A Sermon by Pastor Tom Lacey . . .
power to be better
Galatians 5:1, 13-26, Preached at Congregational Church of Boca Raton, June 27, 2010
A lawyer stood at the gate to Heaven. St. Peter was patiently explaining that the man's sins were far too many and serious to allow for admission into heaven. "Sir, surely you don't deny that you routinely overcharged your clients. That you cheated on your wife with your law clerks and associates -- and that you used your position as a partner to pressure those clerks and associates into becoming involved with you. Surely you don't deny that you deliberately took false positions in court in order to win cases, where any sense of ethics would have caused you to settle. And there's so much more here, why surely...." The lawyer interrupted, "Yes, yes, I know all of that. But I've done some charity in my life as well." St. Peter looked in his book and noted, "Yes, I see. Once you gave a dime to a panhandler and once you gave an extra nickel to the shoeshine boy, correct?" The lawyer looked smug. He replied, "Yes." St. Peter turned to the angel next to him and said, "Give this guy 15 cents and tell him to go to hell."
The 19th century Spanish general Ramon Narvaez was on his deathbed, and toward the end, was visited by a priest. Eventually, the discussion came around to the condition of the officer’s soul. The priest asked him “Sir, have you forgiven your enemies?” “I have no need to forgive them” the officer weakly replied, “I’ve had them all shot.”
The myth of the dramatic deathbed conversion is usually just that, a myth. A person who has spent a lifetime ignoring God is usually still ambivalent about awaits him beyond death’s door. Consider what John Tillotson, archbishop of Canterbury from 1691-1694 said about deathbed conversions: “Do we think that when the day has been idly spent and squandered away by us, we shall be fit to work when the night and darkness come, when our understanding is weak, and our memory frail, and our will crooked, and by long custom of sinning obstinately bent the wrong way, what can we then do in religion? What reasonable or acceptable service can we then perform to God? When our candle is just sinking into the socket, how shall our light “so shine before men that they may see our good works”? ... I will not pronounce anything concerning the impossibility of a deathbed repentance, but I am sure that it is very difficult, and, I believe, very rare.”
We need the power to be and do better now, not later. This is what Paul is talking about in his letter to Galatians, the spiritual power to become better, fuller expressions of what it means to be human, as God wills it for each of us. Free to be anything, but choosing to be what is best.
“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that
among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” When the
Continental Congress declared separation from
Human history is the story of people living-into freedom. Thousands of years before John Hancock’s “John Hancock” signed the Declaration of Independence, the foundational stories of Judeo-Christian tradition say God’s people, enslaved in Egypt, were inspired to freedom. God sent a man named Moses who demanded of Pharaoh’s regime, “Let my people go.” When Pharaoh and company refused, God’s Spirit stirred, the Hebrews escaped and then sojourned 40 struggling years to find freedom’s way to the Promised Land.
A thousand years or so later, the Christian story tells about people
oppressed by the principalities and powers of an occupying force, the
In 1992 a woman named Suzanne Moeller traveled with an American church
group to
The idea of freedom stirs not only in human hearts and minds; it also streams from the heart of God. Like Paul says, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” 2 Cor. 3:17 Nelson Mandela, now in his 90s, once said, “to be free is to not merely cast off chains, but to live in a way that enhances the freedom of others.” Misunderstanding freedom is nothing new. In the reading from Galatians come powerful words about freedom: “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only does not use freedom as an opportunity for self indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. The whole law is summed up in a single commandment: ‘You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself.’”
Now these words were born of a serious conflict with divisive extremes in
a church, in
The other faction believed it was imperative to strictly adhere to the requirements of religious ritual, the most significant ritual being circumcision. This group’s perspective was that a Gentile believer still had to relate to God in a primarily Jewish way; therefore, circumcision was required. Freedom is all well and good, these folks reasoned, but if you don’t have rules to live by, and you don’t live by those rules the whole house will crumble. Now you know why Paul is so passionate in saying that merely observing ritual or holding to tradition for tradition sake misses the point.
To be free is to be liberated from the prison of “me, myself and I.” To be free is to be able to move beyond oneself and into the risk to love, to give oneself freely. The first question freedom asks is not “what’s in it for me?” To be free is to be free for responsibility not from responsibility. People saw this freedom in Jesus of Nazareth. The early church sang a hymn about Jesus, with reverence: “though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself taking the form of a slave.” Ph 2: 6-11 That’s what freedom looks like and how freedom acts.
The apostle Paul warns us that certain behaviors may cause the flesh to feel good, but they're ultimately destructive. Paul's list includes fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness and carousing. "Live by the Spirit," says Paul, "and do not gratify the desires of the flesh." Just say "no thanks" to these "works" of the flesh, despite their appeal to our fleshly palates.
But let's face it, we may do quite well pushing away
licentiousness, idolatry, and sorcery, but anger and envy, for example, do have
a certain appeal. In fact, Frederick Buechner says that anger is possibly the
most fun of the Seven Deadly Sins. "To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over
grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter
confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the
pain you are given and the pain you are giving back - in many ways it is a feast
fit for a king." But anger is not often a nutritious meal. The chief drawback,
says Buechner, is that what you are wolfing down is yourself.
Paul offers an alternative lifestyle option: the fruit of the Spirit.
Rather than a vice that one manufactures, the fruit of the Spirit are virtues
that are generated from within. Spirit virtues can fill us, satisfy us and
strengthen us. And here's why: In order to find peace, you have to live peace.
In order to find generosity, you have to be generous. In order to find joy in
your life, you have to find joy in your life. In order to have love, you have to
be someone who loves. With God, there is no separation between essence and
action, between will and completion, between what God is going to be and what
God is now. Many people misunderstand a life of power, a spiritual life. They
think one has to do this in order to get that; that you have to find the secret
to being happy in order to be happy; you have to read about the seven paths to
love in order to find the one love you want. But the spiritual life is the
Spirit's life in us; and since there is no separation in God of essence and
action, there can only be one thing. So to find joy, you become joyful; to find
peace, you live at peace. To become powerful, like God, you become like God,
like Christ Jesus, "who though he was in the form of God did not regard equality
with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a
slave."
Living into this kind of power and freedom, as individuals, church or nation, we are works in progress. We may fall short of the ideals offered us in the scriptures and by our forebears, but if we are looking for the adversaries of freedom and the promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in our country, we must continue to take on poverty, violence, lack of good education, illness and disease, discrimination and intolerance. We ought to strive in public policy, including issues of taxes, health care, immigration policy, adoption policy, and economics to build people up, to affirm that every person, regardless of skin color, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, class or level of education is made in the image and likeness of God. If we believe any less about any of God’s people, then we’ll treat them that way.
To a church in
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