This week, I have been pondering the word “freedom,” and trying to untangle it from the loaded patriotic word that it has become to see what God means by freedom and what God wants for us in setting us free. Let’s look at our scriptures today and see what we find.
In
the Hebrew scripture, God is reminding the people that God has freed them from
literal slavery in Egypt, but not to go running off in every direction or
without a leader or relationships, but to follow a path in the wilderness
together. God took brought them from
oppressive work and mistreatment to 40 years of learning to trust God and to
work together to build relationships.
The people were learning to be in life-giving relationships with God and
each other. Some scholars believe that
in the wilderness, lots of little bands of misfits came together and found a
home and a people together with the Israelites walking together until they
formed a unique identity as a people who God cares for, who have a
responsibility to care for the smallest and weakest among themselves. Freedom meant freedom from forced labor, from
fear for your life at the hands of a slaveowner, from family separation, from
the whims of a violent and jealous pharaoh.
Freedom meant the ability to follow leaders who cared for the people, to
be in community with others, to work together, to trust God, to take on values
that brought abundant life to the community.
This freedom also meant not having to trust—but having the choice
whether to follow these values of God or not.
There were many times people chose not to trust, which had consequences sometimes
of loss of life and spending 39 more years out in the wilderness than what was
actually necessary.
Psalm
46 was one of Martin Luther’s favorites.
He wrote “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” based on it. He knew what it meant to be captive, enslaved
to his fear. He feared his father, who
he could not please. He feared God who
he could not please. But this psalm
helped him overcome his fears. God is
there to help us so we can be free from fear.
God is bringing to reality a vision that is beautiful and
life-giving. When Martin Luther saw God
as an angry father, he was absolutely paralyzed. This was the image the church perpetuated to
control people. When he became a monk,
he started to read the scriptures and he found there grace and hope. It freed him to speak the truth to the church
authorities, which at times led him to have to go into hiding and become
something of a captive. But this truth
of God’s love meant that no matter what anyone did to him, he would always have
the freedom of knowing he belonged to God.
This epiphany led him to translate the Bible into the common language of
the people so they could read it for themselves and also become free. Education became a means of freedom. It meant people could access the word of God
themselves and no one could control what they knew of the freeing promises of
God.
Another
of Martin Luther’s favorite verses is Romans 3.
We are not justified by our works or deeds. That’s not what makes us right with God. It’s helpful to know the law because there
are some helpful guildelines to help us relate to others, and also because
these laws show us what sorry shape we’re in, that we are slaves to our desires
and to our fears. But we’re not meant to
stay in that sorry state. Jesus gives us
a most beautiful gift, the gift of grace, the gift of relationship, the gift of
welcome, of family with him. We have
been slaves—worshipping ourselves and our own power, trapped in our cycles of
addiction and fear. Jesus comes to unite
heaven and earth, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, to stir
us all up until we all look up and say, “I don’t want this life of slavery to
sin anymore. I want the life that Jesus
is offering.” It is a freedom that comes
with relationship to Jesus, to follow the way he lives and in relationship and
responsibility to vulnerable neighbors.
Finally
in the Gospel of John, Jesus offers freedom to those who are listening to
him. They first deny all the ways they
enslaved and trapped in life and even their own history, their own story. They claim that their relationship to Abraham
means they have always been free. But
Jesus and John the Baptist have never been impressed by that relationship. God could make stones into children of
Abraham. No big deal. It isn’t a blood line that makes us free or
not. Instead we are all related to
Abraham because he couldn’t keep all the rules, either, but God valued the
relationship they had and that was enough.
Abraham found enough trust to leave his home and walk with God through
many dangers. Sometimes he didn’t listen
so well and relied on his own smarts which got him into trouble several
times. Sometimes he really complained
because God hadn’t followed through on the plan to give him a son, but the
relationship and conversation continued.
Abraham related to many unexpected people on the journey with
hospitality and grace that God had welcomed and related to him.
Sometimes
we get stuck like these folks Jesus is talking to in the Gospel. It might be hard to admit some ways we might
be enslaved or trapped. We get trapped
in our ideas of what family is and how we are or aren’t related to each
other. Who is my brother or sister? Who am I disconnected from? Who do I dismiss or ignore?
We
get stuck in wanting to control things, to make the decisions, or in our
dependence upon violence or the threat of violence to get our way. We get enslaved to money and comforts. We get enslaved in alcohol or food or
exercise as a way to feel in control. We
idolize sports figures and celebrities.
Trinity’s
Anniversary is right around the corner.
We’ll be looking at our history.
We’ll get practice telling our story.
We’ll examine where we have been enslaved and trapped. We’ll see the vision and hope the people
before us held. We’ll remember our
relationships. We’ll remember when we
were faithful. We look there not to go
back there but to see what we can learn.
Maybe those stories will shed light on where we are now and help us
articulate our faith and our vision.
Maybe those stories will inspire us to strengthen relationships with
neighbors. Maybe we will see where we
get stuck and be honest about barriers within our church. Maybe we will find ourselves freed, not to do
whatever we want, but to follow Jesus, who used his freedom to show no
partiality, to cross borders in his sharing the good news, to risk illness and
pain and ridicule to spend time with people on the margins, to offer healing
and love, and to put people to work bringing in the Kingdom. That’s what freedom is for—to get to work
alongside Jesus and all God’s people, loving the world in truth and action.
Someone
said this week that when the Israelites were getting ready to cross the Red
Sea, it wasn’t Moses raising his staff that parted the waters, but the first
person to stick their toe in the water.
It was the faith of one person to take the first step that God was
responding to. For us that person is
Jesus. He was completely free, but he
came in human form to lead us from slavery to freedom. He stood on the threshold and stuck in his
toe and so we follow although the path is often difficult.
I
invite you to stand up this morning.
Close your eyes and imagine with me.
We are standing on the edge of the Red Sea. We have left our comforts, our homes, our
shackles. We are uncertain of where we
are going. We smell the water of the
sea. We feel the breeze. We hear the marching of Pharaoh’s
troops. We look around and see that we
are surrounded by friends. Our anxiety
eases a little. We see Jesus before us
and the sea parting. It is roaring and
foaming. And together we move forward
following our Savior. We’re not going to
arrive right away. We might need a year
of training, learning how to trust and we might need 40. But we’re moving toward abundant life
together, freed to love our neighbor and work for the common good.
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