Sermon:
July 4, 2004
Morning Services

Scripture:
Micah 6:8  
Galatians 5:13-14  
Galatians 5:22-26

Today is the Lord’s Day. Today is the Fourth of July. This day offers an opportunity to reflect upon the confluence of citizenship and discipleship. On my first visit to Pittsburgh some 40-plus years ago, I marveled at the three river triangle. I remember being told that the Ohio River begins at the confluence of the Monongahela and the Allegheny. Doesn’t that sound wonderful! Our daily conduct is shaped by the confluence of our national traditions and ideals and our Christian ideals and traditions. Discipleship and citizenship: are they in conflict, congruence or confluence? 

When you hear the phrase “It’s as American as…”, what comes to mind? Apple pie, Chevrolet, baseball, motherhood—all warm, fuzzy and perhaps even nostalgic images of a bygone era? Or equality, liberty, justice and peace—the cornerstones of our American ethos? Or is it Ritalin, SUVs, violence and security—the modern mantra of the media? Or more contemporary warm fuzzies—like Atkins diets, Starbucks and Disney World? These images say a lot about what we hold dear. When you complete the sentence “It’s as Christian as…”, what comes to mind? Is it scripture, tradition, reason and experience (the Methodist quadrilateral) or is it peace, justice, freedom and love (the biblical imperatives)? 

When you think of a favorite Fourth of July pastime, is it a ball game, picnic, parade, fireworks, family, flags, etc.? Or is it working for peace and justice? When you think of a favorite Lord’s Day pastime, is it family worship, prayer, singing or Sunday school? Or is it working for peace and justice? 

While researching this sermon, I came across the following short essay tucked in one of my favorite books, Dakota by Kathleen Norris. The essay is “A World Through Peripheral Vision” by Ellen Goodman. Who is Ellen Goodman? (I once had a parishioner by that name.) The internet tells me she is a columnist for the Boston Globe. Where did I get the essay? Whoever slipped it into my book, thank you. Somehow I think Goodman captures the essence of summer’s challenge of freedom for and freedom to rest. The story serves as a wonderful meditation for the Fourth of July, and it is too good to be paraphrased, so let me quote: 

“A World Through Peripheral Vision” 
by Ellen Goodman

Casco Bay, Maine – I arrive here coasting on the fumes of hi-octane anxiety. The split-second timing of my daily life has adhered to my mood like a watch strapped to a wrist. Behind me is a deadline met by the skin of my teeth. A plane was late. A gas tank was empty. A boat was missed. The carry-on baggage of my workaday life has accompanied me onto the island. An L.L. Bean bag full of work, a fax machine, a laptop with modem. I have all sorts of attachments. Fully equipped this way, I tell myself that I can get an extra week away. And so I spend that week wondering why I cannot get away.

For days I perform the magic trick unique to my species. My head and body are in two different places. Like some computer-generated animation, my body is on an island where the most important news is the weather report. My head is on the mainland of issues, ideas, policies and problems. My body is dressed in shorts, T-shirt, baseball cap. My mind is in a suit, pantyhose and heels. 

I am split across the great divide between this place and the other. Neither here nor there. The desk chair is full, the hammock empty. On the road, I am able to see the Brown Eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s Lace only in my peripheral vision. My focus remains elsewhere. 

I feel like a creature of the modern world, who has learned to live much – too much – of the time on fast forward. And to pretend it is a natural rhythm. What would Charlie Chaplain make of these Modern Times? Our impatience when the computer or the ATM machine ‘slows’ down, or the plane is late. The way many of us have learned to do two things at once, to ratchet up our productivity, that buzzword of the era, as if life were an assembly line. In some recess of this modern-time mindset, I thought I could be on vacation and at work. Instead, these two masters wrangle for custody over me and I learn that there are two things you cannot do at once: something and nothing. 

But finally, this morning, walking down the country road at a distracted, aerobic, urban speed, I brake for butterflies. I am aware suddenly of four monarchs in full orange and black robes at their regal work. They have claimed a weedy plot of milkweeds as their territory. As I stand absolutely still, these four become eight and then twelve. My eye slowly adjusts to monarchs the way it adjusts to the dark or the way you can gradually see blueberries on a green bush. There are twenty butterflies harvesting a plot no bigger than my desk. There are thirty in a space smaller than my office. The flock, the herd, has followed the summer taste buds onto my island, the way native tribes came here for clams. They leave as suddenly as summer people. 

The monarchs allow me, a commoner, to stand among them in the milkweeds as they work. I feel foolishly and deliciously like some small-time anthropologist, pleased to be accepted by the fluttering royals. I am permitted to watch them from inches away. For half a minute, one monarch chooses my baseball cap as his throne. For half an hour, I am not an intruder but part of the native landscape. 

And I remember now the lines of poetry I read in the icy dead of last winter. After watching two mockingbirds spinning and tossing “the white ribbons of their songs into the air,” Mary Oliver wrote:                                                        

I had nothing
Better
To do
Than listen.
I mean this
Seriously. 

Such moments are rare in our world of Rapid Eye Moments. We have been taught to hurry, to scan instead of read, to surf instead of watch. We can go from zero to a hundred miles an hour in seconds – but only by leaving the natural world in the dust. We pride ourselves on speed – and forget that time goes by fast enough. The trick is to slow down long enough to listen, smell, touch, look, live.

At long last, the faxes and phones and ties all disconnect. And for a summer afternoon, surrounded by monarchs, I know this: I have nothing better to do than watch. I mean this seriously.

The Fourth is not only a time when we decide how we are to vacation in the midst of our busyness, but also a time to consider weightier matters. It is a time to reflect upon our freedoms, whether it is the work versus leisure choices of an Ellen Goodman or more fundamental choices of choosing something over nothing as disciples of Christ—or as Paul puts it, to be free in Christ. 

About four weeks ago I was honored to touch down with our Prague mission team at our mission work site at The Diakonie in Horni Porcenice, Prague 9. For me it was a brief, first-time visit. For many it was the fourth such visit to help our Methodist colleagues live into their new freedom to worship and disciple. I’m sure most of you know that the Czech Republic, then part of Czechoslovakia, was a client state of the Soviet Union for almost 50 years. Before that, it was occupied by the Germans. And before that, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Freedom is a new experience for two generations of Czechs.  How do some respond? How do we respond to our freedom in this country? I invite you to listen to this experience of one saint and reflect upon your use of freedom. 

As my visit was only to last a couple of days, after hearing the introduction of the Center staff, I asked if I could accompany “Little Jan” on his daily Meals on Wheels rounds. This program is one of the centerpieces of the Center’s ministry, as well as a revenue generator for other ministries. In the past year, the number of daily meals delivered has grown from 150 to 350. My morning began in the cramped preparation kitchen where the stacked plastic containers were ready to be filled with the day’s meal. The kitchen brought the meals in large sauce pans, and as “Little Jan” looked at each container with the name of the recipient on it and the meal choice, I helped ladle the food into the containers. From my perspective the meals, while hot and nourishing, were on the Dickensian side of gruel. But each container was filled with care and stacked in neat bundles, some with two dishes and some with three. We then placed the containers in large plastic milk-carrying crates and put them in the panel van, a dilapidated old red Ford which was acting as their substitute van, as the Center’s one was in the shop for repairs. 

The day was gray and rainy. We piled into the van, Jan jerked it into first gear, and off we went. The back of the van seemed to have the meals placed in random order, since I was never given instruction that this box goes here and that one there. I watched “Little Jan” grind the gears and wrestle with the non-power steering as we maneuvered down tight little alleys and parked on curbs to deliver our meals. “Little Jan” would allow me to carry the meals, and show us the way to a recipient’s home. 

Our first stop was a senior citizen residence, where we were greeted by a smiling young man with cerebral palsy who lived with his mother. We exchanged our meals for their containers from the previous day’s delivery. Over the course of the next two hours, we visited numerous old men and ladies in small (by our standards), cramped apartments. One old man’s place smelled of urine and cat pooh. “Little Jan” seemed to know all the idiosyncrasies of his clients. He knew one man suffered from dementia but was living on his own. He stopped to chat with him and encourage him. In some cases there were old women waiting in the windows for his van, and we passed the food through a window. In other cases we left the containers on the stoop or at the garden gate. 

Much to my surprise, not all the recipients were indigent or shut-ins. We stopped at a run-down factory to be the lunch wagon for the metal workers. We delivered to small shop owners, even the warehouse workers at a Home Depot-style big box store. The whole three-hour experience was for me a “traveling with Jesus experience.” I could see the joy the deliveries brought to the people, even the blind lady who “Little Jan” played a game with. When he knocked on her apartment door, he would announce that he was the police or the fire department. She would recognize his voice, open the door, and they would have a good laugh. She was a regular member of their congregation at the Center. “Little Jan” was my Jesus for the day. He loved his work and cared for his clients. He would stop to ask how they were, share a word, a smile, even a joke. When we returned, I felt that ministry had been done. 

Why tell you this story on the Fourth of July? Stay tuned for the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say. What does Paul have to say to us about freedom? Paul speaks of freedom in Christ, meaning to serve Christ by loving your neighbor. Note the contrast with the following classic definition of freedom given by Epictetus: “He is free who lives as he wills, who is subject neither to compulsion, nor hindrance, nor force, whose choices are unhampered, whose desires attain their end, whose aversions do not fall into what they would avoid.” I’m fine with it up to the point of “whose desires attain their end”! 

Paul’s understanding of freedom is not “anything goes” and not “your own desires,” but God’s desires for you. For Paul, freedom takes place in the context of community. You are free to help better the community, building character, fostering its cohesiveness. In Galatians he warns against becoming conceited, competing against one another, envying one another. For Paul, freedom is the choice of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Rather than thinking it will demand less of us, freedom actually makes greater demands on us. One of the ironies of a life in freedom is new responsibilities, in that it requires greater effort than the life of servitude. Paul seems to be warning against an overly individualistic interpretation of freedom. He is warning us against the human tendency to pursue our own needs and desires, oblivious to the common good. We are free not to sin! Not, we are free to sin. We are free, but at the end of the day we have two obligations: to God and to neighbor. Period!! William Barclay makes this observation: “Christianity is the only true democracy, because in a Christian state everyone would think as much of his neighbor as he does of himself.” 

Since in our worship this morning we have spoken the stirring words of The Declaration of Independence and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, I offer a more recent declaration of our country’s ideals in the following speech to Congress on January 6, 1941 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt: 

In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression – everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way – everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings, which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants – everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor – anywhere in the world. 

And now for the rest of the story! On the last Sunday of the mission trip, our missioners were feted at a party. In attendance were “Little Jan” and his family, which included his two boys from his first wife, his partner’s girl, and a boy they had adopted together. (Hold up picture, an enlarged copy is in the narthex for you to see as you leave the church this morning.) The adopted boy on the left has stumps at his elbow, no legs and a speech impediment. They loved this child so much, he was adopted and cared for by “Little Jan” and his partner. The beautiful young woman in the picture is Jan’s partner. What you can’t see is that she has stumps for arms and hands, and is wheelchair-bound. She ties her little girl’s shoes with her teeth. She paints and did this drawing with her teeth. (Hold up drawing with Jesus on the Methodist Cross and Flame, which is also available for you to see in the narthex as you exit the church this morning.) Take  note of the imagery on the cross and flame. The suffering servant. “Little Jan’s” story is one person’s response to freedom. 

President Roosevelt concluded his speech, “This nation has placed its destiny in the hands, heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women, and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God.” Christ has placed the destiny of the kingdom of God on earth in the hands, heads and hearts of his disciples. This Fourth of July, what will you make of your freedom in Christ?