Sermon Archives

July 4, 2010
Pastor Jim Bangsund

"No Other Gospel: Dealing with Freedom"
Sermon Series on Galatians (5 of 5)
Galatians 5-6

Thank goodness for Martha Washington putting her foot down. As we know, many who first came to America were fleeing the oppression of monarchy - British and European kings before whom they had no freedoms and were mere subjects. Thus, the American experiment was set up as we know it today, with a president, congress and courts but no king. Yet what many don't realize is that there were those in our early history who wanted to start setting such things in place again. George Washington was almost made a quasi-religious cult figure, as some of us will have discovered if you've visited the nation's Capitol. If you've been there, you know what I mean: the vast expanse of the Capitol rotunda contains a mural known as "the Apotheosis of Washington."

Apotheosis means "elevation or exaltation of a person to the rank of a god," and indeed the image is of Washington ascending up through the clouds into the heavens - very similar to images of Jesus' ascension which you see in the domes of many cathedrals. And there was almost more. When Washington died, there was a movement to bury him in a vault deep in the central foundation of the Capitol building, but it was at that point that Martha put her foot down, taking a very practical and dubious look at the idea and saying, "No, he's being buried at Mt Vernon." And so he was.

Thank goodness for Martha, because there's always the danger that the hard work of the Founding Fathers will be allowed to come unglued. It almost happened during the Civil War; and today some watch with great concern the polarizing and extremism that enter the political stage from both wings. What might those who have gone before us say to us today? At one point, Benjamin Franklin looked at the danger of polarization and said, "We must hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall most assuredly hang separately." Today, he might say "Start pulling together or you will lose what you have - what we risked our necks to provide for you."

As we come to the end of our series on Galatians, the message is remarkably similar. We're picking up at chapter 5 on page 1154 in your church Bibles. Paul has heard that this young group of congregations in Galatia, which had come into being through his preaching, was losing its moorings. We have heard, in particular, over the past four weeks, of the threat to the Gospel by a group called Judaizers: legalists who were insisting that faith in Christ was not enough to put us right with God - that people also had to keep the old law of Moses including circumcision. We have heard a good deal about that group, but this morning, as we move toward the end of Paul's letter, we find that there was another group Paul had to keep his eye on - folks who were the polar opposites of the Judaizers.

In chapter 5, verse 1, Paul exhorts the Galatians to hang tight with the Gospel

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free [he writes]. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

Slavery to religious laws. Many years ago, when I was a seminarian, we were assigned to a moderate-sized town in Iowa, where I did my internship with the pastors of two large Lutheran congregations. The pastor of the largest was on the radio and so had become known as Mr Lutheran in the area. But his preaching was legalistic to the core, and I remember a sermon in which he told of two young men in a previous congregation who'd had an airplane. One Sunday morning, they decided to go flying instead of attend church. The plane crashed, and they both went to Hell - so he claimed - because they hadn't been in church that day to hear the benediction. Wow. Now that's legalism! And a steady diet of that had certainly affected the listening audience out in the radio hinterlands.

That became clear when, toward the end of my internship, I was up to preach and the lesson was today's text from Galatians 5: "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." I preached it like Paul wrote it, and I remember getting an angry letter from a radio listener that concluded, "We have to teach our children to fear and love God" - with the word "fear" underlined three times. The bitter fruit of legalism. That was the day I came to understand the intensity of Paul's concern for his children in the faith as he wrote his letter to the Galatians. He was contending for their spiritual lives, and we hear his anguish in verses 7 and 8 where, like a parent to a child, he writes:

You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you.

And if Paul is like a pitcher doing his best to throw strikes, the strike zone suddenly narrows as we get to verses 13 and following, for here we encounter the second group I mentioned:

You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.

There were those who misunderstood Paul - perhaps willfully - and said, "This grace and freedom stuff is great. Party hearty, it makes no difference what you do; and if it causes grief for your neighbor - well, that's what Jesus came to forgive." And so Paul has to carefully weave his way between these two polarized groups: the legalists and the anything-goes folks. Yes, you were called to be free, he writes. But don't use your freedom in unhealthy ways." Freedom abused can become the new slavery. If you smoke and overeat, and the doctors pull you back after a heart attack, don't use your new lease on life to continue the same old habits. Use it in ways that benefit yourself and others.

Where do we find ourselves on this 4^th of July 2010? - we who live in a free country, we who are free in Christ. We're found in a variety of places, I suppose. As Americans, we're becoming polarized enough that I find myself seeking the cooler, calmer voice of the BBC when I look for radio news - now there's a great irony for the 4^th of July! As we face a whole truckload of problems on both the national and state level, how much we as followers of Jesus need to be found in the responsible middle, seeking to pull to center stage those who are retreating to the left and right wings to snarl or to sulk.

But greater than that - foundational to that - what does it mean to you that you are a forgiven child of God, set free in Christ from the burden of following endless religious rules? That's what Galatians is driving at. Even today, we may still struggle to find our place between legalism and anything-goes. Legalism. Sometimes I run into people who still labor under that heavy burden. If you come from a background where churchgoing was a duty - an obligation to be fulfilled - it can be mighty hard to get out from under that cloud. Let me encourage you to think on this: God wants you here in worship not as a duty or obligation or payback of some kind but as a relationship. God wants a living relationship with you and that's why he has told you to set aside certain times and places for doing that. Chances to gather together, to sing praise to him, to hear his Word for the week ahead, and then to visit and fellowship with friends.

But the flip side of legalism is the tepid and indifferent world of anything-goes. Luther once said, "We're all like drunken peasants; we either fall off one side of the horse or the other," and if I fall off of this side of the horse I can become complacent, all about me, and indifferent to those around me, the ones to whom God is sending me.

Remember - if you were here last week - what Paul said about heirs vs slaves? If you live in the big house, you will live in a far different way if you know you are an heir than if you consider yourself a slave. In two ways. First, you'll walk tall and not grovel like a slave or look at the world through the pinched narrow eyes of a legalist. Second, if you really take seriously the fact that you are an heir - that God has claimed you for his own and has a purpose for your life today - you will simply live in different ways than the folks for whom anything goes. Consider who you are - an heir, a child of God, one for whom Christ died. God has called you and appointed you to a place in this Valley that only you can fill - he's surrounded you with people whose lives only you can touch - whether you are 8 or 80, whether you are a child or a CEO. Paul is saying: remember that, and let it shape your life.

You know, God started making that point with his people from the beginning. As we have seen, Paul mentions Abraham several times in Galatians because Abraham was the one with whom God started - the one from whose descendants God formed the nation of Israel which was to become the cradle for the Christ child. Paul showed how promise trumps law. Five centuries before God gave the law to Moses he began by giving a promise to Abraham. And if we read carefully, we realize that from the get-go that promise was meant for the whole world. "By you," God told Abraham, "all the families of the earth will be blessed." When God blesses us, he means it to be passed on as a blessing to others.

This past week, in the men's Bible study, we noted how often God reminded Israel, "Remember, you were slaves in Egypt and I had mercy on you; therefore, you are to have mercy on others." And so it is with me and with you. God has made you part of the family, an heir with a calling and a purpose.

Martha Washington got it right, and spared a young nation from wandering back into the world of personality cult, of subjects and monarchs, of things that had just been escaped by those who fled European royalty. Thomas Jefferson also got it right - the same issue, but in a dramatically different way. Perhaps you caught the fascinating story in yesterday's Washington Post. ⁽¹⁾ Scholars of the Declaration of Independence have finally solved a mystery contained in an early draft of that great document in which Jefferson obliterated one word and wrote another in its place. The article, by Marc Kaufman, notes that

in a moment when history took a sharp turn, Jefferson sought quite methodically to expunge the word, to wipe it out of existence and write over it. Many words were crossed out and replaced in the draft, but only one was obliterated. Over the smudge, Jefferson then wrote the word "citizens."

But what was that original word that Jefferson wrote and then wanted to remove completely from the Declaration of Independence? Scholars had speculated for years about what that word was before he changed it to "citizens." Some suggested "patriots;" others "residents." But now it turns out that the change was much more dramatic. Using a modified version of the kind of spectral imaging technology developed for the military, the Library of Congress has been able to tease out that original word from the smudge in the parchment. The word that Jefferson expunged and replaced with "citizens"? "Subjects." "Subjects"! Dianne van der Reyden, of the Library of Congress, said

"Seldom can we re-create a moment in history in such a dramatic and living way. ... It's almost like we can see him write 'subjects' and then quickly decide that's not what he wanted to say at all, that he didn't even want a record of it. Really, it sends chills down the spine" [she writes].

Indeed. So today we are citizens, not subjects. And this is precisely what Paul contends for in Galatians from beginning to end. "For freedom Christ has set you free." Now live in that freedom as an heir, Paul says - not as a slave or a subject, not in an attitude of "anything goes" indifference, but rather as an heir. "Free you are, and my child you are," God says, "a citizen and heir in my household. And now, as you live in that freedom, there is much I'm going to accomplish through you." Amen.