By Rev. Dr. Charles J.
Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist
Partnership
Pentecost 11, August 16th,
2015
Will Willimon tells about how
one day a recruiter for the "Teach America" program visited the
campus of Duke University, which is of course, one of the most prestigious
universities in the South. The recruiter was there to see if she might be able
to find some bright young students willing to teach in some of the most
difficult and deprived school systems in the country.
When the recruiter got up to the podium and
saw the auditorium full of young men and women, she said: "I don't know why I am here. You are all
special people, who have benefited from the best educational resources that our
country has to offer. And I can tell by looking at you, that you are all bound
for Wall Street or law school or medical school. And here I am trying to
recruit you to take a salary of $15,000 a year and to work in some on the worst
situations in our nation. I'm here to beg you to waste your life for a bunch of
ungrateful kids in the backwoods of Appalachia or in the inner city of
Philadelphia. I must have been crazy to come here. "But I do have some literature up here,
and I would be willing to talk to anybody who might happen to be interested.
But I know, just by looking at you, that all of you want to be successes, and
here I am inviting you to be failures. So you can all leave now. The meeting is
over."
When the recruiter finished
speaking, the rows of students stood up, and most of them rushed forward,
pushing and shoving their way to get a chance to talk to that recruiter, dying
to do something more with their lives than they had ever thought of before (William Willimon, The
Intrusive Word, p. 61).
What are you going to use
your ‘freedom’ for? This seems to be what Paul is wondering as he turn
his focus from defending freedom to more clearly defining it.
In chapter 4, Paul reminded
the Galatians that they are all descendants of the ‘free woman’, not the ‘slave
woman.’ When he says this, Paul speaks
allegorically, metaphorically, symbolically and figuratively. He is not literally saying that Abraham’s
second wife Sarah was better than Abraham’s first wife, Hagar. He is also not saying that Isaac was better
than Ishmael or that Jews are better than Arabs, just like he is not saying
that Jacob was better than Esau or that Christians are better than Jews. What Paul is saying is that through Abraham’s
wife Sarah that God brought the promise and opportunity of freedom for everyone. Because of Jesus Christ, we all have a way to
become children of the ‘free woman’
(4:31) and we can be free from whatever hinders us. We can all follow Jesus because: ‘It is for freedom that Christ has set us
free” (5:1).
IT IS FOR FREEDOM…. (5:1)
That’s a very big statement
isn’t it? Everything that Jesus died
for, was raised for and will come again for, is so that we can be ‘free’. That’s also what Jesus meant when he himself said,
“You shall know the truth and the truth
shall make you free….”
FREEDOM IS A BIG WORD and it
is at the heart of everything that Paul is trying to communicate to the
Christians at Galatia. For you see, even
Christians, just like anyone else, can become confused about what it means to
be ‘free’. They, you, I or we, alone or
collectively, can much too easily forget that ‘freedom’ is what faith is all
about. But the question is what kind of
‘freedom’? What does Paul mean when he
says: “It is for Freedom that Christ has
set you free! (5:1)
In PAUL’S DEFINITION OF
FREEDOM he means a freedom that frees us from ‘slavery’ (NRSV) or ‘bondage’
(KJV) to laws, rules, regulations and meaningless rituals. In Paul’s definition of freedom he means a
freedom that truly sets us free to so that Christ can be a full ‘benefit’ to us (5:2). In Paul’s definition of freedom he means a
freedom that causes us to ‘fall’ into grace rather than ‘fall away from grace’ (5:4).
In Paul’s definition of freedom he means a freedom that is ‘through the Spirit’ and is ‘by grace’ while we ‘wait’ for our ultimate ‘hope of righteousness’ (5:5).
However we apply Paul’s
definition of freedom to our own lives, this is not a freedom, like so many
misunderstand it, which releases us from a life of responsibility. This is a freedom that calls us to be both
faithful and responsive to God’s love in Jesus Christ while we become the
people we can now hope to ultimately become in Jesus Christ. This is not a freedom that says that we have
arrived or have achieved, but it is a freedom that affirms the potential and
possibility of grace in each of us by what Christ has achieved for us all, in
his own perfect ‘righteousness’ which has now become true ‘hope’.
As the people of churches of
Galatia had become ‘confused’ (5:10)
by those who would call them back to circumcision and legalism, Paul wants them to know that since Christ has
come, he has revealed a ‘higher’ level of righteousness, a level which ‘exceeded the righteousness of the Scribes and the Pharisees’ (Matt.
5) and even exceeds the Law of Moses.
Since Christ has ‘set them free’
from being ‘obliged’ to the ‘letter of the law’ which is a ‘letter’ they
could never fulfill, nor can we, now
they and we are ‘set free’ for
obeying the ‘spirit of the law’,
which frees us for a better life and fills us with an even greater hope. Could we still imagine what such spiritual
freedom might still mean for us?
Several years ago I visited a
little town in eastern Germany with the strange sounding name, “Herrnhut”.
Translated the town name means, “shelter of the Lord”. This town was the place where some of the
very first Moravians escaped persecution from the Roman Catholic Church and
found shelter on the large estate which was then owned by Nikolaus Ludwig von
Zinzendorf. When I visited the large
Moravian Church building there, I was struck by the similarities to Home
Morvavian Church in Old Salem, and by the simplicity of the worship center,
which had no visible religious images.
It was there that the Moravians were ‘set free’ from the ‘idolatries’ and of the Catholic Church of that
day so they could live out their faith in sincerity and simplicity. To become serious about their faith, these
Moravians understood that they had to first get free of all the ‘trappings’ of
insincere worship and religion. They
focused upon responsibility to community, upon shared work, upon practical organization
that matters, and upon religious freedom and education for both men and
women. What was true of the Moravians
was also true of Baptists, Methodists, Quakers and many other “Protestant”
religious groups of that time. They were
not trying to find freedom so they could escape their human responsibility, but
they were trying to gain the freedom to live their responsibility in ways that
expressed a true ‘hope of righteousness’.
SO, DON’T GIVE UP YOUR FREEDOM (5:1b,; 4, 13)
The corruptibility of faith, religion
and of humanity in Paul’s day, in the time of the Protestant Reformation,
reminds us of the corruptibility of any human, any faith or of any religion in
any day. This is why Paul is so
concerned that the Galatians, who have been given ‘freedom’ in Christ, should not ‘submit again to the yoke of slavery’ (5:1b).
The use of the language of ‘slavery’ or ‘bondage’ is interesting because it is exactly the opposite of what
religion and the law of God was all about.
If you recall from reading the Old Testament, the giving of the Law came
immediately after the Exodus, the grand moment of the liberation of the people
of God from their bondage in Egypt. How
dare that the ‘law’ that was intended to help them maintain their freedom now
be used to put them into ‘bondage’ all
over ‘again’! How
in the world could the Jewish faith allow this to happen? How in the world could the churches in
Galatia allow this to happen to them again?
How in the world could any church or any religion for that matter, allow
faith to become an burden rather than a blessing, making it an ‘albatross around the neck, as a punishment or a curse that is ‘enslaving’
rather than ‘freeing’ us with ‘hope’ and ‘righteousness’?
One of the reasons many today
are skeptical of ‘religion’ today is exactly for this reason. They see the church or faith or religion as a
way that limits rather than frees, as a way that strangles rather than
strengthens, or as a way that restrains rather than releases. What Paul wants us to know, finally and
fully, is that ‘it is for freedom’ that
Christ has ‘set is free’, but it also follows that because we are truly ‘set free’ we might also abuse or corrupt our God-given ‘freedom’.
If religion or faith can be
corrupted, then what good is it? Well,
the answer is that anything can be ‘corrupted’.
Just like air, water, or land or a ‘soul’ can be polluted or corrupted,
so can faith, law, religion or truth.
There is no way around this without taking our ‘freedom’ away. The potential or possibility of the ‘misuse’
of faith does not disqualify faith, but it can, as Paul warns, ‘cut us off from Christ’. This is why Paul sounds so serious when he
writes in similar words: “Don’t submit
again to slavery! Don’t fall away from grace! Don’t
listen to those who will confuse you!
Don’t stop obeying the truth! Don’t
take away the cross! Don’t misuse your freedom! I’m paraphrasing, but you get the
message. This is strong language, but
it’s strong for a good purpose. If either the world or the church corrupts the
message of ‘freedom’ in Christ, there will be no more ‘freedom’ and “Christ will be of no benefit’. Without Christ there is no ‘freedom’ and without ‘freedom’ Christ has
‘no benefit’ whatsoever.
I recall years ago, when I
was young in ministry, another pastor, who was a bit older than me, trying to
tell me that if we could only go back to Leviticus, which meant going back to
legalistically following the ‘rules’ or ‘laws’ in the Old Testament, we could
not only ‘eat better’ and ‘live better’, but could help save ourselves, our
churches and our nation. He told me
that all the ‘answers’ we will ever need to have healthy, happy lives in found
how the Bible teaches us to live in those old laws. It all sounded nice and neat, but something
didn’t seem right, especially when I read through Leviticus. Just read Leviticus and you’ll come to
understand what I mean. There are just
parts of the Bible that may have once spoken volumes of truth, but has little
relevance to our lives today.
It might surprise you, but the
point of the Christian faith is not to “live” the Bible as the point of the
Christian faith is so that Christ will become alive in us. This is not just semantics. The Bible is important because it leads us to
Jesus. The Bible is a story, but it’s
not just any story. It’s the story of
how God calls us all to be part of God’s story.
We become part of God’s story by getting into the Bible, but by letting
the Bible get into us. The only the way
such an old, ancient book can get into us, is when we let the living Christ rule
our lives.
You cannot live a ‘book’, no
matter how good, holy, or righteous it is.
Even the Word of God is not restricted to the Words of the Bible, for
the Bible itself calls Jesus the living “WORD” of God. Again, the point I’m making is not to
belittle the Bible, but to help us realize that the Bible points us to the WORD
who is living, relating, and should be alive in us. It is to the Galatians that Paul has already
said: “Nevertheless, it is not I who
lives, but Christ lives in me.” To
be a serious Christian does not mean going backward
to what the Bible once said, but it means going forward, with the guidance of Bible, so that through the ‘freedom’
we have been given in Christ, the Spirit can lead us, as we let Christ get into
us. We certainly don’t read or study the
Bible to live like people used to, but we study the Bible to find the freedom
to live faithfully right now and into the future.
THE ONLY THING THAT COUNTS (5:6)
But of course the final point
must answer: What does it mean to let Christ
freely live in us and to let Christ lead us to be ‘set free’?
Such ‘freedom’ in Christ cannot
simply mean to be free to be for anything we want or desire. All freedom does not cultivate or maintain real
freedom. For example, I can say that I
live in a ‘free’ country and that I’m free to make my own decisions, but there
are also ‘boundaries’ which say I must make a living, provide for my family, take care of myself,
and care for my community. If I don’t do
these things, my freedom will eventually become burdens and then shackles. If I live irresponsibly, or if I break the
norms and rules of life, then I will run into barriers, if not blockades to my
freedom. Paul himself goes on to create
a necessary boundary when he says, “Do
not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence…” (5:13).
The true nature of freedom is
not to misuse it, abuse it, or hoard it only for myself. That is not what ‘freedom’ means in any real
sense. This is why Paul gives us a final
word that points us what freedom means by telling us that ‘the only thing that counts is faith working through love’
(5:6). This is what matters most. What matters is not following some ritual
like circumcision which includes some and excludes others, but what matters
most is the kind of faith that leads us to try to include everyone who has
faith in Christ. True freedom is to
have the kind of faith that works through love for all. There may not be any better description of
the gospel in the entire New Testament that to say that the good news is that
in Jesus Christ God has given us a faith that works through love. Doesn’t this sound just like Jesus? Doesn’t this also sound like James, “Faith without works is dead, being alone?” Doesn’t this sound like the kind of ‘good
news’ that can still save our world?
This is something we can build our whole lives and can build the hope of
the world upon, so that we can be people
will not only get free from the sins that entangle us, but so we can stay free
because we now live the kind of ‘faith’ that
(always) works (or always has an effect) because it is a ‘faith that works through love’?
In Daisaku Ikeda’s children’s
story, “The Cherry Tree, two children come across an elderly Japanese man who is
found nursing a war-damaged cherry tree.
Most of you know that ‘Cherry Trees’ are ‘sacred beauties’ that bloom
beautifully all over Japan. When the
children ask the old man why he is tending an almost dead tree, he
replies, “It’s true she hasn’t blossomed since before the war. But one day, with a little tender-loving
kindness, she may blossom again. Not in
my lifetime time perhaps, but one day! I’m
sure of it.” Why was he sure of
it? Because he was sure of the effect of
faith, hope, care and love (As quoted in “Sessions with Galatians” by Eric S.
Porterfield, Smyth & Helwys, p. 70, 2005).
That’s a wonderful thing to
teach a child in a war-torn world, isn’t it?
That if we turn our efforts toward a ‘faith that works through love’
we will one day grow the kind of life in the world that will enable us
to be free, fruitful and faithful. Do we
have the kind of ‘faith’ that flowers love?
If not what kind of life do we
have when we only live to indulge our own desires? It could be different, if we would learn to
have the kind of faith that works through love.
Marian Preminger was born in
Hungary in 1913, was raised in a castle with her aristocratic family, and was surrounded
with maids, tutors, governesses, butlers, and chauffeurs. Her grandmother, who
lived with them, insisted that whenever they traveled, they take their own
linen, for she believed it was beneath their dignity to sleep between sheets
used by common people.
While attending school in
Vienna, Marian met a handsome young Viennese doctor. They fell in love, eloped
and married when she was only eighteen. The marriage lasted only a year, and
she returned to Vienna to begin her life as an actress. While auditioning for a play, she met the
brilliant young German director, Otto Preminger. They fell in love and soon married. They went
to America soon thereafter, where he began his career as a movie director.
Unfortunately and tragically, Hollywood is a place of ‘self-indulgence’ where Marian
got caught up in the glamour, lights and superficial excitement and soon began
to live a sordid, promiscuous life.
When Preminger discovered it,
he divorced her.
Marian returned to Europe to
live the life of a socialite in Paris. In 1948 she learned through the
newspaper that Albert Schweitzer, the man she had read about as a little girl,
was making one of his periodic visits to Europe and was staying at Gunsbach.
She phoned his secretary and was given an appointment to see Dr. Schweitzer the
next day. When she arrived in Gunsbach she discovered he was in the village
church playing an organ. She listened and turned the pages of music for him.
After a visit he invited her to have dinner at his house. By the end of the day
she knew she had discovered what she had been looking for all her life. She was
with him every day thereafter during his visit, and when he returned to Africa
he invited her to come to Lambarene and work in the hospital.
She did - and she found
herself. There in Lambarene, the girl born in a castle and raised like a
princess, who was accustomed to being waited on with all the luxuries of a
spoiled life, became a servant. She changed bandages, bathed babies, fed
lepers…and became free. She wrote her autobiography and called it All I Ever Wanted Was Everything. She
could not get the everything that would satisfy and give meaning until she
could give everything in the kind of ‘faith
that works through love’.
When she died in 1979, the
New York Times carried her obituary, which included this statement from her: “Albert Schweitzer said there are two classes
of people in this world - the helpers, and the non- helpers. I’m a helper.” What an obituary! (From a
sermon by Maxie Dunnam at esermons.com).
When we dare to have a faith that
freely does the works of love, life
works. Life works because love
works. This is what is like to finally
find what matters most. Amen.
No comments :
Post a Comment