“Managing
Our Freedom” Sermon Delivered By Rev. Dick Stetler – June 19,
2016 Centenary United Methodist Church
Psalm 24; Galatians 3:23-29
Father's Day Today we are going to discuss
one teaching that stands above many others that causes Christianity to
be different from its parent-religion of Judaism.
Since Jesus taught very little that was different from the
teachings of his heritage, what would create such a quantum change?
In his letter to the followers of Jesus that were living in
Galatia, Paul wrote that before the coming of Jesus, the Law had been
defining many aspects of Hebrew life. Jesus'
teaching, however, carried believers beyond the Law by setting aside
obedience as the primary way of honoring God and replacing it with the
freedom of choosing their responses from a loving and forgiving spirit. To understand the meaning of such a change, my grandfather's
experience of growing up in an orphanage may expand our understanding of
Paul's words. To give all the children in the facility a sense that they
were part of a larger community, there were rules for everything from
when breakfast was served to when all the children were to go to bed at
the end of the day. When children transitioned from the orphanage setting, the rules
that each had lived by were no longer needed.
There was a tremendous sense of
freedom. The early phase of this
new experience was similar to what young people go through when they
leave home to go to college or taking their first job in a new location.
Making their own decisions and taking full responsibility for
setting their own priorities and schedule became all
new territory. Early followers of Jesus had the same trouble adjusting to their
new freedom. Communion
services sometimes became love-fests where hormones of passion played a
larger role than symbolically taking the spirit of Jesus into themselves
by eating bread and drinking from the cup. There was drunkenness and
orgies taking place in some of the early churches.
Paul once wrote, "The sexual immorality is so terrible among you
that not even the heathen would be guilty of such things." (I
Corinthians 5:1f) When
guidance from the Laws was not available, people fell prey to their
inner impulses of selfish desires.
Paul told his readers to avoid being around
believers that could not
control themselves. (I Corinthians 5:11) People love being free from rules, regulatory restrictions,
disciplines and being spied upon by
the peering eyes of security
cameras. By teaching about God's
infinite, unconditional love for all of us, Jesus was announcing the
freedom of people to take full responsibility for their own lives. Any
misery or suffering in human life was more the result of self-sabotage
than God throwing thunderbolts because of humanity's disobedience.
(Genesis 19:24) Jesus supplied
the road map or
blueprint for extending our
loving energy to others. It
was up to each individual to find their own way in spite of where the
world's populations were on the learning curve.
Today, living this way can appear to be a monumental task because
everyone has their own opinions about everything.
Evelyn Beatrice Hall once summed up the
tug-of-war between love and
the reality of living among such opinions in her book entitled,
The Life of Voltaire.
Her well-known quote appears in
this book, "I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death
your right to say it." As we have discovered
in recent years, free societies have become vulnerable to those that
insist that certain controls must be maintained over everyone's
behaviors, beliefs and attitudes.
Free societies will have to endure the few, and it is a few, that
insist on violence to teach their
truth. As
we make our way into the future, there will be clashes and bitter
disputes about values, but we must not judge
the beautiful gift of freedom
by the behavior of a tiny minority that have their deeds magnified by
media coverage.
Such people will always assert themselves for fear that freedom
lacks the power to guide people correctly.
Free societies, however, have a
way of sorting out what works and what does not.
They deal with people who
misbehave.
Those of us who enjoy our
freedom, realize that every individual is in the process of growing at
his or her own pace. The
mistakes we make can stimulate change. Even Jesus was in this
evolutionary process throughout his life.
(John 15:2) Many mistakes are made quite unintentionally.
Life appears normal until we meet a game-changer that offers a
second opportunity to make a correction. A cell phone call came at 2:00 a.m. with news that can cause
parents to stay awake at night. Their daughter, Samantha, had been
in a car accident not far from her college dormitory.
An ambulance was taking her to the hospital. A frantic passenger
making the call had been in the car with her. Their car was
T-boned by a driver that had
run through a red light. Since there were younger children at home, Samantha's father told
his wife to stay behind while he made the two hour drive to the
hospital. When Samantha regained consciousness, the first person she saw
was her dad sleeping in the chair beside her bed.
She reached over and awakened
him. At first, their words to
each other were awkward.
However, as Sam began to share her happiness about surviving the
accident, their communication began to flow more normally. As she began to share personal information about her life as a
college student, her dad started sharing stories about his university
experiences. Samantha grew quiet as she began pondering what was
happening. Her reflective
silence was broken with these words, Dad, why did it
take a car accident for you to show up in my life eager to engage in
storytelling? Where have you been? You have just told me a number
of things about your life that I never knew. Why is it that we have
never taken the time to get to know each other until now? On hearing Samantha's words, empathy for what his daughter was
saying caused tears to form in his eyes.
His tears caused her to cry as they both hugged each other for a
long time. He confessed that he did not have an answer that was
worth mentioning. He had
been busy playing the role of a father by being a responsible, dedicated
architect. He brought home
paychecks, got the grass mowed and did all kinds of things that dads
normally do. After a long pause, he said, "It never dawned on me how much time
was getting away from us, but I guess it has." Samantha
interrupted: No dad, it hasn't!
We have just found each other.
Accidents sometimes give people a second chance to live life more
intentionally. Let's you and I not allow these moments to get away from
us. I love you, dad. Thank
you for coming all this way in the middle of the night to check on me. Sam fully recovered, but the two of them made a discovery that
they might have missed. They found each other and became close friends.
Father's Day is now a very special time for both of them. Even though we love our children, often we do so without really
letting them know who lives inside of our bodies.
I have learned this from adult children that find it very
difficult to provide me with anecdotal material for their mom or dad's
memorial service. Many of them
have never heard the story of how their parents met or even where they
were born. We develop our routines and family rituals.
Without getting these occasional
wake-up calls, we can grow
contented with playing our roles.
This happens so slowly that we are not aware of the little
changes that have been taking place for years.
Yes, we are in relationships but are we fully showing up in
people's lives with a transparency that lets them into our inner-world? When we live in an
environment where we are free to become anyone we wish, life becomes
beautiful when we have
a
rudder that helps to guide
our ship.
Paul wrote, "The Law was in charge of us until Christ came.
He showed us how love aligns us with the creative energies of
God. Now that the
time of faith is here, the Law is no longer in charge of us." (Galatians
3:24f). What is so
essential about this passage is
the Christ mind that provides the "how-to" for ordering our lives.
The Christ mind is
what dramatically changed Paul's life overnight from hating to
loving. THAT change
represented a major shift in his consciousness! Currently, we live in a world where every individual is
struggling with how to manage their lives while living in a relatively
free society. We need to
remember every day that all of us are in a process of growing.
We do not always make our choices from the highest places within
us. We make mistakes as we
have already mentioned. We
use words that suggest that we are needy, dependent and standing alone
in the rapids of life. None
of this is true. We are all
sons and daughters of God. Think about this. We
would not make these mistakes if we knew how to show up in every
conversation, every social setting and every moment with our dearest
friends by radiating our loving energy.
We fail not because we are uninterested in people; we fail
because our energy is focused on how we look, whether or not others will
like us, or whether we disagree with their position on political issues
instead of being focused on them in spite of who they are. The story of Samantha and her dad is one that could be said about
many families. What is
significant about this story is that Samantha took responsibility for
being open to her dad's love when it began to show up. She said, "No,
Dad, we haven't lost a thing.
We have just found each other.
Accidents sometimes give people a second chance." Paul was teaching that all of us have the
Christ mind within us.
It is up to us to be
enthusiastically hopeful and alive in this marvelous world savoring this
remarkable gift of freedom. We
cannot become discouraged because a microscopic number of people are
committed to displaying their anger and acting out in destructive ways.
Like toddlers, they get a lot of attention from everyone because
their world is not the way they want it.
Let us commit ourselves to counter all the horrible headlines caused by the behavior of this tiny minority with healing spirits that outnumber them a million to one. Such destructive people cannot heal the world by what they do; however, we can by holding hands and walking into the future together unafraid of what tomorrow will bring. |