Sermon for the 4 th Sunday in Lent, March 14, 2010
“I t is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman.. ”
YOU have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you? It's called the Miranda warning, and it's one way to know that you've been arrested. Another way is the handcuffs which tie your wrists behind your back. The third is the rear seat of the patrol car, not padded as in a standard Crown Victoria: this is a solid piece of plastic for ease of clean up. Losing your freedom by being arrested may be the best break you've ever had—the freedom that a child of crime has is only bondage by another name.
Our society has lost the concept of enslavement to sin, yet the signs of slavery are easy to spot. You can tell one slave by the deterioration of her face from methamphetamine. They make before and after posters of beautiful young women on the drug only a few months or a year, and her face has lost its youth, her skin horribly blemished, her teeth sunken, eyes dead— bondage . It isn't pretty. Likewise, cruise through the sparkling halls of our local casinos, with their amazing video machines, nickel-dime-quarter-dollar slots, musically calling their victims into the dullness of middle-aged addicts whose sole function in life is to lift a hand, drop a coin, push a button and witness a machine happily robbing him— bondage .
Those are easy. How good are you at discerning the modern slave? What do addicts to sexual misadventure look like? Adulterers, though even in their minds alone, may betray a look of furtive guilty pleasure, the self-satisfaction of a pornography user. Or is it the slave to rich, gooey foods loaded with high caloric, low glycemic white bread, bacon-laden trans-fatted calves, super-size me please . Or the couch potato-head with the dazed look of endless televised entertainment and no real occupation for years. Covetousness, gluttony, lust and sloth are simple to see by the marks they leave on adults and children, enslaved by the body's pleasure centers, hardly moved by their own flaccid atrophied moral fiber. Bondage is easy to spot in the physical sinner. And still we call it freedom, when we're justifying evil ways and days.
Sin is just as real and more commanding when only the mind and spirit are imprisoned. Pride, envy and anger pay a greater dividend to their captives and these may lead what we judge to be normal lives while under the spell of their mastering vice. Bondage to sin is just as fatal when envy robs you of all your joy and love, human compassion, fidelity for one person, or anger conceals itself in political rectitude and moral indignance. Cover it all up with a thick icing of pride and we look good as the cover of a magazine. It's bondage still, but the attractive kind lets the others wish they were us, while we languish in a vague heartsickness. Egypt to the Jews was nothing compared to the wealth of America in its leisure and affluence in keeping us wed to our fleshpots in a modern slavery. The difference is that the Egypt-dwelling Hebrews knew they were slaves.
It's an advantage to know this, and to chafe at your manacled wrists, the whiplashes and barked orders. You know you're a slave and you want a way of escape to freedom. What does an indolent addict in the plush seat of a minivan in the drive-thru at MacDonald's know about his lost freedom or her heart's longing to cut the cords of sin? Most of our 21 st century fellow citizens haven't any idea what is the good news of forgiveness and new life in Christ. Leaving a life of sin feels like being arrested, a loss of freedom, a subjection to jail cells, judges at benches, prison guards and bad food. Do you know what church looks like to the common criminal ? Jail . It's no joke that Pirates of the Caribbean has become every child's ideal of fun and freedom. You should really reassess this value. Skulls on every t-shirt in J. C. Penney's kid's section is a clue.
St. Paul wrote: “W hen you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:20-23 “You know that to whom you to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.” 6:16-18 “You are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.” Gal 4:1
Slaves of sin, or servants of God: you were made to serve somebody or some thing , and you thought it was yourself, but that's the devil's own lie. It's the same lie that's been enchanting boys and girls, men and women since he tricked poor Eve over that tree. We think we do it for ourselves , but instead it's Pleasure Island . You saw Pinocchio . The wooden-head followed his tempters to a wagonload of wicked boys shipped to that island where cigars and beer and pool halls corrupted them while they were being changed into donkeys with big ears and grey tails. They lost their power to speak and were carted off to be beasts of toil, owned by others, slaves. You never simply serve yourself. You will serve another, and that master will create your eternity based on which master you've chosen and followed. The great irony is that self-serving pleasure leads to eternal slavery and death, while self-control found in grace and faith in the loving God leads to freedom and a glorious life. If we don't get this one great secret, we may never want real freedom at all. Rather give us free governmental health care, free anti-depressants, 500 free channels to surf, and a free monthly check to keep us quiet and orderly—and an American has every right to be nervous. You have the right to remain silent. Your masters have almost locked every door of escape.
Is it as desperate as I paint it? Why don't more people want Jesus? This looks like a waste of time to them. Truth stands knocking at the door, and most people are in their den, can't be bothered, if we ignore Him He'll go away . Jesus said “If you remain living in My word, you are truly My disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth shall make you free… whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And slaves don't get to stay in the house forever, but a son lives there forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.” John 8:31-36
Free indeed. It's the mystery of a life of faith. We look ridiculous to a worldly person. We could scoff at his blindness, but we should mourn. What can open his eyes to the sadness of his condition, the decay to his soul that the sins he loves bring inevitably? What brought us to that conclusion? And are we free, completely free even now? God catches us, convicts us, converts us, but it takes time to clean us. At every step of the process, we're free to escape Him, resist change, hide in our secret world where the calliope echoes of Pleasure Island still call us back to childishness. Bondage. Slavery . It's high time we were free indeed.
I resist the slick theology of irresistible grace. The logic begins with a revulsion of religious works that some may count as righteousness before God and salvation through stepping through certain actions, buying one's way to heaven. It was St. Augustine's retort to Pelagianism, but you don't need to know that story. The opposite error is thinking God does everything regardless of our wills, and grace is His tractor beam that captures us, redeems us, and amazingly makes us new creatures. He chooses His kids and rejects the rest, but we have nothing to do with it. Sorry: that's not freedom either .
Grace is not godly bondage—that's slave talk. We're so used to taking no responsibility it's an easy fallacy to accept. No. Grace is grace, unmerited favor, given freely but freely we take it or not, accept the gift or reject it, and we make that choice again and again. We walk through the Red Sea or we remain on the Egyptian shore. We cross the Jordan or we stay on the desert. We march around Jericho or we sulk back in camp. We live the new life and seek Him daily, or we slump and find ourselves gradually getting ourselves enslaved again. Grace is free and without His incredible gift, we go nowhere. But grace must be acted upon and our freedom is active participation in our own emancipation. The American carpetbaggers had easy pickins with former slaves because they were used to being used. One drug traded for another is not yet addiction-free life.
Bondage and Grace: we have to waken to the tender trap we've been lazing in. We need to rouse ourselves to the fly-trap that lured us in and made us comfy, well-fed and indolent so we might at the last chance affect our escape. Sin is all around us, and the addicts of sin are like all addicts: they want everyone else addicted too. We're a threat to the system, but I like being a threat. When children die, women weep, men wallow in chains of self-abuse and our country goes to the dogs I think it's time to makes some noise, rebel a little, make trouble for the slave masters, get uppity.
Let's get uppity. “He that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.” Galatians 4:29-31 It's a war, but not against other human souls. They're captives too, slaves, but we being free must call to them, cut their bonds, expose the lies that hold them, give them hope. Now: you have the right to remain silent , but is it right to remain silent? Is it right?
PFH+