Independence Day (sermon, June 27, 2010)

Luke 9:51-62
Galatians 5:1, 13-25

Before the World Cup started, few would have predicted that France would fail to advance from the first round of play. After all, the French not only won the World Cup back in 1998, they played in the championship match in the last World Cup in 2006.

So what happened? First, in their match against Mexico, a French player crudely insulted his coach during halftime. He was subsequently expelled from the team by the French Football Federation for his unsportsmanlike conduct. Then, in protest, the entire team skipped practice three days later.

According to France’s sports minister, Roselyne Bachelot, by insulting the coach and boycotting practice, the French players were a “moral disaster.” In a stern rebuke of the team, she told the players that “they could no longer be heroes for [French] children. They have destroyed the dreams of their countrymen,...friends and supporters.” (1)

What happened is that the French players forgot that they play soccer, not for themselves and for their own personal gain, but for a team, a team which represents a nation. They seemed to believe that their coveted roles as France’s most talented soccer players gave them the freedom to behave however they wanted...as if the rules no longer applied to them.

It’s not uncommon to think of freedom as the absence of rules and restrictions. When we long for freedom, we typically mean we wish to be relieved from the regulations that constrain us. Children wish to be free of parental rules and guidance; citizens don’t want the government legislating morality or taking their money; even many churches wish to be free of their parent denominations which have certain expectations of what church life should look like.

But, as writer Mark Douglas puts it, “freedom is not the absence of entanglements; entanglements are the means by which freedom becomes meaningful.” (2) Think, for example, of the freedom that comes with the so-called “entanglements” of marriage or parenthood -- freedom to discover the many challenges and blessings that result from these committed relationships. Think of the freedom that comes in a society where citizens vote for the leaders who make the laws; yes, the resulting laws may restrict us, but the alternative is to either not vote and have no say or to live in a society where voting is not even an option and a self-appointed ruler dictates the laws for everyone.

So when Paul declares to the Galatians that “for freedom Christ has set us free,” he is not saying that becoming a follower of Jesus means that you can now do whatever you want. Paul is saying that Christ sets us free from the heavy chains of self-absorption; Christ sets us free to become entangled in a community where the overriding rule is “love one another.”

Several years ago, my husband Derek traveled to Tokyo, Japan, to visit his friend Craig. One evening, he and Craig met up with some of Craig’s Japanese friends to share a pot of green tea. As if being 6‘5” didn’t give it away, Derek quickly revealed his ignorance of the culture when he poured himself a second cup of tea. You see, in Japan, there is strict etiquette around sharing a pot of green tea. When your cup is empty, you are not permitted to refill it yourself. You may refill the empty cups of others, but you must wait patiently for someone else to refill your cup. As long as everyone tunes into the needs of everyone else at the table, then no one will go thirsty, and everyone will receive just as much as they need and desire.

“For freedom Christ has set us free...but do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.”

Christ sets us free only to enslave us to one another in the context of a loving community. And if there’s any question whether Paul gets this right, in our passage today from Luke’s gospel Jesus himself makes it very clear that as followers of Christ our priority is not ourselves and our own concerns.

In this passage, we hear of three would-be followers of Jesus, each of whom proclaims a genuine desire to embark on a journey of discipleship. To the first, Jesus makes clear that he should not anticipate this journey to be full of creature comforts or luxury accommodations. To the second two, who want to follow Jesus but first have some important business back home to take care of, Jesus makes clear that being a part of the kingdom of God means that God must be our number one priority.

This is a hard passage to hear. It certainly makes it seem as though if you haven’t rejected your family, left your hometown, and lived a life of self-sacrifice and misery for the gospel, then you haven’t been truly faithful. But if that’s all we hear, then we will miss the important message of this text, which ultimately is the same message Paul sends to the Galatians. As followers of Christ, we are called to continually evaluate our priorities.

Our faith in Christ sets us free from our tendency to focus on ourselves and our needs. Our faith sets us free to love others, to live in community in such a way that we all know and trust that everyone’s needs will be met, because we are looking out for others and they are looking out for us.

Just to make sure his readers understand, Paul lists the kinds of behaviors that are based on selfish desires and contrasts them with those that come from the Holy Spirit. Most of us modern Westerners struggle with this list. When we hear the word “flesh” we are likely to think that Paul is saying that all the desires of our bodies are bad, while anything spiritual is good.

That’s not what Paul is saying. If you notice, some of the things he lists as “works of the flesh” are actually spiritual in nature, such as idolatry and sorcery. And some of the fruit of the Spirit intimately involves our bodies, such as gentleness and self-control. Paul is really making a distinction between, on the one hand, being enslaved to our own desires -- desires that all too often destroy community because they are self-serving in nature -- and, on the other hand, submitting to desires that arise from the Spirit moving in us -- desires which build up and strengthen our community of faith because they enable us to put the needs of others before our own. As followers of Christ, in our community of faith, we must continually evaluate our priorities.

It doesn’t make it any easier to prioritize the needs of the community over our own individual needs when so much of the language we hear today about spirituality focuses on the individual. Many popular spiritual practices are ones that enable us to cultivate their spiritual life in the comfort and privacy of our own homes. Well, for Paul, there is simply no such thing as individual spirituality. (3) The very idea of it is likely to lead to the kind of behavior seen by the French soccer players who seemed to forget that they played for a team which represented a nation. Rather, the Spirit moves in and through us in order to create a stable, cohesive community, one that witnesses to the love and mercy of God...a community participating in something like Japanese green tea etiquette, where there is always room at the table for another thirsty pilgrim and where there is a deep sense of trust that everyone will be served, not because each person is looking out for his or her own needs, but because they are looking out for the needs of others and the trust that others are looking out for their needs.

On the day of Columbine school shooting, Patrick Ireland, a junior at Columbine High School, was in the library. During the shooting, a shotgun pellet lodged in Patrick’s brain, disturbing his vision, wiping out his ability to speak, and paralyzing the right side of his body. His foot had also been badly injured. For a while he blacked out, but when he regained consciousness, he had only one coherent thought: he had to get out of there. It took him three hours to drag himself across the library to a blown-out window. He eventually managed to pull himself up and jump from the window into the arms of a SWAT team waiting below.

More than a year later--after a long year of recovery--Patrick graduated from Columbine High School and gave the valedictory speech. In his speech he admitted that “it had been a rough year...’The shooting made the country aware of the unexpected level of hate and rage that had been hidden in high schools,’ he said. But he was convinced that the world was inherently good at heart. He had spent that year thinking about what had gotten him across the library floor. At first he assumed hope, but then he decided that wasn’t quite right. What had gotten him across the library floor was trust. ‘When I fell out the window, I knew somebody would catch me,’ he said. ‘That’s what I need to tell you: that I knew the loving world was there all the time.’” (4)

For freedom Christ has set us free. And perhaps this freedom will become most meaningful and precious to us when we allow it to free us from selfishness and free us to be part of a community in which people are bound together in trust and love, when no matter what trial or tribulation confronts us we trust that the loving community is there to catch us, and when we see another about to fall, we reach out our hands to catch them, knowing that together we will carry each other on this journey of faith, on which our first priority is to follow Jesus, who shows us the love that truly sets us free. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. quoted in the article “Loss Completes France’s Dishonor” by Jere Longman in the New York Times on June 22, 2010.
2. Mark Douglas, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 3, Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett, eds. WJK, 2010, p. 186.
3. Thanks to the Sermon Brainwave crew for this insight: David Lose. Karoline Lewis, and Matt Skinner. Listen to the episode in which they discuss this passage here.
4. David Cullen, Columbine, Twelve, 2009, p. 302.