Independence Day
This weekend many people are celebrating Independence Day in a variety of ways. Many have taken extra time off from work and are traveling. Some are taking a special opportunity to visit family. Others just stay home and perhaps watch the John Wayne marathon on TV. There is a lot of BBQ going on all across the country. There are fireworks, parades and all kinds of celebrations which have become tradition in the US.
We celebrate this holiday because of what happened in 1776.
We celebrate the actions of people we only know about because of books. We celebrate the actions of people that lived without electricity, without regular mail service, without Super Wal-Mart.
What a stark existence to be willing to fight for.
We celebrate that these people had the gumption, or gall or courage to break the existing hold of Europe on these wilderness colonies that had struggled to survive and were being choked by rules and unfair burdens by the king of England.
They were pretty specific in the declaration of independence. If you read through the document you find oppression, abuse, removal of rights, false justice and punishment. You find a precisely stated set of charges against the king and their justification for separation from the rule of a king. Their charges are that the king is not fulfilling his responsibility to be a protector of the people nad worse that he is abusing his distant subjects.
Their declaration was to break free of the strangle hold of a tyrant.
Interestingly we celebrate the day of declaration not the day it was actually achieved.
I guess if they had lost their struggle we would not be celebrating at all this weekend and Monday would not be a holiday. We would be subjects of the queen.
But, We celebrate the ideal of the prize that was worth everything to the men that would sign the document. Something worth risking wealth and even life to gain.
So, what is the Christian comparison?
The scripture we heard this morning is talking about freedom. This passage is about freedom from Mosaic Law. The law is described else ware as being something that helped to identify sin, and how to live a life honorable to God.
However, too many people, religious leaders, used the Law as a tool of control. They used it for power and position and separation. They used and abused the law as control and power in the name of God.
Paul declares that because of Jesus Christians have freedom from the law. He tells the churches in Galatia that they are called by God through Jesus to be free.
The people of Paul’s day suffered persecution and hardship which increases as they became Christians. The community made it tough to live a new faith. They were unwelcome in the Jewish community unless they adhered to the law. This meant big changes for the Gentile men.
It had to be hard to celebrate the freedom that Paul encourages. Because the culture did not understand them and the Jews were angered by them simply because they had different rules.
It was very confusing for them. They had already broken from their old traditions. They were trying to figure out the ins and outs of this new faith.
They had lots of questions and pressures to give into and it appears in scripture that one of the most logical was that you needed to becom a Jew to become a Christian. The pressure was to live under the law as a first concern.
Paul insists that it is not true.
Paul thought that the Law was being required as the means to cover sin, A tool provided by God to offer a substitute to pay for sin against God.
But the people of the day still had the problem of Sin to deal with, the covering the paying a price became something to factor into your budget. Well I expect to sin this much this year so I will need this number and type of animals. To pay off that debt. The peoples lives were not changed by fines and moved on.
Today we may do the same. We see the removal of the law and a discount on getting right with God. We pray for forgiveness and go out and commit the same sins time and time again.
Hind sight is so good. Today we can look at United States history and find the investment made by people so long ago was worth it. It is great to be free. It is fantastic that I can pretty much do what I want and say what I want.
The first sentence in the Declaration of Independence is a whopper. It is long and I imagine that it would make an English teacher wince. It sets the stage for the rest of the document, basically saying when things are bad enough people have to take action and force a separation.
The second sentence of the Declaration of Independence says:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable (unchangeable) Rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
234 years later we still enjoy the freedom that the Declaration of Independence call for on behalf of the colonies and future citizens: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
This is my kind of place. I am so happy that God placed me here. I mean the US, Georgia and especially as your pastor. There are a lot of less comfortable places in this world where there is little or no freedom. Places where life liberty and pursuit of happiness are a pipe dream. For some on this planet the biggest goal is to have life and there is little hope for much else.
However, there are still a few problems even here.
I am not complaining mind you. But, we have a lot rules in this country. Traffic laws, home mortgages, traffic lights, seed limits, Income taxes, building codes, lines at the grocery store even the constant need for money.
I could go on and on. It seems to be hard work to peruse life and happiness when we have so many rules. When the economy is unstable. When things cost so much.
It seems to me that with freedom comes a lot of other things which steal away our freedom.
This is a key concept …The freedom we have in our nation is cooperative.
It is a union of people that agree to protect God given rights at a cost that is shared by the group.
The freedom we enjoy was not obtainable by one or two. It involved a community of like minded people focused on one goal.
The freedom we have has limits that keep us from expressing our freedom at the expense of another.
In the revolutionary war they fought to make something new. A new nation with new rules, rules that identified equality between people of different backgrounds. And while not initially enforced and acknowledgement of god given rights and freedoms for all people.
But let’s look at this from a Christian perspective. We live in the greatest country in the world, the richest, the finest, and the seemingly most blessed.
In our scripture today, Paul tells the churches in Galatia that they were meant to be free. Free from slavery to sin – free from the obligation to keep the law which is impossible to keep. However, even Paul explains that with freedom there are still rules and limits.
He states rule 1 like this: “But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.”
We can not use our freedom to become immoral people!
We can not use our freedom to abuse or use other people!
We can not use our freedom to avoid obligations within the church.
We can’t use our freedom to sit around and do nothing!
Our Freedom is not a license to sin in any way.
He also adds, we are to serve one another (within the Church) in Love.
Sounds like a limited version of freedom, sort of restrictive. But, it is not to expensive. After all, the people at church are family by birth or holy adoption.
We all do things we don’t necessarily like for family, at least occasionally.
The freedom we receive as Christians is limited to being good and loving others.
Now we get to the second rule, “The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself.”
There is that Love your neighbor thing. It starts in Leviticus, then Jesus is quoted in Matthew, Mark and Luke, then Paul and James both remind us several times.
Sort of a pain isn’t it. To be reminded about loving your neighbor.
Perhaps, we need to take the reminders as extra significance or importance.
Here Paul reminds us that this one rule replaces the entire law.
- This one rule if followed will set your life on an even footing and guide you in the right direction.
- This one rule will set you free of all the little nuances and petty restrictions of the Law.
Loving your neighbor as self, what does that really mean?
How do we demonstrate our love for ourselves?
When we are hungry, thirsty or sick we do something about it.
When I decide to go someplace I use my car, something I bought to meet my needs.
When I am sick I go to the doctor..Eventually.
I guess there are a lot of things I do for myself, some are needs some are comforts some are just for fun. But I am worth all of it, right?
According to Paul, our neighbors are worth something as well. With freedom come obligations to our family, community, neighbors and even individuals along our path.
People that don’t value you or me at all should still be important to us because of our freedom. I will rephrase that, a person that openly says “I don’t like you..” is important to a Christians because of our freedom….When in doubt of how we should treat people in our lives refer to rule number 2 - Love your neighbor as yourself
The removal of the Law as a guide over our lives should have made thigs easier….but actually it has opened up a whole can of worms…problems that we are forced to deal with.
Paul is writing to people that are in the middle of a battle over salvation.
-- They do not have the advantage of hind sight.
They are fighting their way toward the path of righteousness and are uncertain of the proper steps. Some of their issues are raised within the church itself. There must be spirited conversations and accusations between fellow believers, as they struggle with the freedom that Paul reminds them of.
The main struggle is to try to live under the oppression of the law in hopes that it would get better or to choose the freedom that God offered.
Our fore fathers in this nation recognized their lives were on the edge of slavery to the king. No rights or self-government and more and more loss of control over lives led them to declare their freedom against the all powerful King of England.
They did not declare war on the king. They just severed their servitude to a life as servants to an unjust king. They changed their direction choosing the harder path of independence. A path of struggle and pain that would end in freedom like few in the colonies had ever known.
Paul tells his readers that for Christians that path is directed by the spirit. The battle he describes is between the sinful nature of every person and the guidance offered by the Holy Spirit. He explains that the struggle is in individual battle within each person. The choice is being bound and controlled by a sinful nature or following the spirit toward ultimate freedom.
The struggle for independence is still going on today. In our nation the battle over religious freedom is growing and I would suggest that if we don’t join the battle, we will continue to see our rights and freedoms trimmed and removed.
Our nation’s founders obviously were much more open to the leading of God that many of our politicians and judges today.
The battle over our spiritual freedom continues as well. We all struggle over right and wrong everyday. We decide over loving ourselves and loving our neighbor and we probably don’t win as many battles as we could. In fact I fear that we don’t struggle or battle at all. We just choose self and ignore others and let sin and personal desire guide our selfish choices.
God offers us the help we need, it is not always as easy to find as we want. It takes real effort and control to listen to the spirit. It takes even more to follow it’s direction.
All Glory be to God!
