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July 02, 2006
The Burden of Freedom
John 8: 31-36
July 2nd, 2006
Worship on the Patio
The gift of the Jews to the world, it has been said, was monotheism, belief in one God. The gift of Christianity to the world was freedom. Jesus said in that memorable passage we heard this morning, “If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.”
Jesus’ other teaching on freedom has been claimed as a motto by a number of universities. “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” This is the motto of the University of Freiberg in Germany. I discovered in checking the web that this remark of our Savior has been claimed over and over again as the inspiration for higher learning.
But what is the truth that sets us free? Jesus was not telling us that truth is attained by an unfettered pursuit of learning. Jesus said, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.”
The truth that makes us free comes from continuing in Jesus’ word, which makes us truly His disciples. What is it to continue in His word? It is to continue learning of Him. This sets us free.
Paul echoed His Lord, “For freedom Christ has set us free.” “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were in bondage to beings that by nature are no gods; but now . . . you have come to know God.” In Christ we are introduced to God as children so that we can call Him, “Abba, Father.” In Christ we come to “know God,” and this sets us free. This is an article of our Faith.
Since we have come to that time of the year sacred to all Americans let me remind you how our claim to freedom unfolded. In the late 18th century as part of the Enlightenment the winds of freedom were blowing in Europe. John Locke d. 1704 claimed this freedom much earlier in his “Second Treatise on Government.” There he wrote of all peoples’ “unalienable rights of life, liberty, health, and property.” Where did he get that idea of an unalienable right to freedom that contradicts the state of nature?
It traces back to what Jesus said, echoed by Paul: In Christ, God has set us free. Free from what? Freedom from the bondage of a law we cannot keep. Freedom eventually from death itself.
Christianity played such a part in the development of the Western World that gradually people claimed this freedom. But it was a freedom in a very limited sense, as release from all restraint. It was an idea of freedom that forgot that true freedom is inward and comes in being Jesus’ disciples. It is good for us to remember this even though Thomas Jefferson may have forgotten it.
Our American forbears claimed the rights of life, liberty, and property at the First Continental Congress, October 14, 1774. Then in June, two years later, Thomas Jefferson, realizing not all on our shores owned property, changed the last word in writing our Declaration of Independence. “All people are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
It may be that with some lack of diffidence that people of my ancestry point back to the inspiration for this in the northern part of Great Britain in the early 14th century. Patrick Dunbar delivered the Scots Declaration of Arbroath on April 6th, 1320 to Pope John XXII. In this document the Scots told the pope, “It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom—for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.” This was a call for national freedom from tyranny, copied by those who framed our own Declaration of Independence.
All of this history interests us as Americans. We happily point to origins earlier than 1776. If we can point back to ancestors who had some part in the story of freedom, we are proud to claim it. Freedom is both a sacred and a political ideal.
But this morning I want to remind us all first that the freedom Jesus proclaimed is ours if we are truly His disciples—it is then that we will know the truth that sets us free. Second, I remind us all that freedom brings with it a burden to carry.
Freedom is far more than the political climate in which we can do whatever we desire. This so-called freedom, if under the bondage of miserable desires leads to terrible bondage. We see the sad spectacle of some young people who come to university as freshman, newly out from their parents immediate control, sometimes choosing to use their new freedom badly. They are lured into a culture of alcohol and sometimes drugs, and it goes downhill from there. Freedom, ill-used, is the source of such misery. In our free land there have been many entrepreneurs of evil, using their freedom from restraint to disgrace our humanity, drawing people into the lowest degradation.
But well used, freedom leads to the highest development of character. And with this high development of character our land has seen remarkable stories of human achievement.
We point with pride to all the first generation immigrants who came to our shores longing for freedom and opportunity. With honest effort and discipline they used well their freedom to create wealth, providing goods and services that served others well, enjoying the just revenue their labor earned.
It all goes back to Jesus’ words, “If the Son shall make you free you shall be free indeed.” The context in which Jesus said this begins back in the previous chapter. In John 7: 16, where Jesus said to His fellow Jews, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.” Who could possibly be more free than
Jesus, the Son of God? Who could possibly set any boundaries to freedom on the One “in whom all things hold together,” “by whom all things were created?” But Jesus freely chose to submit to the will of the Father. We find this hard to understand since our idea of submission includes the idea of dominance and subservience.
Jesus made it clear that not only did His teaching come from His heavenly Father, but His will was the will of His heavenly Father. It would seem that a person whose teaching and will are completely governed by the will of another is not free. He is a captive at the deepest level. But it isn’t so. Quite the opposite.
The secular anthem of America is “I did it my way.” Jesus could not have sung that song. His song was “I did it His way,” pointing to His heavenly Father. It was in this way that Jesus brought to us this freedom we claim.
As Jesus neared the end of His work He used His freedom in some strange ways. In John 13 we see the Master washing the feet of His disciples. Picture this. How would you feel if Jesus were at your feet with a basin, pitcher, and towel, washing your feet? He did this for three reasons: first, their feet were dirty. Second, Jesus loved them. Third, they needed to see how to use the freedom He gave them.
Two chapters later, in John 15, Jesus taught them how closely they must remain attached to Him if they would use their freedom well. “I am the vine, you are the branches,” Jesus taught. If they remained connected to Him, they would bear fruit. Apart from Him they could do nothing.
If you and I are in Christ, we read the same thing. You and I, if we are in Christ, are connected to Him. You and I are not solitary, unattached people with religious opinions, we are connected in Christ.
We easily forget this. We think of freedom as the privilege of doing as we want. Freedom is the right to come and go when and where I please. Freedom is being able to make my own choices, to do or not to do. Yet even if you think this way, when you read what Jesus said about freedom you realize it’s quite a bit different from merely being able to do and think what you please.
Our present dilemma as Presbyterians is that that the Peace, Unity, and Purity report adopted by our latest General Assembly takes away our connectedness to Jesus as branches attached to a vine.
It may seem to some a stretch to connect the teaching of Jesus to all that is taught to us in the Bible, but Jesus specifically connected His teaching to the teaching of His Bible, the Old Testament. And the whole of the New Testament is anchored in Jesus’ person and teaching. So that our freedom to interpret the meaning of the Bible has boundaries—if we are in Christ. We did not make up these boundaries. They are boundaries that are as necessary as railroad tracks are to an Amtrak train. We cannot be “in Christ” and disregard the Bible. Without the Bible we jump the tracks and our heavy wheels get bogged down in soft ground so that we cannot move.
George Matheson, a blind Scottish pastor, wrote these memorable words back in 1890 that capture the conditions of our freedom in Christ.
Make me a captive, Lord, and then I shall be free.
Force me to render up my sword, and I shall conqueror be.
My heart is weak and poor until it master find;
_It has no spring of action sure, it varies with the wind._
It cannot freely move till Thou has wrought its chain;_
Enslave it with Thy matchless love, and deathless it shall reign.
One last truth regarding our freedom I must emphasize for us all. The Christian faith is a togetherness thing. This is a burden hard for many to bear. Christianity is not a loose and voluntary federation of independent individuals. It is many branches connected to the same vine.
These days we are being pulled apart because the idea of freedom has been detached from the Bible which Jesus said would have every jot and title fulfilled. “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Indeed, Jesus led us to think of the spirit of the law behind the letter of the law. You and I are not disconnected by private interpretations of the Bible; we are connected by our common submission to it, if we are in Christ.
It is my heavy duty to speak of this common submission we have to Scripture if we are in Christ in a day when the momentum of freedom tries to shake loose from every restraint. The Bible is famously poorly known and seldom read—though often cited in fragments. The News informs us more than the Bible—including as it quotes the Bible in bits and pieces.
If we here at Faith Church will freely choose to come together in submission to Jesus Christ, in submission to each other, in submission to the clear teaching of the Bible—on much more than matters pertaining to sexuality—we will discover a freedom that will make this congregation flourish as never before.
Now we are facing a severe test as a congregation. Will we be of one mind, heart, and will, deliberately and consciously asking, “What does the Bible teach us?” How do we freely submit to the will of Jesus Christ? And how do we do this together?
The burden that rests on you and me if we are in Christ, is to “truly be His disciples.” The burden is to “continue to be in His word.” It is a burden that falls on our shoulders as individuals. But it will bind us together. Jesus never taught us that individualism is the way to go. All His disciples sat at His feet, knowing that what he taught to one he taught to all together.
Paul explained this same truth in referring to us as a body. Let us be a body with parts that work together, contributing to the whole. This will come if we are in conscious submission to each other as well as consciously submitted to Jesus Christ, whom we call “our Lord.”
In the mid-nineteenth century President Lincoln faced a great test of keeping together our United States of America. He was able to achieve this by force of arms in a terrible Civil War. But at that time the southern Presbyterians broke away from the northern Presbyterians over the sorry issue of slavery.
Now we face a sterner test: will the basis of our togetherness be obedience to the word of God, the word that sets us free, because it binds us to the will of God? “My will is to do the will of Him who sent me,” Jesus said. What is our will? What is yours? Mine? Jesus says to us: “If you continue in my word you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.” Some Presbyterians believe we should have a UNITY based only on respect for each other’s opinions. We indeed should be respectful to each other. But the only basis on which we can have unity is submission together to the will of God revealed in Holy Scripture—fairly and rightly accepted in what it means. We are now being reminded RIGHTLY that our unity and our freedom comes only if we are truly Jesus’ disciples—if we continue in His Word.
Let us pray: O Lord God, we bless you for our freedom in Christ Jesus. Help us to continue in His word and to truly be His disciples. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at July 2, 2006 09:30 AM