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.