Community Church Sermons

Year C

June 30, 2013

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Oh, Freedom…

Galatians 5:1, 13-25

Rev. Martin C. Singley, III

Senior Pastor

Lynna Williams, a professor at Emory University, tells a story about a twelve-year-old girl, the daughter of a West Texas fire-breathing evangelistic preacher, who is forced by her dad every summer to spend a couple of weeks at a fundamentalist Bible camp for children in Oklahoma.  During the day, this Bible camp is just like most other camps – there’s hiking, softball, sailing and arts and craft.  But at night, every night, a “revival” meeting is held for the campers, a highly emotional service of worship where there is hellfire and brimstone “come-to-Jesus” preaching and the kids are pressured to give their lives to Christ.  The unwritten expectation is that sometime during the camp every camper will come forward to give a moving personal testimony of their conversion.

The problem is these campers are just kids, and a good many of them don’t have personal testimonies.  That’s where this twelve-year-old preacher’s daughter comes in.  She’s figured out that she can make a little money on the side as a ghost writer for Jesus, by writing personal testimonies for the other campers.  For example, for five dollars, she wrote a wonderful testimony for a boy named Michael, about how in his old and sinful life, he used to be bad and take the Lord’s name in vain at football practice.  But now that Jesus has come into his heart, his mouth is as pure as a crystal spring.

Michael’s “testimony” was a good one, no doubt, but this girl’s most dramatic personal testimony, her best piece of work, was written for a boy named Tim Bailey.  It was about how his life was empty and meaningless until he met Jesus in a nearly fatal, and utterly fictitious pickup truck accident in Galveston, Texas, a near catastrophe in which Jesus himself had seized the steering wheel and averted disaster.  That one took some imagination, so she charged him twenty-five dollars.

Isn’t it amazing how complicated religion can be made? Something as simple as Jesus’ call to “Come, follow me!” becomes a whole laundry list of things you have to say and do and think and feel in order to be considered truly Christian. Faith can almost be as complicated as your telephone bill. Don’t you just love the TV commercial where the little girl is calculating the family’s phone bill and every time she adds two numbers together her father tells her the result is not correct because she forgot to add on all those hidden fees, extra charges and taxes. Totally frustrated, the little girl finally says, “Daddy, phone company math is hard!”

So is religious math.

And that’s where our reading from Galatians 5 kicks in.

You see the apostle Paul brought the Christian Gospel to the region of Galatia and many people believed. Paul told them that Jesus had come to tell the world of God’s love, and had given his life so they could know God and have eternal life. It was a Gospel of grace requiring nothing more than to accept God’s love in Christ as a gift, and then following his way. And many did!

But after Paul left town, some other believers came along. “That’s great that you’ve accepted Christ,” they said, “but have you been circumcised, and do you keep the Jewish dietary laws?”

Hidden fees and charges, you see.

The same thing happens in our day. Every once in a while I’ll be confronted by a zealous Christian convert who asks, “Are you a Christian?” “Yes, I am.” And that seems to puzzle them as if that can’t possibly be true. So they go to the next subset of questions. “Are you a BORN AGAIN Christian?” “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I am.” Silence. “Well, are you a BORN AGAIN, BIBLE-BELIEVING Christian?”

And this cross examination sometimes goes on until they find some little hidden tax or fee I haven’t paid yet.

So here are these Galatian Christians who have come to know Jesus and are following him, but now they’ve had all these religious add-ons piled onto them. And you know what happens then. Division. People start thinking they’re better than others. There are Christians and then there are “born again” Christians and then are “bible-believing Christians” and then there is the 1^st Presbyterian Church, the 2^nd Presbyterian Church, the Reformed Presbyterian Church and I’m not even going to mention the Baptists.

If you take a close look at your own experience of Christian Faith, you may well see that you’ve been to Galatia too and have been charged all sorts of fees, charges and taxes Jesus never said you had to pay.

So Paul’s got quite a problem on his hands. How can he bring these people back to their senses and help them realize they really don’t need a religious IRS - Internal Righteousness Service - hounding them about all these other things they’ve decided you need to be truly Christian.

Here’s what Paul says: “For freedom Christ has set us free.”

Think about these words.

For our FREEDOM, Christ did what he did.

For our FREEDOM, Christ came, and gave his life.

For our FREEDOM, Christ rose from the grave.

For our FREEDOM, Christ called us to come and follow him.

“For freedom Christ has set us free.”

And then he adds, “Never again submit to a yoke of slavery.”

What Paul was referring to were religious systems that enslave people.

Like 10-year old kids at Bible camp who are scared into thinking they’re going to hell if they don’t come forward and confess their sins in a particular way. Like grown up people who make mistakes and are ostracized by their church and saddled with guilt. Like families that are refused baptism for their children, divorced people denied Communion, intelligent people not allowed to think for themselves, and women prohibited from serving as pastors. Oh you know how it goes because we’ve all passed through Galatia!

But now Christ has set us free.

But free for what?

To live by the Spirit, free from our sinful nature.

This being the weekend before our nation’s Independence Day holiday, we Americans celebrate our freedom. We value freedom of speech – and freedom of the press – and freedom of the marketplace – and freedom of religion. America is built upon the foundation of freedom.

And yet we know these freedoms can be misused. Words can incite and destroy. The press can distort and re-shape the truth. Free enterprise can oppress so the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And religion – well religion in our nation’s history has promoted slavery, bombed abortion clinics, murdered gay people, and been co-opted by political ideologies.

Freedom misused can be a terribly destructive power.

So Paul offers us two approaches for becoming truly free.

First, self-examination. Take what AA calls a fearless moral inventory of your life and discern what you need to be set free from. Paul lists some examples – behaviors that evidently were quite rampant in Galatia - sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissension, factions, envy, drunkenness, orgies…and then he says…”and all sorts of stuff like that!”

Honestly, I can find myself in that laundry list, can you?

Freedom means being set free from things that hurt us and others and that are contrary to God’s will and purposes. In our day, the list may be different and certainly would include things like greed, and racism, and xenophobia, and violence, and even polluting the environment.

So where in your life are there attitudes and behaviors that are harmful to you and others, and contrary to the will of God?

Let Christ set you free!

And this is how these destructive behaviors can be overcome: by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

These are called the “fruits of the Spirit” and they are the by-product of genuine faith – the qualities of life that emerge when you follow Jesus.

“For freedom Christ has set YOU free!”

Never again submit to a yoke of slavery.

So on this weekend, as we prepare to celebrate America’s birthday, let us undergird our freedom with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

For when the Son of God sets us free, we are free indeed.

And as you go out to live this week, keep it simple, would you? Don’t complicate your faith with all sorts of hidden fees, charges and add-ons.

One thing is necessary: Love God and love your neighbor.

That’s what it means to be free!