When I was 12, I went on vacation with my family to a place called Iguazu Falls. Not many people in this country have ever heard of it. It’s only the second biggest waterfall in the world, after Niagara. It’s only the second highest waterfall in the world, after Victoria Falls. It’s at the top NE corner of Argentina, where it it borders Brazil and Paraguay, where the Parana River, flowing down from the center of Brazil, pulls in more water from rivers on both sides until it all comes crashing down together over the edge of the southeastern highlands into the beginning of Argentina’s most fertile central valley.
It was an incredible experience to go there and see it. There are more than a dozen different falls, and over half of them will kill you if you slip and fall. El Garganta del Diablo, which is Spanish for "The Devil’s Throat," is the most dangerous, because the suction of the falling water will pull you right over if you get too close. The tour guides didn’t tell us until later how many tourists they’d lost, when the boatmen who made their livings taking people up to the best viewpoint misjudged the currents, because of course a family of six represented a pretty good day’s wage, and the risk - to them - was worth it. And of course it makes a great story for us, because we came back, and the photographs are simply incredible. But I’ve never forgotten it.
So when I went to see The Mission, a movie which came out about 15 years ago, I was absolutely transfixed. The movie opens with sight of the falls, and it all came back to me... the rush and thunder of the river falling over the edge, the cold pull of the wind following the water downwards, the spray flying upwards into our faces in brief defiance of gravity, and the deceptive feeling of safety we felt as we watched, as if we were somehow immune from the awesome forces swirling around us. I could almost feel it all again as I watched the camera move closer to the falls, and focused in onto two men who were climbing up the rocks to the right of the falls. I could almost feel the slipperiness of the wet rocks under my hands, almost smell the damp patches of moss which made what little footing they could find treacherous and unstable. I could feel my breath coming faster and my muscles tense each time either man reached out for a new handhold.
But there was something I couldn’t understand. One of the men was traveling light, carrying only a pouch attached to his belt, while the other had an large, lumpy, and obviously very heavy bag slung over his shoulders. It was clearly pulling him back away from the rock, and making the climb even more more dangerous than it already was. The other man shouted down to him, but you couldn’t hear the words over the sound of the water. The man carrying the bag slipped. You could feel the whole theater gasp. And the lightly burdened man, above him on the face of the cliff, moved back downward, drew a knife, and cut the other man free of the ropes tying him to the weight that had nearly pulled him to his death. You could practically see the tension in the theater melt away as everyone relaxed, expecting both men now to make it easily to the top. But no. The suddenly unburdened climber went back to the bottom and tied the bag on again.
You see, this scene was - in addition to a look at the very real journey taken by two men who were going to take Christ to the Paraguayan Indians - a metaphor for the burden of sin. Because the bag the man Miguel was carrying contained helmet, armor, sword, and guns, symbols of a violent past which he had given up - but which still haunted him. Miguel had given up his former life as a mercenary and slaver after killing his only brother in a fight over a woman. He had joined the priest Bernardo in a desperate attempt to earn absolution for something he could not live with. Miguel did not understand forgiveness.
This scene is a metaphor for sin and forgiveness, with Bernardo offering forgiveness and Miguel refusing to accept it. It’s a good metaphor. We can look at Miguel and see how ridiculous and futile is his attempt to atone for his actions by punishing himself. We can see that Miguel didn’t understand forgiveness. But how how many of us really do either? How many of us live in the freedom that comes from knowing and following Christ? How many of us still carry around the burdens of our mistakes and failures, weary with the weight of guilt or shame? The forgiveness of Christ is not an easy thing to accept, when we cannot even forgive ourselves.
This scene is a good metaphor. And maybe it will help some of us recognize how equally silly we are to burden ourselves with our abandoned pasts. But the metaphor doesn’t go far enough. Not many of us have sinned on that grand a scale, and it’s easy to distance ourselves from the big sins. “I’m not like that. I haven’t done anything that bad.”
The people Jesus was speaking to in this scene from the Gospel of John were like that. They were Jews, a unusually moral people who by and large had held on to their faith in the one God, and had rejected the idolatry and corruption that surrounded them on all sides. They were good people, on the whole, and they didn’t recognize themselves when Jesus spoke of slavery to sin. And to those Jews who weren’t willing to look seriously at the possibility that Jesus might, indeed, be telling the truth, He said, "Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.” Guess what? They got REALLY, REALLY mad. They tried to throw stones at him, but Jesus had somehow disapeared.
Modern Americans have a similarly difficult time recognizing themselves in Jesus’ words. We’re already a free people, aren’t we? We value freedom perhaps more highly than any other people in history.
And sin. Sin is bad things that people do, isn’t it, mostly other people, like murderers and thieves and drug dealers and rapists, people that hurt others on purpose and then aren’t sorry afterwards. I was talking to a woman named Lucy while she was waiting to be picked up from the County Hospital, where I work alternate weekends as a chaplain, and she told me that the man who was picking her up was an atheist. “But a good atheist,” she said. I didn’t argue. There are a lot of good, moral people out there - including friends of mine, and members of my own family - who do not belong to God. And they, too, like many of Jesus’ listeners, would not be able to hear what Jesus was saying.
Can you hear what Jesus is trying to tell us?
Maybe we can’t hear because the idea of slavery is also very far away. For some of us it’s farther away than for others; for most of white America it’s not even an ancestral legend. But in ancient Palestine, in Jerusalem as well as in Rome, slavery was an inescapable part of everyday life. And it was something that could happen to anyone, even Jews. Slavery was part of the penal code, as well as a solution for debt and a consequence of war. And it was the first thing that Jesus’ listeners thought of when Jesus offered them freedom. “We are free,” they said. “We’re not slaves.” What would you say, if someone came offering you freedom? “We are free. We are Americans, the freest people the world has ever known.”
But if we’re going to hear what Jesus has to say, you and I are going to have to look a little closer to what Jesus is trying to tell us. To make it easier, let’s shift the metaphor a little. The closest modern equivalent to slavery is probably prison. Prison is like slavery in that it means equal loss of freedom and equal loss of status. You cannot do what you want, you cannot go where you want, you cannot achieve what you want, you cannot be what you want. Your survival is dependent on the whim of people and forces more powerful than you, and there are no guarantees. Sounds pretty awful, doesn’t it? But it may not be all that unfamiliar. Have you ever felt trapped? Trapped by circumstances, trapped by choices you may have made, trapped by age or ill health or a dead-end job? If you have, you’re coming very close to understanding what Jesus is talking about. Consider, once again, the possibility that you might, indeed, need the freedom Jesus offers.
Let’s go back to Miguel and Bernardo, back on those slippery rocks next to the Falls. Fast forward a frame or two; eventually Miguel does let Bernardo cut him loose, and the whole audience heaves a collective sigh of relief. But here’s what’s wrong with the metaphor. That big weight is gone, Miguel’s conscience is clear... but he still has to go the rest of the way under his own strength. Because it takes every ounce of strength and concentration for those men to keep moving on up that cliff. And not everyone can do it.
I couldn’t, could you? What happens if you’re afraid of heights, or not tall enough to reach the next handhold, or a rock comes loose above you and knocks you off? Gravity pulls at you the entire time, and the smallest miscalculation or lapse in concentration can leave you in a broken heap back at the base. And even if you’re the world’s greatest climber and never make a mistake, what happens when you reach the top? You find that the real goal is the moon, not the mountaintop, and with all your effort there is still an impassable gulf between you and what you seek.
We are, my friends, imprisoned by sin in exactly the same way that we are imprisoned by gravity. We don’t have to fall to the bottom of the cliff to know that we are controlled by gravity; if we slip, and catch ourselves, we know; if we fear to reach out a hand to someone, for fear of falling ourselves, we know. That is what Jesus meant when he said, “everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” Have you ever lost your temper? Have you ever envied someone their good fortune? Have you ever turned your back on someone who needed help? Have you ever passed on a particularly juicy tidbit of gossip? Have you ever noticed how easy it is to hurt someone without meaning to? If you have done any of these things, then Jesus is talking to you, just as He is talking to me. That is proof of our common condition. We are all prisoners of our own humanity, and it’s a life sentence with no time off for good behavior.
Martin Luther tried.
Martin Luther had such a powerful longing for God that he entered a monastery. That was how to get close to God, he was taught. For years he studied, fasted, prayed, and fasted, and prayed and studied. But the harder he tried, the farther away God seemed to be, and the more overwhelming became his consciousness of the futility of all his struggles. Martin Luther understood what Jesus was talking about when he talked of slavery to sin. Martin Luther did all the things his superiors told him a follower of Christ, had to do - and it didn’t work. Nothing he did brought him the freedom he longed for.
And there is nothing that we do can either. That is the truth that eluded so many of Jesus’ hearers, that eluded Luther for so many years, and that still eludes so many today. We can’t earn our own salvation. How many people do you know believe that getting into heaven is a matter of “being good”? How many people do you know who are quite sure they are “good enough”? The truth of the matter is that heaven is not for those who are “good enough,” but for those who belong to God.
Can you hear Jesus’ words? There were many in his audience who liked what they saw, who were impressed by the healings and the exorcisms, and who expected him to usher in the salvation of Israel - but on their own terms. When things didn’t go the way they wanted, when Jesus didn’t throw down the gauntlet and cast down the power of Rome, they fell away and began looking elsewhere for their freedom.
What was the difference between the ones who fell and the ones who followed?
The difference was that some acknowledged Jesus’ authority to turn their preconceptions upside down, and some did not. D. A. Carson, in his commentary on John’s gospel, says that his Jewish hearers' “sense of inherited privilege was so strong that they can neither acknowledge their own need nor recognize the Divine Word incarnate before them.” “Who are you?” they ask. “Prove yourself,” they demand. “We are Abraham’s children,” they said, “Who are you? Why should we listen to you?”
The truth many of Jesus’ hearers refused to hear was that he was, indeed, the Incarnate Word, who had the authority to make promises, and the power to keep them. It was hard to hear then; it is hard for many to hear now. “Jesus was a good man and a great moral teacher,” say many very good people of my acquaintance. “But I’ll pick and choose which of his sayings to listen to, because some of them are mighty uncomfortable.”
What is the difference between the ones who fell and the ones who followed? "He who belongs to God hears what God says."
”If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do the things Abraham did."
What was it that Abraham did? What is it that we are supposed to do?
"Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed ... Without weakening in his faith ... he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was ... fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why “[his faith] was credited to him as righteousness.” [Rom 4:18-19, NIV]
We are supposed to believe in the promises of God, even when circumstances look bleak. We do not need to add to the righteousness of God, it is enough - even for you, and even for me, and even for the thief and even for the junkie. And we are to believe that the promises of God and the righteousness of God are summed up in one person alone, the man Jesus, the Christ, the incarnate One.
Christ’s freedom is, of course, radically contrary to the habits and promises of the world. We are no longer scrabbling with toes and fingernails to a precarious hold on a slippery cliff, we are held in the arms of one who cannot fall. We no longer have to “Go for the gusto,” snatching for scraps of happiness on their way by, because true joy is the gift of God. We no longer have to be afraid of tomorrow, because tomorrow belongs to God and we who have heard and responded to the words of Christ are the children of God and the heirs of eternity. This freedom means believing that God’s power and goodness are even greater than our own folly and weakness. Freedom means that with God’s help we can live today unbound by our own selfishness, our own fears, our own greed and shortsightedness. Freedom in Christ means living with our hands open, giving of ourselves as Christ gave to us, knowing that whatever we give will be given back overflowing in order that we may give again, and so become more like Christ.
My favorite hymn is the one that begins, “And can it be that I should gain an interest in my Savior’s blood?” But the verse that says it all for me is the 4th one. “Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature’s night; thins eye diffused a quickening ray; I woke, the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off, and I was free; I rose, went forth, and followed thee.”
We follow Christ not to earn our salvation, but to be with and to become like our beloved, and as the psalmist says, “I sing in the shadow of your wings.” If you do not know Christ’s freedom, if all you know are the commandments, let it begin. This is a free gift of God; if you can hear, it is for you. W.H. Auden put it well when he said,
“In the deserts of the heart let the healing fountain start;
In the prison of his days, teach the free man how to praise.”
Let it be so. Amen.
