Sermon: Christ Is Our Liberty
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Sermon: Christ Is Our Liberty Text: Acts 16:1--34 Date: May 16, 2010 Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church In Charles Dickens’ classic story “A Christmas Carol,” Scrooge is sitting by the tiny fire in his room when all of a sudden every bell in the house inexplicably rings. They stop; there is silence for a moment. Then a new sound: “a clanging noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks of wine in the…cellar.” Scrooge cowers in his chair as the sound of chains comes up the stairs and moves toward his door. The ghost of his dead partner, Marley, appears. “The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; at it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.”[1] Chains. Chains appear in the Bible story today—some in physical form, some more ghostly but heavy nevertheless. Can you see and hear the chains that enslave, both visible and invisible? Can you identify the free people in the story we heard this morning? It’s not quite as simple as you might think. In the continuing adventures of the apostles, Paul and his missionary partners have gone to the place of prayer in Philippi, presumably the place they met Lydia last Sunday. There they encounter a slave girl—real chains. She is doubly enslaved because she is both owned by men and possessed by some kind of demon of divination. She starts following Paul and crew around, singing out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” She, legally a slave, is shouting about how these free men before her are slaves to God who are proclaiming good news of salvation, which is, after all, a kind of freedom. A slave heralding free slaves announcing freedom. And she does this rather slavishly—she follows them around for days, hollering the same thing over and over again. She finally gets on Paul’s last nerve. He liberates her from the demon so he can have some peace and quiet while he’s trying to preach the good news. He’s now free from being constantly annoyed by her. But is she free? Well, she’s free from being possessed by a fortune-telling demon; one set of chains has been destroyed. But she’s still a slave, and one whose blue book value has just plunged because she’s not going to be making money telling fortunes any more. Paul doesn’t purchase her freedom; he doesn’t even convert her to Christ, as far as we know. He just shuts her up. In a nice way. Here come the incensed owners of the slave girl. They look free; they are the owners, not the owned. But are they free? They’re pretty bent out of shape over losing their source of income. Maybe their chains resemble those of Marley’s ghost. Their business has been damaged, and they are not going to sit still for it. They grab Paul and Silas and haul them off to the magistrates. They accuse Paul and Silas of disturbing the peace and trying to convert people to Judaism; since it was illegal to proselytize, they have a legal bat to whack with. The magistrates exercise the power given to them by the Roman Empire. With impunity they have Paul and Silas beaten and thrown into prison. Can’t have these religious fanatics disturbing the peace and interfering with the profits of the leading citizens. They tell the jailer that these dangerous outsiders are clearly a threat to security, and they order the jailer to keep them fastened down. They go home confident that they have done their bit to ensure the Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome. This should look good on their annual review. Are they free? Paul and Silas, beaten and bruised, are under lock and key in maximum security with their feet in stocks. Are they captive? Are they free? I’ll come back to them in a moment. There’s an earthquake; the walls of the prison collapse and the chains come unfastened. The prison guard assumes the worst, that the prisoners would have run the moment they had a chance. Because jailers were held personally responsible for the security of the prisoners, he prepares to commit suicide before the magistrates can come back and carry out a death sentence on him. To what or to whom is the jail keeper, the man with the big ring of keys, captive? When he responds to the prisoners’ compassionate refusal to get while the getting was good by inquiring what he must do to be saved, is he free? When he acts like a slave to Paul and Silas, tenderly washing their wounds and serving them food at his own table, is he free? When he is baptized, does he then become a slave of the Most High God? Who is free and who is enslaved? Who can move about freely and who is weighed down with chains? This story in the adventures of the apostles reminds us that freedom isn’t necessarily what can be observed with the naked eye. I think the clearest revelation about freedom and captivity is what happens after night falls in the jail house. Paul and Silas must have been hurting and miserable, but what they do is sit there in their dank little cell and…sing. Sing hymns. Imagining them doing that reminded me of hearing a little East German folk ensemble a few years ago at the Folklife festival singing “Die Gedanken sind frie” with incredible passion and fire. This song is around 200 years old. It means, “Thoughts are free.” It has been a popular and important song in Germany for many years. Since I don’t speak German, and maybe you don’t understand it, I’ll share with you a version Pete Seeger recorded in 1966 on his “Dangerous Songs” album: Die gedanken sind frei
When I heard the East Germans sing that years ago the Berlin Wall had been a pile of rubble for just a short time. These young men were presently free, but it seemed to me that they were shedding their chains from the moment they began singing that song from behind the intact Berlin Wall years earlier. It’s a chain- breaking song. “Die Gedanken send frei” has been banned off and on throughout German history. It will be no great surprise for you to hear that the Nazis strictly banned singing it while they were in power. Nevertheless, it was a popular song in the WWII resistance. One young woman, Sophie Scholl, learned the song at her father’s knee. She sang it with her companions in the White Rose group, a tiny non-violent student resistance movement out of the University of Munich. When her father was imprisoned for calling Adolph Hitler a “Scourge of God” Sophie went to the prison where he was detained. Under cover of darkness, she stood outside the walls, under the small window of his cell, and played “Die Gedanken send frei” on the recorder so he could hear it where he sat in chains. When Paul and Silas sat in chains and sang hymns to the Most High God, they were essentially singing their freedom songs. No physical captivity could constrict their fundamental spiritual liberty. Paul wrote of freedom in his letter to the Galatians: “When Christ freed us, he meant us to remain free.” Now, Christian freedom is a bit of a paradox, as you can hear in the slave girl’s label of Paul and Silas, “Slaves of the Most High God.” Paul called himself a slave of God often enough to raise the eyebrows of those of us who are brought up on notions of individual freedom. Theologian Jaques Ellul explains the heart of the paradox like this: “Accepting freedom is recognizing that one is under the protection of God alone. Conversely, to put oneself under the protective authority of God is to be free. To seek any other protection, whether it be in the army, in fortresses, in alliances, or in the state, is to fall into slavery again.”[3] You could say that all the chains that bound Paul and Silas previously had been thrown aside for this one-link chain, binding themselves to God. Choosing the one link, the covenant between themselves and God, allowed them to shed all the other chains that might have weighed them down. Therefore, even if they were physically shackled, they remained free under the protective authority of God. They were exquisitely aware of their freedom at their darkest moment, singing their freedom songs. Perhaps they sang Psalm 62: “God alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken…Trust in God at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.” [Psalm 62:6,8] Oh, to have such freedom! Don’t you covet the liberation these men in shackles had? But I’m afraid a lot of us, myself included, are still dragging chains. Like some of the characters in the Acts story who may have looked free but weren’t quite. I can identify with the slave owners who were consumed with their economic interests. Speaking for myself, few things constrain my spirit as powerfully as the care and keeping of money and possessions. I can identify with the magistrates as well. I like living in an orderly society, and I’m capable of “overlooking” a number of sick and unjust aspects of our life together for the sake of an orderly, peaceful existence. I’m not particularly apt to rock the boat when I am benefiting from the Empire. I can identify with the jailer, who almost gave into despair, overwhelmed by fear, jumping to fearful conclusions even before he knew what was really going on after the earthquake. I can even identify with the slave girl to some extent; I feel like a slave to oil consumption as I watch helplessly the great disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico because people like me have such a thirst for gasoline and other petroleum products. There are plenty of chains around my soul in spite of being a professing Christian for many years now. If having a chained-up soul was strictly a private matter between myself and my Lord it wouldn’t much matter (to anybody but me). But that is not the case. The inner struggle reveals itself in real problems. I can’t picture people in chains without thinking about the scandal of political prisoners being held without specific charges or due process, subject to inhumane interrogation techniques. Just this week news again broke that our own government has a secret prison in Kabul at Bagram Air Force Base. Former prisoners have reported to the BBC that they were held in a separate facility from the regular jail and subjected to abuse.[4] What are such facilities but manifestations of our fear? Shackled by insecurity, we misplace our trust in violent systems, hoping we can lock up everyone who threatens us. Being constricted by fear as a society manifests itself in very real injustice. Therefore, it is a matter of urgency not only for our souls but for the good of humanity that we seek liberation. It seems that for most of us liberation is an excruciatingly gradual process. One theologian I was reading used the phrase “freedom becoming flesh.” As freedom becomes more real to us, more a part of us, we come to enflesh freedom, to embody love more boldly in our ethical choices. Jaques Ellul writes about this, saying, “Can it be said that Christians have become free persons by nature? Do they have a different nature from other people? This would imply a metaphysical transformation and we do not contend for this. The real point at issue when we speak of Christian freedom is ethics. Christians, like all other individuals, are still subject to pressures, temptations, determinations, and necessities. Christians, like everybody else, obviously know what it is to be hungry. Their distinctive gift, however…enables them to give a different reply from that of all others in the same conditions, and…allows them to introduce a lever of freedom into the dense mass of constraints.” [5] I really like Ellul’s notion of introducing a “lever of freedom into the dense mass of constraints.” I’m picturing a pair of loppers at the end of that lever, powerful enough to cut through the links of the chains in which I remain swathed. Paul writes to the Christians in Galatians, “Freedom is what we have—Christ has set us free! Stand, therefore, as free people, and do not allow yourselves to become slaves again.” I hope to be free one day. Free-er. I can say with conviction is that one of the things that helps me most is getting together with you, beloved, and singing hymns that remind me again under whose protective authority I live and move and have my being. Each hymn sung with passion and conviction helps a link of the chains that bind drop off and roll away: Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come; tis grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.
Take my lips and let them be Filled with messages for Thee; Take my silver and my gold, Not a mite would I withhold, Not a mite would I withhold.
Great is your faithfulness! Great is your faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see; all I have needed your hand has provided, Great is your faithfulness, God unto me.
Save us from weak resignation to the evils we deplore; let the search for your salvation be our glory evermore. Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, serving you whom we adore, serving you whom we adore.
My life flows on in endless song above earth’s lamentation; I hear the sweet, though far-off hymn that hails a new creation. Through all the tumult and the strife, I hear the music ringing; it finds an echo in my soul—how can I keep from singing?
What though my joys and comforts die? My Savior still is living. What though the shadows gather `round? A new song Christ is giving. No storm can shake my inmost calm, while to that Rock I’m clinging; Since Love commands both heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?
As we become free, believing the good news that we are indeed free and acting on that freedom, we become liberators in partnership with Christ. One’s inner struggle to be free can become manifest in actions that free others from those forces that constrain them—poverty, indecent housing, addiction, exploitive business, discriminatory applications of the law, militarism, racism, heterosexism, and so forth. I do believe that Christ gives us more freedom to be courageously compassionate than we often exercise. But like Sophie Sholl’s father listening to his daughter playing “Die Gedanken sind frei” outside his prison cell, we can become so attuned to that “real, though far off hymn that hails a new creation” that we may sing and dance and march and hammer along with it. Christ is our liberty. Christ is our liberty. May it be so. [1] Dickens, Charles “A Christmas Carol” [2] Seeger, Pete hear him sing his version of “Die Gedanken send frei” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M53mpCOAfS4&feature=related [3] Ellul, Jacques excerpt from The Ethics of Freedom in Alive Now January/February 1981, p. 3 [4] http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2010/05/11/Red-Cross-confirms-secret-US-prison/UPI-85531273587319/ [5] Ibid, p. 8
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