Sermon: Freedom!

The Rev. Bryn Smallwood-Garcia
Congregational Church of Brookfield (UCC)
July 1, 2007

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Freedom!

Galatians 5:1, 13-25

Prayer:   “May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts and minds here together be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.”

We talk a lot in the United States about freedom – and we truly treasure it.  Especially in times like ours, as we approach our nation’s birthday this week and when our young men and women overseas are dying in a war, we want to honor those who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice to defend our freedom. But when here in the Letter to the Galatians Paul writes, “Christ has set us free … and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery,” he doesn’t mean what Nathan Hale meant when he said, “Give me liberty or give me death!” 

Paul was pointing us toward freedom of new life in Christ, not emancipation from political tyranny.  Paul wrote this letter to new Christian converts in Galatia, in what is now central Turkey, in order to stem a controversy among church leaders.  Since most of them were recently converted from Judaism, they were having a hard time with pagan converts who had no knowledge or experience of Jewish law. Leaders of the Galatian church were thinking that this rowdy and unclean bunch needed to first convert to Judaism, and be circumcised and respectable, before they could be Christian.  So Paul was reminding them of God’s gift of grace that freed them from the laws of the Torah. 

However, Paul does acknowledge the dangers of the decadent wider culture, as he writes, “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence.” Christ’s freedom liberates us from what Paul calls “the desires of the flesh,” which although he claims to be “obvious,” he lists for us: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.”  

I think this text poses a considerable challenge for faithful American Christians today.  Because, in many ways, I think we find ourselves in something of the same boat as those Galatian missionaries.  Although our nation is not pagan, you don’t have to very far from the doors of this church to find a party where the guests are drunk and carousing, or looking for the next indulgence of the flesh.  Even WITHIN the church we might be able to find a fair amount of envy, jealousy, dissensions, quarrels, anger or strife. 

What most Americans seem to mean by “freedom” today is the freedom to pursue happiness, to do our own thing, to eat and drink whenever and whatever we want and drive anywhere we want anytime we want.  We demand freedom from crime, poverty, or physical danger, freedom from taxes, indeed freedom from any annoying inconvenience, like long lines at the bank or DMV.  Many Americans even claim freedom from any civic involvement, freedom to NOT read political news or vote, freedom to not be tied down by anyone or anything – freedom to pretend neither action nor apathy has consequences.  Even in the church, some of us prefer to have freedom to worship in a spiritual sanctuary separate from the world – where there is no whisper of anything controversial or political.

What a shock that would be to our Congregationalist forefathers and mothers!  In his keynote address at our 26^th General Synod of the United Church of Christ held this past week in Hartford, journalist Bill Moyers – a Southern Baptist seminary graduate – said that what most attracted him to the UCC was our involvement in the world.  It was our reputation for activism for justice and peace, not just evangelism for spiritual salvation, that he said kept him in our denomination.  He reminded us that 11 signers of the Declaration of Independence were members of what would become UCC congregations.  He reminded us that it was Congregationalists who staged the Boston Tea Party and helped the Amistad captives regain their freedom.  Like the apostle Paul, Moyers warned us that we run the risk of re-enslaving ourselves if we ever allow our freedom in Christ to lull us into a blissful self-indulgence that forgets our primary call as Christians – “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

If we examine our lives closely, most of us would have to admit how easy it is to allow our so-called “freedom” to lead us into temptation and various kinds of spiritual slavery.  Our freedom to overeat has made some of us feel like prisoners in our own overweight flesh.  Overindulgence of our freedom to shop can lead to mountainous debt burdens.  Overindulgence in many luxuries of freedom have led to power shortages and global warming that may lead to the extinction of all life on this planet.  That’s the kind of freedom Paul, and a whole series of prophetic UCC voices at our 50^th anniversary General Synod, warned us against.  The freedom of new life in Christ comes with a call to accept what our UCC Statement of Faith names “the cost and joy of discipleship.”

What does this mean?  Our basic Christian confession, that all of us in the United Church of Christ share, that “Jesus is Lord,” both frees us and demands our obedience to Christ, and his commandment that we “love one another.”  We are all sinners.  We are all saved by God’s grace.  But what Paul is saying here in Galatians is that grace does not give us license to indulge ourselves like pagans in self-centered, materialistic, un-Christlike lives.  We are called instead to a radical brotherhood and sisterhood in Christ that is always a challenge – because we are always struggling to discern the way God is calling us to walk in the world.  Our United Church of Christ has been saying for some time “God is still speaking,” but our problem is that not all of us are hearing the same prophetic message.  We often differ about what, as disciples, we are called to do and be.  Are we called to spread a personal and spiritual message of hope that comforts the afflicted?  Or are we called to a public and political message of justice that afflicts the comfortable?

Perhaps the most inspiring sermon of the long weekend was the last one – from Dr. Mary Mikhael, President of the Near East School of Theology in Beruit, graduate of our UCC-affiliated Union Seminary and an elder in the Presbyterian Church.  She was humble and soft-spoken, with the slow and careful speech of a non-native English speaker.  Now this Synod had included powerful and personal testimonies of faith from famous converts to the United Church of Christ like Barak Obama and Lynn Redgrave.  This Synod had included an inspiring call to service and action by Children’s Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman and fiery and prophetic preaching from our UCC President John Thomas.  So her quiet and plodding sermon seemed at first to be a bit of a downer to end the whole event. 

But then she began telling about the certainty of violent conflict in her country and the uncertainty of when or where the next bomb would explode.  And I think many of us began to view our American freedom to live in peace in our own homes in a new way.  “In places like Lebanon or Darfur, in most of the 3^rd World,” she said, “you would be stunned by the crimes against humanity.  There is no time to rest.”  As she congratulated us for our more than 50-year commitment to world mission, she smiled broadly and in her gentle voice still challenged us, “What are you doing here?  You’re not out of a job just yet.”  She said that we in the church have been given a great gift of freedom, but that it is “freedom to act with God on behalf of the well-being of all people.”  She said “the church is called to be an agent of change in the world – to move it from darkness to the light of Christ.”  To that I believe the apostle Paul would have said with this Synod, “Amen!”

When the United Church of Christ was founded a short 50 years ago this past week, we forget the major miracle of the union was the bringing together of former enemies to dine in Christian brotherhood at the same table of grace.  Only 12 years before, the English (who founded the Congregational Christian churches) and the Germans (who had founded the Evangelical and Reformed Church) had been in a bitter World War against each other.  The UCC called children of two nations to brotherhood.  And still today, we are a denomination that is working to surmount the differences of an even more ethnically diverse American culture.  The miracle I’ve witnessed at these two Synods is that even after contentious debate, we still join hands at the end to pray for one another and sing together songs of praise for the one Lord who unites us into one body.

It is easy to talk politics when all are in agreement.  For those in fundamentalist churches or denominations, or even nations, that have clearly written and closely followed laws – it’s easy to know where you stand.  You’re either with them or against them, either in or out of power.  But the freedom of the grace of God and the peace of Jesus Christ, which passes all understanding, is very different.  It is the freedom to struggle over hard issues of faith and practice, it is the freedom to strongly differ and yet love, it is the freedom to live by the Spirit and not the letter of the law.  This is the freedom upon which we contentious Congregationalists founded our nation and the freedom that, thank God, we in the United Church of Christ, are called to share with the world.  

Thanks be to God for this Good News.  Amen.