Born on the Fourth of July
July 01, 2007
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Galatians 5:1, 13-25; Luke 9:51-62
For freedom, Paul says, Christ has set us free. Presbyterian pastor Joanna Adams points out that freedom is “an idea that originates in the very heart of God.” God could have created us to be obedient puppets, she explains, who would always do the right thing. But, says Adams, “God created us, women and men, with the capacity and the responsibility to act as free moral agents. The desire for freedom is not simply a function of the human spirit. Its source is nothing less that the free will of the Living God.”
So freedom isn’t actually an American invention – although Americans have spoken eloquently about freedom, America originated a government based on freedom, Americans have fought for freedom, died for freedom, stood for freedom in a way no other nation has. Nonetheless – long preceding such words as “Give me liberty or give me death…” and “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” were the words of Jesus who in his first sermon proclaimed that he had come “to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives…to let the oppressed go free….” And Jesus later said to those who 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…So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”
We think of freedom and America as being two sides of the same coin –“it’s a free country!” we assert. And the rights we cherish most dearly are those rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights, which we call civil liberties – the freedoms that come with being in America: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom from state-mandated religion, freedom to assemble, freedoms within the legal system –and we are free to disagree with our government, to reject religion, to disrespect the President, or the Congress, or the President AND the Congress. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” proclaims the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The birthday of this country, and those words, falls this Wednesday – 231 years ago the Declaration of Independence was signed.
Nonetheless, Rev. Dr. Joanna Adams is right – freedom is not an American invention – it is an idea which originated in the heart of the living God. And God calls us to live in a freedom that comes from committing ourselves to God.
And that’s where today’s reading seem to create a little paradox. Now paradox in or among Scripture readings shouldn’t surprise us. Paradox seems to be sort of a hallmark in the teachings of Jesus, starting with “The first shall be last and the last shall be first – he who would be great among you must be a servant. The one who keeps his life will lose it and the one who gives his life for my sake will gain it….” With the words of Jesus, it sometimes seems that if they make sense to you the first time around, you must have misunderstood him.
“For freedom Christ has set us free,” writes Paul and yet, that isn’t the sense we get in the gospel passage. The gospel passage seems to place limitations on us.
So let’s take a closer look at the context of the passage. One of the problems with the way we read the Bible on Sunday mornings is that it is a snippet at a time, and while it’s good to take the close look that we do sometimes at a piece of the text, it really is helpful to have a sense of the whole story, and the flow. Often on Palm Sunday, I’ll suggest that you take the time to read all of the Holy Week passages at once, but today I’ll suggest even more. It’s summer time, most of us have fewer meetings, a little more free time. I’m going to suggest that you read the entire Gospel of Luke. If you’d like a really readable version, come on by my office and pick up a copy of the Message version, which is an idiomatic contemporary translation that attempts to render the Gospel into language as clear to us as the original Greek was to early hearers. In any event, if you take the time to read the whole Gospel, you’ll get a better sense of the flow of the story. And although today’s chapter is not exactly the halfway point, it is a passage that provides a kind of hinge between the early part of the ministry of Jesus, and his final journey toward Jerusalem. For this passage begins: When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. The passage is anticipating the confrontation in Jerusalem that will end with the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus has come to a sense that it is time for him to go to Jerusalem and engage the powers there. Some people believe that Jesus absolutely knows what will occur there. I am not sure of that, but I am convinced that he at least understands the likely consequences of confronting imperial power, and of the collaborators who support Rome.
So at this point in the Gospel, the mission of Jesus acquires a certain focus – he knows where he is headed. And the Greek makes the focus more clear, for it uses the same word again and again, 5 times in verses 52-57. The word is poreuomai and it means to go, to be on the move, to journey. The New Revised Standard Version translates it in different ways so we don’t get the repetition that occurs in the Greek. Listen as I read these verses translating it the same way each time: When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to journey to Jerusalem.
And he sent messengers ahead of him. Journeying, they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because was set to journeying to Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, "Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" But he turned and rebuked them. Then they journeyed to another village. As they journeyed on the way, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go”
Reading it this way, using the word that repeats in the Greek, we get a better sense for the focus and singlemindedness that characterizes Jesus in this passage. And when we are aware of that, we can better understand his responses to people who don’t share that focus. Eugene Peterson is a Presbyterian Minister of Word and Sacrament – he is also the man who translated the Message version of the Bible. And he has written extensively on the pastoral vocation, and I think he is very insightful. In his book The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction, Peterson writes: “It was a favorite theme of C.S. Lewis that only lazy people work hard. By lazily abdicating the essential work of deciding and directing, establishing value and setting goals, other people do it for us; then we find ourselves frantically, at the last minute, trying to satisfy a half dozen different demands on our time, none of which is essential to our vocation, to stave off the disaster of disappointing someone.” Many of us, not only pastors, find ourselves overbusy and distracted because we have let others set priorities for us, and we have not determined what is and is not our mission. When we are clear about our priorities, it doesn’t mean we don’t care about other things, it simply means we find the freedom to live with intentionality instead of lurching from demand to demand, from crisis to crisis, always feeling that we are letting others down.
By the way, some of the most overbusy, distracted people I know are retired people. I think that what often happens is that after the clear priorities of employment are gone, it is easy to say “yes” to too many commitments. And so quickly the new freedom from employment becomes no freedom at all. For setting priorities does provide significant freedom. When we have a clear sense of our own priorities, we are free to say no to someone or something because it doesn’t mesh with our prior assessment of our own mission.
Jesus knew that many good things can distract us from our commitment to God. In today’s passage, he focuses on three of these: home, heritage and heart. The first is home, and the comforts of home. As they were journeying, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Jesus is aware that his mission will mean that ties of community and place will not be the primary commitment in his life. Jesus talks often about the kingdom of God, and it is clear that this is his primary community.
The passage continues: To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” In this case, the conflict is between discipleship and heritage. Every culture has certain expectations, and Jesus is making the point that those expectations take second place when your primary commitment is to God. This has been a huge issue for Christians since the earliest days of the Church, when the empire demanded that Christians worship the emperor, and Christians ended up giving their lives rather than elevate nationalism to the same level as faith. This is not to say that we don’t value our heritage – but patriotism and faith have often been commingled in many cultures. It was a problem in Rome, it was a problem in England, it was a problem in Nazi Germany, and it can be a problem in our time when we conflate patriotism and faith.
One of the primary reasons that early settlers came to this continent was to escape state-mandated religion. From Puritans in Massachusetts to Quakers in Pennsylvania and Catholics in Maryland, many came here seeking the freedom to worship God as they felt led. In our day, the issue isn’t so much state control of religion, as religious allegiance to the nation. As Christians, we need to remember that American Christianity isn’t the only kind of Christianity, and that God doesn’t have a national preference for America. Philip Jenkins, professor of religion at Penn State University has written extensively about the increasing growth of Christianity outside of North America and Europe – the church is growing in the global south, he writes, and Christianity looks different outside the West. It’s always awkward for me as a pastor at national holidays because I know that for many people there is an expectation that we will mark those national holidays here in church – yet, as Christians our primary identity is one that transcends national boundaries. Our church welcomes people of other nationalities –in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, in Chapter 3, he reminds the Galatians that national identities are no longer our highest priority, when he writes: There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. Obviously Paul isn’t saying that nationalities don’t exist, any more than he is saying gender doesn’t exist – but he is saying that in Christ we don’t make distinctions among us based on gender issues or nationality. This is part of the reason that our church has embraced the Thailand Project – because for Christians, all children are our children. This is why Christians are called to world mission: all hungry people matter to us – we care about hungry people in Portage County, and hungry people in Africa. As Christians, we recognize our connections to all people throughout the world regardless of nationality, wealth, etc. etc.
Does this mean that we aren’t proud of being American? No of course not, but when we gather here, we gather as Christians – not all of us are necessarily American. And it doesn’t mean that we can’t be proud of our national heritage – the American ideal of freedom has given generations of Americans the ability to worship without fear. I am intensely proud of our country, and of the heritage I have as an American. My family heritage includes Daniel Boone and the Underground Railroad hero Levi Coffin – both of these men who in their own way broke barriers.
When we gather here as Christians, we are gathering as humans before God, on the same footing as any other people who come here. Just as we don’t assume that God prefers the Cubs to the Brewers, or the Brewers to the Mets; and we don’t assume God is a Democrat or a Republican, we also don’t assume that God is especially blessing America, or that the way we worship in North America is intrinsically more pleasing to God than the way God’s people worship in India. American was born on the fourth of July – and so was Kay Lewis, a British citizen who is part of our fellowship each week. Do we want our worship to be such that she, or other non-Americans, feels less welcome here? Of course not. No matter how proud some of us are to be American, in this room we gather without regard to nationality. Nonetheless, we will sing a song about America today – I do recognize that church is one of the only places where adults gather and sing, and that most of us here are American. So my apologies to those who are not American, and my reminder to all of us that national heritage, like other cultural norms, is not God-ordained or necessarily God-blessed.
Finally, the text tells us that …another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” This is a verse that is often used to remind pastors that our home is determined by our call. And it is a reminder to all of us that even our heart and affections come after our commitment to God – this is perhaps the hardest challenge to most of us. And yet, Jesus, too, had deep love for people and cared about others – he isn’t telling us that our love for our family or friends is a bad thing. He just is calling us to love God first. And by having that clarity in our priorities, we gain freedom. As Americans, we are free to worship however we want – as Christians, we are free from the narrowness of nationalism. For freedom, Christ has set us free, that we might freely serve God, love others, and enjoy the fullness of our humanity in common with others of all lands. God bless us, everyone. Amen.
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Galatians 5:1, 13-25; Luke 9:51-62
For freedom, Paul says, Christ has set us free. Presbyterian pastor Joanna Adams points out that freedom is “an idea that originates in the very heart of God.” God could have created us to be obedient puppets, she explains, who would always do the right thing. But, says Adams, “God created us, women and men, with the capacity and the responsibility to act as free moral agents. The desire for freedom is not simply a function of the human spirit. Its source is nothing less that the free will of the Living God.”
So freedom isn’t actually an American invention – although Americans have spoken eloquently about freedom, America originated a government based on freedom, Americans have fought for freedom, died for freedom, stood for freedom in a way no other nation has. Nonetheless – long preceding such words as “Give me liberty or give me death…” and “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” were the words of Jesus who in his first sermon proclaimed that he had come “to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives…to let the oppressed go free….” And Jesus later said to those who 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…So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”
We think of freedom and America as being two sides of the same coin –“it’s a free country!” we assert. And the rights we cherish most dearly are those rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights, which we call civil liberties – the freedoms that come with being in America: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom from state-mandated religion, freedom to assemble, freedoms within the legal system –and we are free to disagree with our government, to reject religion, to disrespect the President, or the Congress, or the President AND the Congress. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” proclaims the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The birthday of this country, and those words, falls this Wednesday – 231 years ago the Declaration of Independence was signed.
Nonetheless, Rev. Dr. Joanna Adams is right – freedom is not an American invention – it is an idea which originated in the heart of the living God. And God calls us to live in a freedom that comes from committing ourselves to God.
And that’s where today’s reading seem to create a little paradox. Now paradox in or among Scripture readings shouldn’t surprise us. Paradox seems to be sort of a hallmark in the teachings of Jesus, starting with “The first shall be last and the last shall be first – he who would be great among you must be a servant. The one who keeps his life will lose it and the one who gives his life for my sake will gain it….” With the words of Jesus, it sometimes seems that if they make sense to you the first time around, you must have misunderstood him.
“For freedom Christ has set us free,” writes Paul and yet, that isn’t the sense we get in the gospel passage. The gospel passage seems to place limitations on us.
So let’s take a closer look at the context of the passage. One of the problems with the way we read the Bible on Sunday mornings is that it is a snippet at a time, and while it’s good to take the close look that we do sometimes at a piece of the text, it really is helpful to have a sense of the whole story, and the flow. Often on Palm Sunday, I’ll suggest that you take the time to read all of the Holy Week passages at once, but today I’ll suggest even more. It’s summer time, most of us have fewer meetings, a little more free time. I’m going to suggest that you read the entire Gospel of Luke. If you’d like a really readable version, come on by my office and pick up a copy of the Message version, which is an idiomatic contemporary translation that attempts to render the Gospel into language as clear to us as the original Greek was to early hearers. In any event, if you take the time to read the whole Gospel, you’ll get a better sense of the flow of the story. And although today’s chapter is not exactly the halfway point, it is a passage that provides a kind of hinge between the early part of the ministry of Jesus, and his final journey toward Jerusalem. For this passage begins: When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. The passage is anticipating the confrontation in Jerusalem that will end with the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus has come to a sense that it is time for him to go to Jerusalem and engage the powers there. Some people believe that Jesus absolutely knows what will occur there. I am not sure of that, but I am convinced that he at least understands the likely consequences of confronting imperial power, and of the collaborators who support Rome.
So at this point in the Gospel, the mission of Jesus acquires a certain focus – he knows where he is headed. And the Greek makes the focus more clear, for it uses the same word again and again, 5 times in verses 52-57. The word is poreuomai and it means to go, to be on the move, to journey. The New Revised Standard Version translates it in different ways so we don’t get the repetition that occurs in the Greek. Listen as I read these verses translating it the same way each time: When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to journey to Jerusalem.
And he sent messengers ahead of him. Journeying, they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because was set to journeying to Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, "Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" But he turned and rebuked them. Then they journeyed to another village. As they journeyed on the way, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go”
Reading it this way, using the word that repeats in the Greek, we get a better sense for the focus and singlemindedness that characterizes Jesus in this passage. And when we are aware of that, we can better understand his responses to people who don’t share that focus. Eugene Peterson is a Presbyterian Minister of Word and Sacrament – he is also the man who translated the Message version of the Bible. And he has written extensively on the pastoral vocation, and I think he is very insightful. In his book The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction, Peterson writes: “It was a favorite theme of C.S. Lewis that only lazy people work hard. By lazily abdicating the essential work of deciding and directing, establishing value and setting goals, other people do it for us; then we find ourselves frantically, at the last minute, trying to satisfy a half dozen different demands on our time, none of which is essential to our vocation, to stave off the disaster of disappointing someone.” Many of us, not only pastors, find ourselves overbusy and distracted because we have let others set priorities for us, and we have not determined what is and is not our mission. When we are clear about our priorities, it doesn’t mean we don’t care about other things, it simply means we find the freedom to live with intentionality instead of lurching from demand to demand, from crisis to crisis, always feeling that we are letting others down.
By the way, some of the most overbusy, distracted people I know are retired people. I think that what often happens is that after the clear priorities of employment are gone, it is easy to say “yes” to too many commitments. And so quickly the new freedom from employment becomes no freedom at all. For setting priorities does provide significant freedom. When we have a clear sense of our own priorities, we are free to say no to someone or something because it doesn’t mesh with our prior assessment of our own mission.
Jesus knew that many good things can distract us from our commitment to God. In today’s passage, he focuses on three of these: home, heritage and heart. The first is home, and the comforts of home. As they were journeying, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Jesus is aware that his mission will mean that ties of community and place will not be the primary commitment in his life. Jesus talks often about the kingdom of God, and it is clear that this is his primary community.
The passage continues: To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” In this case, the conflict is between discipleship and heritage. Every culture has certain expectations, and Jesus is making the point that those expectations take second place when your primary commitment is to God. This has been a huge issue for Christians since the earliest days of the Church, when the empire demanded that Christians worship the emperor, and Christians ended up giving their lives rather than elevate nationalism to the same level as faith. This is not to say that we don’t value our heritage – but patriotism and faith have often been commingled in many cultures. It was a problem in Rome, it was a problem in England, it was a problem in Nazi Germany, and it can be a problem in our time when we conflate patriotism and faith.
One of the primary reasons that early settlers came to this continent was to escape state-mandated religion. From Puritans in Massachusetts to Quakers in Pennsylvania and Catholics in Maryland, many came here seeking the freedom to worship God as they felt led. In our day, the issue isn’t so much state control of religion, as religious allegiance to the nation. As Christians, we need to remember that American Christianity isn’t the only kind of Christianity, and that God doesn’t have a national preference for America. Philip Jenkins, professor of religion at Penn State University has written extensively about the increasing growth of Christianity outside of North America and Europe – the church is growing in the global south, he writes, and Christianity looks different outside the West. It’s always awkward for me as a pastor at national holidays because I know that for many people there is an expectation that we will mark those national holidays here in church – yet, as Christians our primary identity is one that transcends national boundaries. Our church welcomes people of other nationalities –in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, in Chapter 3, he reminds the Galatians that national identities are no longer our highest priority, when he writes: There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. Obviously Paul isn’t saying that nationalities don’t exist, any more than he is saying gender doesn’t exist – but he is saying that in Christ we don’t make distinctions among us based on gender issues or nationality. This is part of the reason that our church has embraced the Thailand Project – because for Christians, all children are our children. This is why Christians are called to world mission: all hungry people matter to us – we care about hungry people in Portage County, and hungry people in Africa. As Christians, we recognize our connections to all people throughout the world regardless of nationality, wealth, etc. etc.
Does this mean that we aren’t proud of being American? No of course not, but when we gather here, we gather as Christians – not all of us are necessarily American. And it doesn’t mean that we can’t be proud of our national heritage – the American ideal of freedom has given generations of Americans the ability to worship without fear. I am intensely proud of our country, and of the heritage I have as an American. My family heritage includes Daniel Boone and the Underground Railroad hero Levi Coffin – both of these men who in their own way broke barriers.
When we gather here as Christians, we are gathering as humans before God, on the same footing as any other people who come here. Just as we don’t assume that God prefers the Cubs to the Brewers, or the Brewers to the Mets; and we don’t assume God is a Democrat or a Republican, we also don’t assume that God is especially blessing America, or that the way we worship in North America is intrinsically more pleasing to God than the way God’s people worship in India. American was born on the fourth of July – and so was Kay Lewis, a British citizen who is part of our fellowship each week. Do we want our worship to be such that she, or other non-Americans, feels less welcome here? Of course not. No matter how proud some of us are to be American, in this room we gather without regard to nationality. Nonetheless, we will sing a song about America today – I do recognize that church is one of the only places where adults gather and sing, and that most of us here are American. So my apologies to those who are not American, and my reminder to all of us that national heritage, like other cultural norms, is not God-ordained or necessarily God-blessed.
Finally, the text tells us that …another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” This is a verse that is often used to remind pastors that our home is determined by our call. And it is a reminder to all of us that even our heart and affections come after our commitment to God – this is perhaps the hardest challenge to most of us. And yet, Jesus, too, had deep love for people and cared about others – he isn’t telling us that our love for our family or friends is a bad thing. He just is calling us to love God first. And by having that clarity in our priorities, we gain freedom. As Americans, we are free to worship however we want – as Christians, we are free from the narrowness of nationalism. For freedom, Christ has set us free, that we might freely serve God, love others, and enjoy the fullness of our humanity in common with others of all lands. God bless us, everyone. Amen.