By Rev. Dr. Charles J.
Tomlin, DMin.
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist
Partnership
Pentecost 6, July 5th,
2015
Yesterday we celebrated 239 of American
freedom. Interestingly, the same year
Flat Rock constituted as a church (1783) was the very year American
independence was recognized by Great Britain.
After the decisive siege of Yorktown by the Continentals, militia, and
French regulars, under the leadership of General George Washington, General
Cornwallis surrendered and America was free.
But our American experience of freedom began even
before winning our independence from England.
Most of us remember learning in grade school how the Mayflower set sail
for the new world and landed at Plymouth Rock in November of 1620. It was there that those English dissenters
established the Plymouth Bay Colony in Massachusetts. While the leadership of that historic new
colony was seeking religious freedom, the majority of those who came to
establish the first permanent settlement of Jamestown were seeking gold, not
God (See “American Gospel” by Jon Meachham, p. 41).
Most Americans cherish freedom, but we cherish it in
different ways. Some cherish individual freedom, which allows us to live
any way we choose. Others greatly cherish
the political freedom we have to vote and to choose our own leaders. Baptists have historically been at the
forefront of the struggle for religious liberty, believing that the greatest
freedom we have is to be able to worship God in a free country, a free state,
and a free church.
As Christians, we believe that all human freedom,
secular and religious, has its true source in the God who liberated Israel from
Egypt and who also redeemed us in this Jesus who said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” (Jn.
8.32). The ‘truth’ Jesus clarified is
the truth about himself: “If the Son
shall make you free, you shall be free indeed”(Jn. 8.36). However
you look at it, ‘freedom,’ individual and religious, is a core value of
our Christian faith.
This is why Paul’s letter to the Galatians should be
important to us. Galatians is the New
Testament book that has been nicked-named ‘the
Magna Carta of Christian Liberty’. As Paul himself expressed it: “It is
for freedom that Christ has set you free.
So, stand firm.” (Gal.
5.1). For the next several weeks we are
going to consider how we should continue to ‘stand firm’ in this freedom that
finds both its center and its source our Lord Jesus Christ.
FREEDOM: OUT OF THIS WORLD
Notice how Paul introduces us to his letter about
Christian freedom with a very unique beginning. He reminds his readers and us that he is ‘an apostle—sent neither by human commission
nor from human authorities’ (1:1). Already, we have our first important clue to
help us define what Christian freedom means.
It is a freedom that is from beyond our human capability---it is a gift
that only comes ‘through Jesus Christ,
and God the Father….” (1.1b).
Most of you have send or heard of the recent release
of the Academy Award Winning movie, “12
Years a slave.” It is the true story of
a Freeman, Solomon Northup, who in 1853
was kidnapped from a free state in the North and then made to endure the
suffering of being a slave in the deep south until he was able to prove his rights
as a free man. While most of us have
not known what it is like to be ‘enslaved’ like African Americans have, we all need
to understand that it our human tendency to hurt and to enslave each
other. You can read the story of
bondage all the way back to the opening pages of the Bible, when Adam submitted
to the bondage of sin, or when Israel
was overcome by the bondage of Egypt. The ‘supernatural’ not the natural message
from God through Moses was, and still
is, “Let
my people go….”
What Paul wants us to know is that this is the source
and the reason for the gospel of Jesus Christ,
to help people become ‘free’ from those things in life that can capture
us, hook us, entangle us, and enslave us.
No matter which way you define the gospel, you must finally understand
that the gospel is a ‘liberating’ work of God, not liberating us to be free to
destroy ourselves or others, nor to live in any way we want, but it is a
liberating gospel that is sent from God to help us ‘get free’ from the forces
of human life that can hurt and hinder us from living out our God-given
potential.
Again, as we begin reading this letter, we must see
that it is purposely ‘not’ a message like other human messages we hear all the
time. In advertisements we hear
salesmen and sales women trying to get us to buy a certain product, so we have
a better life, but often they get the better life because we buy their
product. This same kind of ‘false
promise’ happens over and over in our world as people go after the kinds of ‘freedom’
that are only mirages. The freedom that
is ‘not of human origin’ is not another ‘get free’ product. The gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ
that has been established on earth by God, when Jesus was ‘raised from the dead’
(1.1). We are not talking about things
that are ‘humanly possible’, but we are talking about something that is humanly
hoped for and desperately needed. It is our human hope, but this is a hope of
freedom that comes from God, and is not from humans.
On the day before spring, a story on the news was told
about a young, less than 2 year-old boy in Pennsylvania, who fell into a cold
creek and should have drowned. For 101
minutes medical personnel worked to try to get his breathing and heart
re-started. Some call it a miracle that
the boy not only survived, but he came back to life in a very normal way. The news media said that ‘thanks to the
training of the medical team….”. Of
course, they were like Paul, sent,
called, and trained to do a job to save a life,
but many times that training doesn’t work out. This time it did. One news person on ABC, pointed up to heaven
acknowledging that this indeed was a miracle that could only be explained as a
miracle from God in heaven. I don’t
think you have to figure out a miracle, but you can be thankful for it, learn from it, and give God the glory for
life that is always a gift.
Paul wants us to know that our ‘freedom’ is a gift
that is just like this. There is a
human side to freedom, especially in how it comes to us, but ultimately the
gift of freedom is a gift that is ‘not
from human beings nor through human authorities…. Freedom is a gift from the very God who in
Christ ‘died to make us free’, as the
Battle hymn of the Republic so beautifully puts it. Our freedom has many faces, but the ultimate
source is not from us, but it is for us, because it is a gift from beyond.
A
GIFT OF GRACE AND PEACE
Paul also describes the nature of this gift of freedom,
as ultimately a gift of ‘grace and peace’ which comes from “God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ”. Paul’s common greeting reflects ‘uncommon
grace’ and much too ‘uncommon peace’.
Grace and Peace is Paul’s wish for the churches, because it is God’s
wish and dream for the world, to be a
world that finds freedom through ‘grace and peace’. Is there any other way to find it?
When we sing, “Let
Freedom Ring”, we really
mean, “Let Grace and Peace” reign, because without peace there is no true
freedom and without grace---that is, without receiving God’s gift of grace and
extending that grace to other people around us, there is no lasting, real,
genuine peace. If we want freedom, or
if we want our freedom to continue, we must also be a people of ‘grace’ and a
people of ‘peace’.
Where does such ‘grace and peace’ come from? Doesn’t it come through the message of the
gospel? The message of good news is
that because of what God has done in Jesus Christ, by forgiving us of our sins,
and by extending God’s grace, not just to Israel who keeps the law, but also to
any who will receive God’s love by faith, through grace. Now that
God has made ‘peace’ with us, through
Jesus Christ, we can God’s peace as a ‘gift’ of ‘grace’ which we can give to
others. It this way, our own
freedom---that is the freedom God gives to us, comes to us as we receive grace
and make peace. This is how the wonderful
gospel is received by us as we receive it and then pass it along. It is this kind of new reality, which
begins in our hearts, that makes freedom possible, not only in us, but around
us, and it makes freedom ring out in a world where freedom is still under
threat.
In our world today, one of the greatest threats to grace
and peace is the radical Islamic nation of Isis. We all have watched their bloody rampage across
the world and how innocent people continue to be killed, how human culture and
civility is being threatened and destroyed.
The question comes to us, as Christians and as Americans, in regard to how we can wish ‘grace and peace’
in a fallen world when evil is still alive and well. How can we follow and live the Sermon on the
Mount, which calls us to love our enemies?
How can we give grace and make peace, when we have come to believe the
only way to stop this evil is to ‘make war’?
This is not a new question. It was the same kind of question that was
put before the human race during the rise of Nazism, Communism, or many other
kinds of extremely radical evil threats the world has known. How do we ‘let freedom ring’, when we know that there are threats to
freedom that constantly raise up their heads,
like radical Islam is doing today?
How do we attempt to uphold justice, while extending our hand in
goodness, righteousness, fairness and peace?
Isn’t this still the most pressing question for Christians, for
Americans, and for the world?
I don’t want to make this a political sermon about
what our government should or shouldn’t do, but I want to keep with the
biblical discussion that is before us in Paul.
But any discussion of liberty will, should and does affect how we live free
as Christians in this free country, and how we support the values that God has
set loose in the world---through Jesus Christ. How can we wish ‘grace and peace’ even
when we there comes a time or a historical moment, we may have to keep peace by
deciding to ‘make war’?
When I go back to the original American Revolution,
which was fought on the very good ground of ‘liberty and justice for all’, I
think we can find a way to understand that sometimes, even to live out the God’s
dream of ‘grace and peace’ sometimes may require us to put up a ‘fight’. But what kind of fight, is the question,
isn’t it? There is all kinds of
imagery in the Bible about ‘putting on armor’ that is more spiritual than
militaristic. There is also powerful
words from Paul about ‘fighting the good fight’
which not at all the same as fighting the way the world fights. Is there a place for fighting ‘a good fight’
that puts on the ‘armor of humanity’ rather than the ‘armor of God? How do we keep our freedom secure? While we can never justify war, or killing,
or violence, on any grounds, are their times we must seek justice,
righteousness, and goodness ‘through strength’ because we know that we also
live in a fallen world?
FREE FROM THIS EVIL
AGE
For me, at least,
the answer to how to wish ‘grace, peace’ and ‘freedom’ in a fallen world
comes in what Paul says next, when he reminds us that ‘the Lord Jesus Christ….gave himself for OUR SINS, that he might DELIEVER US FROM THIS PRESENT EVIL
AGE….” Paul reminds us that there is
no lasting ‘freedom’ without being ‘delivered’
or made ‘free’ from ‘this present evil age’, which we are
all subjected under. In other
words, even if we, or our government, decides
that we too must take up arms to fight, we
can only fight with the full understanding that it’s not just ‘them’ who are
the sinners, but it is us too.
My recent studies about the Muslim world seem to
verify this. While there is no excuse
for the violent acts of radical Islam, there are reasons. Part of the reasons radical Islam is able to
attract followers is because, as Western nations of power and influence must
admit, the radicalization in the Middle East today is feeding off the mistakes
and the misdeeds of our own western governments in the past. There is just no way around the truth that
before we can receive the ‘good news’ of the gospel, and before we can take the
‘good news’ of ‘grace and peace’ to the world,
we must also be willing to receive the bad news about ourselves. The gospel that brings freedom must always be
a gospel that includes ‘OUR SINS’ as the reason for Jesus’ death. It is never as simple as ‘us’ against ‘them. Even
if we decide to fight the enemy, we must remember and never forget, that the
enemy is also inside of us.
I believe that Jesus and Paul are right to understand
that the source of freedom is the freedom that begins in each of our own
hearts. Until we find ‘freedom’ within
ourselves, we can’t understand the full importance of freedom, nor can we take
the wonderful of message of freedom to the world. And we have to take this message to the
world, don’t we? We can’t wait until the
whole world comes to us seeking the freedom we have. We have to go out there and take the message,
so that they can have what we have. But do we even realize what we have? Do we remember how freedom rings, not just
in our ears, but also in our hearts?
Not long ago, I was getting a haircut and my barber reminded
me of a story I once told about freedom.
It was a story about siblings, a brother and sister, who spent the
summer together at grandma’s. One day,
the little boy was skipping rocks on the farm pond and accidently hit and
killed one of grandma’s prize winning ducks.
He did not go to tell Grandma, but his sister was hanging up clothes
nearby and saw the whole thing. After
supper the sister asked her brother to help her wash dishes. He didn’t want to until she made him,
because she would tell grandma about the duck.
Then, she got him to do other
things, on top of his own chores of
taking care of the farm animals. As
time went by, he was doing as much of
her chores as he was his own.
Finally, the
boy decided he would not being enslaved by his sister’s wishes any longer. He went to his grandma to tell her the
truth. To his surprise, grandmother
told him that she had also seen him kill
the duck, and she had also watched him live in slavery to his sister’s wishes
and wondered how long it would take him to come and tell the truth. All he had to do to be forgiven and free,
would have been to come and tell Grandma the truth. If only he had loved the freedom of being
forgiven as much as he loved the freedom of hiding the truth. But now, he has learned, and he is free, so he
can enjoy the rest of the summer.
If only we could understand what kind of ‘freedom’ we
could ALL have if we would let freedom ring, not just in our ears, but also 'sing' in
our hearts. Isn’t this where all
freedom begins? It begins within as we let our
lives be free in God’s amazing, redeeming grace. Let freedom Sing!, then is will always ring! Amen.
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