“Free-dumb?”

A sermon based upon Galatians 5: 1, 13-25

Charles J. Tomlin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

June 27, 2010

There is little doubt that the experience of freedom releases within the human spirit an incomparable exuberance and excitement.    

Last week  for the first time, I heard about the annual “Juneteeth” celebration.  I didn’t know about this until recently and have since discovered that “Juneteeth” is, in a word, a “portmanteau”--a blending of two words and their meanings, signifying a celebration of emancipation from slavery.   The celebration started, in of all places, Texas; one of the last places freedom rang for African-Americans.  Being the largest southern State, eastern Texas refused to honor the new law until Union General Gordon Granger, along with 2,000 troops arrived in Galveston on June 18^th, 1865 and enforced the new law.  Ironically, it was in this last of the states to end slavery that the celebration of “Juneteeth” originated and is now spread to 36  other states (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth#cite_note-TXJ19-8  ).

But what can a celebration of a freedom from slavery mean to us who’ve never been slaves and don’t know are still a bit dumb to it, because we’ve never been enslaved?   On two consecutive Wednesday evenings, we recently watched the moving story of William Wilberforce and the movie “Amazing Grace” which dramatically retold the story of the legal work and the religious and moral movement to abolish the slave trade in England with the passing of the Slave Trade Act in 1807.  As we watched we could help but be appalled, not only to see the evil of slavery reenacted, but to also consider the inhumane treatment human beings once received at the hands of other human beings on those slave ships as people were forced from their homelands and most of them died before they even reached their destination to  sold like animals at a slave auction.    

 

The ending of that kind of world and that kind of human cruelty is something to celebrate, whether we “feel” it or not.   We, as a nation, as a world, never want to go back there.   Even if we don’t feel this “celebration” in our hearts because we’ve never been slaves or never had ancestors who were slaves, we must never let ourselves become “free-dumb”, that is, stupid about that we don’t recall how precious freedom is and to renew ourselves to the costs of freedom everywhere for everyone.  If we take freedom it for granted, for ourselves or for others, or if we abuse or confuse it; we too can turn our freedom into being “free-dumb” and we don’t even want to know what might come after that.

In our text today, the apostle Paul has his own concerns about “Freedom” or being “free-dumb”.   He wants to warn the Galatians about the risk of losing their own newly discovered “freedom” in Christ and becoming ignorant of both the costs and the responsibilities of what it means to be and live free.    

LIVING LEGALISTICALLY IS BEING FREE-DUMB  

In his closing words to his “freedom letter”, Paul calls upon the Galatians to “stand firm” in their Christ-given “freedom” and he goes on to explain with great detail what freedom means, what freedom costs, and what it takes to maintain freedom as the centerpiece of our Christian and our human experience.   Considering Paul’s concern about freedom, we need to ask ourselves today, what would it mean to become “free-dumb”?   

Paul does not mince words in explaining that it is very “dumb” to go backward to legalism and the captivity of the soul, rather than going forward in the freedom of grace through faith that Jesus has brought us.   He warns them: “Do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (5:1). 

But who would want to do this?  WHO WOULD WANT TO GO BACKWARD RATHER THAN FORWARD?   Well, the Israelites did.  Don’t you still hear them saying after they were made free through the miracle of the Exodus as they faced the difficulties of the desert, how much they wanted to go back to the “fleshpots” of Egypt (Ex. 16:3)?   Don’t you also recall how Jesus had taught Peter and the disciples to move ahead in their ethics and living by “turning the other cheek” and “loving the enemy” but at Jesus’ arrest in the garden, Peter is the first to pull out his sword to fight, cutting off a man’s ear (Mark 14.47).   Now, here we are again, as the Spirit has moved the church beyond the legalistic requirements of circumcision, but there are some who wanted to go back old ways.  Instead of moving forward in the grace of what was unknown, it seemed easier to go back into what was known through the law. 

For these new Jewish Christians, the “yoke of slavery” not only meant going back to the practice of circumcision (5:2) but it meant being “obliged” to the “entire law” going back to how things were before Jesus Christ had set them free.   Paul warns: If you go back to the being “justified by the law”, you “cut yourselves off” from Christ (5:4).   The language in the Greek is very graphic and you can’t miss how it implies something similar to making a mistake with the circumcision knife; a mistake you don’t want to make.  

When you short-cut freedom, you short cut Jesus, and you when go back to living under the law, Paul also says, he also says very seriously, that you “fall away from grace” (5:4).  Falling from grace by trying to find salvation by living under the law can be visualized like walking a tightrope across a ravine and being in danger of falling off without a safety net.  Realistically, a few people might be able to do this, but most can’t, and for most of us, any attempt to do such a thing is not just ridiculous but sure spiritual suicide.  In terms of Christian spirituality, to go back to legalism is to be blatantly forgetful of everything Jesus has done to get us where we can be today---“saved by grace, through faith, and not of works, lest anyone should boast.”  (Eph. 2, 8,9).

But the question rises once again:  Why is it even “tempting” to go backward into legalistic interpretations of the law instead of forward with interpretations of love, mercy and grace?  WHY IS IT SO INVITING TO BE “FREE-DUMB” AND BECOME “ENSLAVED” AND “ENTANGLED IN THE YOKE OF BONDAGE”, rather than to be “free-smart” for deciding, living and loving in the world?   

Teresa and I will never forget the day we drove from “free” and colorful Western Germany into the former eastern bloc nation of East Germany.  It was literally like driving out of a color TV into a Black and White one; or like changing your TV back from High Definition to Standard Analog signals.   This was 1991, right after the Berlin wall had fallen.  Eastern Germany was now “free”, but it was “free” in name only.   It was still a dark and dismal place to our eyes and what made it so dark and dismal was not just cosmetic but also inward.  There had been no true freedom.  Everything was decided from the top down.  Government controlled everyone’s life and destiny.  No one owned anything, so no one took real ownership.  It was always somebody else’s world.  Because of these rules, few risks were taken and nothing was ever really gained.  

After we moved into the east and started to meet the people, we saw the other side of living under a “government” control and a legalistically controlled world.   There was little crime.  The streets were safe.  Everyone had very little, but most would help each other survive.   They got meat one day a week and people would share.  There was not much of anything in the stores to buy, so you had to find meaning and life in the simple things.    And this might sound a little bit strange to you like it did to me.  People who lived under communist rule would not want to go back there, but they also realized some very high costs to being free they had not anticipated.   Freedom created all kinds of new problems; like the difference between rich and poor; the new opportunities for greed, crime and self-centeredness; and the new responsibilities to decide and determine one’s own destiny.  All this is not easy and can be quite hard.   I’ll never forget how frustrated one woman was at going into the newly built supermarket and having to choose between so many different kinds of cereals.   She looked at me, as a more experienced westerner, and commented: “How do you choose?  I liked my store with two kinds of cereal better.”  

There is no doubt about it.  LIVING LIFE IN THE COLOR OF FREEDOM AND GRACE REQUIRES MORE OF US not LESS; just like that TV with HD definition takes twice the energy than the old analog set.   In some ways, for us in church too, it would be easier to go back to the days when one denomination or religion was perfectly right and all others were completely wrong.  Being “free dumb” might sound stupid, but it can seem nicer and neater to live with very certain contrasts of “black and white”, than to have to consider the many mysterious angles, depths and complex details of a life that must be lived in color.  In “black and white” the differences, the issues, the rules can seem cut and dry, simple and clean, or just true or false; with no multiple choice, no essay, no debate, no discussion, no compromise, and no constant communication being needed.  It doesn’t require much heart, soul, or mind work to live or stay there, though it did require a lot of body work:  blood, sweat and tears---so many tears.  Can’t you just see the tears of all those people being condemned under the law and being shut out until Jesus came to set them free?   The problem with doing only “body work” as your only “life-work” is that while your body does all work, your mind, your soul and your heart can go sound to sleep.  To make the choice of living in color requires that you also open your heart fully to God, allowing your soul to be touched by others, and use your mind to contemplate the deeper things of life and of God.  This requires not just living by laws and rules, but it requires living and loving by grace through faith.   While it is much more challenging to live in the color and on the higher level of faith and grace, a life in color has so much more potential and possibilities for fullness and life.    It is harder at times and also challenging, but it is also more rewarding and fulfilling.

Jesus clarifies what moving forward in grace means just as Paul knows what is going backward to the law means.   Jesus said that he did not come to dismantle the law, but he came to bring the law to a higher fulfillment (Matthew 5: 20ff).  The law is not an end in itself, but it a means which needs some “higher” ends: “Unless your Righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven…”(Mat. 5:21). Neither Paul nor Jesus declared that any of us should live ‘above” the law, but they do preach that we must live “beyond” the law: “You heard it said, “don’t murder”, but I tell you you shouldn’t even get angry” or “You’ve heard it said, don’t commit adultery, but I tell you don’t lust….” Over and over again, Jesus does not discourage nor disagree with the law; but he constantly challenges us to live beyond the law and to build our lives upon even as we supersede it.   Jesus wants his people and his disciples to live smarter than they have in the past.   The law is not meant to hinder, but is intended to teach, help and free us for our good and for gifts of grace.   Someone has said, “we only have 10 “thou shalt  nots” so that the rest of life can be full of “thou shalts,”, but I will add, that if we never get to the “thou shalts”, we’ll never have anything in life worth shouting about.”  Legalism might be able to save us “from something”, but the problem is that it can never save us “for” something and this is why legalism cannot save us like Jesus can.  

LIVING ONLY FOR YOURSELF IS ALSO FREE-DUMB

The other thing Paul warns about in this text, is just as dumb, if not “dumb and dumber.”   To misuse our freedom to live any way we choose or to live only for self (or your own flesh) even dumber than legalism.   This is what Paul refers to in verse 13, when he says: “For you were called to freedom…. only don’t use your freedom as an opportunity for self indulgence…”   If you trade in Jesus’ way of freedom for your own self-motivated version you can become “free-dumber” than you might look?

Don’t we all know a little about being this kind of dumb?  We might not have “traded in Jesus” for “getting what we want”, but I think we all had to learn, even as children, that if we were going to be smart in our freedom and maturity, at sometime or other we had to stop being so dumb as to only want what we wanted.   I remember on a hot summer days in childhood, how my friend, Kenny Burdett, had an grandfather who lived next to me on our street.  Kenny’s grandfather also ran the Five and Dime store that was just about 5 streets away from my home.  As a 6 and 5 year old, being bored one afternoon, Kenny and I decided we were “free” to hike to his grandfather’s store to see what we could get his grandfather to give us.   We made it to the store and later returned safely home with Tootsie Pops.   My mother, seeing the candy, questioned me and I refused to tell her where we’d been, because I knew full well that her giving me “freedom” to go to visit my friend did not mean wandering down city streets alone.   When I made up some story about where the candy came from, it was then that my mother informed me how Kenny’s grandfather had called, informing her where we were.   Because of my “abuse of freedom”, I ended up being in “heap of trouble” and losing some of my freedom, both for refusing to tell mom, and for going to the store without permission.

Children are supposed to learn the limits of their freedom, but it is much bigger trouble when as adults, we have not learned that freedom is not just license to have or go where we wish, but also means a responsibility to be and to do what needs to be done.  There’s a song we used to sing a lot in church, especially in the “Baptist churches” of my childhood, and there is in it a line that expresses the abuse of freedom when it says: “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.”  (From “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing).   I find that line “strangely true” because it speaks of living in both the blessing and in the risk of God’s grace, when it says:

             O to grace how great a debtor, Daily I’m constrained to be!
            Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
            Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love;
            Here’s my heart, O take and seal it, Seal it for Thy courts above.

These words were written by a 22 year old English, Methodist pastor in 1757.  What we must not miss in his words is the “other side” of the drama and challenge of salvation which occurs after grace comes to the soul that has been set free.  This "other" drama is a call to be just as serious about keeping and maintaining the grace and the “freedom” we have been given, even after we have it.  Maybe we Baptists have not been as serious about the possibility of losing our freedom to our “wandering hearts” as this Methodist was, nor have we been as concerned as Paul was about “falling from grace.”  Should we be?   Paul actually believed that if you do not “stand firm” (5:1) in your freedom, Christ will be “of no benefit.” (5:2).   He actually believed that a person could “cut themselves off from Christ” (5:4) and could “fall away from grace” itself (5:4) while waiting for the full “hope of righteousness” (5:5) which is still to come.   Paul’s point is not that you can lose your salvation, but makes the point that if you start going backward in a salvation that only moves you forward, and you go wayward instead of straightaway, then you have indeed lost what you could have but do not have.   Paul believed you can lose grace and your freedom in God’s grace when you don’t have what you think you have, because you are not who you think you are because you don’t do what you are supposed to do.  Either way, you won’t just end up looking dumb, you will be worse than dumb; so dumb that you will not even know what you’ve lost, until may be too late.   That’s dumb!

BECOMING SMART ABOUT FREEDOM.   

What we all need to do and know to keep from becoming “free-dumb” is to know and do what it means to be “free-smart.”   Being “free-smart” requires us to join with God in his work of grace in us in ways that are both social (outward) and spiritual (inward).   Being “Free-smart means that we have a socially active love for others and for life (5: 13-21).  This other-directed love finds its source and resource in the spirit-led love that comes only from God (5:22-26).  If you want to find freedom and keep it, and you want to stay free-smart, rather than becoming free-dumb, you can’t ever separate these two ways of being responsible with your freedom in your love for God and your love for others.    

Do you see the many ways, after verse 13, that Paul goes on to show how true “freedom” in Christ comes “through love”?  Paul speaks of love that is not selfish, but serving (v. 13); love that is not flesh oriented, but Spirit motivated (16-21), and he finally speaks of having spiritual roots of love in your heart so that the fruit of love in grows in your life to give you and help you keep the very freedom you have been given in Jesus Christ.  What Paul is saying in all this is to simply remind us what Jesus first told his disciples: We keep our freedom because as we love and this love we have is only law we ever need (v. 18).   Having this “law of love” in us means we will seek to serve each other, rather than “bite and devour one another”, “be consumed by one another” (v. 15), become “conceited, competing against one another” or “ envying one another.” (v. 26).   Just as hatred, conflict and destructive competition will be the way to bring an end to our God given freedom, because we are so “free-dumb”, so will serving, respecting and caring for each other be how we stay free- smart.   

Perhaps what is most important in all of this talk of love is what Paul implies when he shows that freedom means “love” this love begins by learning to “walk in the Spirit” (vs. 16).  Being free-smart, is not much talk at all, but it is outward, loving action toward those around us which is based upon walking with the Spirit living inside of us.  In this spiritual logic, Paul implies that we stay smart in our freedom, because of what we now want to do, not because of what we learn we have to do (vs. 18).  In Jesus’ loving action for us and through God’s spirit still working in us, something changes inside of us, even when nothing has changed around us.    

Carlos Wilton, tells about a true story that comes out of the little Gerorgia country church where he grew up preaching professor Tom Long grew up. The older folks of that congregation loved to tell the story again and again.   The tale took place on a certain Sunday night in October of 1938. This was back in the days of Sunday-evening prayer services. The preacher was right in the middle of his sermon when a man named Sam — a member of the congregation and well known to everyone — burst through the church doors, trembling with fear. It took him a moment to catch his breath, but then he blurted out, “It’s the Martians! They’re attacking the earth in spaceships! Some of ’em have landed in New Jersey!”

Now, Sam was not a man given to flights of fancy; nor was he fond of practical jokes. He was a straight-arrow sort of guy. From the look in his eye, and his earnest tone of voice, it was clear he believed every word he said.   The poor preacher didn’t know what to do. He had never imagined, in his wildest dreams, that his sermon might one day be interrupted by news of an interplanetary invasion. The preacher just stared at Sam, open-mouthed. The congregation stared, too.
            “It’s true!” said Sam. “I swear it. I heard it on the radio.”

What Sam had heard, of course, was Orson Welles’ now-infamous Mercury Theater of the Air radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds. It was a fictional story, meant to sound like a real radio broadcast. It fooled an awful lot of people. The announcer said at the beginning it was only a story, but if you tuned in a few minutes late, you missed the context and were very likely to think it was a real, “we interrupt this program,” sort of news bulletin.

After a few moments of awkward silence in the church, one of the oldest members of the congregation got up to speak. He was a farmer, a plain-spoken “man of few words.”
            “I ’spect what Sam says ain’t completely true. But, if it is, I know this. We’re in the right place here in church. I say we go on with the meetin’.” And so, they did.
            “The old farmer sized it all up,  by walking in the Spirit of love, the church was better to be loving their brother and also to stay in church praising God than running around the cow pasture shooting buckshot into the night sky or making a fool out of their friend.”  (As quoted from Homileticsonline.com)

In a world that can be very enslaving in so many wrong ways, and can mislead us in so many ways, it is only when we “enslave” ourselves to God’s spirit in the best, most loving way that we find both the roots and the fruits of true freedom and grace continually born in us through love.  Out of these very spiritual roots of love, God grows the fruit of love, which will always be the root and fruit of freedom.  For as he says, out of the fruit of Spirit we find all fruit of freedom—freedom to speak our hearts and freedom to love even those we don’t agree with.  It is a the kind of spiritual love that always results in inward growth of outward joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.  By letting God’s spirit work in us as we work for God, God keeps growing and giving us the spirit of Christ’s freedom from the inside out.  

I want to close this message with some words from a woman who became one of the most spiritual persons who ever lived, even though she was once a slave, not just to her white masters, but was also to her own humanity and the terrible experiences of her life--- until the day the fruit of God’s spirit began to grow inside her.  Her name was Sojourner Truth, and this is a dialogue of her conversation with the great American preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, as remembered and written down by Harriet Beecher Stowe:

            “Sojourner, this is Dr. Beecher. He is a very celebrated preacher.”

“          IS he?” she said, offering her hand in a condescending manner, and looking down on his white head. “Ye dear lamb, I’m glad to see ye! De Lord bless ye! I loves preachers. I’m a kind o’ preacher myself.”

            “You are?” said Dr. Beecher. “Do you preach from the Bible?”

            “No, honey, can’t preach from de Bible,--can’t read a letter.”

            “Why, Sojourner, what do you preach from, then?”

Her answer was given with a solemn power of voice, peculiar to herself, that hushed every one in the room.

            “When I preaches, I has jest one text to preach from, an’ I always preaches from this one. MY text is, ‘WHEN I FOUND JESUS.’”

            “Well, you couldn’t have a better one,” said one of the ministers.

She paid no attention to him, but stood and seemed swelling with her own thoughts, and then began this narration:--

“Well, now, I’ll jest have to go back, an’ tell ye all about it. Ye see, we was all brought over from Africa, father an’ mother an’ I, an’ a lot more of us; an’ we was sold up an’ down, an’ hither an’ yon; an’ I can ‘member, when I was a little thing, not bigger than this ‘ere,” pointing to her grandson, “how my ole mammy would sit out o’ doors in the evenin’, an’ look up at the stars an’ groan. She’d groan an’ groan, an’ says I to her,--

            “‘Mammy, what makes you groan so?’“ an’ she’d say,--

            “‘Matter enough, chile! I’m groanin’ to think o’ my poor children: they don’t know where I be, an’ I don’t know where they be; they looks up at the stars, an’ I looks up at the stars, but I can’t tell where they be.

            “‘Now,’ she said, ‘chile, when you’re grown up, you may be sold away from your mother an’ all your ole friends, an’ have great troubles come on ye; an’ when you has these troubles come on ye, ye jes’ go to God, an’ He’ll help ye.’  An’ says I to her,--

            “‘Who is God, anyhow, mammy?’   “An’ says she,--

            “‘Why, chile, you jes’ look up DAR! It’s Him that made all DEM!”

“Well, I didn’t mind much ‘bout God in them days. I grew up pretty lively an’ strong, an’ could row a boat, or ride a horse, or work round, an’ do ‘most anything.

            “At last I got sold away to a real hard massa an’ missis. Oh, I tell you, they WAS hard! ‘Peared like I couldn’t please ‘em, nohow. An’ then I thought o’ what my old mammy told me about God; an’ I thought I’d got into trouble, sure enough, an’ I wanted to find God, an’ I heerd some one tell a story about a man that met God on a threshin’-floor, an’ I thought, ‘Well an’ good, I’ll have a threshin’-floor, too.’ So I went down in the lot, an’ I threshed down a place real hard, an’ I used to go down there every day, an’ pray an’ cry with all my might, a-prayin’ to the Lord to make my massa an’ missis better, but it didn’t seem to do no good; an’ so says I, one day,--

            “‘O God, I been a-askin’ ye, an’ askin’ ye, an’ askin’ ye, for all this long time, to make my massa an’ missis better, an’ you don’t do it, an’ what CAN be the reason? Why, maybe you CAN’T. Well, I shouldn’t wonder ef you couldn’t. Well, now, I tell you, I’ll make a bargain with you. Ef you’ll help me to git away from my massa an’ missis, I’ll agree to be good; but ef you don’t help me, I really don’t think I can be. Now,’ says I, ‘I want to git away; but the trouble’s jest here: ef I try to git away in the night, I can’t see; an’ ef I try to git away in the daytime, they’ll see me, an’ be after me.’

            “Then the Lord said to me, ‘Git up two or three hours afore daylight, an’ start off.’

“An’ says I, ‘Thank ‘ee, Lord! that’s a good thought.’

            “So up I got, about three o’clock in the mornin’, an’ I started an’ travelled pretty fast, till, when the sun rose, I was clear away from our place an’ our folks, an’ out o’ sight. An’ then I begun to think I didn’t know nothin’ where to go. So I kneeled down, and says I,--

“‘Well, Lord, you’ve started me out, an’ now please to show me where to go.’

            “Then the Lord made a house appear to me, an’ He said to me that I was to walk on till I saw that house, an’ then go in an’ ask the people to take me. An’ I travelled all day, an’ didn’t come to the house till late at night; but when I saw it, sure enough, I went in, an’ I told the folks that the Lord sent me; an’ they was Quakers, an’ real kind they was to me. They jes’ took me in, an’ did for me as kind as ef I’d been one of ‘em; an’ after they’d giv me supper, they took me into a room where there was a great, tall, white bed; an’ they told me to sleep there. Well, honey, I was kind o’ skeered when they left me alone with that great white bed; ’cause I never had been in a bed in my life. It never came into my mind they could mean me to sleep in it. An’ so I jes’ camped down under it, on the floor, an’ then I slep’ pretty well. In the mornin’, when they came in, they asked me ef I hadn’t been asleep; an’ I said, ‘Yes, I never slep’ better.’ An’ they said, ‘Why, you haven’t been in the bed!’ An’ says I, ‘Laws, you didn’t think o’ such a thing as my sleepin’ in dat ‘ar’ BED, did you? I never heerd o’ such a thing in my life.’

“Well, ye see, honey, I stayed an’ lived with ‘em. An’ now jes’ look here: instead o’ keepin’ my promise an’ bein’ good, as I told the Lord I would, jest as soon as everything got a’goin’ easy, I FORGOT ALL ABOUT GOD.

            “Pretty well don’t need no help; an’ I gin up prayin.’ I lived there two or three years, an’ then the slaves in New York were all set free, an’ ole massa came to our home to make a visit, an’ he asked me ef I didn’t want to go back an’ see the folks on the ole place. An’ I told him I did. So he said, ef I’d jes’ git into the wagon with him, he’d carry me over. Well, jest as I was goin’ out to git into the wagon, I MET GOD! an’ says I, ‘O God, I didn’t know as you was so great!’ An’ I turned right round an’ come into the house, an’ set down in my room; for ‘t was God all around me. I could feel it burnin’, burnin’, burnin’ all around me, an’ goin’ through me; an’ I saw I was so wicked, it seemed as ef it would burn me up. An’ I said, ‘O somebody, somebody, stand between God an’ me! for it burns me!’ Then, honey, when I said so, I felt as it were somethin’ like an amberill [umbrella] that came between me an’ the light, an’ I felt it was SOMEBODY,--somebody that stood between me an’ God; an’ it felt cool, like a shade; an’ says I, ’Who’s this that stands between me an’ God? Is it old Cato?’ He was a pious old preacher; but then I seemed to see Cato in the light, an’ he was all polluted an’ vile, like me; an’ I said, ‘Is it old Sally?’ an’ then I saw her, an’ she seemed jes’ so. An’ then says I, ‘WHO is this?’ An’ then, honey, for a while it was like the sun shinin’ in a pail o’ water, when it moves up an’ down; for I begun to feel ‘t was somebody that loved me; an’ I tried to know him. An’ I said, ‘I know you! I know you! I know you!’--an’ then I said, ‘I don’t know you! I don’t know you! I don’t know you!’ An’ when I said, ‘I know you, I know you,’ the light came; an’ when I said, ‘I don’t know you, I don’t know you,’ it went, jes’ like the sun in a pail o’ water.

            An’ finally somethin’ spoke out in me an’ said, ‘THIS IS JESUS!’ An’ I spoke out with all my might, an’ says I, ‘THIS IS JESUS! Glory be to God!’ An’ then the whole world grew bright, an’ the trees they waved an’ waved in glory, an’ every little bit o’ stone on the ground shone like glass; an’ I shouted an’ said, ‘Praise, praise, praise to the Lord!’

            An’ I begun to feel such a love in my soul as I never felt before,--love to all creatures. An’ then, all of a sudden, it stopped, an’ I said, ‘Dar’s de white folks, that have abused you an’ beat you an’ abused your people,--think o’ them!’ But then there came another rush of love through my soul, an’ I cried out loud,--’Lord, Lord, I can love EVEN DE WHITE FOLKS! http://fiction.eserver.org/criticism/sojourner_truth.html

© 2010 All rights reserved Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, B.A., M.Div. D.Min

When you consider such a such a tremendous story of the triumph of spirit over the weakness of the flesh,   I’m not half as free-dumb as I was before.   What about you?  Amen.