Sermon prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church, Auburn WA
by Pastor Greg Kaurin
July 4, 2010
Text: Galatians 5:1-6
Our Christian Freedom, pt. 3: for Country
This will be the third week that we look at this verse from Galatians: "For freedom Christ has set you free. Stand firm, therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." Last week, I said that this Christian freedom that Paul wrote about isn't civil freedoms, our rights as citizens. Neither is Christianity a freedom to follow our urges, either. However, there is a relation between our Christian freedom won for us by Christ, and the freedoms for which we strive and pray and die while we are here, our civil freedoms.
Our civil freedoms have been earned and fought for, and need protection. Our Christian freedom was given to us by God, paid in full by the blood of Jesus. Our Christian freedom is what gives us the ability to live and act with compassion, but without fear for the sake of our neighbors.
Before the great battle in the movie Braveheart, William Wallace shouts to the enemy that “you may take our lives, but you’ll never take our freedom!” It’s almost ridiculous to see a shackled man, or someone claiming that not even death can take his freedom, but this is the Christian claim to freedom. It can and has been shackled, it has been enslaved, it has been persecuted, laughed at, hidden and hated, but none of these can actually destroy the Christian freedom. We are in God's hands, his instruments. So long as others do these things to us, we can bear up. Even from death, we will rise again.
We do need to be vigilant as citizens to help protect each other as we try to keep this balance between safety and freedom, so that we can have a place in which the church can worship and the gospel can spread. Here "on earth" Christians have a special ability to be generous hosts in protecting the civil rights and freedoms of others.
I know that some of you have felt and seen anti-Christian sentiments both here and elsewhere around the world. The temptation is to strike back, in words or actions, or to take back. But when we're doing that, talking tough or demanding, it's too easy to look and act and sound like the stereotyped, judging, or irrational people that others say we are. Some are.
The trick, instead, is to remember Jesus' teaching: his example is to act on behalf of our neighbors, to protect the rights and dignity of those who differ, disagree, or even disbelieve.
So, while we are here, we seek to have the peace of Christ and God's kingdom come to the just and to the unjust, to the believer and the non-believer. The Christian who fights for the rights and dignities of those who follow other creeds, are, in fact, living out both their Christian freedom, and supporting our civil freedoms at the same time.
Not long ago, there was Southern police chief; he was a black man who volunteered to walk in front and protect a demonstration of the KKK as they paraded through his city streets. His face was set like flint. He protected their rights to free speech and assembly, but at the very same time, he showed his own freedom and the rights that people bled and died for, and he was able to do it because of those who gave of themselves on his behalf, and because of his faith that proclaimed him free no matter what.
My life, my hope, my future, my salvaton is in Christ, so that now I can think about, work for, and seek to answer the needs of my neighbors and the public sphere: their health and food, their rights to assemble and vote, and to worship or not, their right to love, and to raise children. On behalf of the Samaritan, the Jew or Muslim, on behalf of the atheist and agnostic, men, women, children, we demand protection, care, compassion, life and freedom. Those are freedoms worth Christian blood, sweat and tears. We can give any of these away to anyone, or even lose them for their sake, and regardless of the apparent outcome, we cannot be defeated because we will rise again. The Body of Christ will always rise again.
Our overall sense of freedom and independence have been building over centuries and generations. In the Old Testament, while God's Spirit came to specific people at specific times and for specific reasons, he promised that the day would come when: "I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. Sons and daughters will prophesy. Young men shall see visions, old men dream dreams. On my servants, men and women, I will pour my Spirit.” And Ezekiel promised a day would come when each would be responsible for his own sin, or her own relationship with God.
And in the New Testament--while Paul did not declare all slaves to be free, in fact, even returned a slave to his owner, and told women to be silent and respect the authority of husbands and men--this is the same Paul who spoke of a gospel message that was not bound by these structures, but a grace in which there is neither Jew, nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female.
That gospel message--and the prayer that God's will, that this same gospel, might be lived on earth as it is in heaven--set us on a course long ago. So that now after centuries, including the Reformation, Wars of Independence here, France and elsewhere, Civil War, Womens' suffrage, civil right’s marches, and on, humanity continues to strive for these freedoms. Our country needs to strive for these freedoms, even more than for our safety and protection.
And as Christians we are free to love, pray for, fight for, and critique our nation. We must seek the peace and welfare of the nation in which we are living and the rights of our neighbors because, in the process, we demonstrate the freedom God has given to us through Christ.
We sometimes worry so much about protecting and hoarding our freedoms that we forget that freedom is not free if it's lived in the cages of selfish desire or bound by fear. Stand firm. Do not submit to fear. Do not try to regain control of God with Old Laws or new rules. Stand firm that you are saved by grace, that nothing else can put you in or remove you from the hand of God.
And while you are here, seek the welfare of the nation you are in. Pray for its welfare, its people and leaders. Help reach for the civil freedoms that so many have bled and died for. Pray for our men and women who stand in harm's way on our behalf; pray that their sacrifices will finally result in better lives for all.
Of our national hymns and songs, I am very partial to those that are clear solemn prayers to God. We have our strengths, and we certainly have our faults, so we ask God to mend our every flaw, and to make firm our soul through self-control, and our liberty in law. We ask for God's blessing; our nation needs his grace, and his forgiveness to stand beside her and guide her, through the night with a light from above.
And while you're at it, pray for a new birth of freedom in and beyond our nation that will come when fears are put aside for the sake of sharing our freedoms, and demanding that basic human needs be met, and that justice be given both in and also beyond our borders.
Live the idea and belief, that in God's eyes, all are created equal, and that whatever separates, divides and qualifies that truth needs standing against, needs us to stand firm. Dream with Martin Luther King, Jr. that God's will can be done on earth, and that with this faith we will be able to help--as he said--"transform the jangling discords of our nation" into a more beautiful symphony.
Civil freedom points to and reaches for the freedom of heaven which was won by Christ once and for all, and all the bells of heaven rang out. So now, we pray that all the bells of our freedom can ring on earth, as they once did in heaven.
