Rev. Dr. Joel D. Biermann
John 8:31-36
Oct. 30, 2016
What does freedom look like? The word may conjure images of arms breaking loose from the shackles that had bound them, or of birds flying skyward from an opened cage. Freedom makes us think of a rugged mountain man dressed in leather and fur and living off of the land in the wilderness of Alaska. Freedom looks like the patriotic minutemen standing up against the tyranny of the British crown and declaring themselves in servitude no more. Freedom is a college freshman stretching and exploring in his new environment filled with choices and the latitude to make the ones he wants. Freedom looks like a white sand beach, palm trees, an all-inclusive resort, and ten days of vacation with absolutely no agenda. Freedom is eating and drinking and reading and watching what you choose when you choose to do it and going where you want to go, how you want to go, when you want to go there. Freedom is living without constraints or restrictions or inhibitions. Freedom is the great goal of the American experiment and the great virtue and aspiration that is supposed to well up naturally inside every human being. This is what freedom looks like in our world. This is the array of ideas that flood our thoughts when we think of freedom.
Today we arrive together at the annual church festival that we call Reformation Day, and again, we encounter the idea of freedom. It’s easy to package this reformation freedom in all of our standard freedom images. You know the story. It all unfolded five hundred years ago, now. Martin Luther was the devout Augustinian monk struggling to find peace with God, but unable to do so by following the path presented to him by the church of his day. No matter how much he prayed, fasted, confessed, deprived himself of sleep and comfort, nothing he did could give him the assurance that he was right with God. But, then, while working on his university lectures on the Book of Romans, everything changed. He came to realize that God’s righteousness was not something he had to earn; rather, it was a wonderful gift that had been earned for him by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Luther learned that by God’s grace alone through his God-given faith alone, he had received the gift of righteousness with God in Christ alone. His own works and efforts had nothing to do with any of it! He was freed from the condemnation of his own sin. He was freed from the guilty weight of his inability to keep God’s law. This is, of course, the message of the Gospel itself, and it is the core of the teaching of the Reformation. But, what happened next? Well, it’s precisely here that we need to be careful with how we tell and understand the rest of the story.
Typically, we continue the story with something like this: So, Luther started to teach the truth about how a person is made right with God only by God’s grace. But, the church leaders branded his teaching a heresy, and demanded that he retract all that he had written and preached about forgiveness of sins by grace through faith in Christ alone. Luther refused. Luther told the Pope that he would not listen to him or submit to his authority any more. In fact, Luther told the pope a few more choice things, and by doing so he struck a sweeping blow for freedom. Because of Luther, no one has to listen to what the pope says. Because of Luther, no one has to learn how to read and understand the Bible, we can all just read it for ourselves and figure it out. Because of Luther, no one has to follow rules made up by the church. Because of Luther, the authority of the church is gone, now the focus is on the individual who has been set free. Because of Luther, no one has to believe the things that they are taught, we are now free to think and decide for ourselves. Because of Luther, all of those old superstitions and fears are swept away. No more relics, no more, pilgrimages, no more fasting, no more purgatory, no more praying for penance. No more slavery. Because of Luther, people are freed from the tyranny of having to keep the law, now they have Christian freedom to do whatever they like. Now, because of Luther, freedom reigns. And isn’t it interesting that the freedom that Luther brings, looks virtually identical to the freedom that we cherish as Americans. It’s freedom from constraint and restriction, the freedom to be and do whatever we like. This is the way that reformation freedom is often taught and understood.
But this is not the freedom of the Reformation. As wonderful or familiar as this account of the story may sound, its portrayal of Christian freedom is wrong. Yes, the reformation brought freedom. But, it did not bring the kind of freedom I have just described. Reformation freedom, which is simply Christian freedom, is not the forerunner or the spiritual twin of the sort of freedom we have come to expect and cherish in our western culture. The freedom that Luther uncovered and shared, is not the ancestor of the American ideal of freedom which is all about individual expression and fulfillment. No, the kind of freedom that Luther learned and taught, does not look like American freedom at all. It looks like the kind of freedom that is described and taught by Jesus.
John records for us one of the many contentious discussions Jesus had with those who were following him but weren’t his disciples. In this case, Jesus is challenging and even provoking people who had believed in him, in other words, they had found his teaching compelling, and were hanging around and listening to him, but perhaps still with reservations and a studied distance that was well short of actual discipleship. Jesus both invites and admonishes them. He wants them to be more than interested spectators or nonchalant believers lacking commitment. He wants them to quit holding back and taking him on their terms. He wants them to recognize his authority and his identity as the Messiah and Lord. He wants them to be disciples. The time of their sitting on the sidelines and observing from a comfortable vantage had to come to an end. Jesus was making clear that it was time to quit watching and evaluating and cautiously holding back. It was time to be a disciple. That’s what Jesus is getting at when he tells these curious but uncommitted spectators on the fringes: “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” There’s the word: free. Jesus does bring freedom. But, it’s clear that what he means by freedom is not about shattering shackles and removing all restraints. No, for Jesus, freedom is something else quite different. The text explains it.
Jesus’ freedom comes one way: by knowing the truth, which is only learned by being his disciple and that happens only by continuing in his Word. To put it another way, a person is free only when he is the disciple of Jesus. Hear that again: a person is free only when he is the disciple of Jesus. Now, suddenly, it becomes clear just how very different Jesus’ truth is from the ideas that are at work in the world around us. There is no common ground at all. Freedom is not about doing what you want to do when and how you want to do it. Freedom is about knowing and following Jesus. Obviously, this truth is not immediately reasonable or even accessible to most western thinkers. It is certainly not compatible with an obsession on individualism and the sovereignty of the self. Jesus is teaching a different definition of freedom altogether. His definition hinges on what it means to “continue in his word.” So, what does that mean? The two critical words are the ones translated “continue” and “word”. The first can also be translated as remain or reside. In other words, it’s where a person settles and stays put. The word conveys a sense of constancy and consistency. It’s something that is done without wavering. So we are to keep on staying put…but where, exactly? Jesus tells us where: “in my word”. The original term is one of those loaded Greek words. It’s λογος (logos) which means an idea, concept, basic principle, or fundamental thought, or teaching. So, what Jesus is saying is that those who are his disciples are those who keep on learning and living his teaching. This is, he says, the world’s one great truth, and when you learn and live his teaching, the result is freedom.
You see, Jesus does not give a freedom that turns you loose to do whatever you feel like doing. The freedom of Jesus does not mean being able to do whatever interests you or excites you. Jesus does not give you permission to pursue your passions or to fulfill your potential. Instead, Jesus invites you to know him and his teaching, his reality, his truth. Practically, this means that you study what he taught, and what he continues to teach through his church. It means that you strive to live your life according to the truths that he showed us by what he taught and by what he did. When you continue in the word of Jesus, you live your life with his reality as the basis of everything. You conform your thinking, and your willing, and your acting to his purposes. What he says is what matters. And what he says is that we are to live the way that God has given us to live. We are to live according to God’s will for his creation, in other words, we are to live according to his law. And that’s what real freedom looks like!
This is the great truth that appears as a profound mystery—it’s something that seems incomprehensible to most people in our world. Freedom does not come when you do what you want and choose your own path and your own life reality. No, that’s not freedom, that’s actually futility, failure, and slavery. It always ends with people turned in on themselves and living lives that are bankrupt—lives that end in hell. Real freedom, the freedom that Jesus gives, the freedom that Luther discovered and taught, the freedom that we recognize today, is not a license to live as you please or to pursue whatever dream you deem important. Real freedom is a life lived in sync with God and with God’s will. Real freedom is doing what God created you to do, the way that God created you to do it. That’s freedom. That’s what Jesus taught. It’s what Luther discovered. It’s what we celebrate, today, on Reformation Day.
Of course, you shouldn’t expect people suddenly to agree with you when you tell them that real freedom means living according to God’s law. It seems like an absurd self-contradiction. And arguing, or quoting the Bible won’t make much headway. Truth be told, there will even be plenty of Christian people who will not accept that freedom is obedience to the teaching of Jesus. They will remain convinced that the Reformation was really about Luther breaking away from the pope and striking a blow for freedom. Don’t be fooled by this wrong thinking. You know better. You know that freedom means continuing in the word of Jesus. It means knowing that you are forgiven by his life and death. It means knowing that Jesus has done this for you so that you can be all that God created you to be. You know that freedom means living within God’s plan. And you know that this is real freedom. You’ve experienced it. You’ve tasted the incredible joy and peace that come when you do what God gives you to do. You know the thrill and the deep satisfaction that you experience when you fulfill the hard task you’ve been assigned to accomplish.
This freedom is real. This freedom starts, now, by the way that you live, now. That’s why you come to worship. That’s why you work hard to do things his way. You know that freedom doesn’t mean doing your own thing, it means doing God’s thing. And when you live in that freedom you provide a powerful witness to the truth of that freedom. The life that you live is far more convincing than any other argument that can be offered for the truth of Jesus’ freedom. The joy you have in knowing God’s perfect love and grace given to you in Jesus, and the joy you live when you follow God’s will and delight in his law is a profound witness to all the world that Jesus’ freedom is real freedom. You are a witness to God’s truth. Your life declares that it is real and that it is right. Your witness shows what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. Your life shows that you know that truth, and that that truth has set you free—free for a life lived God’s way. That’s what the reformation was all about. That’s what we’re here to celebrate, today. Amen.