Freed... to Love--July 3, 2025

Freed... to Love--July 3, 2025

"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. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, 'You shall love your neighbor as your self.' If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another." (Gal. 5:13-15)

Maybe Janis Joplin was right: maybe "freedom's just another word for 'nothing-left-to-lose'."

Freedom is one of those words that gets thrown around in conversation in America almost to the point where it loses its meaning. What do we want? "Freedom!" What do we stand for? "Freedom!" During the 1960s, "freedom" was invoked by the Civil Rights movement on the one hand as they marched to end segregation and on the other hand by segregationists who demanded they had the "freedom" to refuse to serve African American customers. Both used the same word, but each had completely different understandings of what it meant. We still do the same today, where the nebulous notion of "freedom" is invoked for people who want lower taxes... and people who advocate for programs that will mean higher taxes... for people who are hawks when it comes to war... and for people who want to stay out of wars.  The trouble with a concept like "freedom" is that you can use it for everything and make it end up meaning nothing.

So what is this reality called freedom that we're so quick to shout about? Quite often, our picture of freedom has to do with not letting anyone tell us what to do, or being able to do whatever we want whenever we feel like it. And the story that often gets told in America is that freedom is our goal--the purpose and meaning of our lives. We are told to believe that freedom is an end in and of itself, rather than a means toward something more important, more vital, more life-giving.

But maybe that's the problem. Maybe we've been thinking of freedom the wrong way... possibly for a very, very long time. Maybe so long, in fact, that we have stopped considering that freedom might be more than just the angry insistence that no one can make me be kind to someone else (which, on the face of it, sounds like a sort of jerkish thing to dig your heels in on). Maybe we made such a fuss for so long about what we think we need to freed from that we haven't given much thought to what we are freed for.

And the trouble in all of this is that freedom doesn't make much sense as an end in itself--we've got to ask, what is the point of freedom? Some might argue back that the "point" of freedom is to be able to do whatever we want, but that only begs the question--what is it that we truly want? Or maybe more to the point, what is it that we truly need, what do we ache for? And what is it that freedom allows us to move toward? We are often so quick to assert what we are freed from (as in, "You can't tell me what to do!" or "I'm free from your authority over me--I don't have to listen to you!") that we miss the more important question of what we are freed for (as in, "Without the old constraints on me, what am I able to do now that I couldn't before? What will I use my freedom for?). The real life-giving question is that second one: "What are we freed for?" Once you've established you're free to do what you want... what is worth spending your day, your time, your love, your energy, your lifetime, for?

This is really where Paul is headed with this passage that many heard this past Sunday in worship as the New Testament reading. After having fought so hard with the Galatians to let it sink in that they really are free in Christ from the old constraints of the law and the old barriers to community, Paul wants the Galatians to understand that freedom easily gets distorted if pursued just for its own sake. So easily in the name of "protecting our rights" or "proving our independence" or "not letting anybody tread on me," we trample on what really is worth having--the grace of being able to love others together in community. We can become so consumed protecting our own freedoms that we isolate and insulate ourselves and in the process cut ourselves off from everyone around us. We preserve our calendars so we don't have to give up our precious free time to invest in the needs of others; we hold back on sharing the concerns on our hearts with others because we don't want to let down our facades of independence. We refuse to be inconvenienced for someone else's sake, and so we make a fuss about going out of our way to help someone else. And we get in a tizzy, especially many of us Americans, about not wanting to lose our freedoms, when sometimes what we are most deeply and truly aching for is the connection that comes from serving someone else.

If you ask Paul, freedom is not something to pursue as a goal--it's a channel along the way, a condition that makes it possible for us to be drawn into the new reality of God's community that we are most deeply in need of. Freedom is worth having only insofar as it frees us up for love--to be loved freely (and to allow ourselves to believe that God really does love us in freedom apart from our earning) and to love others freely in Christ (no longer with the constrictions of race or class or gender or outsider status). So yes, we are free in Christ, and amen to that--but we are free for something, for someone, too. We are freed for love of neighbor, of stranger, of enemy. We are freed in order to be the people we are aching to become.

So, with all due respect to Janis, freedom is more than just having nothing left to lose--maybe really, it about the ability to be brave enough to give yourself away in love.

Today, what are you freed for? Or better yet, whom are you freed for? How can you use the freedoms you have in this day (freedoms that are part of the political realm we live in, but also the freedom we have from God in Christ Jesus) to be drawn more deeply into love and to draw others in love? What kind of freedom could you find today in serving someone else? Risk it today....

Great God who is our Goal and our Journey, keep our minds straightened out about what is means and what is end in our life, and lead us to freely follow you until we are united at last with all your freed ones.

Risking Our Reputations--July 2, 2025

Risking Our Reputations--July 2, 2025

To another [Jesus] said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.”  And Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:59-62)

Well, let's just cut to the chase right away: none of us is fit for the kingdom of God.  Not a one.  Precisely zero.  The fact that any of us do find ourselves pulled into the community of Jesus' disciples is by itself a gift of sheer grace--accomplished not because we have been sufficiently zealous but because Jesus has grabbed a hold of us and just isn't letting us go. 

Jesus does, after all, seem to have a habit of inviting all the losers, the failures, the notorious sinners, and the ones deemed "unfit" to share a table with him, and then he makes a point of saying that's exactly what the kingdom of God looks like anyway.  For that matter, Jesus also very famously chose an inner circle of disciples who pretty much did all abandon him (at least the overwhelming majority of the twelve guys we call "the apostles") and chickened out when things got scary and the militarized police game by night to round Jesus up and make him disappear into a prison cell.  So, okay, these verses that many church folks heard in worship this past Sunday have got a fair point that all of us who are skittish about following or half-hearted in our commitment to Jesus are "unfit" to belong in the Kingdom.  It's just that our unworthiness, does not seem to stop Jesus from still calling us, claiming us, and loving us into belonging simply on his say-so.  That's grace for you--taking a bunch of misfits, chicken-hearts, and dropouts like all of us and pulling us along for the ride.

But still, there is a truth we cannot evade in Jesus' statements here from these verses--namely, that Jesus isn't looking to be merely a hobby we pick up in our free time.  And he is convinced that the life of following him is more important, more life-giving--more vital, you might say--than even the obligations we had to our families.  Even the noble and respectable excuse of getting the blessing of mom and dad back home before running off to follow the traveling rabbi doesn't hold water for Jesus.  He doesn't offer a delayed-entry acceptance program or discipleship as a part-time gig or side hustle.  He calls us to drop everything else we hold as a priority and go where he leads us.  (The fact that Jesus reserves the right still to claim us even when we waffle on our commitment to him is a testament to the strength of his love for us, but it doesn't let us off the hook for his radical summons.)

I imagine that the would-be disciples of these verses all meant well.  I'm sure the first man thought it was a reasonable request to go take care of the funeral obligations for his father (whether or not this father had yet died is an open question, of course, so this man may well have intended to offer to follow Jesus only once his other responsibilities were over or when it was convenient on his schedule). And I'm confident that the other man who wants to say farewell to the people back home thought it was a matter of keeping that commandment (one of the Ten, mind you!) about honoring your father and mother.  They only wanted to be respectable and do what was expected of them... but then along comes Jesus, insisting that his call to them overrides and outranks even their obligations to their parents and the expectations of Respectable Religion.

That's a question we will have to wrestle with as well in our own lives: are we willing, not only to the do things that earn us social capital in the eyes of others, but also the things that seem scandalous?  When Jesus leads us away from the easy photo-op moments to follow him into more controversial territory or more scandalous acts of love, will we still walk in his footsteps? If Jesus calls us to leave behind the safety and comfort of our familiar bubbles to speak up for refugees or migrant workers, or to advocate for the hungry, or to walk beside folks who have been told they are "unworthy sinners" by Respectable Religious People, will we be willing to go with Jesus into those places, or will we hang back because we're afraid of being shunned by family and friends for being too provocative?  Those are questions we cannot avoid.  All too often, we church folk have used our Christianity as a means of making ourselves appear reputable and commendable, assuming that Jesus has primarily come to help us win the Good Little Boy and Good Little Girl awards in everybody else's eyes.  But what if the things Jesus is calling us to don't make us "look good" to everyone? What if they see us as troublemakers, pot-stirrers, radicals, or--gasp!--friends of sinners?  Will we still be willing to go where Jesus leads, or will we decide we need to go back home and get permission from our parents because we are afraid of risking our reputations like Jesus does?

The Gospels are full of examples of people who came to Jesus expecting to make a deal on their terms: discipleship as a weekend gig, obedience when it didn't upset the apple cart, allegiance as long as it didn't cost anything.  But Jesus was never one for making deals like that, and he has never offered the option of following him just when we feel like it (or when it's safe).  Jesus does, after all, call us to carry a cross and follow him--what else would we expect but the risk of losing our reputations, our standing, and our respectability by going where he goes, doing what he does, and loving as he loves?  As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it so powerfully, the life of following Jesus is a life of "costly grace," and "Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life."  Bonhoeffer, of course, was willing to follow Jesus all the way to one of the Reich's concentration camps as a result of resisting Hitler, even though many in the church of his day thought he was a troublemaker, a dangerous subversive, and a shameful traitor to his nation.  I wonder if we would be willing to take those same risks.

We come back to the two truths, then: all of us have a habit of being fair-weather fans when it comes to Jesus, and on that account we should have been disqualified for discipleship.   But Jesus reserves the right still to claim us and call us, and hearing that call will indeed mean the risk of losing other people's approval, relinquishing the appearance of respectability, and letting go of the need to have Mom and Dad's permission on everything we do in Jesus' name.  

What do you think?  Are we willing to dare still to follow Jesus, even with those odds?

Lord Jesus, for all of our failures, we still hear you calling us.  Get us ready to go where you will lead us, whatever the cost.