STM: Freedom and Truth
Freedom and Truth
This week you no doubt heard that NASA put an orbitor into orbit around the planet Mars. So far , so good. Over the next three years, this mission will study the mineral and radiation and water content on the Red Planet. Much is at stake. It was a trip of 286 million miles. There were 220,000 individual critical measurements that all had to go right for this mission to be a success, for that spacecraft to arrive and be captured in orbit by the gravity of Mars. So far they have been successful. That was not the case in 1999. Then, someone forgot to transpose one english calculation into a metric calculation and the mission failed. One measurement out of 220,000.
Can you imagine if the integrity of our faith and salvation, if God's promises were determined by the same scale? Can you imagine if one little mistake would result in the complete failure or our relationship with God? Can you imagine if our peace and our hope were at risk by one little mistake? That would simply be a religion of fear, without hope, without freedom.
There is no freedom in that. But wait a minute. Don't we still hear those messages? Either self-generated or from the outside. Don't we conjure up the formulas in our minds that somehow God is talking about someone else than me when we heard the words of promise and salvation? I think so.
We struggle to live in freedom as Christian people. Let me read you something written by a guy named Robert Capon. "If we are ever to enter fully into the glorious liberty of the children of God, we're going to have to spend more time thinking about freedom than we do. The church, by and large, has had a poor record of encouraging freedom. She has spent so much time inculcating in us the fear of making mistakes that she has made us like ill-taught piano students; we play our songs, but we never really hear them, because our man concern is not to make music, but to avoid some flub that will get us in dutch." We spent so much time in the fear of making mistakes that we are like ill-taught piano students, banging out the uninspired chords of religious behavior without living in the freedom that is ours through Christ. It's like that old childhood suspicion where you are walking down the sidewalk and avoid the cracks because of some ominous consequence. So we stumble along in our journey of faith in a jerky and unnatural motion, taking every step in fear. That's not freedom. And that's not truth. When the church speaks such language, she is not speaking the truth. When we live under such anxiety, we are not living in the freedom of the truth of Christ. God intends for us this freedom. We know that because we heard the words of Jesus today saying, "you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." Let's talk a minute about this truth.
First, the truth is that all of us, each of us, without exception, ever, has made the kind of mistakes that in the math of NASA would destroy our hope. St. Paul said it, "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." And the knowledge of that is a tremendous burden which can obscure our vision of freedom. Sin is not small thing. That's a truth.
Another truth. God doesn't want that kind of relationship. God wants to be forgetful of our mistakes, our sins. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God said it, "The days are surely coming when I will make a new covenant . . . and I will be their God and they will be my people . . .and I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more."
Another truth: That new covenant, the fulfillment of that desire of God. . .. . is accomplished through Jesus Christ for the specific purpose of forgiving our sins, being God's agent of forgetfulness, not past, but present and future too, drawing us into a relationship with God that God seeks and supports through the Holy Spirit. .. . . a relationship of peace, and love and hope for this day and the next.
Another truth: We can't achieve this on our own. We can't get to God without Christ. We can't get good enough for God. That was Luther's problem, until his struggle and study led him again to the grace of Christ. The great truth is that this relationship is not contingent on our goodness or failures, but on the goodness, the grace of God through Christ.
A final truth: That in this relationship, in this fulfillment of God's passion to be in relationship with us, there is true freedom. This is what freedom is. That the mistakes, the sins, even the doubts that weigh on us so heavily and so justly are not enough to destroy us because Christ stands as our mediator, as the fulfillment of God's intention for this relationship.
Now let's talk a little about freedom, because although it the consequence of God's intervention, God's purpose, we still struggle to understand it. Partly because we approach freedom wrongly.
First, we get it mixed up with our sense of national freedom. Freedom is one of the best and most meaningful words in our national culture. We understand it because we remember that once we were not free, that we were under the thumb of another nation. But through trial and sacrifice and unity, we attained our national freedom. We earned it. Same with the Americans who are descendants of slaves. Only through great personal sacrifice and struggle and trial were these Americans able to gain their freedom. The problem with translating this notion of freedom to our faith is that the former is a freedom earned by our own sacrifice and suffering. But this is not the freedom of the soul and the spirit. Under this national understanding, we earned it and through a host of ways we celebrate that success and that sacrifice. But it doesn't translate to our faith. That's why it is not appropriate to fly a flag inside the sanctuary. It reinforces this notion of an earned freedom and detracts from the true, unearned freedom we share in Christ. We can't get there on our own.
Which leads to the second problem we have with understanding freedom is the notion that it means that we can do whatever we want. That's not freedom. That's license. It simply makes us the object of our own idolatry . . . and finally fails us in our considerations of divine things, radical hope. . . and forgiveness from the tremendous burden of our brokeness before God because it is limited by our own selves.
True freedom, the freedom of the gospel is first, to be released from the constant fear of messing up--freedom from the constant fear of a God standing by with lightening bolts to zap us at every wrong turn. True freedom is the freedom to ask for and forgiveness, to know that Christ stands as God's agent of forgiveness and forgetfulness. I like a business adage that has circulated lately, "be sure to generate a sufficient number of excellent mistakes." In other words, dare to live with some passion and risk. Luther said it another way. "Sin boldly for grace abounds even more." Now that doesn't mean live life doing what you want to do, whatever it is. But rather to live with passion and hopefulness. Forgiveness, grace, grants us this permission.
And I think we have to say that true freedom is the freedom to doubt. To doubt. To grapple and struggle with faith. To wonder and question, because faith is a relationship; "I will be your God and you will be my people." And we wonder what it means to be the people of God, and we struggle with our inability to understand sometimes, and we doubt and fear. It is not a workbook that we fill out and turn in to God. True freedom is to struggle with these great truths without the fear of breaking the relationship which draws us into them. Freedom is to know that there is one who stands with us ready to make the course correction when we err, so that our whole mission does not fail.
Finally, Jesus says true freedom is knowing his personal truth, his incarnate truth. What we can know of this truth, he has shown us. His sacrificial and redemptive love, calling us to unconditional love for others. He has shown this in his promise of grace and forgiveness, and our call to live outside ourselves, to be graceful and forgiving to others. True freedom is to live in relationship with all people, in relationship with God's creation. To know that there is nothing, not even death, that separates us from the love of God. Freedom is to know the truth that God wants for us this passionate loving relationship and that God has given us the means to live in it.
Today is Reformation Sunday, a day in the church year when we mark the cataclysmic events that proceeded from Martin Luther's passionate ministry to understand God. Certainly it's appropriate to do that, but more importantly we celebrate today the fact that the church has reclaimed this truth, this freedom. Or, more accurately, that the church is in the process of reclaiming these truths. One of the best things Luther said in all of his copious writing was to remind us that the church is always in need of reform, in need to correct itself from generation to generation, to turn to this truth and freedom. To remind us that the body of believers is always in danger of taking the power of grace onto themselves, forgetting that this is a free gift. To be reminded that because of Christ God may be a forgetful God who will remember our sins no more. The church is always in danger of making Jesus into a copilot who follows where we we steer, and not the savior of the world, the source of our grace,. . . . the very word of truth
Which brings me to the final question. How many Lutherans does it take to change a lightbulb? Change? Change? My grandma gave that light bulb to the church 17 years ago and we're not changing it! The church is always in need of reform, or reexamining how it proclaims the truth and freedom of the Gospel. God gives us the power and permission to change, to seek again this truth and freedom, and it is a meaningful and hopeful journey.
In search of meaning and understanding of the universe, the spacecraft hurtles toward its destination, pilotless, in danger of being destroyed by a single mistake. That is the cold, uncompromising truth of that journey.
Thank God we don't need to live like that. Thank God for the uncompromising truth of God's love and the freedom Christ grants to us through his grace. Thank God for that, today. Amen
Copyright (c) 2001 by Pastor Robert J. Rasmus
This week you no doubt heard that NASA put an orbitor into orbit around the planet Mars. So far , so good. Over the next three years, this mission will study the mineral and radiation and water content on the Red Planet. Much is at stake. It was a trip of 286 million miles. There were 220,000 individual critical measurements that all had to go right for this mission to be a success, for that spacecraft to arrive and be captured in orbit by the gravity of Mars. So far they have been successful. That was not the case in 1999. Then, someone forgot to transpose one english calculation into a metric calculation and the mission failed. One measurement out of 220,000.
Can you imagine if the integrity of our faith and salvation, if God's promises were determined by the same scale? Can you imagine if one little mistake would result in the complete failure or our relationship with God? Can you imagine if our peace and our hope were at risk by one little mistake? That would simply be a religion of fear, without hope, without freedom.
There is no freedom in that. But wait a minute. Don't we still hear those messages? Either self-generated or from the outside. Don't we conjure up the formulas in our minds that somehow God is talking about someone else than me when we heard the words of promise and salvation? I think so.
We struggle to live in freedom as Christian people. Let me read you something written by a guy named Robert Capon. "If we are ever to enter fully into the glorious liberty of the children of God, we're going to have to spend more time thinking about freedom than we do. The church, by and large, has had a poor record of encouraging freedom. She has spent so much time inculcating in us the fear of making mistakes that she has made us like ill-taught piano students; we play our songs, but we never really hear them, because our man concern is not to make music, but to avoid some flub that will get us in dutch." We spent so much time in the fear of making mistakes that we are like ill-taught piano students, banging out the uninspired chords of religious behavior without living in the freedom that is ours through Christ. It's like that old childhood suspicion where you are walking down the sidewalk and avoid the cracks because of some ominous consequence. So we stumble along in our journey of faith in a jerky and unnatural motion, taking every step in fear. That's not freedom. And that's not truth. When the church speaks such language, she is not speaking the truth. When we live under such anxiety, we are not living in the freedom of the truth of Christ. God intends for us this freedom. We know that because we heard the words of Jesus today saying, "you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." Let's talk a minute about this truth.
First, the truth is that all of us, each of us, without exception, ever, has made the kind of mistakes that in the math of NASA would destroy our hope. St. Paul said it, "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." And the knowledge of that is a tremendous burden which can obscure our vision of freedom. Sin is not small thing. That's a truth.
Another truth. God doesn't want that kind of relationship. God wants to be forgetful of our mistakes, our sins. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God said it, "The days are surely coming when I will make a new covenant . . . and I will be their God and they will be my people . . .and I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more."
Another truth: That new covenant, the fulfillment of that desire of God. . .. . is accomplished through Jesus Christ for the specific purpose of forgiving our sins, being God's agent of forgetfulness, not past, but present and future too, drawing us into a relationship with God that God seeks and supports through the Holy Spirit. .. . . a relationship of peace, and love and hope for this day and the next.
Another truth: We can't achieve this on our own. We can't get to God without Christ. We can't get good enough for God. That was Luther's problem, until his struggle and study led him again to the grace of Christ. The great truth is that this relationship is not contingent on our goodness or failures, but on the goodness, the grace of God through Christ.
A final truth: That in this relationship, in this fulfillment of God's passion to be in relationship with us, there is true freedom. This is what freedom is. That the mistakes, the sins, even the doubts that weigh on us so heavily and so justly are not enough to destroy us because Christ stands as our mediator, as the fulfillment of God's intention for this relationship.
Now let's talk a little about freedom, because although it the consequence of God's intervention, God's purpose, we still struggle to understand it. Partly because we approach freedom wrongly.
First, we get it mixed up with our sense of national freedom. Freedom is one of the best and most meaningful words in our national culture. We understand it because we remember that once we were not free, that we were under the thumb of another nation. But through trial and sacrifice and unity, we attained our national freedom. We earned it. Same with the Americans who are descendants of slaves. Only through great personal sacrifice and struggle and trial were these Americans able to gain their freedom. The problem with translating this notion of freedom to our faith is that the former is a freedom earned by our own sacrifice and suffering. But this is not the freedom of the soul and the spirit. Under this national understanding, we earned it and through a host of ways we celebrate that success and that sacrifice. But it doesn't translate to our faith. That's why it is not appropriate to fly a flag inside the sanctuary. It reinforces this notion of an earned freedom and detracts from the true, unearned freedom we share in Christ. We can't get there on our own.
Which leads to the second problem we have with understanding freedom is the notion that it means that we can do whatever we want. That's not freedom. That's license. It simply makes us the object of our own idolatry . . . and finally fails us in our considerations of divine things, radical hope. . . and forgiveness from the tremendous burden of our brokeness before God because it is limited by our own selves.
True freedom, the freedom of the gospel is first, to be released from the constant fear of messing up--freedom from the constant fear of a God standing by with lightening bolts to zap us at every wrong turn. True freedom is the freedom to ask for and forgiveness, to know that Christ stands as God's agent of forgiveness and forgetfulness. I like a business adage that has circulated lately, "be sure to generate a sufficient number of excellent mistakes." In other words, dare to live with some passion and risk. Luther said it another way. "Sin boldly for grace abounds even more." Now that doesn't mean live life doing what you want to do, whatever it is. But rather to live with passion and hopefulness. Forgiveness, grace, grants us this permission.
And I think we have to say that true freedom is the freedom to doubt. To doubt. To grapple and struggle with faith. To wonder and question, because faith is a relationship; "I will be your God and you will be my people." And we wonder what it means to be the people of God, and we struggle with our inability to understand sometimes, and we doubt and fear. It is not a workbook that we fill out and turn in to God. True freedom is to struggle with these great truths without the fear of breaking the relationship which draws us into them. Freedom is to know that there is one who stands with us ready to make the course correction when we err, so that our whole mission does not fail.
Finally, Jesus says true freedom is knowing his personal truth, his incarnate truth. What we can know of this truth, he has shown us. His sacrificial and redemptive love, calling us to unconditional love for others. He has shown this in his promise of grace and forgiveness, and our call to live outside ourselves, to be graceful and forgiving to others. True freedom is to live in relationship with all people, in relationship with God's creation. To know that there is nothing, not even death, that separates us from the love of God. Freedom is to know the truth that God wants for us this passionate loving relationship and that God has given us the means to live in it.
Today is Reformation Sunday, a day in the church year when we mark the cataclysmic events that proceeded from Martin Luther's passionate ministry to understand God. Certainly it's appropriate to do that, but more importantly we celebrate today the fact that the church has reclaimed this truth, this freedom. Or, more accurately, that the church is in the process of reclaiming these truths. One of the best things Luther said in all of his copious writing was to remind us that the church is always in need of reform, in need to correct itself from generation to generation, to turn to this truth and freedom. To remind us that the body of believers is always in danger of taking the power of grace onto themselves, forgetting that this is a free gift. To be reminded that because of Christ God may be a forgetful God who will remember our sins no more. The church is always in danger of making Jesus into a copilot who follows where we we steer, and not the savior of the world, the source of our grace,. . . . the very word of truth
Which brings me to the final question. How many Lutherans does it take to change a lightbulb? Change? Change? My grandma gave that light bulb to the church 17 years ago and we're not changing it! The church is always in need of reform, or reexamining how it proclaims the truth and freedom of the Gospel. God gives us the power and permission to change, to seek again this truth and freedom, and it is a meaningful and hopeful journey.
In search of meaning and understanding of the universe, the spacecraft hurtles toward its destination, pilotless, in danger of being destroyed by a single mistake. That is the cold, uncompromising truth of that journey.
Thank God we don't need to live like that. Thank God for the uncompromising truth of God's love and the freedom Christ grants to us through his grace. Thank God for that, today. Amen
Copyright (c) 2001 by Pastor Robert J. Rasmus