Fish, not Snakes

Why did we just do that? That prayer we just finished - "May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer" – why do we do it? The words are from the Psalms - Psalm 19. But why do we say it?

You know, it could be some kind of insurance policy so that what I say and what you understand me to say will be holy. It could also be a way of redeeming this sermon in case it’s really awful and maybe the Holy Spirit can fix it into something that looks like. Or maybe you’re not ready for it – you’re worried about falling asleep or your mind wandering. After all, a lot of the time we come to church not too sure that we're really ready for it or worthy of it, and I know that there are a lot of times I come with a sermon I'm not real sure is the best I can do. Maybe if we just offer it all up to God at the beginning like that God can salvage the morning for us. Is that what we're doing? Or worst of all, is this prayer just a set piece in some kind of meaningless ritual?

So here’s the problem of the day. Prayer is a funny thing. As Christians we talk about it all the time, but we don’t really believe in it. At least we don’t act like we believe in it. Prayer is one of the things that make us different from the rest of the world – it’s a strange thing that Christians do. But I wonder if we really believe in it.

We know it's important because Jesus did it. In Luke's gospel especially we see Jesus going apart to pray on a regular basis. Jesus talks about prayer more in Luke's gospel as well, as he does in this passage we read this morning.

All through the history of the Church the followers of Jesus have prayed. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, set aside two hours a day at a minimum to pray. Martin Luther, who was one of the early leaders of the Protestant movement, once said, "I'm so busy that I couldn't go on without three hours of daily prayer." Not all of the Christian family has been that disciplined, but prayer was a large part of what Christians did.

And now? Now it seems that we treat our prayers like relics from the past or liturgical Muzak - background music for the real business of worship. Do you worry about this? Do you worry that prayer gives us a chance to air out our best intentions and our current worries, we talk about the things we wish for and the people we care for, but without any confidence that the things we pray for will really happen? And when they do we are very reluctant to give the credit to prayer.

The world around us has changed. The early disciples and even Martin Luther didn't have what we have. We can trot out physics or medicine to explain away miracles. We can test things to see if God had any involvement in them and since God leaves no DNA evidence behind, God never gets the credit. Good things still happen in this world - but do they really happen because of prayer?

Which brings us right to the heart of Jesus' promises. One of Jesus' disciples saw him praying and said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, just like John the Baptist taught his disciples." What the disciple was looking for, we really don't know, but he was probably looking for a set prayer, which was a common thing for a teacher to give to his disciples in those days - a prayer that they could repeat and which would identify them with the teacher.

Jesus responds to this request by giving the disciples what we now call the Lord's Prayer. But he goes on to say several other things - one of which we say so often that it has become almost a cliché, yet when we really look at it I'm not sure we really believe it. Jesus said, "Ask and it shall be given to you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door will be opened to you."

Now one of the things Jesus is saying with these short statements is that we need to be persistent in prayer - not just consistent, but shamelessly persistent. Just before this he has told the disciples a rather strange parable about how they expect a friend to get up in the night to give them something they need. Jesus said, even if the friend won't get up for friendship's sake, he will eventually get up because you won't quit knocking on the door and he wants to shut you up. Shameless persistence has its rewards and Jesus seems to be saying that we need to be knocking on heaven's door in the same way. Then he goes on to say, "Ask, seek, knock. Keep up the racket. God will hear you."

But the other thing that Jesus says with these statements is the really hard thing. Jesus seems to be saying that whatever we ask for we will get. "Ask - you will receive. Seek - you will find." Really? Now normally I'm really cautious about trying to change the plain meaning of Jesus' statements. Jesus said some pretty harsh things and I think he meant them to be harsh. When Jesus said it's harder for a rich person to get into the kingdom than it is for to squeeze a camel through the eye of the needle - I don't think he was talking about spiritual riches - I think he was talking about physical riches and yes, it is very, very hard to enter the kingdom of heaven that way. When Jesus said, "Be kind to your enemies and turn the other cheek," I don't think he meant only in certain situations and with certain enemies, I think he meant with all enemies. It's too easy for us to say, "Yes, Jesus, but..."

But...ask and you shall receive? Seek and you shall find? These are simple truths that are too simple to be truth! The world doesn't work like that. For every prayer that asks for justice to be done there is the cry of one who feels their prayers have not been answered. Prayers certainly don't work like Burger King where you can "have it your way".

Besides all this there is a theological problem - which is a fancy way of saying that this is not the God I know! God doesn't exist to fulfill our desires like Aladdin’s genie. That sort of God would be a God created in our image instead of the other way around. There's a word for a god like that - it's called an idol. And from all we know of Jesus and the Jewish faith which he grew up in, I don't think he was talking about a magic spell when he said, "Ask, and you shall receive."

So where does that leave us? If prayer is not about the power to ask God to change the world as we know it - what is it about?

I remember a time when a prayer was a very important thing to me. It was 1984 and I was at the United Methodist Assembly Center in Lake Junaluska, North Carolina where we were having the Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference. This is the event that happens once every four years where we elect bishops for this region of the country. And in 1984 I was a lay delegate.

I remember this prayer because I was asked to begin it. It was late in the night near the end of the conference. About twenty of us were gathered in a cabin on the edge of the lake there. We were there because one member of our group, Rev. Leontine Kelly, was getting ready to get on a plane to go to Idaho. We didn't know for sure at the time, but Tina Kelly was about to be voted in as the first African-American woman bishop in the United Methodist Church by the Western Jurisdiction.

It had been a very disappointing week for us in Lake Junaluska. All of us had come to the conference hoping that the Southeastern Jurisdiction would see what we saw in Tina Kelly, a strong, dynamic, faith-filled woman who could lead the Church as a bishop. Instead she was forgotten and ignored - even by the members of the Virginia delegation. It became clear very quickly that she would not be elected by this conference.

But then one night, word came to us that the Western Jurisdiction, which was meeting at the same time, had put her name in as a nominee. There was a chance that she would be elected. So we gathered together in that cabin and held hands in a circle and prepared to send her off. That's when Tina Kelly asked me to begin the prayer.

So we prayed. We really wanted Tina to become a bishop. We really did. We were amazed that other people were so blinded to her gifts in ministry and leadership. So we didn't hide that from God in the prayer. We prayed that she would be elected. We prayed that those who might demean her because she was black and a woman would see her true worth. We were really honest. But in the end we prayed that God's will would be done. Because God knew the Church better than we did. God could see the true needs even if we thought we had the clearest vision. And we said, 'not our will but yours be done'.

Tina Kelly got on the plane that night in Asheville and the next day in Boise, Idaho she was elected bishop. She served in the San Francisco area and she was a wonderful bishop. She's retired now and she came to our annual conference one year as the guest preacher. And one of her sermons was about that night at Lake Junaluska and about that prayer. It was a powerful moment.

God didn't make that happen because we knew best. It was a powerful moment because somehow in that prayer we were drawn into the will of God. The prayer opened us to the new possibilities of the Holy Spirit moving among us. The prayer deepened our relationship with a God who is so close to us that we can refer to God as a loving parent. That's what prayer does. It doesn't guarantee us everything we want - it guarantees that we will receive, that we will find, that God will answer the door in the middle of the night.

That's why Jesus teaches us a prayer that says "My will be done" – no, it doesn’t say that -- it says, in the version from Matthew’s gospel, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done". The greatest answer to prayer that we can receive is the knowledge of God. The greatest quest we can go on doesn't end with a prize of gold - it ends with the companionship of the Holy Spirit.

You see, a very wise person once said that God is closer to us than we are to ourselves. God is closer to us than we are to ourselves. Opening ourselves up to God - really being honest about who we are and how flawed we are - shamelessly persisting in offering our worries and cares to God...when we lay ourselves out there like that we are on the road to discovering the God who dwells within us and knows our deepest needs.

After all, what does knocking on heaven’s door do for us except get us close to God? If we are at God’s door every day, how much closer will be to God? Then, maybe, we will be able to see that even if God doesn’t always answer our prayers the way that we think they ought to be answered, we will at least be able to trust that God’s intention is always for our good. A good parent does not give a snake to a child who is asking for a fish. A good parent doesn’t give a scorpion to a child who wants an egg. God gives us fish, not snakes.

Richard Foster, who wrote the book Celebration of Discipline, says that "to pray is to change". But what we change is not God - or even God's mind. What changes is us. So those impossible words bring us closer to who God has always intended that we should be. Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock on heaven's door, and it will be opened unto you. Thanks be to God.

Luke 11:1-13
Now he was praying in a certain place and it happened, as he finished, that some of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, just like John taught his disciples."
He said to them, "When you pray, say:
'Father, may thy name be held in reverence,
may your kingdom come.
Give us the bread we need for the coming day,
and forgive us our sins
for we also forgive all those who are indebted to us.
And do not lead us into a time of testing.'"
He also said to them, "What if one of you has a friend and you go to him in the middle of the night and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because my friend has arrived on a journey and I do not have anything to set before him.'? And he answers from within, 'Don't bother me; the door has already been shut and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.' I tell you, even if he doesn't get up and give it to him because he is his friend, then because of his shameless persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.
"And I tell you this as well: Ask and it shall be given to you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. For all who ask receive and all those who seek find and to the one knocking the door shall be opened.
"Is there a parent among you, who, when their child asks for a fish will then, instead of a fish, give the child a snake? Or if the child asks for an egg will give a scorpion? So if you, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask?”

A Troubling Day in the Neighborhood

I hate stories. Always have. You see I am a lawyer and in my legal training in the Jewish faith I always know to look out when someone starts a story. When I ask a rabbi for a legal opinion and he starts to ramble on about some figure in the scriptures or to talk about the example used by Rabbi Zerubbabel I know he's trying to avoid the question. So I just keep pushing until I can show him up or be proved wrong. But I'm rarely proved wrong.

But today I'm feeling a little stumped. There's a new teacher on the scene – one of these rabble-rousing prophets who wander through every so often with a cluster of disciples in their wake. Jesus was this man's name. He's gotten a bit of a reputation for his healings and his teachings. People are beginning to talk. Crowds are beginning to gather. Whenever one of these folks comes to town, it's time for one of us to put him in his place. So that's what I did. I think.

Jesus was sitting and teaching in our village. His disciples were nearby and they were nearly glowing. Someone told me they had just returned from a mission in which they had started to display some of the same signs as Jesus. They were on fire. But Jesus was still clearly the focus.

So I stood up. Sure it attracted attention. With me standing and Jesus sitting it looked like I was lording it over him. Looking down on him. But that's kind of my role. If someone is going to prove me wrong they're going to have to accept my challenge. And I'm rarely wrong.

I had my question all prepared. “Teacher,” I said, giving Jesus the honor of a title he hadn't earned. “Teacher, what do I have to do to get eternal life?” I was a little worried about this. Some of the more traditional Jews would not have started with a question about eternal life. Not everyone believes in it. But Jesus seems to and I wanted to see how he put all the pieces together. How would he talk about the obligations of the Law and the promise of the resurrection? I was ready to take notes.

He responded with a question. A common trick of teachers. Put the question back on the questioner. “What does the Law say?” he asked. “How do you read it?” But that was no trap for me. I responded with my favorite summary of the Law. One which Jesus himself used on occasion.

“The Law says you shall love God with your whole heart, your whole soul, you whole strength and your whole mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

He seemed pleased with this and tried to end the conversation right there. “That's right,” he said. “Do this and you will live.” But he hadn't really talked about the reward of eternal life and he hadn't gotten himself into any trouble. I would have to draw him out more to give him enough rope to hang himself. I needed to get him talking about the particulars of the Law. I needed to get him to give me a controversial legal opinion. Something I could use to nail him and tell the crowds, “See! I told you he was not to be trusted.”

Besides I was standing there looking like an overanxious student looking for a head pat. So I pushed him. “Jesus,” I said, “but who is my neighbor?” This was a slippery slope for Jesus. If he got into sorting out who was lovable and who wasn't he was bound to offend somebody. The people are so divided that they all have some lines they won't cross.

THAT'S when he told a story. Right then. No introduction. Just launched into a story. I know I wasn't the only one scratching my head at what came next. He starts to tell a story about a man taking a trip from Jerusalem down to Jericho. Right away it was a strange thing to do. The Jericho Road is a dangerous stretch of highway. Not only is it steep but it's prime territory for bandits. A person traveling that road would want a companion and it seems this man didn't have one. I kept listening, wondering when he would start to talk about neighbors.

The next part of the story was predictable. The man was ambushed by a group of robbers on the road. They stripped him, beat him, left him for dead on the side of the road. Well, of course. What was he thinking going down a road like that without any protection? I'm surprised they didn't cut his throat. But this is a story and somewhere in this story, I'm thinking, Jesus better start talking about neighbors or I'm going to nail him.

The next part was also predictable. A priest comes by and sees the beat-up man but passes by on the other side of the road. Then a Levite, another worker in the Temple comes by and does the same thing. Of course these folks were not going to stop because they have holy professions with strict rules about remaining pure. They could not have helped the man because he was probably bloody and they didn't know if he was dead. If they defiled themselves by coming into contact with the blood or a dead body they would be unable to perform their duties for the Temple...for God. Nothing surprising yet.

Then Jesus gets to the heart of the story. Somebody finally does stop by and this...this is really disturbing. The guy who stops is a Samaritan. Now you know about Samaritans. They are...well, they're half-breeds. Not really Jews. Not really Gentiles. But some strange mixture of races. And even though we live cheek by jowl with them, true Jews have nothing to do with them.

I know that Jesus has a thing about the Samaritans, though. Someone told me that he had a confrontation with the Samaritans not too long ago. He and the disciples were traveling through Samaria on their way towards Jerusalem and the disciples had gone ahead on into the town to find a place for them to stay. But the Samaritans were having none of it. They knew that Jesus was a Jew and that he was headed to Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish people. So they gave the disciples the cold shoulder.

The disciples were mad, though I really don't know why they were surprised. They came back to Jesus and said, “Do you want us to call down fire from heaven and wipe out this village?” I'd've wanted to do the same thing. But Jesus called them down for it. And they just kept walking.

So here he is telling this story about a Samaritan traveling alone along the Jericho road. No smarter than the man who got beaten up. He doesn't have any protection either. But when he sees the man lying their bloody and half-dead, what does he do? He has compassion for him. Doesn't know him from Adam, but he has compassion for him. He comes over and...and this is really a foolish and extravagant thing to do...he takes the man and binds up his wounds and then he pours oil and...and not just oil, which I can understand, but wine...he pours oil and wine on his wounds and then puts him on his donkey to take him into the next town.

But it doesn't end there. Jesus just goes over the top with this story. This Samaritan takes him to an inn and spends the night with him, caring for him into the next day. And then he goes to the innkeeper and gives him two denarii, which is like two days' wages, and says, “Look, you take care of him and if you spend any more in addition, when I come back I will repay you.” It's like an open account! He has no idea how much it's actually going to cost to help this man heal. He could be taken advantage of by the man or the innkeeper.

Well, if Jesus was trying to paint the picture of a man who was willing to give without measure, he surely did it in creating this character. A man from another land who loves this broken down, beat up human being so much that he would pour out wine on him like blood from an open wound, who would nurse him and then promise to return to finish the job – this is too much.

So it caught me by surprise when Jesus finished the story by asking me another question. “Which of these three seems to you to have been the neighbor to the one who fell into the hands of the robbers?” I was caught so off-guard that I didn't have time to realize that he wasn't answering my question. I wanted to know who we were supposed to love as a neighbor. That's what I had asked Jesus. And now he was asking me who was doing the loving! He had turned this question around so that it was no longer about the object of our love – who it is that we're supposed to care for. In fact in Jesus' that was the most unclear thing. All we know about the man being cared for was that he was walking to Jericho. I assume he was a fool, too, but Jesus didn't say that.

But that's not even the point. What Jesus was asking me was about the subject of our love – who's doing the loving. And of the three choices on offer – the priest, the Levite and the Samaritan – it was pretty obvious who was the one loving, even if it was extreme and extravagant.

I couldn't bring myself to say it. To admit in front of a Jewish audience that a Samaritan was the hero of the story? I just couldn't do it. So I just said, “The one acting like a neighbor to the beaten up man was...the one who showed him mercy.”

And at that moment I should have pressed the point. I should have kept going and questioned Jesus about his feelings toward Samaritans...about whether he really was concerned about keeping the traditions of our ancestors. But he had me confused. He hadn't answered my question on my terms. Instead he had told me a story. A story! I told you how I feel about stories. And after the story I was left with the choice of defending the integrity of religious figures going about their tasks while a man bled to death on the side of the road or admitting that a foreigner understood mercy better than they did. So I swallowed my pride and played along.

But then Jesus gave me a command. This is not how I wanted this to end. He looked at me...and he really looked at me...with those piercing, loving eyes and said, “Go and do likewise.”

Now I understand that that's when he answered my question. Who is the neighbor? It's the person who acts like one. Who is the neighbor? It's the one who gives without counting the cost, even when it seems foolish and extravagant. Who is the neighbor? It's me. If I can let myself love enough to see the person right in front of me who may be wounded and dying and needing me to spend some time at their side.

I hate stories. They make me question everything I think I believe. And they make me

say foolish things. Such as – I want to love like that Good Samaritan so that I can learn to love like God. Thanks be to God.

Luke 10:25-37
Just then a certain lawyer put him to the test.
--Jesus, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
--What does the law say? How do you read it?
--You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and your whole soul and your whole strength and your whole mind and your neighbor as yourself.
--You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.
But he wanted to justify himself, so he said to Jesus,
--So who is my neighbor?
--A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell into the hands of robbers who stripped him and beat him and went off leaving him half-dead. Now as chance would have it, a certain priest was going down that road and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. In the same way a Levite, when he came to that place and saw what was going on, passed by on the other side.
But a Samaritan who was traveling came upon him and he was moved with compassion when he saw him. Coming to him, he bound up his wounds, poured oil and wine on them, and placed him on his own beast of burden. He brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave to the innkeeper and said, 'Care for him and if you spend any more in addition, when I return I will repay you.'
Which of these three seems to you to have been the neighbor to the one who fell into the hands of robbers?
--The one doing mercy to him.
--Go and do likewise.

Set Free to be a Servant

On Wednesday we will celebrate this nation's Independence Day – a day to lift up the ideal of freedom – and none of us believe in it. That's what I think in my darker moments. A nation built on the ideal of freedom, and yet it seems that we have an anemic idea of what freedom is, what it entails, what it means. And so I wonder sometimes if any of us truly believe in it. Oh, we believe in a right to privacy. We believe in the freedom of the individual to choose what is best for him or herself. But do we really believe in freedom?

What I mean is – I question whether we believe in freedom for anything in particular. We believe in freedom from all kinds of things – freedom from oppression, freedom from the terror of unelected rulers, freedom from those who would tell us how to pray or think or assemble. Just look at the Virginia flag with that seal in the center: The figure of a woman with a spear standing over an overthrown despot and the words sic semper tyrannius - “Thus always to tyrants.” No, we don't have a lot of patience with those who would deny us freedom. But the question I want to ask today is – What are we free for? And that's the question that's harder to answer because I'm not sure we believe in that kind of freedom.

Most of us have our roots and citizenship here in the United States, though I'm aware that today we've got folks in this congregation who claim roots in many different parts of the world – Portugal, Chile, Mexico, Spain. That's one of the things that I love about this place. We are connected around the world. But this week we have a chance to think about what it means to be American. And we have a lot to be thankful for this week, even as we realize that we are a nation at war.

In our long history we have produced people like James Madison, Sojourner Truth, Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King, Jr. who have opened our eyes to the power of a place where people were liberated from bondage. Despite its failings, this country still offers opportunity and hope and people still come here looking for something that is too often missing in their own land – freedom. If we are divided right now it is because we are struggling ourselves with the notion of what it means to protect freedom, to hold up freedom as a model, and to represent freedom around the world.

But there is a way that we have misunderstood our freedom. We have misunderstood our freedom and too often we have taken it to mean a freedom for individuals to do whatever they want. That's not what freedom is all about. Freedom from slavery or tyranny does not mean freedom from responsibility or from community. But we’re prone to this error as Americans.

It’s not recent. It has always been with us. The pioneers went West for new opportunities, but many of them also liked the idea of being able to get away from everybody. They were loners by choice. There's a great quote from a diary written by a settler in Michigan in the 1840's who was angry because people were moving in and there was now a house within eight miles of his home! Michigan was getting overcrowded and he was thinking about moving on.

We have always sought to break away and to get away. We’ve got this Thelma and Louise streak in us. It's how we define our freedom. But it can be a very empty freedom.
D.H. Lawrence, the British author, spent a lot of time on the move. In the early twentieth century he wrote the book Lady Chatterley's Lover, which was a scandalous book. He spent many years in a kind of self-exile. You could say that he was someone who tested freedom and lived a “free” life. But he recognized something of the loneliness of this kind of freedom. And after spending some time in the U.S. he said this in 1924 in a book on American literature:

Men are free when they are in a living homeland, not when they are straying and breaking away. Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom. Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains, always was.[i]

So what it is that constitutes real freedom? The apostle Paul gives us a hint in the passage we read from Galatians this morning. The church that Paul was writing to in Galatia was obviously a congregation with many members who believed that the only way to be a Christian was to follow every part of the old Jewish law. But Paul told them that Christ changed everything. This new freedom must have been a little scary for the Galatians. If you're used to following the book there is a certain kind of certainty in knowing where you stand. Suddenly Paul is saying that you don't walk on the same ground, you walk by faith.

So Paul is dealing with these scared Galatians and telling them, "For freedom Christ has set you free". But then the obvious questions come up - If Christ has really set me free, then what's to stop me from doing something horrible? If Christ has really set me free, what's to stop me from determining my own rules, establishing my own law, starting my own Church? These are the kind of questions that Americans tend to ask in different ways. We have been trained to think that we have the power to interpret Scripture as well as anybody - so what's to stop us from justifying everything we do? What’s the purpose of Christian community if believing is enough?

But Paul says to the Galatians, and to us, "No, no, no. Yes, you were called to freedom, but it's not a freedom of opportunity for self-indulgence - it's a freedom to become slaves of one another."

Now this is hard to understand, but there it is - Paul says - You're free, don't be a slave anymore. And then he says you are free to be a slave - but not a slave to sin, not a slave to those things that oppress you, not a slave to abuse and degradation, not a slave to discrimination, but you are free to be a slave to one another.

Now I say this is the freedom we don't believe in because it is so contrary to what we think we want freedom to be. I have spent the last week at the beach and I think I learned again the lesson about what we think freedom is supposed to be like. On vacation we think, “Hey, on vacation anything goes. I am freed from my regular schedule so I can do anything I want. Eat anything I want. Drink what I want.” And at a place like the Outer Banks there are any number of places to help you pursue the list that Paul spells out as works of the flesh. Drunkenness, carousing, fornication, debauchery – I think there are even some places to help you pursue idolatry and sorcery. And you don't have to go to tourist towns to find the means to these. They're here on the Eastern Shore.

I used to be a campus minister in Charlottesville and I know that they were there, too. One of the great temptations for young people leaving home for the first time is to see college as the place where they can throw off all the things that seemed like restraints before. I couldn't drink before; now there's no one to tell me I can't. I couldn't stay up all night before; now there's no one to tell me when to go to bed. There are all these folks who live by such different moral codes; maybe I could try theirs. And half a semester later I would find students who were sleep-deprived, developing some really unhealthy habits and making some decisions they had come to regret. You college students can tell me if things have changed, but managing your freedom is one of the great life lessons of leaving home. There are innumerable ways that we can get it wrong. Freedom can end up making us a slave to our bad choices.

But, listen, there is something more to it than this. It's not just about the “temptations of the flesh.” It's not that freedom in Christ means that I now have to beware of all the ways I can go off the rails. There is the danger that we will use our freedom to turn in ourselves and that we will follow illusions of what the good life is instead of staying on the path that leads us to a truly good life. We can get our freedom and choose our misguided passions instead of choosing to follow the God who gives us life. But there is a promise contained in this passage, a promise that is more than a command. There is a promise that we will discover what true freedom is. There is a promise that if we stop accepting a libertine lifestyle as a pitifully poor substitute for true life that we will be able to get in touch with the deepest desires of our heart. There is the promise that we can finally become really human...finally, the people we were meant to be.

What is it that Jesus told us was the greatest commandment? When he was asked by someone what a person must do to inherit eternal life, to get into the kingdom, Jesus referred the man who asked him back to the Ten Commandments but then he went on to sum up the entire law in two simple clauses. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. It's the second clause that Paul quotes here in Galatians. “The whole Law is fulfilled in one commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself.”

This is not just a command; to me it seems also a promise. It's not just “You SHALL love your neighbor as yourself” but “You shall!” You shall! You think all the dissensions and divisions of human community are the final destiny for us? No. If we have found new life in Christ, the promise is that we shall love our neighbors. Can there be any deeper desire of our hearts? Most of us do a pretty good job of trying to love ourselves. We think we're showering ourselves with happiness by giving ourselves over to the things that give us momentary pleasure, but the drink, the rich meal, the extramarital fling are not the ends for which we were made and they can't bring us the thing we really want, which is the ability to truly love. To quote those great 60s philosophers, Lennon and McCartney, “Money can't buy me love.”

This is the freedom that comes from being a servant: When we put ourselves in the service of others, when we spend ourselves in the pursuit of creating a better community, when we learn the ways of love, we will know the freedom that Christ intends for us all. Freedom is not served by walls that divide us. Freedom is not served by violence and hatred. Freedom is served by following the example of the one who knelt at his disciples’ feet and washed them.

Lech Walesa, the leader of the Solidarity movement that brought down the communist government of Poland in the 1980s, a man who was known as being the author of freedom in his country, took his first trip to the West in 1988 and his observation was, “You have riches and freedom here but I feel no sense of faith or direction. You have so many computers, why don't you use them in the search for love?”[ii] I don't think he was talking about eharmony.com either. We are a free people, but what are we free for?

What are you free for? Where is God calling you to be a servant, not so that you can be burdened with responsibilities you didn't ask for, but so that you can claim the promise that we are made to love? What are those habits of the flesh that are still keeping you from being all that you can be? Where are you wasting your gifts on things that are not worthy of them? What do you need to be released from in order to serve? Whatever it is that is holding you back, bring it to the table this morning. Lay those things down. Let them go. Because the host at the communion table is our brother Jesus who passed through death to bring us life. The host at this table is a servant who was the freest man who ever lived. And when you open your eyes you will find that you are at a table with a lot of others who are struggling just like you to be free. And in the strength of this meal, in the strength of the Spirit, you will be free to love them. That's a promise. Thanks be to God.

Galatians 5:1, 13-25
For freedom Christ has set us free. So stand and do not be loaded down again with the yoke of slavery.
For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters! Not to the freedom of opportunity for self-indulgence, but rather, through love, to become slaves of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one commandment - "Love your neighbor as yourself". But if you bite and tear one another to pieces, see that you do not devour one another.
So, I say, walk by the Spirit and do not satisfy the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh, because these two are in opposition to each other in order that you might not do what you will. But if you allow yourself to be led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law.
Now the works of the flesh are clear - fornication, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, selfish ambition, dissension, factionalism, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, just as I said before: those who do such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God!
But the works of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, humility, and self-control; against such things there is no law.
Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with all of its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.

[i] D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930), British author. Studies in Classic American Literature, ch. 1 (1924). "Men are not free when they are doing just what they like," added Lawrence. "The moment you can do just what you like, there is nothing you care about doing."
[ii] Daily Telegraph (London, 14 Dec. 1988)