Dear friends in Christ: grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
A blessed Reformation Day to you all.
How free are you? What does it mean to be free? As Americans, we have oft tossed adages like “Freedom isn’t free” or “Land of the Free, home of the brave.” We – who exist in this increasingly post-modern and post-Christian era – may be bewildered that our central American ideal seems all but lost. Enormous constraints weigh in on our mental and emotional resources. We talk about being free, but do we even know what that means?
Constraints might be internal ones. That feeling of terror one has at the thought of not having social media. A need to always be plugged in with a super computer in your pocket that didn’t exist 20 years ago. The fear of vulnerability in our relationships because people might judge us unworthy. Or the need for self-identification with our brands. Granted, these exist in culture outside of us, but we force ourselves to participate in the performance around us as to not seem strange.
More often limits are imposed externally. Your favorite brand of soda wasn’t restocked in the market place this week because of supply. The boss won’t let you flex your hours as you will. Your husband, wife or kids needed more time than normal this week. The governor has decided you cannot get in your car and go to your house of worship. Maybe the IRS has decided your freedom is worth you going up a tax bracket, or that our freedom is worth half your income.
There may be a not so distant future where churches will pay taxes on your gifts, from the income that was already taxed. Then it will pay taxes on the
goods it needs to keep open its doors. Perhaps, the city of Seattle decides to exercise their freedom to say this church cannot meet because you confess the truth about gender or marriage. But look on the bright side, the powers that be might allow you to be really free this year and vote for a new party or candidate, so that you feel you made a difference even though we all know the outcome is ultimately the same.
We find ourselves bound up. In chains and bonds that we can’t seem to get free of. We caught in performative freedom wars, where freedom is wielded like a weapon of mass destruction. We must stretch our legs and “be true to your own heart” or “be authentically you”. Our identities are crafted from the supermarkets of opinions, and no one can tell you otherwise. These are the questions and thoughts that provide the backdrop we bring this morning.
With this in mind, strangely, we find ourselves in a similar place as Jesus Jewish audience. The discourse of Jesus in this passage happens in a much larger piece of John’s narrative. Jesus is speaking to “the Jews who had believed him.” These were not merely scoffing pharisees or pagan Gentiles. They are of the promise because they have heard and believed. In other words, these are the “good guys”.
Jesus begins by proclaiming to the masses, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” In our pious desires, we might be inclined to act as Peter – we would speak a bold AMEN LORD JESUS. This is all well and good. We should be eager to speak the truth and confess it when moved by the Spirit. But dear friends I am here to tell you today, we are more often the doubting Jews.
Though they have heard and believed, the crowd answers with doubt, and surely a note of contempt. “WILL BE FREE?!” How can you say we WILL be free!? We are free and have never been in bondage to anyone! We are sons of Abraham after all.
Never mind the years spent in Egypt crying to God. Or that wonderful vacation in Babylon. The exotic tour of Persia as slaves of Cyrus the God-King. Or how about their current state of affairs under the ever-benevolent tyrant Julius Caesar.
Does this not sound like our own state of affairs? We are a fat, happy people. Living in this brave new world of pills, sugar, supermarkets, and government benefits. As Americans we proudly exclaim, “We are free, children of the Enlightenment project, never slaves to anyone.” Forgetting our past with the British of course. Or that most of our ancestors came here to escape for the sake of freedom.
But we forget that we are a melting pot of oppressed people, who now seek to oppress one another for our own gain. We tend to use our freedom for our own selfish gains, thus submitting ourselves to bondage of our desires. Or we seek identity in our affiliations, but instead of Jewish or Samaritan it sounds like: “I am team Apple or Google, Ford or Chevy.” We allow our brands and preferences to define who we are. Our freedom of choice suddenly doesn’t sound so free.
Jesus, however, does not remind the Jews of their past meanderings around the Near East. He subverts their political and sociological interests and goes straight for the jugular. “Truly, TRULY, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.” The Jews are shell shocked at where this has led. Further down the passage they will accuse Jesus of being a demonic Samaritan. This accusation is easier than confessing their own sinfulness. But Jesus sees past their racial, cultural insult. While they argue care about their identity and free will, Jesus looks on the heart of man.
We, like they, are not so reticent when it comes to our own guilt. We are indeed in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. We are consumed with our addictions, vices, and worst of all hyped up on our own virtue. The worst part about being at church is it is full of sinners. And even worse yet, these are sinners who hear the Word of God and despise it because of their bondage to sin. Church itself can become the marker and brand of “a good person.” You should go to church – you should hear the reading and preaching of the Word constantly. But be warned – do not fall into the pit of the Jews. The Church is a hospital for the sick, not a temple for the holy. Being a child of Abraham, means that you are the unfaithful ones that God chose to be faithful to, not the other way around.
Paul spells this out for us today in our Epistle reading. The law speaks to those under the law. That’s all of us. It does not call you good. Indeed, there is none righteous, not a single one. The law is given so that none can escape the judgement of God. It does not seek to make you happy, healthy, or wealthy. It doesn’t even seek to make you holy. The Law wants you dead. The works wrought by this law of God are a ministry of death as Paul calls them in 2 Cor. 3:7. No one is justified, the case is closed, you are accused, dead, and damned.
What then does this law give? Does it give us the path forward? Does it show how we achieve the hopeful utopia that we all so desperately long for in the dirge of post-modern nihilism? May it never be! Instead, it gives knowledge of sin. The law makes your situation worse as Paul declares later in Romans 5: “The law came to MULTIPLY the trespass.” There is no way out, over, under or around. So not only has this law put you in bondage through knowledge of sin as the apple did in the Garden: it makes you more sinful. You are caught in the act of betrayal. You stand accused this day as residents of the world, sons of the devil, the murderers of Christ, bound to your own sinful natures.
Some of you may say, “Pastor, this is a pretty bleak picture you have painted this morning.” And bleak it is. So where do we go to find comfort and hope? Where do we find freedom from this ministry of death? From sin, death and the devil himself. Jesus tells us in the first word of our text today.
“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” What does it mean to abide in this Word? It means to be in Christ. John 1 identifies Christ as the Word. The only true freedom one can experience is freedom IN Christ. Christ does not come to make us free in a modern, post-enlightenment liberation. Christ is no libertarian. Our theology of the cross taught in the line of St. Paul, St. Augustine, and our own dear Martin Luther cuts to the heart of the issue. It is for FREEDOM that you have been set free. Do not be so eager to cast yourself back into the law, thus shackling your costly freedom that you have been given.
What does it mean to be truly free? Jesus does not come to free you from the tax man, the law man, or from the court of public opinion. His freedom is not of this world, but of cosmic magnitude and magnificence. In Christ, true freedom is from the law, sin, death and the lord of this world, the devil. You are free from yourself, from the arbitrary standard you cling to and measure yourself as righteous in your own eyes. You are free from playing the part of a righteous pious Christian. You are freed from climbing the ladder of sanctification that American theology is so keen on sustaining.
You are free to call yourself what you are: a sinner in need of grace. You are no longer a slave, but you are all sons and daughters of God. Christ says to you today: the slave does not stay forever, but you as children will. You are free because the law now has no sway. You are a free and holy because the God’s promise names you thus.
Where does this freedom come from? How do we take hold of this freedom today? Well, the truth is you do not take this freedom, this freedom takes you. Freedom is found in the waters of the font. In your baptism, dear Christian, you died to yourself and to sin. It is no longer you that lives, but Christ that lives in you, and you in Him. In the water, you are drowned in the Word. Jesus pours his water and blood over you with the hands of the priest. At your baptism you attended your own funeral. You now truly abide in the Word, because you abide in the death of Christ.
Not only are you dead, but you are recreated: you are now his disciples. It isn’t an optional add-on to the package, it’s the main feature. God has justified you to himself, indeed He has justified the world to himself objectively and universally. You have been made into “little Christs”. You are his church: go out and serve in your vocations and local communities.
Day in and day out we usher in the kingdom. From the tired mother nursing a small child, a father waking early to the day’s labors, to the farmer harvesting the winter crop, to the elderly wife caring for her dying husband: to be his disciple means to follow his example of being free for the other.
But even that, he has done for you.
You are free to live and love your neighbor because there is nothing more to do. You cannot earn the grace given. There is no way to do the law to your own merit. Christ has done it all for you. You simply are walking in the path that he paved and walked for you. This is the true meaning of vocation and living as a disciple.
Paul tells us in Romans today that we all come up short. You have missed the mark and been found wanting. This is the true purpose of the law. But thanks be to God, you are given his grace and faith in the promise. You are redeemed by the blood of the lamb, the price has been paid, and you are no longer in bondage to sin. Your sin has been passed over. God’s grace is greater than your multitude of sins.
This grace and blood are received by faith, the faith given to you in your baptism. In the faith given to you in the bread and wine in the Supper. He is the faithful one, most of all in our unfaithfulness. Your redemption is not given because of anything you bring, but because of the death that he brings. The death given to you in your baptism. The law has lost its teeth, death no longer has its sting. He was crucified, died and was buried. But the story does not end there. He also rose to make life anew.
The law speaks to the sinful, praise be to God, we are all dead. The law cannot speak to a dead man. However, your story does not end there either. You too are raised up. We live in the in-between time as prodigals, outlaws and sojourners. We await the final apocalyptic revelation of the return of Christ where he will wipe every tear away. He will return to judge the living and the dead and the Kingdom where God meets man will have no end. For now, we watch, wait, and work. But we do so in hope. Go in peace, for you have died his death with him, and are made alive forever more in the light and life of his grace.
Amen.
The peace which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord unto life everlasting. Amen.
