Sermons

October 2nd 2005

Freedom’s Just Another Word

Reverend Dr Cheri DiNovo

I wanted to talk about freedom today. I wanted to talk about a particular kind of freedom which is Biblical and Christian freedom as contrasted with what the world sees as freedom.

I thought what I’d do is trot out some of my favourite quotes about freedom. The title of this sermon is, "Freedom’s just another word." which for those of you in the know will know as a Janis Joplin (popularized) song. The entire quote is "Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose."

I like this one too. This is from Mae West, "When presented with two evils I always like to try the one I haven’t tried before." I also like this one from Talullah Bankhead, "Cocaine, habit forming? Of course not. I ought to know. I’ve been using it for years." An Islamic proverb, "The world is the prison of the believer and the paradise of the unbeliever" An eastern European proverb, "The big ones always hang the little ones." Isaac Bashevis Singer, "You must believe in free will, there is no choice." Billie Holliday, "You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane in sight but still be working on the plantation." Bob Dylan, "You’ve gotta serve somebody." And finally Jesus, my favourite, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."

There’s a journalist in the States who I was listening to on Alternative Radio, named Michael Perenti, who described the three stages journalists go through in the main stream press. He said the first stage is where they think up this amazing and creative story that really slams the advertisers and the powers that be and you take it in to your editor and your editor says, "No, I don’t think we can run with that." The second stage is when they think up this amazing and creative story that slams the advertisers and powers that be and they know that there’s no point in taking it to the editor. The third stage is, of course, that they don’t even dream up those stories any more.We, my friends, are definitely in the third stage in the main stream press across North America and it is our duty as Christians to always be in that first stage. We are the journalists of our lives.

But what about those pesky laws in the Bible, a passage we didn’t read today included the giving and receiving of the Ten Commandments for example. Christine did a wonderful Bible Study on that on Tuesday night in Scripture 101. We discovered that very few people in that room actually knew the whole of the Ten Commandments. Here they are 1) No other Gods before me. This is a proscription against idol worship. 2) Not to take the name of God in vain 3) To keep the Sabbath 4)To honor your father and your mother 5) To not kill 6) To not commit adultery 7) To not steal 8) To not bear false witness 9) To not covet your neighbour’s wife 10) To not covet anything else that your neighbour has either. Those are the Ten Commandments.

Jesus said that every time you wake up in the morning and live through a normal day, you’re in fact, breaking one of them. He said even those who lust in their hearts have broken the commandment against adultery which is a very strange thing to say because in his rendition of the law and remember he came to fulfill the law, we are all condemned by that law. We break one of the commandments in thought every day, at least one. It is what being human is. It is what our lives look like.

So if we read the law in a certain way, not to mention Leviticus, which has over 600 hundred strictures, we’re all guilty. If we were really living biblical lives in that sense we’d be killing live animals every day. We’d have huts for our women in the back yard. If anyone tells you they’re living a biblical life, you can hold Leviticus up to them and ask, "Did you do your animal sacrifice this morning?" What are these laws about? What is the meaning of them?

From the very first stories in the Bible, the story of law giving has been the story of increasing de-regulation, increasing freedom for the people of Israel, not increasing rules and regulations but exactly the reverse. "An eye for an eye" was actually a freedom given to the people of Israel because until that moment if someone from a neighbouring tribe came and killed one of your goats you were well within your rights to go and massacre every man, woman and child in their tribe. "An eye for an eye" said that such retaliation was against God’s law. This was a progressive step.

The Ten Commandments was a progressive step in judicial history and in their history because before the ten simple commandments there were hundreds of rules and regulations governing every moment of their lives. After all, the Jews were slaves and the Egyptians ruled them and owned them. Remember this was a step forward. It was a progressive step for the Jews. It was a step toward ultimate freedom. They were no longer slaves.

Then when Jesus came he said that all the laws and rules and regulations could be summed up very simply just with two, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and your neighbour as yourself." That’s it. That’s all you have to do. Then Paul comes along in Philippians and goes one step better. He says all you have to do to be a Christian is to follow Christ. That’s it. That’s all. No man made rules or regulations have any sway over you any more. You are called only to follow Christ which is, Paul said, absolute obedience and absolute freedom. For a Christian to be free is to be absolutely enslaved, absolutely obedient, to Christ. That sounds like a contradiction but in fact that is our freedom.

I had a theology professor who always used to bring out this story when he was asked about Christian freedom. He said, "Imagine if you were standing by the side of the road and all of a sudden you saw a child running into an oncoming car. What would you do? The reasonable answer is that you would try to snatch the child out of danger. Where then is your freedom? Freedom is trying to help the child. Yet there is no choice." To do anything else while within your ‘free’ range of options is to turn from Christ. To do anything else is to turn your back on Christ calling to you from the world. To do anything else is to be enslaved to the world and not act in obedience, in true freedom to the call of Christ.

Westerners think that freedom means you can do anything you want but that’s not freedom in the Bible. The Bible makes it clear that freedom is only and ever
living for the other. This is following the call of Christ in the world. This may mean breaking the laws of the land if you are convinced that Christ is calling you to do so.
I always give an example to our confirmation class about the Ten Commandments. The example is this. It is the Second World War and you have a Jewish family living in your basement. Do you lie to the Gestapo at the door? Of course you lie to the Gestapo, of course you follow the call of Christ in the world.

So all rules and regulations are subject to the call of Christ for we Christians and the call of Christ we are assured is alive in the world. Here’s how we live our freedom out. These are stats from the United Nations done in the year 2000. More than a third of children are malnourished. More than a 100,000,000 in industrial countries live below the poverty line. In the 90’s, 2,000,000 children died in armed conflicts. The cost of eradicating world wide poverty is 1% of world income. Debt relief for the world’s poorest countries is 5.5 billion, almost exactly what it cost to build Euro Disney. That’s the back drop to our freedom. What is the call of Christ in the world? Where are the children suffering? That’s where we’re called.

To be truly free, we are being called to help, to aid them, to pray for them, to be compassionate to them. That’s what freedom looks like. You know last week we spoke about joy. That’s how you live real joy as well by living a totally and truly free life, a life lived for others. That’s the only freedom we could ever possible know.

You know however, the news is good. The United Nations in the same report goes on to share this, since the 1960’s the child death rate has been halved. Malnutrition has been cut by one third. Access to clean and safe water has doubled in that period, more than in the last 500 years by the way. In those thirty years, the life expectancy has increased by a third for all of the 1.3 billion people in our world. This is the call of Christ in the world and it is triumphant. If you follow the call of the divine in this world you cannot lose.
When Jesus stood in front of Pilate and Pilate asked him what truth was? Jesus said nothing but he was probably thinking a lot. He was probably thinking about the whole history of the Church. What we were about to do with his teachings. How we were going to make a bunch of rules and regulations, like the Pharisees, that we could beat people over the head with. He saw that the Church would become not a place of freedom but of restraint. He saw that the Church would become not a place of liberation but of oppression. He saw that the Church would become a colonizer for its own imperial glory around the world. He saw the whole history and every horror that was going to be perpetuated in the name of religion.

And he also saw something else. He saw the reign of the Kingdom of God upon earth. He saw a time when people would live in true and absolute freedom when people live for each other. He saw the new Jerusalem, how it would look, how clean the water would be, how crystal clear the air, how able we all would be to live as one family. How the poorest would be not so poor and the richest not so rich and how we would be brother and sister one to the other, how race and gender and sexual preference would mean nothing to us. We would see each other as family. We would see all the children of the world not as ‘their children’ but as ‘our children’.

The truth is that Pilate was staring at the truth when he was staring at Jesus Christ. What can the truth say about itself but follow me? What can freedom say about itself except to ring out the cry to follow me?

I pray that these are the words Christ would have me say. I pray that we live to see that New Jerusalem.

Amen.