October 25, 2015, Reformation Sunday

“Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?” Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” John 8:31 – 36

“If we are ever to enter fully into the glorious liberty of the sons of God, we are 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 had made us like ill-taught piano students; we play our songs, but we never really hear them, because our main concern is not to make music, but to avoid some flub that will get us in dutch. She has been so afraid we will lose sight of the laws of our nature, that she made us care more about how we look than about who we are; made us act more like the subjects of a police state than fellow citizens of the saints.

It is essential that you see this clearly. The Apostle is saying that you, and Paul, and I have been sprung. Right now; not next week, or at the end of the world. And unconditionally, with no probation officer to report to. But that means that we have finally come face to face with the one question we have always thought we were aching to hear but that we now realize we have scrupulously ducked every time it got within a mile of us. What would you do with freedom if you had it? Only now it is posed to you not in the subjunctive but in the indicative: You are free. What do you plan to do?” (from Robert Capon in Between Noon and Three.)

You are free. You are free now. Today. Yes one day we will be free from pain, death, loss, suffering, etc., but there are ways that we can look at and live into our freedom right now. The first thing we should do is identify the ways that we are held hostage – by our jobs, by our wants You Are and needs, by our desires, and so on. We are just as capable of living holy lives as butchers, bakers and computer makers as we are if we all go to seminary. So if we are free, we need to live in that manner.

But we also need to remember who makes us free – Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ makes us free right now – free to love, to serve, to hate, to judge – it is an unprecedented freedom, but it is a spiritual freedom. So what will you do with your spiritual freedom today – and how will you be an instrument of freedom to someone you meet?

Pastor Dave