Freedom

from my message on July 6, 2014 from Gal. 5:1, 13-14

So, how was your 4th of July?  Did you spend some time around a table?  Was it a picnic table, or kitchen table, or dining room table, or tray table while watching soccer or tennis from Wimbledon?  What did  you eat?  Was it BBQ, fried chicken, hot dogs, hamburgers, any tofu burgers out there?  With whom did you gather?  Was it family or friends?

We gather today around another table.  We gather as Americans to celebrate our independence, now 238 years.  We celebrate our freedom form the tyranny of Great Britain.  We also celebrate that 50 years ago the Civil Rights Act was signed into law, outlawing discrimination by race, color, religion, sex, national origin.  We gather as Christians around this table to celebrate that all people are welcome here.  You don't have to earn it or fight for it.  There's a place for you at this table.

Our freedom as followers of Christ is rooted in the Jewish Passover feast.  Our Jewish ancestors were once slaves in Egypt.  The gods of the Egyptians said, Make more bricks.  The God of the Hebrews, Yahweh, said, Let my people go.  The Passover feast celebrates that we have a God who is a liberator.

Jesus celebrated a Passover feast with his closest friends before his passion and resurrection.  He offered there another kind of freedom. He changed the words of the liturgy.  He said, This is my body given for you.  He said, This is my blood poured out for you and for many, for the forgiveness of sins.    This may be the kind of freedom you need today, freedom from guilt and shame, from a past that drags you down.  Where do you need forgiveness today?

We come to today's scripture where Paul says, For freedom you have been set free; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence.  Paul says that our freedom is freedom from sin and freedom to serve others.  God has freely chosen us, so that we might serve others.  Love of neighbor is the highest expression of freedom.

Our high school youth have just come back from a mission trip from ReCre in North Carolina.  I understand from Diane our youth director that the seniors on the trip did not use it as an opportunity to haze the freshmen, but that the seniors actively mentored the younger students. That is an example of true freedom.  Not to mention high school youth taking a week of their summer off to go roof houses in the hot summer sun.  That is an expression of Christian freedom.

I will sing it for you, Freely, Freely, you have received,
Freely, Freely, Give,
Go in my name and because you believe,
Others will know that I live.

This freedom can even be expressed on a political level. Consider this:
Anti-Semitic German preacher Ahlwardt came to New York in 1895 to advocate a crusade against Jews. The city's Jewish leaders went to the police commissioner, Teddy Roosevelt, and demanded that Ahlwardt not be allowed to speak. But Roosevelt insisted that the German was entitled to freedom of speech regardless of his views and even required police protection. So Roosevelt personally appointed the man's security guards: 40 policemen, all of them Jewish.

Isn't that great?

This freedom can even be expressed on an international level. Consider this:
In his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela tells of a place he came to during his 27 years in prison: "It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred; he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else's freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity."

Come to the table.  All are welcome here, at this table of freedom.