Sunday, July 3, 2011
Freedom in Christ
The Rev. Rebekah Bokros Hatch
St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church, Alpharetta, Ga.
Come unto me all ye that
labor, and I will give you rest. I can hear the voice from Handel’s
Messiah. The lilting gentleness, that when sung by the right vocalist
can sound like Christ himself, coaxing us into his arms; begging us to
lay aside our troubles and fall into his arms. Come unto me. Come unto
me.
Now, I might be the only person here this morning that feels this way,
but sometimes I find Paul to be, well, a little annoying. That’s not
the word that you might think a preacher should use to describe the
words and intentions of one so important and pivotal to our faith as
Paul. But, have you been listening??? If we focus on Paul’s words just
from this morning, they are confusing; he’s long-winded – taking
several sentences to say what could possibly be said briefly in one or
two; and, quite frankly, especially looking at his words from the
reading this morning, he’s not always very uplifting. Christ is
calling us to take on his easy yoke and light burden; and Paul
complains about how difficult life is.
Yet, Paul, is one of the most influential disciples of Christ. Letters
that have been attributed to him fill up most of our Christian
Scripture – its pretty much the Gospels and Paul. And, so, if we dig
deeper and look closer, as usual, we gain a better understanding of
what, perhaps, Paul’s intentions were and where we might fit into
these sometimes complex and often confusing words of encouragement and
whatever else.
Only a day removed from the birthday of our nation, it seems timely to
ask ourselves what freedom might look like. What is independence and
freedom and how do we live those values that we find so important.
Most of our notions about freedom center around political, social, and
even national images of freedom. What’s one image of freedom or
independence that comes to mind?
For Paul, freedom was wrapped up in only one thing: Jesus Christ. And,
while his letters to various church communities differ in the way his
message is relayed, the theme of freedom is found in many of them.
So, we hear from Paul this morning, and the part that we hear from
Romans begins with something we can probably all, at one point or
another, say: I do not understand my own actions. Why do I do the
things that I do??? I’ll bet that each of us here this morning can
think of something we’ve done recently – perhaps even in the last few
days – that has us wondering, “Why?” Why did I eat that third hot dog?
Why did I have that extra brownie? Why was I so mean to that person
that asked me for help? Why didn’t I speak to my mother more kindly?
And for some of us, those questions bother us for days. Well, for
Paul, these types of questions and ones that go even deeper were at
the heart of his struggle with faith. And, what a struggle it is. Paul
has us thinking, with his words to the church in Rome, that our bodies
are somehow evil; that we are sinful; that we are not able to make
good choices. Is this really good news?
Well, what if I made things even more complicated than Paul already
has and offer this notion: that Paul is not only talking about himself
in Romans, when he says, “I”, but he’s talking about something larger.
Some scholars say that Paul is talking about Israel – that evil dwells
within the people of Israel (who, by the way, is us, though far
removed from the geographic land). What if Paul is not just talking
about himself, not just talking about the people of Israel, but
perhaps this is a message to the church in Rome that addresses a
struggle that even we as the church in America have?
See, its easy for us to believe what Paul tells us – at least on the
surface. Its easy for us to believe that we are sinful; that we are
not capable of living fully into what God has called us. That’s easy.
Believing that God has created us in God’s image and that what God has
created is good is the difficult part to swallow. Even Paul had
trouble with that. Except that Paul knew deeply what we sometimes
forget. That in spite of our sinfulness; in spite of our brokenness;
in spite of our need to believe that we are inadequate, God sent Jesus
Christ to redeem us. Paul knew what we sometimes stop short of: true
freedom to be what God calls us to be comes through the love and life
of Jesus Christ.
The poet Marianne Williamson says, “Our deepest fear is not that we
are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond
measure.
It is our light, not our darkness
that most frightens us.”
The light is God through Jesus Christ.
Throughout Paul’s letters, we hear, if nothing else, that true freedom
– freedom from guilt; freedom from obligation; freedom from struggle
comes from Christ. That we are offered yet another chance in Christ to
walk with God into the kingdom to which God is calling us. When we
talk about independence and freedom, this is what we mean. That we are
rescued from the body of death, as Paul calls it, and brought to
freedom by God.
I do not understand my own actions. A truer statement possibly never
spoken. Yet, in Christ we are given the opportunity to move beyond
understanding and into relationship; beyond criticism and into
rejoicing; beyond bondage and into freedom. True freedom. Thanks be to
God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Williamson, Marianne.
Our Greatest Fear. Accessed at
http://www.wanttoknow.info/060616ourdeepestfeartheinvitation on
July 5, 2008.
©
The Rev. Rebekah Bokros Hatch.
All Rights reserved.
