A Midnight Friend...Luke 11: 1-13

I called my mom confused and bewildered. I was 19 or 20, and in college and was facing a difficult challenge. I was living with some friends in a house close to school, and being on your own is not always easy. My roommates and I were trying to save money by preparing our own meals instead of always going to the school dining hall, which was pretty pricey, and there I was, staring at a 10 pound bag of potatoes, wondering what on earth you do with these things. Now don’t get me wrong – I was not raised by clueless parents, and I was not totally helpless to feed and care for myself. I knew how to cook and do all the basic things that a person needs to know how to do – but for the life of me I could not remember in that moment how it was that my mama made mashed potatoes. So I got on the phone, a little confused, a little perplexed, looking for something really basic from my mama. I said “Mom – how do you make mashed potatoes?” She laughed a little, and then she walked me through the process of washing the potatoes, peeling and cutting them up, and boiling them and mashing them with good stuff like milk and butter. Then the next time I came home, before I left, she handed me a book – a Better Homes cookbook that covers all the basic things you need to know about cooking, including how to make mashed potatoes. She said: “after that phone call, I knew that it was time. You needed to have this book.” My mama, and my dad, my wonderful and patient parents, have helped me over and over to navigate through the sometimes turbulent waters of living life. Sometimes it was through simple words, sometimes it was through thoughtful gifts like a cookbook, sometimes it was just a home cooked meal, complete with a cooking lesson, that helped me find what I needed at that moment.

In our reading for today, the disciples ask Jesus for something that they felt they needed. They asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. Maybe they were a little perplexed, maybe they were confused or even bewildered at the subject – it is easy to get bogged down when you pray, feeling either that your words aren’t fancy enough, or that you aren’t saying the right things in the right way, or that somehow your just aren’t getting your message across in the proper way to the Almighty Creator of the Universe by whose very will and pleasure you even exist. I mean, it can be deeply intimidating if you stop and think about it – how is it that we even dare to approach God, a holy and sovereign God whose ways are mysterious and different than our ways, as the Scriptures tell us. So the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray. Not why to pray – that part is obvious to most of us. We are powerless, and God is powerful, and we need God’s help to get through big things and little things in life. What the disciples ask is how to pray – which maybe you could think of as a question of form or technique (like what words do I say when) but I think they are really asking a question of attitude of approach. “Lord,” they ask “how is it that we should approach God in prayer? What should our attitude be? Should we come with guilt and shame, beating our chests and wailing about our sinfulness? Should we give God a laundry list of all of our wants and desires that we feel like God should work on for us? How does this work, Jesus?” They had seen him praying often, and they knew that he understood how it worked. They knew he knew the recipe for deep, rich, meaningful prayer.

And what an answer Jesus gives the disciples. He did not give them complicated guidelines for their prayers: “When you pray, face east by southeast, and you must bow three times touching the ground with your forehead, and then you must chant the following phrase for precisely ten minutes, and then, and only then can you begin your prayer…” No, the instructions that Jesus gives are remarkable mostly for their simplicity! He says: “Pray like this: “Father. Hallowed by your name. Your kingdom come. Give us everyday our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, as we forgive everyone indebted to us. And don’t bring us to the time of trial.” That’s it. That’s the prayer that Jesus teaches the disciples –at least according to Luke. The version we say most Sundays in our worship service comes from the gospel of Matthew, and adds a few phrases here and there, but the gist is the same, and what comes across is simplicity. Jesus tells those first disciples, and the disciples struggling through life today, that prayer doesn’t need to be a complicated thing. Christ tells us that prayer is a matter of first recognizing the holiness and power of God – that is the starting point for every prayer. If God wasn’t powerful, wasn’t “mighty to save” then what would be the point in praying to begin with? Then, we ask for God’s kingdom to come – which is a way of focusing our energies and attention on God’s desires and dreams for the world. In prayer, we are tuning our hearts to be in harmony with God’s heart. We want God’s Kingdom to arrive and flourish in all of its glory, and not to elevate our own little kingdoms. And then, once we are focused on God’s holiness and God’s desires for the world, we ask for what we most deeply and desperately need. Food, enough to keep the body going for that day. Forgiveness, to free the soul and to empower us to live in peace with our fellow human beings. And deliverance from trials, shelter from the storms in life that set us back and send us spiraling into despair. And all of this is addressed to “Father” – really, the word Jesus uses is “Abba,” which means “Daddy” in Aramaic, a term of endearment and love. Prayer doesn’t have to be complicated, with rigid forms like a magic spell or something like that – Jesus’ recipe for prayer has God’s children asking a loving Father for what they most need in life, without flourish or pretense.

And then Jesus tells a story that goes sort of like this. Suppose a man has a guest arrive in the middle of the night. He is out of bread, the most basic food, and if he is out of bread, you better believe he is out of everything else, too. He really needs to make his guest feel welcome, and with all of the stores closed at that late hour, the only option he has is to go to his friend, who lives across the street and to beg for bread in the middle of the night. Now what do you think the friend will do? Do you think he would say: “Go away! I’m in bed here with my wife and kids and we are all tucked in and I’m not getting up to give you any bread or anything else for that matter!” No – if not out of friendship, then at the very least because there is banging on the door and he wants his neighbor to go away – the man would get the bread that he needs from his neighbor.” And then Jesus drives his point about prayer home: “So ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.” Just like the man who was knocking on the door got the bread that he needed from his grumpy neighbor by knocking on the door, don’t you think that God will oh so more willingly give you what you need. Jesus continues: “If your children ask you for things that they need, and even you who are broken and imperfect and sinful will give your kids what they need, then how much more will God, who is holy and merciful and loving and generous give you what you need.

In giving the disciples a recipe for authentic prayer, and telling them a story to help explain how it all works, a picture emerges of God and how we, as his children, offer prayers. God is not like the neighbor in the middle of the night – reluctant, sleepy, begrudgingly throwing us just enough to get by. No! God is the opposite – when we ask for what we need, we will receive it. When we search for what we must have to get through the day, we find it. When we knock on God’s door, it is opened to us willingly and with love. And this is not only for the pure, only for the sanctified, only for the select few who have climbed to the top of the mountain and spent hours in meditation – no, Jesus says that everyone who asks, receives; everyone who searches, finds; everyone who knocks on the door to God’s heart finds the door opening wide to receive them.

Now some of you may be thinking: so I don’t have everything that I’ve ever asked of God. I’ve prayed for some things for years and I didn’t receive it. I think it is important that we distinguish between what we want and what we need. We might sometimes pray Janis Joplin prayers: “O Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz…” We might end up praying to God asking for all kinds of things that we want – as though God were a genie bound to our service. But that is not what Jesus is teaching us – no, God is a loving parent, a Father generous and willing to give his children what they need to find freedom and full humanity, not a Heavenly ATM machine giving us everything that we want. We might want fast cars and HD tvs, but we need bread from God’s hands to survive, we need forgiveness to thrive, we need God’s power and strength to get us through life’s trials. To quote the Rolling Stones: “you can’t always get what you want, but when you try sometimes, you find, you get what you need.” We may be asking for things that we want, thing to fill our bellies with empty calories, or the latest or the flashiest trendy thing that we feel will help us seem whole to our neighbors. But what we need is bread, real, whole, true bread from heaven; and forgiveness for our sin that spills out from us to affect all of our relationships. Those things are things worth praying for, and our honest, heartfelt prayers for what we most need are heard by a loving, merciful God, who sends us the Holy Spirit to strengthen us and heal us, to comfort and to guide us, to sustain us for the journey of life.

It may be that it is midnight for you. It may be that you have been recently awakened from your normal pattern of life to find that you are in need, in need of bread, in need of a receptive and generous ear, in need of a friend who will open the door to help you with what you need. You may be facing trials, literal or symbolic, you may be hungry for bread, spiritual or physical; you may be burdened with your past and the ways you have hurt yourself and those around you with your choices. Well here it is, a way out, a way to get what you need – prayer. What a friend we have in Jesus Christ, a true and close friend who will give us what we need if we ask, if we search for him, if we knock on his door. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer, a loving Father who answers everyone who asks, and searches, and knocks, even in the midst of the darkest night. So don’t be ashamed – if you need it, ask God. If you are looking for answers, search out God. If you are knocking on doors, only to find them slammed in your face, call on Jesus. He is waiting, full of love and mercy, eager to open the door for you, a door to a new life.

One Thing Only - Luke 10:38-42

A guest arrives, and the whole operation in put into motion. Y’all know how this works – there is a meal to be planned and prepared, there are beds to make, drinks to keep topped off, and after the meal, there are dishes to be done. And can you imagine if the guest was someone really important – maybe your boss just popped by for dinner, an influential neighbor stopped in for a cup of coffee, or the governor arrived for lunch - you’d go above and beyond to make sure that everything was done well, done perfectly, to make a positive impression and make your guest feel at home.

So you can imagine how Martha must have felt when Jesus accepted her invitation to her home. This miracle working rabbi – a great prophet, some said – was in her living room, and Martha’s reputation as a host was at stake. She was probably pretty nervous about having him there, anxious that she might burn the bread or that he wouldn’t like the vegetables that she was cooking, or that he wouldn’t find the cushion he was sitting on comfortable enough. Sure, she had heard how gracious and kind he was, but you never know how these rabbi types act when they are relaxing after hours. Martha was getting pretty anxious about getting all of the jobs and tasks completed, and doing them well, and Mary wasn’t helping any. She literally wasn’t helping at all, she was just sitting there on the floor at Jesus’ feet, listening to him talk about something or other – and Martha was getting more and more anxious, more and more frantic, and more and more frustrated that Mary wasn’t helping her make their very important guest feel at home.

Finally, Martha couldn’t stand it anymore and her anger and her frustration boil over and she interrupts the conversation that Jesus and Mary and the disciples were having in the living room. She points a finger not only at Mary, but at Jesus, too and says: “Lord! Do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work myself? Tell her to help me!” There was a lot of work to do to serve Jesus, to make him feel welcome and at home, and Martha was feeling overwhelmed, and Mary wasn’t helping. And Jesus wasn’t helping, because he was allowing Mary to sit there just listening, instead of demanding that she get back into the kitchen to help her sister.

But instead of joining into her tornado of anxiety, Jesus oh so gently calls Martha back to earth, back to the room, back to where she was and what she was really trying to do. “Martha, Martha,” he says, “you are worried and distracted by many things. But there is only one thing that you need. Mary has chosen the better part, the best part of life, and I’m not going to take it away from her.” Martha wanted Jesus to lend her a hand by ordering Mary to come help her, but Jesus responds by offering words that would really help her, if she took them to heart. You see, Martha had become so focused on the little jobs, so fixed on the tasks of cooking and cleaning and preparing and serving that she had lost focus on who it was that she was serving to begin with, Jesus the Christ, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords. Mary, sitting at his feet, sitting in the posture of a disciple before a master, had remained focused on Jesus alone since he walked in the door, and Jesus knew it. Jesus knew that Mary was choosing the best part of life, choosing to be connected to the Source of Life, choosing to focus on Jesus and what he was doing.

For years, preachers have preached sermons pitting the two sisters against each other, Mary versus Martha, Martha versus Mary, as though they each represented two extremes of human life. The line of argument usually looks something like this: Martha represents a life of action and work, and Mary represents a life of contemplation and study. If we are like Martha, we spend our whole lives working away and miss out on the best part of life, on study and contemplation at the feet of Jesus. If we are like Mary, we choose the best part, the part of an interior life, and leave behind the working part to someone else to do. This line of thinking has fueled a kind of split in the world, a divide between those who work and those who think, between those who do and those who are content to just be, between works and faith. But splitting life up in this way doesn’t really make much sense, and it is definitely not what Jesus is getting at in this living room lesson.

The truth of the matter is that to make a life work, including a life of faith, including a life of a community, of a church – in order to make it really function, you’ve got to have both sides: the Martha side of work, of completing tasks both complex and simple; and the Mary side of prayer and focused attention on Christ. If life was all about being just like Mary, always engaged in an interior life, withdrawing from the world to pray and study scripture without being dirtied by the world, then how would anything get done? How would we eat? Who would grow our food or cook meals? If the lights went out, who would fix them? How would we ever touch a broken world to heal it? You see, if we lift up Mary as one who follows an interior path, there is a danger of falling into a place where faith is only a matter of navel-gazing, of staring at our bellybuttons looking for the meaning of life. Too often the church has fallen into this trap, walling itself off from the real world, spending all of its time on fancy prayers and mulling over the historical meaning of Biblical texts without ever putting them into action.

But if Mary isn’t the one to follow, is Martha really that much better? Martha, the worker, the one who is busy in the kitchen, can seemingly offer us a model that gets our attention out of our belly buttons, out of our minds and heads and into our hands and feet. And this can feel like an antidote to the inertia of the interior life. At last, if we follow the path of Martha, we can get our hands dirty, and get off our duffs and do something! But this path also presents a danger, a trap that is more akin to a never ending hamster wheel. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in all of the tasks, all of the jobs to do in the church that our life of faith can end up being a never ending cycle. And while it may seem that we are working hard on the outside, we are just spinning around in circles, never moving forward. Too often the church has fallen into this trap, spending all of our energy on potluck dishes or flowers for the altar or meetings that don’t seem to have much purpose or point.

Either path, the Mary or the Martha path, can lead to a stuck place of faith. Either stuck in an interior belly-button gazing place or stuck spinning round and round never going anywhere. But into this argument, into these extremes of life, Jesus interrupts. “You are distracted by many things,” he says, “you have need of one thing only.” You are distracted both by interior things and exterior things, and it’s true, we are. We are so easily distracted by a life of study and learning, never going beyond our classes and books; and we are so easily distracted by our little jobs, our work to keep things up and running, never going beyond the things that we’ve always done to what might lie beyond. The cure for being distracted by one extreme is not to throw off everything and run to the other extreme – that only has us swinging like a pendulum, or running from one side of the deck of a sinking ship to the other. No – the cure for distraction is focus. A clear, laser beam focus on one thing is all that you need to find your way out of the traps, out of the stuck places, out of the distractions. And the thing, the person to focus on is Jesus Christ. You see, Mary doesn’t represent a life of contemplation and study, she is just a devoted disciple, never leaving the feet of her Master, always focused on his face, listening intently to his words. And Martha could have still done all the work she was doing and kept her eyes upon Jesus, kept her heart focused on why she was cutting the carrots and mopping the floor, and that would have served the same purpose as sitting on the floor with Mary. It is not the actions that you are taking in your life of faith, it is your focus that matters – a focus on the Source of Life himself.

There is a pastor named Mike Slaughter, that some of you may have heard of, who was sent in the late 1970s to serve a congregation in Ohio called Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church. They had about 70 members on the books at the time, and about 30 people or less came to worship on a given Sunday. Like a good pastor, Mike listened at meetings and in conversations to get a sense of who the people of the church were and the issues that the congregation were facing. It seemed as though the church had stagnated, stuck in an endless round of covered dish suppers and dull and boring committee meetings. Meanwhile, several folks let him know about the air conditioning system – it badly was in need of replacing, but they just couldn’t get the money together to replace it. They had tried and they had tried, but they just couldn’t do it. Mike quickly recognized that the congregation had become distracted by many things, stuck in a rut of the tasks of being a church. So he did two things: first, he began a bible study in the church, and began to preach sermons pointing always to Jesus, helping the congregation to refocus on their Lord and Savior. And second, he said: we are going to do this one thing. We are going to work as a team, all of us, to reach one common goal of purchasing a new air conditioner. That is going to be the focus of what we do as a church until we can get it done. So with their renewed spiritual energy and a newly found focus on a goal, they quickly raised the funds within a few months. But they didn’t stop there. They came together and picked another “one thing” to work on next – this time to build a playground at the church. They quickly reached their goal and had a new playground for their church and community. Through focusing on Jesus Christ and on one project that was attainable, but still a challenge, the church came together as a community of faith. They recognized that they needed the gifts of all of the Marthas out there to work and to get the jobs done to reach the goal, and they needed the gifts of the Marys in their church to keep them focused on Jesus even as they worked. And here is the thing – the church hasn’t stopped yet. They have kept setting goals and meeting them for the last thirty years, and they invited other people to join them along the way, and are now one of the largest churches in our denomination, with over 12,000 members. One of their most recent “one things” was this: they declared that within a 15 block radius of their church, no man, woman, or child, would go without food, medical care, or school supplies, and they would work to find them jobs if they were in need. They have made a commitment to their community, to love and to serve in a radical way because they have kept their eyes upon Jesus, and their ears upon his words, and their hearts upon his love. And with that kind of focus, look at what the Body of Christ in this world can do.

So my sisters and brothers, all you Marys and Marthas out there, keep your eyes on Jesus Christ, trusting that in his love he will lead us and guide us. God has plans for us yet, plans for good and not for harm, and the Holy Spirit is already stirring among us to action and to focus. We may feel that we are distracted by many things – God knows I feel that way sometimes – but even as we go about our day doing the little things that need to be done, we can’t forget the one thing that we truly need, the love and mercy of our Lord. Because listening to his words and following him takes us in directions we hadn’t even thought possible before, and focusing on what he wants from us, what he needs from us, we just might be able to make an impact in a dark and broken world. Focusing on Jesus, we just might be able to do the things he did, we might just reach out and touch a few lost lives, we might just heal some sin-sick souls. Focusing on Jesus, we might just feed the folks by the thousands, we might just care for the damaged children in our community. Focusing on Jesus, we may just be able to be the church, the Body of Christ, and we may just be able to do what he is calling us to do – to transform the world. It isn’t hard – all we need is one thing. One person. One Lord. Jesus Christ.

"Who's My Neighbor?!" Luke 10:25-37

The story of the Good Samaritan is a familiar one, a beloved parable, a parable that many folks would point to and say: “this story is what being a Christian is all about.” And they would be right. But because it is so beloved, and so familiar, sometimes we start feeling a little comfortable with the story. We begin to feel as though we have the story all figured out. Jesus is telling us this parable, this clever little story, to remind us that being a Christian is about being nice, about helping people with broken down cars on the side of the road, right? Isn’t that was Jesus is telling us?

This story is told as a part of a conversation, an encounter between Jesus and the lawyer, the scholar of the law of Moses. The lawyer stands up to test Jesus – a great beginning to their relationship – and asks: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus, in typical Jesus fashion, answers the man’s question with another question: “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” In other words: “You have studied the Bible – what do you learn there?” And the man, a scholar who has studied the Scriptures for years, knows the right answer from Deuteronomy and Leviticus: “You shall love the Lord you God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus says: “You have given the right answer – now go and do these things, go actually love God and love your neighbor and you will find the true life you are looking for.”

But the lawyer, the scholar of the law just couldn’t leave well enough alone. Maybe he felt approved by Jesus, justified by giving the right answer – so he asks one more question: “And who is my neighbor?” You see, this lawyer was trained in the law of Moses, the law given on Mt. Sinai that gives some pretty clear rules about who is in and who is out of the community of God’s Chosen People. The lawyer knew that the command was to love God and to love neighbor, but he figured he could find a loophole in this most important commandment – if he could get Jesus to say: “well of course your neighbor is the person just like you – Jewish, male, educated, and rich” then he could be very smug about his dislike and his distaste for all the other folks out there – all the folks who were different from him – the Gentiles, the women, the working class folks, the poor.

And in response to the question: “Who is my neighbor,” Jesus tells this story, this familiar, beloved, well-worn story about a man beaten and robbed, and some good religious folks – maybe like the lawyer himself – who just kept on walking, leaving the man bleeding in the dirt. And the one who stops, the one who has compassion, the one who goes way above and beyond in his merciful response, even to the point of laying down his own money to see the injured man whole again – is a Samaritan. If Jesus were to tell us this story today, here in this community, I imagine it might go something like this:

It was late, and the man knew that he needed to get home quickly. The road from Aragon to Taylorsville was scenic during the day to be sure, but at night all sorts of rough types hid out in all the nooks and crannies in the hills, and the man knew that it wasn’t the safest road to be on at that hour. His car was not in the best shape, and was prone to just giving out on him without much notice. And as if on cue, his car began to sputter and the engine died, forcing him to coast to the side of the road. He waited there a moment – of all the nights to forget a cell phone! – and crossed his fingers, hoping that someone would come along in just a moment to help him out or maybe give him a ride. It was just about at that moment that the four men stepped out of the trees and without saying a whole lot began to viciously punch and kick the man, leaving him wallet-less, coatless, and breathless on the ground. He was left bleeding in the drainage ditch on the side of the road, barely able to move, barely clinging to life.

And that is where the man lay, all night long, coming in and out of consciousness through the seemingly endless night, with no other cars coming down the road. And in the morning, traffic began to pick up again on the road from Aragon to Taylorsville, and a car pulled into sight of the man. In the car was a United Methodist pastor, hurrying on his way to a meeting in Atlanta. The pastor saw the man, saw his broken down car, saw the blood, and kept on driving. I don’t know why, he just did – maybe it was just easier to keep driving and pretend that he hadn’t seen what he had just seen. A second car came the other way, this time driven by a deacon of the Baptist church, on his way to his weekly prayer breakfast. The deacon saw the man, saw the bruises, saw the ditch he was lying in, saw him there without a coat, and kept on driving. I don’t know why, he just did – maybe the whole thing was just too messy, too much – and maybe it was some sort of trick or a trap, some kind of a con. So he kept driving.

The third car that came down the road from Aragon to Taylorsville that morning was driven by Omar, a Muslim immigrant from Pakistan. He was driving to a business meeting in Cartersville, to see about opening a gas station there, but as he drove down the road, he saw the broken down car and the broken and bleeding man in the ditch, and was deeply moved with compassion. Without hesitation, he pulled his car over. He ran to the side of the injured man, and with a first-aid kit from his trunk, he began to clean the man’s wounds and to bandage him up as best as he could. He then gently picked up the man, placed him in the back seat of his car, and drove him to the Cartersville Medical Center. After carrying the man into the hospital, he gave the nurse his MasterCard and said: “whatever it costs to make him well, just put it on my card. No matter how much – his medical care is on me.”

And the question that Jesus asks is this: “Which of these three, of the Methodist, the Baptist, or the Muslim, was a neighbor to the man in the ditch?” Now you may be asking yourself: “What is this preacher talking about? I thought this story was about priests and Levites and Samaritans!” Well, Samaritans were the religious and cultural enemies of the Jews, who lived in the region between Jerusalem and the Galilee. So when Jesus tells us that a Samaritan is the one who is really compassionate, the one who shows us what it is like to be a neighbor – you can almost hear the lawyer (and probably the rest of the crowd) steaming, fuming, angry at even the suggestion that the cruel, evil, sub-human Samaritans could even be capable of such a thing. When Jesus asks the lawyer: “Which of these was a neighbor to the beaten man?” the answer is obvious, but the lawyer can’t even say the word “Samaritan” – he’s that mad. He says instead: “The one who showed him mercy.” The lawyer had been looking for Jesus to draw a line and say: “Your love can stop here. To have eternal life, you only have to love these people, but you are fine hating those people.” But Jesus real words are these: “There are no lines, no boundaries, for love. Who is your neighbor? Every single human being on the face of this earth. Especially the ones you hate. Those are the ones that you are commanded by the Living God of Heaven and Earth to love, even as you love your own self.”

This story is far from an easy lesson on being nice to those stranded on the roadside. It is a deep, hard, difficult challenge to our hearts, to our practice of love and mercy. One writer suggests this: “Think of yourself as the person in the ditch, and then ask ‘Is there anyone, from any group, about whom we would rather die than acknowledge “She offered help” or “He showed compassion?” More, is there any group whose members might rather die that help us?’” Then with that picture in your mind, you get a taste of what Jesus is asking – love that one. Show extravagant mercy and care for that one. This is what Jesus is asking of us, we who are seeking to love God and love our neighbor.

And this is the best part – after Jesus totally throws us through a loop, telling us to love the one that it is hardest for us to love, to make that our work and our job – after we are left with our jaw on the floor – Jesus tells us to “Go and do likewise.” “Get out there and do it! Don’t just sit there, don’t just think about at night when you are reading your Bible – go out and do it!” Love God! Love your neighbor! You are free to do so! Jesus lays out an incredibly difficult path and says: “Alright! Get out there and love! Get out there and show complete strangers – the ones you don’t know and the ones you know you don’t like – show them the radical love of God.” You see, for the lawyer, the law was his gospel, his guiding rule, his path to follow. But for us, in Jesus Christ, the gospel is our law – we are commanded to love everyone, everyone – no ifs, ands, or buts – commanded to love everyone. And this is the law that we follow. The law of love. And we don’t follow it out of duty or obligation – we follow the gospel, the good news of God’s deep love for every human being – we follow the gospel as our law out of our love for God. Because when we love God with all that we are, and when we love our neighbor with all that we have to give, we enter into a new way of living, a love way, a kingdom way, and we become more and more human through the power of God’s love working in us and through us.

My dad, when he was giving the eulogy for his mother, my Grammy, said that he always imagined her as a sort of “angel on the loose. A person just looking for a way to help, a way to do some good, a way to love.” And she did – through work with Al-Anon, folks with mental illness, and her church, my Grammy was always looking for a way to help a neighbor of any stripe that was in need. And that’s who we are, isn’t it – who we are as the church? A team of angels on the loose, actively looking, watching with our eyes open for a neighbor in need, eager to respond with the radical love of God in Jesus Christ. We know that we have been shown amazing grace, been given life-changing love even when we were far off from God, and so we are charged and challenged with loving the world in return. So get out there, y’all. Go and do it! Love God with all that you are! Love your neighbor as you love yourself – no lines. No boundaries. No loopholes. Just love. Amen.

"Fruits of Freedom" Galatians 5:1-25

On those rare occasions when my mom and my brothers and I would leave town for a vacation with friends, my dad would find himself free. Free from the obligations of being a spouse for a weekend, free from a “honey-do” list, free from someone else having to tell him what to fix for dinner – or at least free from having to negotiate with a the tastes and preferences of a house full of people. So when he found himself alone in the house, my father would fix one of his favorite things to eat: liver and onions. Now, truth be told, I have never tasted liver and onions, and more than that, I have never even smelled them being cooked – because according to my mom, even the smell of this dish being cooked was so nauseating, that my father was not permitted to even think of cooking it even for himself when the rest of the family was around. So I honestly couldn’t tell you what they smell like – because my dad never cooked it with the family at home. But in those rare moments of freedom, he would do a little dance, fire up the stove and fix himself some forbidden fruit, his beloved liver and onions.

It is good to be free, isn’t it? Often, when we think about freedom, we think about freedom from something – freedom from having to worry, freedom from want, freedom from responsibility for the weekend, freedom from tyranny from distant kings – something appropriate to reflect on as we mark Independence Day today in the United States. As a person who cherishes time relaxing on a couch, I appreciate a sense of freedom from having to be doing something at a particular time. But Paul teaches us something about the deeper nature of freedom – freedom is not just about freedom from this or that; freedom instead comes from Christ, who sets us free for a purpose. “For freedom, Christ has set us free,” Paul writes in his letter to the church in Galatia, “stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” You see, in Galatia, like in other places, the church had a growing problem, one that Paul was trying to help correct. Paul understood that because Jesus Christ had come among us, lived, taught, suffered, died, and rose again, that the old way, the way of the law of Moses, had changed. The good news of Jesus Christ, of his life, his death, and his resurrection was good news for everybody, not just for the Jews, and people of every nation and tribe of the earth began to embrace faith in Christ. There were some in the church that said that to be Christian, believers had to be Jewish first – that every person of faith needed to follow the law of Moses to a “t” and then follow Jesus on top of that. They wanted Gentile Christians to be circumcised as a symbol of their dedication to the law. Now Paul understood that Jesus Christ was the Way, the Truth, the Life, and that everything had changed, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit gave people a new resource, a new strength, a new power to live a new life in a new way – and the old ways, and the strict adherence to the old laws were no longer needed. Christ was alive! The Holy Spirit was moving in people! God was doing a new thing! And Paul wanted people in every church to know that Christ had set every person free to be in true relationship to God, Christ had bled and died once and for all, so animal sacrifices were no longer necessary, and we were all now free to live life as free people, as God had intended. The law, with its guidelines as to what people could eat, what they could wear, who they could associate with, the 613 laws found between Exodus and Deuteronomy – was not needed in the same way anymore, because the Holy Spirit now dwelled in the hearts of the faithful, and guided and taught them how they should behave. Christians were free in Christ! Free from the law, free from all of the old rigid rules, free from the old customs – which, as it turns out, no one was able to follow perfectly, anyway.

But – and this is a big but - some folks were taking their new found freedom in Christ way too far. They heard that they were free, but then forgot about the being led by the Spirit part and went a little crazy. The used their freedom as an excuse for self-indulgence and some even went so far as to turn the sacrament of Holy Communion into a kind of drinking contest, turning a holy meal into an opportunity to get drunk. Others heard “love your neighbor” and took it a little too literally, if you get my drift, carousing and hooking up in risky ways. Others heard the word “freedom” and took it to mean that they were their own boss, and that no one was going to tell them what to do, so they got in fights over petty things and stayed mad at their new “enemies.” The list goes on and on – people heard that they were free and understood that to mean that they were free from the law, free from any ties or connections to other people, free from any rules whatsoever.

That might sound a little familiar to us here in this country. We are blessed to live in a country that is founded upon the ideals of freedom – we have freedom embedded into our national DNA through the Bill of Rights – freedom to say what we want to say, freedom to write what we want to write, freedom to gather when we want to gather, freedom to worship how we want to worship. But sometimes we hear the word “freedom” and we take it to mean that we can do anything we want all the time without any consequences. We hear “freedom” and feel like we don’t have to be connected to anything – not to our neighbor, maybe not even to God. We take our freedom – a hard earned and blessed thing – and we squander it in self-centeredness. We would rather watch tv than chat with a neighbor; we would rather sleep in than get up to help a person in need or attend church; some of us would rather take instead of give. We are free – but we take our freedom and throw it away by chaining ourselves to things that feel good or to our pride or to our vanity or to dangerous things like alcohol or drugs. We are free from the law of Moses, but then we submit again to a yoke of slavery to our own sinful selves – we bind ourselves up with the fruits of our own broken self-centeredness.

And Paul reminds us: “For freedom Christ has set us free!” In Christ we are freed from the law of Moses, yes, but also set free from our sinful selfish desires – we are free to love. This is what real freedom looks like, says Paul – not that you get to do anything you want – but that you are free to love your neighbor as yourself. Now at first glance, this may not seem to make much sense. We are used to freedom meaning freedom from something. But freedom is really about being connected to God, and connected in love to other people. Who is more truly free: the confirmed bachelor who stays out late in the bars looking for a love du jour, or the husband and father who discovers the depth of love and emotion and rewards of his family relationships? Who is more truly free: the person who is easily angered over any small thing, or the person who listens and responds with peace and calm? Who is more free, the person who is very careful about appearances and who she speaks to in WalMart, or the person who is not afraid to love anyone and everyone they meet? This is true freedom – not that you are blown around by your own desires, or that you assert your power over other people, or that you get to do whatever you want – true freedom is living a fully human life for God! You are free to be led by the Holy Spirit of Christ, free to reach out to a broken world with compassion and mercy, free to be connected to every kind of person, to eat and drink with them at a holy table. You are free to be you – exactly who God made you to be. You are free to live life in deep relationship with God – because where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom!

And when we live a life filled with the Presence of the Holy Spirit of God, when we grow and flower into our true human freedom with God, you wouldn’t believe the fruit that appears. Love, joy, peace; patience, kindness, generosity; faithfulness, gentleness, self-control – all blessings of the freedom that we have in Christ Jesus. I love the way The Message version of the Bible puts these verses: “He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.” When we turn away from the self-centered desires and self-indulgent habits of our old broken life, and embrace the true freedom we have in loving God and loving our neighbor, see what wonderful fruit emerges. And because we have been set free by Christ, we are free to pursue these fruit, these kingdom fruit, these fruits of freedom.

On this day when we celebrate the freedom we have in this country, take a moment and reflect on your life, how you live out your freedom. Now none of us are perfect – we are all in a process of growth and learning – but do you see any signs of the fruits of freedom in your life? Maybe they aren’t fully ripe yet, but you see the beginnings of a little more love in your life because of God, maybe you can just see the start of real generosity because of Christ working on your heart, maybe you are recognizing just a little more self-control that you used to have because of the Spirit. Maybe you are realizing that your life is still filled with anger or restlessness or impatience or hate. It becomes time to ask yourself – am I bearing the fruit of freedom? Or the fruit of a broken, self-centered life? This day of freedom is a great opportunity to begin anew a practice of true, real, deep freedom. Love God. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Invite the Holy Spirit to lead you and to guide you. Ask the presence of Jesus Christ to sustain you and connect you to other believers in the sacrament of Holy Communion. Ask God to show you what real freedom looks like. And I guarantee you that he will – because where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And look at what beautiful fruit true freedom brings. Amen.