The Cost of Freedom; a sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 9.51-62

⁵¹ As the time approached when Jesus was to be taken up into heaven, he determined to go to Jerusalem. ⁵² He sent messengers on ahead of him. Along the way, they entered a Samaritan village to prepare for his arrival, ⁵³ but the Samaritan villagers refused to welcome him because he was determined to go to Jerusalem. ⁵⁴ When the disciples James and John saw this, they said, “ Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to consume them? ” ⁵⁵ But Jesus turned and spoke sternly to them, ⁵⁶ and they went on to another village.

⁵⁷ As Jesus and his disciples traveled along the road, someone said to him, “ I will follow you wherever you go. ”

⁵⁸ Jesus replied, “ Foxes have dens and the birds in the sky have nests, but the Human One y has no place to lay his head. ”

⁵⁹ Then Jesus said to someone else, “ Follow me. ”

He replied, “ Lord, first let me go and bury my father. ”

⁶⁰ Jesus said to him, “ Let the dead bury their own dead. But you go and spread the news of God’s kingdom. ”

⁶¹ Someone else said to Jesus, “ I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say good-bye to those in my house. ”

⁶² Jesus said to him, “ No one who puts a hand on the plow and looks back is fit for God’s kingdom. ”

Let the words of my mouth

and the meditations of my heart

be pleasing to you,

LORD , my rock and my redeemer.

As we prepare for Fireworks and Flag Flying day, I find it appropriate to offer a word about freedom.

And by a curious coincidence (if we believe in coincidence), our readings today also say something about freedom and the nature of following Jesus.

How about that?

We are living in a region and in a time in which freedom has a very specific, political context, and the word is really hard to understand apart from that context. Freedom means the right to free and fair elections, the right to determine our own destiny, the right to property and prosperity, the right to speak our mind in the public sphere.

It’s a kind of freedom that we believe must be defended through the threat of violence, and so we also protect the right to bear arms in the interest of maintaining a well-regulated militia.

Which is not, of course, the same as every propertied person owning a firearm to defend his land, home, and family. A well-regulated militia is not the same as anarchy.

But I digress. Already.

Paul shares this proverb with us:

Christ has set us free for freedom. Therefore, stand firm and don’t submit to the bondage of slavery again.

But what kind of slavery are we talking about? Not the kind that leads to throwing crates of British tea into the Boston harbor. Not the kind that led to the Civil War.

Paul is very specific about the kinds of things that own us:

sexual immorality, moral corruption, doing whatever feels good, ²⁰ idolatry, drug use and casting spells, hate, fighting, obsession, losing your temper, competitive opposition, conflict, selfishness, group rivalry, ²¹ jealousy, drunkenness, partying, and other things like that.

I love how earthy, how real the CEB is here, by the way. We aren’t hiding behind more abstract words like “licentiousness” or “factions”. “Doing whatever feels good” and “group rivalry” are so much more clear.

Freedom in Christ has nothing to do with what we’ll be celebrating this week. The freedom we celebrate this week often leads to any number of the actions in Paul’s list, in fact. That’s why so much of the world despises us. We are a hypocritical and fundamentally greedy, lustful people. We use our political freedom as a pass for corruption and idolatry. We use our capitalistic ideology as a pass for oppressing the very people God swears to protect.

And setting ourselves against the people God swears to protect does not put us in a very tenable position, folks.

Just how long do we think we can hold out when we pit ourselves against God?

Church, we have to do better.

We have to forsake shallow political freedom and greed-based ideology for the sake of freedom in Christ.

And that freedom doesn’t look like the kind of freedom we understand. Listen again to how Jesus responds to the various people who want to follow him:

⁵⁷ As Jesus and his disciples traveled along the road, someone said to him, “ I will follow you wherever you go. ”

⁵⁸ Jesus replied, “ Foxes have dens and the birds in the sky have nests, but the Human One y has no place to lay his head. ”

⁵⁹ Then Jesus said to someone else, “ Follow me. ”

He replied, “ Lord, first let me go and bury my father. ”

⁶⁰ Jesus said to him, “ Let the dead bury their own dead. But you go and spread the news of God’s kingdom. ”

⁶¹ Someone else said to Jesus, “ I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say good-bye to those in my house. ”

⁶² Jesus said to him, “ No one who puts a hand on the plow and looks back is fit for God’s kingdom. ”

Does that sound like freedom to you?

What kind of expectation does Jesus have of us? Homelessness, neglect of the dead, abandoning our families. That doesn’t sound like compassion and understanding. It doesn’t sound like family values. It doesn’t even sound like Torah.

But it does sound contextually appropriate.

Today’s reading is introduced:

As the time approached when Jesus was to be taken up into heaven, he determined to go to Jerusalem.

Luke 9:51 is exactly that point at which the gospel turns toward the cross. Luke’s “carefully ordered account”

 takes on a fundamentally different tone here. It gets darker, more foreboding, more grave.

It’s no wonder Jesus would be warning people off now. He knows what’s coming. He knows what’s in store. And he knows that there will be no one who’s capable of following him all the way to the cross.

No one.

Everyone leaves him.

But we’re still called to try. And we’re promised things greater than the blessing of Elisha if we will try.

Elijah said to Elisha, “ What do you want me to do for you before I’m taken away from you? ”

Elisha said, “ Let me have twice your spirit. ”

The risk of staying behind, getting caught up in our own stuff, neglecting the call to follow, is missing that blessing. The risk we take in slavery to idolatry and greed is to miss out on freedom and power.

But isn’t the blessing worth the risk?

Because if we would forsake our burdens, our greed, our idolatry, and choose to follow Christ along the difficult, painful road to the cross, we would also find Jesus bringing us the rest of the way to freedom.

If we will follow Christ as far as our mortal being will allow, Christ will take us beyond the pain and beyond the fear. Christ will take us to glory.

Not just the glory that’s got three syllables in our pulpits (“guh-law-ree!”). Christ will take us into the active, present, right-now glory of bringing the Kingdom of God today. Harvesting and sharing the fruits of the Spirit that Paul reminds us:

love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, and self-control

And oh, that’s good news, friends. That’s Jesus bringing blessing through us. That’s Jesus making us his own hands and feet. That’s Jesus reaching out through us and making us bringers of salvation and healing and forgiveness.

That’s Jesus reaching through us and offering real, true, lasting freedom.

Forget the barbecue and the flags and the fireworks, y’all. If you want to celebrate and bring true freedom today, come join me, and together we’ll make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

God Will Find You; a sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 8.26-39

²⁶ Jesus and his disciples sailed to the Gerasenes’ land, which is across the lake from Galilee. ²⁷ As soon as Jesus got out of the boat, a certain man met him. The man was from the city and was possessed by demons. For a long time, he had lived among the tombs, naked and homeless. ²⁸ When he saw Jesus, he shrieked and fell down before him. Then he shouted, “ What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don’t torture me! ” ²⁹ He said this because Jesus had already commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. Many times it had taken possession of him, so he would be bound with leg irons and chains and placed under guard. But he would break his restraints, and the demon would force him into the wilderness.

³⁰ Jesus asked him, “ What is your name? ”

“ Legion, ” he replied, because many demons had entered him. ³¹ They pleaded with him not to order them to go back into the abyss.t³² A large herd of pigs was feeding on the hillside. The demons begged Jesus to let them go into the pigs. Jesus gave them permission, ³³ and the demons left the man and entered the pigs. The herd rushed down the cliff into the lake and drowned.

³⁴ When those who tended the pigs saw what happened, they ran away and told the story in the city and in the countryside. ³⁵ People came to see what had happened. They came to Jesus and found the man from whom the demons had gone. He was sitting at Jesus’ feet, fully dressed and completely sane. They were filled with awe. ³⁶ Those people who had actually seen what had happened told them how the demon-possessed man had been delivered. ³⁷ Then everyone gathered from the region of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave their area because they were overcome with fear. So he got into the boat and returned across the lake. ³⁸ The man from whom the demons had gone begged to come along with Jesus as one of his disciples. Jesus sent him away, saying, ³⁹ “ Return home and tell the story of what God has done for you. ” So he went throughout the city proclaiming what Jesus had done for him.

Let the words of my mouth

and the meditations of my heart

be pleasing to you,

LORD , my rock and my redeemer.

At certain points in the Church’s history, the practice of anathematizing or ostracizing people has been put in place for folk who didn’t fit the mold or who caused trouble. Today, in some circles, it’s called shunning or the very polite “removing the right hand of fellowship”.

In fact, I have a colleague whose church had so much trouble out of one member that they had to gather before she could arrive and lock the door on her before she could come in.

We’re usually a little more subtle when we don’t want to welcome someone into our fellowship.

A little. Not a lot.

We stop talking to someone. We talk about them so they can hear us. Our conversation with them turns venomous.

It’s a little less obvious than locking someone out of the church, but it’s a lot more hurtful.

But sometimes we do make it clear to someone just how unwelcome they are. We close them out of our church, out of our family, out of our circle of friends. We exclude them in every possible way until it is very clear to them that the little box that remains for them to abide in is the only place they are welcome to be.

That’s what had happened to the man with the Legion within him. His behavior was so unwelcome that he was bound in chains until he could bear it no longer and fled away from that toxic environment into the wilderness.

See, if that doesn’t sound familiar, we might need to spend more time in self-reflection. Thinking about how we treat our neighbors. Because I can guarantee that each of us who has made it halfway through childhood has either experienced ostracism or practiced it on someone else.

Usually both.

And sometimes it’s because of a situation like Elijah’s, although not necessarily so extreme.

King Ahab’s wife Jezebel has threatened Elijah with his life, and he is on the run. He goes on his own into exile, a day’s journey into the desert, and there he doesn’t bemoan his situation. He bemoans his behavior.

“ It’s more than enough, LORD ! Take my life because I’m no better than my ancestors. ”

And under a solitary broom bush, exhausted by fear and flight, he sleeps.

Now, I need to pause for an aside here.

We often teach our children that God is watching us like Santa Claus.

You know that old song that’s such a terrible threat wrapped in such a pleasant little tune:

You better watch out

You better not cry

Better not pout

I'm telling you why

Santa Claus is coming to town

Exactly what kind of goblin or troll are we trying to make Santa out to be?

For that matter, what kind of goblin or troll are we trying to make God out to be?

You’d better be on your best behavior or God’s going to take your life in the middle of the night!

God will find you!

Holy cow, y’all, let’s read our Bibles for a larger picture. Because the kind of God we find in today’s readings is a lot more prevalent than the bad-goblin kind of god we talk about in language of hellfire and damnation.

Elijah is sleeping deep in the desert under a lone broom bush when somebody finds him:

Hey, Eli! <Tap Tap Tap> Wake up. Eat something.

And again.

Hey, Eli! <Tap Tap Tap> Wake up. Eat something. You’ve got a long journey ahead of you.

Now, when that happens to our patriarchs, particularly to Abraham, the author is vague in describing the messenger. Is it God? Is it a messenger of God, an angel?

The author of Elijah’s story is more specific, because after Elijah journeys on a little farther, it is specifically the Lord who says:

“Why are you here, Elijah?”

See? It’s not God’s voice saying, “Elijah, you’ve run away because your faith isn’t strong enough. I’m going to smite you now!”

“Why are you here, Elijah?”

I tend to think that’s a reflective question.

Elijah, what’s brought you here? Are you sure it’s what you were claiming and what’s making you feel so guilty?

I think it’s reflective because God doesn’t give Elijah an answer. Maybe the answer isn’t simple. It’s not tweet-length, that’s for sure.

I’ve been very passionate for the LORD God of heavenly forces because the Israelites have abandoned your covenant. They have torn down your altars, and they have murdered your prophets with the sword. I’m the only one left, and now they want to take my life too!

In the CEB, that’s 262 characters. That’s two tweets long.

In today’s terms, that’s no simple answer.

So God finds Elijah, nourishes him for forty days, and sends him back out with a job to do.

Just like Jesus finds the man on the side of the lake, clears away his deep trouble, and tells him:

Return home and tell the story of what God has done for you.

God doesn’t find him to admonish him for letting himself become a house for demons. God finds him to heal his wounded, worn-out, possessed, unwelcomed spirit.

God doesn’t find Elijah to strike him down like the prophets of Baal. God finds Elijah to give him sustenance for the rest of his difficult journey.

Friends, God is longing for us to realize today that God is finding us to offer us comfort, peace, reconciliation, joy.

I should say that we all need some of that.

And some of us need to recognize that God is longing to make soul-finders of us, too: people who find the broken, the battered, the road-weary, the possessed, the unwelcomed. God wants to work through us to find them and love them back to Jesus.

If that’s a call you think you can handle today, then I welcome you to come and accept it. If you simply need the reminder of God’s welcome of you today, God is offering it. Now is the time.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.