Born (Again) Free

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

July 3, 2011

Born (Again) Free

Galatians 5:13

I flew east from Moscow on an Aeroflot flight

almost a thousand miles,

deep into the midsection of Russia – the Ural region –

to the city of Yekaterinburg,

a drab, gray, hulking industrial city.

The city’s principal, rather unhappy, claim to fame

is that it was the city the Czar and his family were taken to

back in 1918 at the beginning of the Bolshevik Revolution

to be brutally murdered.

For decades the city had been closed to visitors from the west

because it was home to much of

the Soviet Union’s defense manufacturing:

weapons, tanks and other vehicles, and electronics.

But with the collapse of Communism,

the city was eager to find new business partners in the west

for their production facilities.

The small consulting company I was working for

in Buffalo at the time

had developed a relationship with a businessman there,

a man named Sergey,

and my company sent me there for a week to meet with him

and potential business partners he had identified in the area.

When I arrived at the Yekaterinburg airport,

Sergey and his wife Svetlana met me.

We then drove into the central part of the city

to the hotel where I would be staying for the next five days.

Sergey and Svetlana escorted me up to my room,

but no sooner had we walked in,

when Svetlana turned around to leave

explaining in her thick accent,

 that she was off,

“to organize some toilet paper.”

Toilet paper – something we take for granted in this country,

something we take so completely for granted,

that we cannot imagine that it would find its way into a sermon,

but it was something which had been scarce in the Soviet Union,

something for which people stood in line for hours

in order to receive their allotment;

something still scarce during my visit

in the early months following

the collapse of the Soviet system.

In this country we have only to go to the local Giant or Bloom

and we can find the aisle that presents us

with choice after choice after choice:

brand, quantity, price:

The free market at work,

something unknown in Russia prior to my visit.

We have remarkable freedom in this country

to buy what we want;

we have remarkable freedom to do as we like,

live as we like,

say what we like.

During my week in Russia my hosts

and others I met talked excitedly

about their new-found freedom:

about the prospect of having more

consumer goods available to them:

Levis blue jeans, Pepsi, Coke, McDonalds;

They were excited about the prospect of being able to choose

where to live and work;

about being able to live free of fear

of the state security police, the dreaded KGB.

But they were most excited to have the freedom

to think as they wanted to think,

to read what they wanted to read,

their minds no longer shackled by propaganda.

One man told me how wonderful it was

to be able to read Bible stories to his young son,

something that had been forbidden them before.

What is it truly to be free?  

Does it really mean that you and I are

free to do whatever we want,

without anyone telling us otherwise?

Two thousand years ago a Greek philosopher named Epictetus

argued yes, that’s what it means to be free:

“He is free who lives as he wills,

who is subject neither to compulsion,

nor hindrance, nor force,

whose choices are unhampered,

whose desires attain their end.”

A man who lived about the same time as Epictetus

thought quite differently of freedom.

The apostle Paul, as we heard in his letter to the Galatians

argued that freedom wasn’t about being able to:

do what you want,

when you want,

where you want,

how you want.

                                   

True freedom, Paul wrote,

was to be found only in obedience to Jesus Christ,

only in obedience to love,

only in living as Christ commanded,

which was and is to live in grace and love for all.

                 

When Paul wrote to the Galatians, he was not happy.

Galatia is not a town, but a region in what is now Turkey.

The new Christians throughout the area

were listening to the wrong voices

according to Paul,

the wrong people, false prophets.

As we talked about last week,

they were not testing the word,

to determine its authenticity.

Paul saw how they were going astray

and wanted to set them straight.

They thought that the new life

they were embracing as Christians

freed them from all constraints,

including all the laws that were part of the Levitical Code,

the laws that had ordered behavior

within the Jewish community,

for more than a thousand years,

the laws that governed just about every kind of behavior,

down to how to wash your hands before a meal.

But Paul reminded them that just because

they could choose to indulge in

any kind of behavior they wanted,

that didn’t make them free.

“For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters;

only do not use your freedom

as an opportunity for self-indulgence,

but through love become slaves to one another.”

Wait a minute: Become slaves?

How is that living freely?

Isn’t that the opposite of freedom?

What in the world was Paul thinking?

What Paul wanted the Galatians to understand,

and what Paul wants us to understand here and now,

is that we are called to leave the old ways behind,

old lives behind

because we have been born anew in Jesus Christ,

born again, born to a new life.

Paul wants us to leave earthly concerns behind,

or as he puts it, the life of the flesh,

so we can embrace fully

the wonderful new life we have been called to,

the life of the spirit.

The freedom we have been given in Christ

is not freedom to live a life chasing after things,

as we do whatever we feel like doing;

this is a life grounded in love: selfless love,

self-giving love, modeled on Christ himself.

“Paul wants us to learn the real freedom we need

to live the spiritual life,

“so we can pursue the reality of the Kingdom of God”.

(Peter Gomes)

Real freedom.

The freedom to become all that God created us to be,

all that God hopes we will be.

                 

The Reverend Frederick Buechner put it this way:

“To obey our strongest appetites for drink, sex,

power, revenge, [material goods] or whatever

leaves us the freedom of an animal

 to take what we want when we want it,

but not the freedom of a human being to be human.

In God we have freedom …

to be the best that we have it in us to become.”

To live as Epictetus argued,

to live focused on what each of us wants,

Buechner argues that that is to live in a way

that is no different from the animals around us.

It isn’t to lift ourselves up to become fully human,

as Jesus was fully human,

reflecting as brightly as we can

the image of God we each bear.

Paul wanted the Galatians and us to understand

that we are to leave behind all those kinds of behavior

and ways of thinking

that we think we are free to indulge in

but which trap and enslave us, dragging us down:

Paul’s list includes: strife, jealousy, envy

anger, quarrels,

dissensions, factions,

among others.

Paul leaves us with no doubt about where the path

such behavior leads us:

“those who do such things

will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Paul teaches the Galatians and us

that the life of freedom we’ve been called to in Jesus Christ

is a life of: “love, joy, peace,

patience, kindness, generosity,

faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.”

To live this way is to live fully human

just as Jesus lived.

But of course, Paul doesn’t stop there.

He takes us all the way to where he believes this new life calls us:

“through love become slaves to one another.”

Because, after all, didn’t Jesus teach us

that he came not to be served, but to serve?

This sounds like it turns freedom on its head:

Isn’t freedom all about the individual:

what you want, what I want?

Paul says, no,

not in the community we are called to by Christ.

In this community, freedom is to be found

in living for others, loving others,

showing concern for others as we serve.

There is a line in our Declaration of Independence

that captures Paul’s teaching very powerfully.

It is the very last line in the document,

right before we find John Hancock’s magnificently bold signature.

The men who drafted and signed that the Declaration

ended with these words:

“…we mutually pledge to each other our Lives,

our Fortunes

and our sacred Honor.”

Everything every man had,

pledged to one another,

each of them, all of them

commiting themselves to live in service to one another

in their fight for independence.

We are called to commit ourselves to one another

not in just one part of life,

but in all of life.

Our pledge to our Lord Jesus Christ is to live as he calls us to live:

in service, loving service,

to one another,

our hearts and minds focused not on what we want,

but on what God wants:

which is nothing less than the establishment

of his Kingdom here on earth,

just as it is in heaven.

If we live our lives in service to God,

in service to Christ,

in service to one another,

then we will know true freedom.

AMEN