Chains and liberty

In the Gospel reading, Jesus tells the Jews who had believed in him ‘if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples.  And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’  This simple sentence has a lot in it for you to consider, for all of us to consider. We are people who are not always exactly brilliant at continuing in the word of God. Franz Pieper, in his 4 volume work on Christian Dogmatics, frequently quotes this passage, reminding us that we are people who need to continue in the word of God in order to know the truth. We have to live in it, abide in it, if we visit it, it just doesn’t work. You won’t know the truth if you’re just a visitor.

Think of it this way: When you consider possible vacation destinations, you don’t only want to eat at McDonald’s, do you? I know that they have McDonald’s in Paris, in Belgrade, in Tokyo and in New Delhi, but seriously, work on things in this capacity – if you’re going to bother going to all the effort of finding yourself in a new space, with a new culture, you’re going to sort of want to go where the locals go.  You’re going to want to find the quaint little out of the way eateries dotted throughout the city, not where the tourist traps are, not where the fast food joints are, but the places where the people who eat in Paris, or in Rome, or in Moscow actually go themselves.  They live there, they’re not just visiting.  So when they get to know a place, when they get to experience an environment, they truly know what the life in that city is like.  Even if you like Hawaii, even if you visit it every other year, you’re not going to be as well acquainted with it as someone who lives there, dwells in it, and is shaped by it.

Now, when Jesus says to abide in his word, to live in it and to continue in it, he does so for a good reason, that we ought to be living in it, shaped by it, and consulting it daily. God’s word should inform our direction on almost everything that we do, for the intention behind what we do ought to be governed by what God has commanded.  In the decalogue, God told you firmly and neatly what you ought to do and ought not to do, and yet, and yet, we stray far far away from living and dwelling in those simple words.  You ought to know that in daily prayer, as Dr. Martin Luther set it down in the catechism, we ought to go joyfully to your work, singing a hymn, like that of the Ten Commandments, or whatever your devotion may suggest. This is in the office for daily prayer, and it doesn’t deviate based on the season. It does so because we need to be reminded more than we need to be instructed. 

If you depart from God’s word, if it is foreign to you, and you don’t live in it, if you only visit it once or twice, you will come away with a very different idea of what is in it compared with what is actually there.  You will come away with the same idea that the people of Israel did when Jesus told them that they could be set free, when they replied ‘We are children of Abraham, and have never been slaves of anyone.  How can you say that we will be set free?’

The truth of the matter is, and always has been, that we are slaves to our passions.  We are held captive by what we want to do, even when we don’t enjoy it.  Our vices call the shots, and we service them like a debt that we can never pay down, and yes, it is exactly like that, where people would make the minimum payments on owing ten thousand talents – you can make the minimum payments all day, but it’s not going to pay it down by a dime.  When Jesus says that if the son sets you free you will be free indeed, he’s talking about being set free from sin, and being set free from sin is a tricky matter.  It’s a tricky matter because you can’t be free from a captivity that you don’t think exist.  If you don’t think that there is a cage, then you won’t care if someone opens it for you.

So the Jews who had believed in Jesus and we today have the same issue; we are being told that Christ comes to set us free, but we all deny captivity.  We all deny that we are enslaved, that we are captive, and that we are working for something and someone other than ourselves.  And we can do this because we remain ignorant about the word of God, and what it says about who we are and what we do.  We remain ignorant about what God says about what we ought to do, and who we ought to be, and as such, we lose track of the slavery that we are experiencing constantly.  We lose track of the sinfulness that we have, and because of it, we forget, and we believe that we are free.

But we’re not.  Now, the truth of the matter is that it is only Christ who can set you free from this slavery, precisely because he knows that your sinfulness has to be addressed, you have to keep standards, you have to keep belief in truth and honesty, but you have to be honest in that you’re not meeting up with those standards.  And so, you need to be forgiven, to be shriven, to be absolved of your sins which will allow you to be free as well as to acknowledge your sins, and not change the standards that you know to be true.  This is so important that it gets forgotten, and it gets forgotten very quickly.  We forget that this sort of arrangement is possible, that perfection is possible through forgiveness and redemption is possible due to faith in Christ.  And more than anything else, we forget that the Christian faith, that great power that exists in our lives, is something that works forgiveness of the sins we actually commit.  And this is why the news is so good, because there are some real problems that we are carrying around with us, and the way they plague us must be eventually dealt with.

Now we can talk properly about the reformation.  And to do that, let’s talk about some stats.  I know I know, but please bear with me. Women in this great nation were granted the right to vote in elections beginning in 1916. That was just over a hundred years ago, and it was a hard fought right that was difficult to attain from the powers that were there at the time.  You’d think that with a right that important, granted relatively recently in terms of history and all that, that you’d see people cherishing it, and truly exercising their right to vote.  Well, the most recent elections in Winnipeg, Ontario and BC have something to say about that.  We’ve gotten to the point where 57% of eligible voters turning up and casting ballots is seen as a pretty major victory, but it really should be much much higher than that.  You can cast advance ballots, you have to be given time off to vote on election day, you can easily get a ride to and from the polling station, but the one thing that they can’t get through is apathy.  If you don’t care, you’re not going to vote.  And the biggest issue that you’re going to have as a Canadian elector is not guns, bombs, terrorism or aggression towards you as a voter, instead, it will be your complete lack of enthusiasm.  I know we’re not talking a hundred years for this next topic, more like five hundred, but the reformation, the great gift of Dr. Martin Luther to the Christian people, was partially to make the Bible known to them for the first time. They didn’t have to trust someone else to read it for them, they could read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the scriptures for themselves, and they should be on fire for it. They should be doing as Christ recommended, and continuing, living in it.  But they’re not. This is just like the issue with voting, you know, that you have a great gift, and what is stopping you is not the might of the organized church, threat of dungeon fire or sword, not AK 47s, but just your own apathy.

This reformation day, arise, and read the scriptures.  Understand that you are a slave to sin as someone who commits sin, and then learn of the great gift of Christ’s forgiveness and salvation.  This is what he does for you, you understand.  He sets you free from these sins, and when the son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

g their right to vote.  Well, the most recent elections in Winnipeg, Ontario and BC have something to say about that.  We’ve gotten to the point where 57% of eligible voters turning up and casting ballots is seen as a pretty major victory, but it really should be much much higher than that.  You can cast advance ballots, you have to be given time off to vote on election day, you can easily get a ride to and from the polling station, but the one thing that they can’t get through is apathy.  If you don’t care, you’re not going to vote.  And the biggest issue that you’re going to have as a Canadian elector is not guns, bombs, terrorism or aggression towards you as a voter, instead, it will be your complete lack of enthusiasm.  I know we’re not talking a hundred years for this next topic, more like five hundred, but the reformation, the great gift of Dr. Martin Luther to the Christian people, was partially to make the Bible known to them for the first time. They didn’t have to trust someone else to read it for them, they could read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the scriptures for themselves, and they should be on fire for it. They should be doing as Christ recommended, and continuing, living in it.  But they’re not. This is just like the issue with voting, you know, that you have a great gift, and what is stopping you is not the might of the organized church, threat of dungeon fire or sword, not AK 47s, but just your own apathy.

This reformation day, arise, and read the scriptures.  Understand that you are a slave to sin as someone who commits sin, and then learn of the great gift of Christ’s forgiveness and salvation.  This is what he does for you, you understand.  He sets you free from these sins, and when the son sets you free, you will be free indeed.