Free to Be

Joey, a nine year old boy, was asked one day by his mother what he had learned in Sunday School. “Well, Mom, our teacher told us how God sent Moses behind enemy lines on a rescue mission to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. When he got to the Red Sea, he had his engineers build a pontoon bridge and all the people walked across safely. Then, he used his walkie-talkie to radio headquarters for reinforcements. They sent bombers to blow up the bridge and all the Israelites were saved.”

“Now, Joey, is that really what your teacher taught you? asks his mother. “Well, no, Mom, but if I told it the way the teacher did, you’d never believe it!”

The well-known author of such classic children’s books as Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web, also a writer and editor at The New Yorker magazine at the time, E. B. White, made some observations, too, in July of 1940, at a time when war in Europe and Asia was escalating. His comments were in an essay called “Freedom,” appropriate for reflection at this time in which we celebrate our country’s freedoms. He began with “I have often noticed on my trips to the city that people have recut their clothes to follow the fashion. On my last trip, however, it seemed to me that people had remodeled their ideas too—taken in their convictions a little at the waist, shortened the sleeves of their resolve, and fitted themselves out in a new intellectual ensemble copied from a smart design out of the very latest page of history. It seemed to me they had strung along with Paris a little too long.”

He confessed to a disturbed stomach as he would find anyone adjusting his mind to the new tyranny that was succeeding abroad. He went on to say that, “Because of its fundamental strictures, fascism does not seem to me to admit of any compromise or any rationalization, and I resent the patronizing air of persons who find in my plain belief in freedom a sign of immaturity. If it is boyish to believe that a human being should live free, then I’ll gladly arrest my development and let the rest of the world grow up.”

E.B. White repeated some of the strange remarks he heard in New York. They included a man who told him that he thought perhaps the Nazi ideal was a sounder ideal than our constitutional system “because have you ever noticed what fine alert young faces the young German soldiers have in the newsreel?” The man went on to add: “Our American youngsters spend all their time at the movies—they’re a mess.” That was how he saw the new Europe of the time. Another informed E.B. that our democratic notion of popular government was decadent and not worth bothering about—“because England is really rotten and the industrial towns there are a disgrace.” And the man seemed so pleased with himself as he gave that reason for the hopelessness of democracy…

Still another assured E.B. that anyone who took any kind of government seriously was a gullible fool. “You could be sure,” the man said, “that there is nothing but corruption because of the way Clemenceau acted at Versailles.” He went on to say it didn’t really make any difference about that war because it was just another war… Still others shared with him their varied opinions, which included berating him for losing his detachment, and another who preferred the role of innocent bystander, describing it as the duty of any intelligent person.

E.B. was shocked to find defeatism, disillusionment, paralysis, and more—when he expected to find righteous indignation, at the least. He went on to reveal his suspicions of those who shared an affinity toward fascism, while he relayed his own personal love of freedom, describing it as the same as that of those who attended our country’s birth, more than a century and a half earlier. Yet he saw these others as “fearfully disturbing,” and “destructive,” and he was left pale and shaken… as should we be.

His observations were so important for then, and for us to reflect on at this time, as we celebrate today’s freedoms. From the child to the adult, are our perceptions so distorted?

I looked at just a couple things that hit me in recent times to see how distorted our vision can get and I didn’t have to go far, even omitting the most controversial and potentially inflammatory… I just glanced at the headlines on the Internet news.

The first was titled “Cracking Down on Courtroom Tears.” The article started out “Defense attorneys in capital murder cases have often been accused of not working hard enough to help spare their clients the death penalty, in some cases even falling asleep in the middle of a trial. It’s not often, though, that lawyers are accused of caring too much—or at least appearing to care too much—about the fate of the defendants they represent. But that is essentially what state prosecutors in Ohio are claiming, as they try to ban attorneys from swaying a jury with the power of tears.” I’m sorry, friends, it’s bad enough that attorneys are falling asleep, but now we’re trying to regulate tears?! And not even the tears of criminals, but those of defense attorneys and prosecutors!

About the same time as this major issue came about, another article caught my attention, “How to Live With 100 Things.” Now, I admit I could just be personally over-sensitive, because, goodness knows, I have way too much stuff—and I admit, honestly, that I believe we all should simplify our lives and our possessions and eliminate clutter, and I do believe this is an honest attempt to encourage that. I mean Jesus was an individual with few possessions and he is our model… but I do question how much time and focused effort could be spent on this one project if the specific goal were to be actually reached and maintained over a period of time—and the fact that it could become an obsession that would over-ride many other more important things, especially in the world of today—time that could be better spent elsewhere. And, what about Aunt Mary’s precious pearl ring that she left to me—whoops, that’s 101; there it goes! What about the drawing my grandchild gave to me when she was 4 years old, that I treasure so dearly? What about the well-over-100 pictures of my children growing up? What of others who need specialized adaptive equipment, or just comfort items… I can’t give my friend a gift or they’ll have 101… and so on… and we are free to choose…

As we consider these things, what direction are we headed? Where are we going, with the law… and with our lives? We are free to be as we choose… aren’t we?

In the first scripture we shared today, the people are hoping for a king that would reign as God would reign… It’s the ideal ruler’s agenda that is outlined in the almost entirely intercessory prayer of the Psalmist. Israel was surrounded by monarchies at the time and it was believed that God would work through their king. The prayer covers about every situation—justice and righteousness, delivering the needy and saving the life of the poor; all are included. It’s the unachievable, all comprehensive list of what is wanted in the law, before the time that Jesus comes on the scene. It’s the peoples’ request of God.

And then we have the reading in Matthew, in which God responds to the people. They do not yet know Jesus, so his contemporaries are sitting on the sidelines so to speak, functioning as children who can’t play happily. They just don’t get it. It’s a parable in which we see that John the Baptist has been rejected because he was too intense and just not “normal,” while Jesus, who is just the opposite of John, is also rejected for who he is, as he mixes with the people with a joy and acceptance that they can’t understand. They’re pretty negative on all sides… Jesus is referred to as the Son of man, a confusing term as is the phrase “wisdom is justified by her deeds.”

Ah, but then Jesus brings it all together… It’s a simple message, really, that everyone is making way too complex. Jesus next reveals his special relationship and kinship with his Father, and his Father’s knowledge of him… He invites all who are burdened with work and all the intensity of the law to instead take his yoke, his burden, that is a light and easy one, and to find rest.

It is revealed to the people that they don’t have to observe all the rigidity and structure of that previously known law, because Jesus has freed them to simply discover their gifts and talents and know what they should do from that. It’s a much kinder and gentler approach, and it’s the freedom that Jesus would have them have, under God. With that freedom, joy and relationship develop, as the people learn and are brought ever closer to their God to bless him as they are blessed.

Friends, it is because of this response to Jesus to live our lives in open, accepting fulfillment of all that he has to offer us, that we might become all that we can be in Christ, each of us with our own gentle yoke that fits well and doesn’t chafe and that has become a blessed gift for the nature and joy of it.

At this Independence Day weekend, then, we realize that the message of these scriptures is to have each of us follow Jesus in the way that best uses our talents and gifts, with the least outside restriction, yet knowing that this is the way of the greatest responsibility. It is the way we fulfill our God-given mission as we freely respond to all that Christ offers. It is fulfillment of the great commission, with all of us becoming missionaries on this earth. To enable us to fully live out our command, it then becomes the role of our government to be minimal, lest we be restricted in any way from fulfilling the greatest commandment of love to our neighbor, individually and collectively.

Recognizing the individual uniqueness of each of us, our Methodist founder John Wesley provided us some words to reflect on that give us some additional guidelines for living our lives in love and service. He reminded us,

• Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion?
• It is certain, so long as we know but in part, that we will not see all things alike. It is an unavoidable consequence of the present weakness and shortness of human understanding that several men will be of several minds in religion as well as in common life. So it has been from the beginning of the world, and so will it be “till the restitution of all things.”
• Every wise man, therefore, will allow others the same liberty of thinking which he desires they should allow him, and will no more insist on their embracing his opinions, than he would have them to insist on his embracing theirs. He bears with those who differ from him, and only asks him with whom he desires to unite in love that single question, “Is thy heart right, as my heart is with thy heart?” We sometimes express it as “we can agree to disagree.” For we realize that it becomes most important not just what we do, but how we do it. We are all simply instruments of God’s love, always learning his will for us, and serving under the law, praying that we may serve our Lord to the fullest of our abilities.

Jesus says, “The life I give you is not a burden, meant to overload you, but your task is made to fit you, a burden laid on us in love and meant to be carried in love.” Jesus alone knows God fully, so that the ideal government is that which allows the fullest expression of God’s love to be revealed, that we might be free to be builders of the kingdom. In God we trust. Amen.

Benediction: Sisters and brothers, we are not dismissed. We are not just free to go. Christ sends us! Go in the power of the Spirit to love and serve the Lord. Go to help and heal in all you do. Thanks be to God.

Sermon delived by Rev. Carol Mumford on July 6, 2008.