Sunday, June 29, 2014

Looking for Freedom



A Sermon Preached on June 29, the Third Sunday after Pentecost, at St. Augustine's, Wiesbaden
Jeremiah 28:5-9, Romans 6:11-23, Matthew 10:40-42, Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18

Hands up anyone who knows who David Hasselhoff is? I apologize for making you date yourselves: Mr. Hasselhoff, his catch phrase is “don’t hassle the Hoff,” was well known as an actor in the 80s and 90s, in series such as Knight Rider and Baywatch, and he even had a couple of hit singles. While not known as a theologian, he still manages to make a theological point in his 1989 hit: “Looking for Freedom.” Here’s the refrain:

I’ve been looking for freedom
I’ve been looking for so long
I’ve been looking for freedom
Still the search goes on
I’ve been looking for freedom
Since I left my home town
I’ve been looking for freedom
Still it can’t be found

Interestingly, when you read the whole song text, it looks quite like a paraphrase of the Parable of the Prodigal Son….. but that’s for another sermon.
Freedom is one theme of today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans, but it seems to be a strange sort of freedom: “Freed from sin and enslaved to God.” (6:22) But how can we be a slave and free? Martin Luther struggled with this same seeming paradox in his 1520 work: “Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen - On the Freedom of a Christian.” One purpose of his thirty theses was to justify his freedom from obedience to the Pope and to the Papal Church, as well as to liberate Christians from priestly dominance (I’m not sure I like that bit). 
But he also analyses the contradiction he finds in Paul’s letters, both in Romans and Corinthians, that a Christian is on the one hand “free and with no master,” and yet also God’s and “everyone’s servant.” (1 Cor. 9:19) How do these two fit together, how can we be free and a servant at the same time? Or focusing on the extract from Romans, if becoming a Christian is simply a change of Lord or Master, how can that be freedom? For if we are free from the law, surely we can do whatever we want?
For Paul, sin is more than just bad behavior. It is a personified, active and evil force. This Sin (with a capital S) acts as a Lord or Master and, unless we choose otherwise, exercises “dominion over our mortal bodies.” Absolute freedom is for Paul an illusion. We always serve a master, a point Jesus makes in Matthew: (6:24) “No one can serve two masters …. You cannot serve God and Money” (mammon). Or to quote our theologian David Hasselhoff again: “I had everything that money could buy, but freedom I had none.” What God offers, Paul says, is freedom from the slavery to sin and to the law, in exchange for our slavery to God and our subjection to God’s grace. While “slaves to sin” we are only deluded into believing that we are free and have free choices. Instead we are obeying another master, even if that master is some ideal of “self.” In this sense our freedom is the choice we make, our free choice to serve Christ as our Lord.

But Paul promises not only freedom from sin, but also from “law.” In his day He came in for a lot of flak for this argument, and was often accused of encouraging or even allowing sin. “Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace?” (Ro 6:15) he asks, rhetorically, using his opponents’ argument. No of course not he answers. Freedom from law, that is freedom from the idea that salvation can and must be earned by following a strict code of conduct, is not a license to sin, nor is it meant to introduce some kind of moral vacuum. 

New freedoms bring new frameworks. Look at our secular freedoms like freedom of speech, of religion, of assembly, they are defined and regulated in our laws and constitutions, such as the Bill of Rights that contains the first amendments to the US constitution or in the European Declaration of Human Rights. And freedoms have to be limited, because one person’s freedom can impinge another’s. Free speech is not unlimited: lies, exaggerations, or personal defamation are not allowed. And I am glad to live in a country that strictly limits the right to bear arms, especially firearms, as the freedom of the person bearing arms too often proves to be fatal for those who don’t.
Paul too introduces a new framework, when he refers to Christians having become obedient to the “form of teaching to which you were entrusted.” (6:17) By this he probably means the, at that time still oral, accounts of Jesus’ life and teaching, the practice of the Eucharist, and a code of practice of virtuous behavior. Presenting our members, our bodies and intellect, to God for “as instruments of righteousness” (6:13) means using them for righteous purposes, serving our fellow humans beings out of our love for Jesus, or as we heard in Matthew’s Gospel today, being welcoming and hospitable not just to prophets and righteous persons but to any “little one.” 

The difference between this “form of teaching” and law is the motivation. We are obedient from the heart – that is because we choose to be and because we are being transformed from within until this sort of behavior becomes part of our nature. Our Christian freedom is in this choice. On the one hand we can choose to live by behavior which is, at least in the long term both destructive to us and to those around us. Excessive drinking for example does eventually have consequences for our health and severely impacts how we relate to others. When Paul refers to death as the wages of sin, (6:23) he is not threatening a punishment, but simply describing the consequence of “sinful” behavior. 

Eternal life on the other hand is not earned; it is a free gift of God. Our new master is not the tyrant he is often claimed to be, and to be honest the one too many Christians make God out to be with lots of new rules and prohibitions. God’s character, as demonstrated in Jesus’ life and work, is grace and generosity. Living according to the “form of teaching” is not about earning salvation, but about living saved lives now, beginning our resurrection life in the present time, and living in this world as one dedicated to God.  That is what Paul means by us getting sanctification at the end of which is eternal life in Christ Jesus.  

That was also Martin Luther’s conclusion in his final, 30th thesis ofOn the Freedom of a Christian.” Christians, he says, does not live in or for themselves, but in Christ and in their neighbor. They live in Christ by faith and in their neighbor by love. Christian freedom frees the heart from all sin, law and commands he concludes.

So we are free to choose good or bad, free to choose which Lord or Master we serve. Christian Liberty is service, the service of Christ motivated by love. This freedom can be found; we don’t have to look far for it. This (the cross) is the symbol of Christian freedom. It stands for Christ’s free choice to serve us, even unto death, and it stands for his offer of the free choice of serving God through him and in one another. This is what one of the Collects in our Prayer Book calls perfect freedom: 

“O God, the author of peace and lover of concord, to know you is eternal life and to serve you is perfect freedom.”[1]
Amen


[1] A Collect for Peace, BCP, 99

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Following Jesus: tough, dangerous, and difficult!



A Sermon preached on Sunday June 22 (Pentecost II) at St. Augustine's, Wiesbaden
Jeremiah 20:7-13, Romans 6:1b-11, Matthew 10:24-39, Psalm 69:8-20

It has become quite trendy for priests and pastors to want their flocks to become disciples, rather than members and to be critical about the concept of membership. A member is seen primarily as someone who joins an organization for his or her own benefit, often a group of people who have the same interests, stamp collecting or breeding rabbits perhaps, and who too often are very alike in their background: ethnic, cultural, or social. Or a member is someone who pays dues to an organization for a particular service, an association like the AA, the AAA or the ADAC. And that is not what being a Christian is about.

I agree, it isn’t, but being a member is also a biblical concept. Just think of Paul and of the idea he introduces in several letters of how individual Christian are different, diverse, but mutually supportive members of the Body of Christ: “For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ.” (Romans 12:4-5) Now that’s not a bad definition of membership at all and I have no problem with you considering yourselves members in that sense! And as you know this church is also organized as an association, a Verein, of which we are all members. Many of you attended yesterday’s Special General Meeting of the Verein as voting members. As long as we remember that we were a church long before we organized ourselves as an association and that the latter is just a legal vehicle that serves our ministry and mission as Christ’s Church, then I have no problem with that form of membership either.  

Nevertheless as Christians we must also be disciples. What does that mean? This morning, in Matthew’s Gospel, we heard Jesus explaining some of what it means to his disciples.

A disciple is first and foremost a pupil. I studied Latin at school – a long time ago – and when our teacher came into the classroom at the beginning of the lesson we all stood up (it was as I said a long time ago) and had to greet him with the words “salve magister,” greetings teacher, to which he would reply “salvete discipuli,” greetings pupils. Our Sunday school children, who we will recognize later in the service, are therefore already disciples. They are willing and excited to learn about God and about God’s saving acts. That is what God expects of all of us too, that we are always willing to learn more and to grow in the knowledge of God’s love.

A Christian disciple is also totally committed to his or her teacher or master, that’s not me or any other priest or leader by the way, the only person we can ever be totally committed to is Jesus. In a classical Jewish disciple/teacher (rabbi) relationship, the pupil would move on to another master when they felt that they had learned enough. But not here, the pupil is never above the teacher because Jesus is not only our teacher, but also our abiding Lord. For the prophet Jeremiah the commitment to God and to God’s mission was so strong that he felt overpowered by it. The message was as compelling and irresistible as a burning fire within him.

But what do we do with this knowledge and total commitment? We pass it on. We tell it in the light and we proclaim it from the housetops where everyone can see and hear us. Disciples are called to a mission of fearless, public, and powerful proclamation. And sometimes we will need to be fearless when we speak the truth. Poor Jeremiah had to proclaim violence and destruction and suffered rejection even from his closest friends who, so the prophet tells us, were just waiting for him to stumble. Our message is not a message of doom, but a message of joy and hope. It is the Good News of a God of love and life. And yet when we preach peace when others call for war, when we hold up sharing and serving rather than just personal success and achievement, and when we speak out for compassion rather than competition we will also know derision and rejection. 

Jesus does not hold back with the costs and risks of discipleship. If others call him Beelzebul, the prince of demons, what will they call his followers? I believe some American TV and radio commentators have called Pope Francis a socialist, which is I suppose at least as bad as the prince of demons! Jeremiah was in his own words “a laughingstock,” mocked by everyone.
Another side effect of following Jesus was, and still can be, division, even within families. When Jesus says that he has not come to bring peace, but sword, he is not calling for violence or for the use of real weapons. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” he says and means in the Sermon on the Mount. But tension and division can be the unintended and yet unavoidable result of the uncompromising proclamation of God’s kingdom and of our absolute and unconditional allegiance to God and to God’s Son. In Jesus’ day family, tribal, and clan allegiance was often a value above all other values. But not for Christians. The only values above all other values are God’s values and the only family to which we owe unconditional allegiance is the family of Christians, which knows only one condition for membership: to acknowledge Christ before others.  

In Jesus’ day someone who took up the cross was already as good as dead, as he was on his way to the place of execution. And while Jesus’ call to take up the cross and follow him is metaphorical, in the sense of dying to the world and to the self, for many of his followers the consequences were anything but metaphorical. Unfortunately I can give you a long list of people for whom since then the cross they took up when they followed Jesus and proclaimed his message in the light and from the housetops was also the cause of their death.

So discipleship is tough, dangerous, and difficult. Would you choose Jesus over father, mother, brother, or sister?  Many good people have refused to do. Many people also fear the consequences, and some of the original disciples must have done, or Jesus would not have seen the need to tell them not to be fearful. The positive effect of being a disciple, and fully committed to God’s kingdom, is freedom from fear. In his letter to the Romans, Paul reminds us that in Baptism, that moment when we become members of the Church and followers of Christ, we are “buried with Christ by baptism into death.” But, he goes on to say, “if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” We trust in the promise of a God who is in control of the smallest things, like a sparrow. Jeremiah’s despair and depression turn into confidence when he feels God’s presence like a warrior protecting him from his persecutors. And we have the promise of life and love. Total allegiance and commitment to Christ also mean total identification with Christ and that is what gives us the desire and the ability to try and live a life like Christ’s with all that entails and promises. Those who lose or let go of their previous lives, or lifestyles, for Christ’s sake, find a new, better, and eternal life in Christ.

You see, I need neither disciples, nor members. It’s neither my choice, nor my doing when someone becomes one both despite and because of all that being a disciple means. Jesus wants disciples and calls you to become one and it is Jesus will support you, sustain you, and protect you on that path. It’s all in the hymn we just sang before and after the Gospel,[1] just take another look at those simple, yet profound words:   

I have decided to follow Jesus,
Though no one join me, still I will follow,
The world behind me, the cross before me,
No turning back, no turning back!
Amen


[1] “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus,” LEVAS No. 136

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Being Pentecostal



A Sermon preached on Sunday, June 8 (The Day of Pentecost) at St. Augustine's, Wiesbaden
Acts 2:1-21, 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13, John 7:37-39, Psalm 104:25-35, 37


How can I not preach about the Holy Spirit today? The Spirit is the theme of all three readings. First in Acts we heard how the Spirit appeared as a rush of violent wind and as tongues of fire, then in the letter to the Corinthians we were confronted with Paul’s list of a variety of gifts of the Spirit, and finally in the extract from John’s Gospel we heard how Jesus described himself as the source of the Spirit, which is like a river of living water.


Yet the Holy Spirit is often seen as the most abstract manifestation of God, the person of the Trinity who is most difficult to describe or explain. A well-known theologian, Alister McGrath, once called the Holy Spirit the Cinderella of the Trinity. The other two sisters”, he said, “may have gone to the theological ball; the Holy Spirit got left behind every time.”[1] And the original 325 AD version of the Nicene Creed, the one that was actually written in Nicaea, as opposed to the version we recite every week, which was finalized 56 years later in Constantinople, just finishes with the sentence: “We believe in the Holy Spirit.” No more. If you look at our version on page 359 of the prayer book – yes you have my permission to look at a book during my sermon – you will see that the sentence is now a paragraph and has a lot more to say about the Spirit!


Why did the doctrine of the Holy Spirit take so much time to develop? 
Although there is, as we heard this morning, a lot about the work of the Holy Spirit in the Bible, many of the concepts and ideas are attempts to describe how the Spirit worked in the lives of the early Christians and of the early Church. It is, they came to believe, through the Spirit that we experience God’s presence and support. The Spirit is the source of the inner strength and courage they needed and called upon, and it is in the Spirit that they felt connected to one another as Christ’s body. But these experiences were as varied and different and diverse as the people who had them. No single list of the workings of the Holy Spirit can be exhaustive, not even Paul’s long and detailed list in 1 Corinthians. You know, I am convinced that St. Paul, who was a big fan of lists, would have loved Powerpoint: I can just see his list on a slide as bullet points!


But even if these lists are not exhaustive or exclusive I think it’s still worth looking at what our readings and the Creed have to tell us about the Holy Spirit, in particular about what the Spirit does in our lives today.


One thing the images of the Spirit, wind, fire, and water, tell us is that just as air, water, warmth and light are essential to life, so too is the Spirit. Our Creed talks about the Holy Spirit as the Lord, the giver of life. It was the Spirit of God that moved over the waters of chaos in the first creation story in Genesis. The Spirit is the divine spark within us that makes us more than just creatures. When we talk about being made in the image of God, I think it’s that Spirit shining through.


No one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit, Paul says, identifying the Spirit as that which enables and sustains our faith and helps us communicate our faith to others. In the Acts reading the Spirit very literally made this possible by giving the disciples the ability to speak in other languages so that all present could hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power. It is the same Spirit that moves some people to ecstatic speech. This is a gift that our Pentecostal and Charismatic brothers and sisters value and make a central part of their worship. But being able to explain God’s deeds of power to children or young people in their language, making the Good News meaningful and relevant for their lives, is also a gift of the Spirit, one that our Sunday school teachers and youth leaders clearly have.


Prophecy is another gift of the Spirit. Our Creed says that it was the Spirit who spoke through the Prophets, in Acts Peter quotes the prophet Joel’s saying about how God pours out the Spirit and as a result the sons and daughters shall prophesy, and Paul too lists prophecy as one of the gifts. Prophecy in the biblical sense is not about foretelling the future, but about speaking the truth about the present, however unpleasant and dangerous that might be! So the gift of the Spirit is the ability to recognize that truth, that injustice or other wrong behavior that needs to be named and changed as well as the courage to do so regardless of who we are calling out. I think we all need a large share of that gift!


As Christians we should always pray for God’s guidance when we have big and important decisions to take, whether they are personal decisions or ones we take for the Church. We believe that the Holy Spirit guided the men and women who wrote down Scripture and that the same Spirit guides us when we read and interpret Scripture as a source for guidance. The Spirit can also work through visions and dreams, as we heard in Acts, or in the wisdom and knowledge we use to help choose the right path. How do we know that it is the Holy Spirit working in us? The test, as Paul says, is that the decision must be for the common good. Only a decision that is good for us all, not for personal gain, that does not result in winners and losers, and that furthers the kingdom of God is a manifestation of the Spirit.


Paul mentions other gifts – healing, discernment of spirits, or the working of miracles – which I’m not going to talk about in any detail. Anyway, his list is by no means exclusive: there are many other gifts that serve the common good and are just as valuable as those he mentions. There is, as Paul makes clear, no hierarchy of gifts. For example, the ability to listen to someone else, to just be a comforting listening presence to someone in need can be as valuable as the gift of the utterance of wisdom – even the ‘wisdom’ uttered from the pulpit.


The Spirit works in us both as individuals, as well as in the Church, which is why she gets a mention in this section of the Creed. The Church was formed by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, in fact Pentecost is sometimes referred to as the birthday of the Church. We become members of the Church, the one body, through our Baptism by water and the Spirit. As Paul makes clear, the gifts of the Spirit are allocated to each person individually, but only so these persons work together as the different, diverse, but also complementary members of the one body.


Paul equates the varieties of gifts of the Spirit, with the varieties of services of the Lord, and with the varieties of activities of God. The gifts of the Spirit are simply not meant just to be enjoyed personally, nor are they primarily a means of individual growth and experience. The gifts of the Spirit are meant to be used for the common good and to glorify God. Jesus cries out “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.” The Holy Spirit is essential and life-giving. And it will not run out, the more we use our gifts in God’s service, letting living water flow out of our hearts, the more we will have.




I will invoke, or call down the Holy Spirit later in the service: this is of course purely symbolic as the Spirit of God already dwells within you. But I hope it will serve to renew that Spirit within you so that it has the same effect as the Holy Spirit on that first Pentecost. As we celebrate Pentecost today I want us to be a Pentecostal church, by which I mean as filled with the Holy Spirit and as willing to be sent into the world to preach the Gospel until the ends of the earth as the disciples were on that first Pentecost. And I want us to be a charismatic church, not because you have to wave your hands in the air, though you may if you feel so moved, but because we both recognize and use the Holy Spirit’s gifts, in Greek charism. And I want us to be a serving church, using those gifts of the Spirit to serve God, God’s kingdom and all of God’s people in loving, humble service following the example of God’s Son.

Amen.






[1] Christian Theology: An Introduction, Alister E. McGrath, 227