Sermon:
July 4, 2004
Sunday Night Alive  

Scripture:
John 15:12-15
Galatians 5:13-14

Oh freedom
Oh freedom
Oh freedom over me!
And before I’d be a slave
I’ll be buried in my grave
And go home to my Lord and be free. 

These are the words of an old slave spiritual. Its words are important on a day like today because they remind us that freedom has spiritual, as well as national, significance. The song comes from a time before Africans on this continent could fully experience the freedom that was clearly declared on this day in Philadelphia in 1776. But those slaves who sang this freedom song seemed to know that freedom, real freedom, was deeper and more profound than just the conditions of the world they inhabited. And despite the chains that shackled their legs, in their Lord they knew a freedom, a deeper freedom, that could not be taken away. 

Freedom is one of the major themes of the Fourth of July holiday. It is one of the very bench-marks of our society and one of the themes that undergirds our entire American story. And even when we haven’t always gotten it right, we continued to struggle for a fuller and more meaningful expression of freedom as a people and as a society. We have much to celebrate this holiday in terms of freedom. Freedom of religion. Freedom of the press. Freedom to organize and assemble. The freedom for dissent and debate. We are actually free to disagree. Although imperfect, the United States of America has served as a model for the great experiments of freedom and liberty. We have farther to go and much yet to learn, but we have that freedom spirit in the very fabric of who we are as citizens of this country. 

But today, especially since this Fourth of July holiday falls on a Sunday, on the Lord’s Day, I think it begs us to ask a deeper question. What does freedom mean to us as Christians? What does freedom mean to persons whose membership in the body of Christ transcends national boundaries and connects us to persons of different ethnicities, races, genders and economic backgrounds? What kind of freedom are we called to as followers of the God made known in Jesus Christ? Let us explore that this evening. And let us explore it by using the colors of this day—red, white and blue—colors that are symbolic to many Americans of the very notions of what it means to be free.

Red is often the first color associated with our nation’s flag. For many Christians, I think the immediate thing that comes to mind with the color red is Jesus’ death and the blood that was shed on the cross. For most Christians, there is a correlation between Jesus’ death and God’s forgiveness. Oftentimes it is said that the blood of Jesus has freed us from our sins. I agree. I think it does and I think it has. But not necessarily just in the way we have always thought, or have been taught, that it does. 

I think you cannot understand the significance of Jesus’ death on Calvary if it is separated from his life in Galilee. The true, liberating and freedom-giving power of the blood that Jesus shed from the cross makes no sense if it is separated from the blood that flowed through his veins as he walked the highways and byways of the first century world he encountered. We are in need of the lifeblood that flowed through him as much as we are in need of the sacrificial blood that flowed out of him. So on this day, let us consider how the life Jesus lived and the invitation he offered to his followers actually provide us freedom from sin and death. 

Jesus lived a life that flowed from the very blood of the divine. The way he used the very blood, sweat and tears of his humanity sheds light for the world on the truest essence of divinity. In Jesus, we learn that God is far different than we could have ever imagined. The life Jesus lived was radically different than that of the world he encountered, but it was a life radically more abundant, more meaningful, more fruitful. I am afraid for a church that becomes focused only on the blood of the cross without ever taking into account the lifeblood Jesus poured out every day of his earthly mission. If I may be so bold, I believe today’s church is often more in need of a blood transfusion from our Lord and Savior than it is in need of a blood sacrifice. The lifeblood of Jesus calls us into partnership with him—to live the kind of life he led, to allow his very life to live in us and flow through us. 

The life of discipleship that Jesus calls us to offers freedom. Perhaps the most powerful and counter-cultural freedom it offers us contemporary disciples is freedom from a life poured out only in the pursuits of material wealth and social status. To read magazines, watch television and go to the movies, one would begin to think it is not the life, death and resurrection of Jesus that offers us life, but instead it’s a life of luxury, a denial of death and an ever-rising social profile.  We sometimes feel like having more will make us happier, more important or more secure. We can become confused by thinking that net worth and self worth are the same thing. 

But, because of the way Jesus lived, because of the way he let his lifeblood flow through him, we too can see that we have the freedom to choose to live differently. Jesus put service over self, spiritual depth above material wealth, and relationship above ownership. He flipped the paradigm of our world on its head. In a world where material wealth and social prestige are the optimal goals of one’s life, people inevitably become slaves to their calendars. Meetings to go to. People to meet. Deadlines to make. Deals to close. But when your life has been infused with the lifeblood of Jesus, you are free to spend time with things that do not affect the bottom line or are not of material value. In the freedom Jesus’ lifeblood offers, we are free to take time for family. Time for friends. Time for rest, relaxation, service, and yes, even just for ourselves becomes the doorway to the abundant life Jesus offers all to freely experience. In the red of this Independence Day holiday, may we remember the blood that flowed through Jesus, and be infused into that same transforming spirit.

The second color is white. White brings to mind many different images and meanings for our faith. But today I want you to think of the white as a flag unto itself. A white cloth fastened to a pole, waving from behind any hill on a battlefield, signals to participants that there is surrender.  The white flag is a call for an end to fighting, a call to end hostilities. Likewise, the white flag is an invitation to peace, a call to a truce, a summons to a change in relationship. 

On this day of celebrating freedom, we too will find a white flag waving. But it comes to us in a surprising way. You see, it is not humanity that is calling for this surrender, but in fact it appears that it is Jesus who is waving the white flag. In the thousands upon thousands of years of struggle between God and humanity, it is Jesus—God among us—who comes waving the white flag. It is Jesus who says the war is over. It is Jesus who calls for the truce between Creator and creation. It is Jesus who signifies that there has been a change in relationship. 

It is right there in the fifteenth chapter of John’s Gospel. In what is really a remarkable piece of text—a text that the story places among Jesus’ last words to his disciples—it is written that Jesus said: 

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I call you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my father. 

“I no longer call you servants, but friends.” In that statement, Jesus waves the white flag. He surrenders. He calls for peace. He changes the relationship between God and humanity forever.  He signifies that humanity has been made to become friends with God. That is the relationship that God desires with us: friendship. Not slavery, not servitude, not hierarchy, not animosity, but friendship. We have been freed for friendship. And the amazing thing is that any sense of power, prestige, or ownership that we have attributed to God, Jesus says has been surrendered, given up, renounced, to be in friendship with us. 

When we think of the white of the red, white and blue, let it serve to remind us that we are free for friendship with God—a real friendship, a lasting friendship. What does this friendship entail? The same things any of our best earthly friendships entail. Think for a moment. Picture in your mind the face of a friend. This is a person who is there for you, someone you can talk to. He or she is someone who values you, someone you know well and who knows you well, too. She or he is someone you want to spend time with, because your friend is someone you love, someone you respect. 

We no longer have to fear approaching God. We have been freed from that fear because God has freed us for friendship—true friendship, life-giving friendship. Let the white signal the surrender of God so that we might be in relationship with God and with each other. There is truth in that old song, you know: 

What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and grief to bear.
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.

“I no longer call you servants, but friends.” We are free to be friends. Friends with God. Friends with each other. 

That brings us to the last of the colors that Americans often associate with freedom: blue. For Christians, the color blue should immediately take us to the shores of the Jordan River and the flowing rivers of Jesus’ baptism. At that moment, in the blue of the water, the story tells us that the skies opened and the Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove, and the voice from heaven spoke so that all could hear, “This is my child with whom I am well pleased.”  

It was in the blue waters of his baptism that the grace and love of God was recognized to be fully present in this young son of a carpenter from Nazareth. In that moment, Jesus was soaked in the grace of God. In the blue water of baptism, Jesus emerged dripping in God’s mercy. It was the very presence of God, witnessed at Jesus’ baptism, that empowered the ministry that was his life, the surrender that was his death, and the miracle that is his resurrection. God was with him every step of the way. 

Blue is the reminder of God’s ever-present, never-ending, never-failing, always-sustaining grace. Grace. This is one of those religious words that we use a lot. Grace. In fact, it is among the most important and most powerful concepts in the entire lexicon of Christian discourse and understanding. But what is grace? Even though religious types, pastors and the like, use it all the time (“May God give you the grace…”, “God’s grace be with you…”, “I’d be happy to say the grace…”), it is one of those words that is hard to define.  So what is it, this grace, that was there in the waters of our baptisms? The author Frederick Buechner, in his book Wishful Thinking, puts it this way:   

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you that I created the universe. I love you. There’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you’ll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift, too.           

So in the blue water of baptism, we recognize that God has initiated a relationship with us. God has invited us to the party. The journey that is our lives is to live more and more into the fullness of that relationship, to more fully participate in the celebration of life laid out before us. And make no mistake about it. The blue of our baptism brings us freedom, as well. God’s grace brings us to freedom.   

“Freedom from what? Freedom for what?” you ask. Fred Craddock tells the story about life in a small community in Custer City, Oklahoma, population 450. Every Sunday morning, when part of the town went to one of the four churches, a group of men went to a little café. Some drove their wives to church and then drove to the café. The attendance at the churches, Craddock says,  was up and down. The attendance at the café was almost always up. These were hard working, decent men who chose not to go to church. Their leader (Craddock calls him “the patron saint of the group”) was a man by the name of Frank. Frank was 77. He was a good man, a pioneer, a rancher, a farmer, and a cattleman. He had been born in a sod house and had prospered. The men in the café all admired and respected him. Though every man who gathered in the café on occasion was hauled off to church by his wife, Frank never went. They all said, “Frank will never go to church.” 

When Pastor Craddock first met Frank, the older man took the offensive. “Look,” he said, “I work hard and I take care of my family and I mind my own business.” In other words: “Leave me alone. I’m not a prospect.” And the pastor left him alone. A couple of other times they met, and each time Frank repeated the same words. 

Then, one morning, Frank came to church and asked to be baptized. The word reached the men in the café, who began to speculate. Frank must have gotten bad news from the doctor. He’s probably got heart trouble. He must be scared. Why else would he be going to church? 

The pastor didn’t ask. He did what Frank wanted. He baptized him. Then, a few weeks later, Craddock said to Frank, “Do you remember that little saying you had?” Frank nodded. “I said, ‘I work hard, I take care of my family, and I mind my own business.’ I used to say that a lot. In fact, I still say it.” 

“Then what has changed?” 

“In the past, I didn’t know what my business was.” I didn’t know what was my business was. The grace of God, recognized in the blue waters of our baptism, gives us the freedom to change the business of our lives. God’s grace gives us the freedom to start over, no matter where you are in this journey called life. God’s grace—the relationship God has initiated with us—frees us for loving service to God and to each other. 

The apostle Paul sums it up beautifully in his letter to the Galatians: 

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become servants to one another. For the whole law can be summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 

So as many Americans look to this day as a celebration of freedom, let the blue be a reminder to us of the waters of our own baptism. Let the blue serve as a reminder that we too have been dipped, dunked and fully immersed in God’s grace and mercy. Let the blue today remind us that we too are children of God, children with whom God takes great delight and is well pleased.  Let the blue water of our baptism free us to change the course of our lives so that they may better reflect God’s will and desire for us. 

And so we are free, brothers and sisters! Free to be the church—a red, white and blue church. Red by the very lifeblood that moved Jesus into a life of love and relationship. White because the surrender signal has been waved and we have been freed up for friendship. And blue because the wells of grace that flowed at the waters of baptism run deep and free us to change the very business of our lives.

We end our time together in the place where we began it: in the fields, where African slaves pointed us towards the deepest meaning of this holiday’s great virtue.  

Oh freedom
Oh freedom
Oh freedom over me!
And before I’d be a slave
I’ll be buried in my grave
And go home to my Lord and be free. 

Note: As a young preacher, I am learning that the craft of preaching on a weekly basis is far more demanding than one could ever imagine. That is why I am so grateful for two men who have quickly become regular contributors to my sermon preparation and theological reflection.  Both men’s names are Fred—Fred Buechner and Fred Craddock—and both of their writings appear in this sermon. The Buechner quote come from a classic text of his, Wishful Thinking. If you haven’t read it, you should. The Craddock story comes from a sermon he preached called “Attending a Baptism,” and is found in a compellation called The Cherry Log Sermons. 

One more credit is due in this sermon. The notion of the change of relationship that Jesus invites his followers to recognize was excellently developed in a book by Edward Zaragoza called No Longer Servants, but Friends: A Theology of Ordained Ministry. This was a book that I read in seminary as a part of a church leadership class, and at the time it really helped to solidify my call to ministry. Two years later, I picked it up to help with this sermon, and I am once again feeling compelled to read it for its refreshing insights into the vocation that seems to have chosen me far more than I have chosen it.