July 1, 2001
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
Acts 16:16-40
I wonder how
many teenagers over the years have said something like this: “I can’t wait
until I get out of my parent’s house and get my own place. Then I will finally
be free! Free to dress like I want, eat what I want, play my music whenever I
want, hang out with whomever I want. I’ll be in charge of my life. I will be
free!” I am sure I said much the same thing myself, back in the dark ages when
I was a teenager and young adult. To be on my own and be free - I couldn’t
wait. And now I am. I stand before you today a free man - free to pay mortgage
and rising utility costs, free to pay taxes, free to worry about car and home
repairs, free each month to balance a stack of bills on one hand and a shrinking
checking account balance on the other, free to worry about all of you and the
church, free to worry about my own young adult children and how they are using
their freedom! But still…free!
Now, I know we
disagree on many things, from choice of political party to whether we prefer a
Big Mac over a Whopper. But as we enter a week in which we celebrate our great
festival of National Independence, I suspect one thing on which we can agree is
the value of freedom. We cherish our freedom, personal and political -
everything from freedom of religion and speech to the freedom to pursue our own
destiny. “Long may our land be bright, with freedom’s holy light.”
Ah freedom. And
yet, just what does it mean to be free - really free? Is it life without
restrictions - the freedom to do and be whatever I want, whenever I want? Many
seem to think so. A mother and father brought their daughter into a child
psychologist. The girl was withdrawn, had taken to pulling out her hair in
large clumps. The parents essentially sat the girl down in the therapist’s
office and said, “fix her.” They were a hard working, high income, up and
coming young couple. The sky was the limit, professionally and financially. In
conversations with the girl, the therapist discovered that she often came home
after school to an empty house. She never knew for sure if both parents would
be home or if one might be called away on an unplanned business trip. She never
knew who might be putting her to bed at night. He asked her how all this made
her feel. She answered, “I feel like I have a hole in my heart.”
Freedom. I’m
sure her parents would extol the value of freedom to pursue their destiny, to
pursue economic success. But freedom can sing a siren’s song when it closes our
ears to the song of other values, when it is pursued for its own sake, when it
is used to justify a flight from responsibility, a refusal to be bound by any
restrictions, even the restriction of caring for another. In the words of one
colleague, “We Americans have built a society that has given an unprecedented
measure of freedom to its citizens. We have freedom of choice, but now what do
we choose? We are free, but also terribly lonely, terribly driven. You see,
there is freedom and then there is freedom. And our problem is that we may not
even know what true freedom is.”
“There is
freedom and then there is freedom.” Not a bad theme for our text this morning.
Paul and Silas are in jail - imprisoned because Paul has freed a slave girl from
the bondage of what would appear to be mental illness. She is free from
disease, but her freedom is not good news for her owners who can no longer earn
money from her affliction. The good news of freedom for one is bad news for
another. How often has that been true in human history? Her freedom from
illness reveals how enslaved her supposedly free owners are to a system of
oppression. And so with their source of income suddenly dried up, they arrange
to have Paul and Silas tossed in jail - troublemakers, dangerous agitators.
We’ll teach them about freedom! But it is Paul and Silas who have some teaching
to do.
What do we
read? “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God and
prisoners were listening to them.” Chained, kept in the innermost cell, beaten,
perhaps facing death. But all they see is an opportunity to share the good news
of Christ. They are still free to do ministry, to spread the Word. And for
them, that’s just about enough. You get the feeling that they didn’t even hear
the metallic clang of the prison door as it shut behind them. Who is truly free
here? Those who have imprisoned them have no power over them, no power to
determine the meaning of their lives or even of their deaths. Even though they
are in chains, they are strangely . . . free!
Several years
ago, when a Marxist government had taken power in Angola, the Methodist Bishop
of that country visited the United States. He was asked if there was tension
between his church and the government. “Yes,” he replied. “In fact, not long
ago the government decreed that we should disband all women’s organizations in
the church. (I could have told them that was never going to work!) But the
women kept meeting and we shall keep meeting. The government does what it needs
to do. The church does what it needs to do. If we go to jail for being the
church, we shall go to jail. Jail is a wonderful place for Christian
evangelism. Our church made some of its most dramatic gains during the
revolution when so many of us were in jail. In jail, you have time to preach
and teach…Don’t worry about the church in Angola. God is doing fine by us.”
Then he added, “Frankly, I would find it much more difficult to be a pastor in
the United States. There is so much, so many things. It must be hard to be the
church here.”
I’m thankful we
aren’t persecuted and jailed for worshipping on Sunday morning, but when I think
about our church and about the church in Angola, who is really free? There is
freedom and then there is freedom. Like Paul and Silas, the Angolan Christians
were living a different story from that of their oppressors. And in the context
of that story, a story to which they had given their lives, they were free.
Even in jail, free. Not even the threat of death had any power over them. To
what story have we given our lives? Paul, Silas, the Christians in Angola,
eventually even the jailer in our text, discovered that iron bars do not
necessarily make a prison. I want to be free like that.
The siren song
of freedom is that I don’t have to give my life to anything or anyone. I am a
free agent - no restrictions, do what I want. But then why does it feel like
the world continues to have such power over me. Why does it seem that so many
boasts of freedom today are really nothing more than a rattling of our chains?
I think I’m
free. Then Jesus walks by, saying “If you continue in my word, you are truly my
disciples; and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.” Every
day, you see, we are up against the kind of life Jesus stood for, the truth he
revealed, the tenderness he nourished, the courage by which he lived. And the
decision is ours. Is his story the story for us? Is the freedom he offers, a
freedom involving service, sacrifice, and discipleship, the freedom for us?
There is freedom, you see, and then there is freedom. In the words of the
classic hymn, “Make me a captive Lord, and then I will be free.”
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