Truth and Freedom

John 8:31-36

And so what is this truth that makes us free?

I was called upon to preach at our local Hospice Annual Memorial Service a few weeks ago.

Those in attendance were primarily family members and friends of dear ones who had died in the past year. I knew their memories would be fresh and their hearts still raw. I had prepared words about celebrating and giving thanks for the gifts our loved ones had given to us. I had grounded my words in God's love and promise to never let them go.

Before I spoke though, two hospice nurses stood up and read more than two hundred names of those who had died while under the care of hospice this year. It was clear that only a fraction of those who had experienced such loss had the need or the inclination to gather that October afternoon.

And before that there were words of welcome. First from the hospice chaplain. And then from the hospice medical director.

Now the medical director is my own doctor. I know him to be a person of quiet faith. I have experienced his kindness. And yes, I have been at the receiving end of his gentle truth telling. Even so, I found myself surprised at his words that afternoon.

First Dr. Thornton welcomed and commended those who had gathered for coming at all. He reminded us that to remember is important but it is also hard and it takes a certain amount of courage to do so. Only he didn't stop there. Rather, he went on to speak to us of the suffering we had witnessed and experienced in this past year and the hard decisions which had to be made. Next, he essentially urged those present to remember that one day we would also all die and this would be a very good time to update or make out our own living wills and advanced directives and the like.

It was a little jarring, I have to say that. And yet, I expect he knew those gathered better than I --- even if he had not yet met them. For he is that rare doctor who acknowledges the truth of our very human limits --- especially, of course, as we experience them in our physical bodies. He deals with this truth every single day and he chose to speak of it directly with a group who had come against this truth themselves in the not too far distant past.

So is this the truth that Jesus speaks of now? Is this the truth which we will discover more deeply as we continue in his word? Yes, in many ways, I expect this is precisely the truth of which he speaks: We are human. We are limited. We are not God. Only God is God. And acknowledging these truths allows us to more faithfully live the lives God calls us to live.

And so on this Reformation Day, it is not only ours to speak and hear these truths --- it is also ours to celebrate the freedom they bring.

• Perhaps we experience this as freedom as it helps us to realign our priorities, our values, our dreams.

• Maybe this offers freedom from worry about those things which, in the end, really won't matter.

• Possibly this enables us to freely live our lives in grace knowing that in our human limits, failure will always be part of our lives --- in the same way it will be with our neighbors --- and that forgiveness is perhaps the most freeing thing we can offer or receive. 

• And yes, perhaps this frees us finally to be fully human in the best sense of what it is to be human.

This meaning of this freedom to be fully human came home to me in a story told by a member of my congregation who died this past year. Kim was just my age. She was diabetic --- a condition which had plagued her since she was a child. As a result, her physical journey was tough in the extreme. Coincidentally, we shared the same family doctor.

She told me this story. Not too long before she died, she sat in her doctor's weeping in her frustration. She so wanted to be better and to that end she had been following doctor's orders every step of the way. Only it wasn't working. Her physical body was continuing to decline.

And that same doctor who spoke to families and loved ones a few weeks back about their own human limits, clearly has acknowledged them in himself. For in those next moments he demonstrated that he is no longer enslaved by the expectation that he should somehow "fix" all that ails us. He simply handed her a tissue and cried with her. Oh yes, his acceptance of her limits and of his own, allowed him to be fully human in the best ways God calls us to be. 

And it all starts with truth, of course. This truth of our humanness and the greater truth of God's great love for us. 

Oh, there are many truths which set us free, of course. This is simply the one which resounds for me today as I hear Jesus' words. How about you?

• In your experience how are truth and freedom related to one another? What stories would you tell?

• What do you think it means when Jesus says "If you continue in my word?" How are we called to do that?

• My thinking on this is that sin is rooted in our tendency to believe we are 'more than human' and this surely can enslave us.  Does this make sense to you or would you go in another direction? Why or why not?

On Truth and Freedom and the One Who Sets Us Free

John 8:31-36

"And you will know the truth and the truth will make you free..."  John 8:32

I have to say that, like many, I have a rather checkered relationship with 'the truth.'  And while I'm going back close to fifty years to make my point, it would, no doubt, be less than truthful for me to say this is no longer the case.

I was six years old and entering the first grade with all the eagerness one would wish upon a little one first venturing out into the world.  I could not have imagined or anticipated the 'trauma' that awaited me then. Yes, that is a strong word, but that was exactly how I experienced it.

It was in my first days sitting at that child-sized desk that I came to know that the world was far different from what I had come to take for granted. For you see, while our teacher was a tiny woman, she surely didn't seem to be so.  She ruled that classroom with an iron fist.  Or at least a ruler. Her desk drawer was overflowing with marbles and balls and other toys she had confiscated from wayward children over the years. There was seldom a corner without a child in it. Indeed, the sixth grade teachers would threaten those who crossed the line in their classrooms that if they did not behave, they would send them down to Miss Lamb.  (Yes, that was her name.)  Sometimes they followed through and on those days there would also be big, hulking twelve-year-olds crouched under a wooden table in front of us --- this being their punishment for misbehavior.

These many decades later I can call up some measure of pity for this poor woman who was so clearly unhappy.  But then?  I was just afraid.  I can remember cowering in my seat when she would come flying by with a wooden ruler.  I can remember wincing to hear it land on another child's hand or forearm.  But even with all that 'fair warning,' if you will, still the six year old in me was not entirely immediately quashed.  For as it happened, one day early in the year I inexplicably failed to remember that from 9-3 on school days my universe was ruled more harshly than I had ever known before.  I forgot and turned and spoke to a friend across the aisle. As you might expect, I was caught and ordered to stand in the corner almost before I realized my lapse. And these 47 years later I still remember the institutional green paint on that wall. And the feeling of the gap between the cinder blocks where I traced my finger then, willing myself not to cry.  Indeed, my memory of the entire incident and what would follow is an experience I keep pressing against and through which I continue to seek meaning and understanding.

This is where this memory intersects with 'truth.' Or not.  For you see, I vowed I would never tell. For reasons I cannot understand, my 'guilt' almost immediately seeped over into a sense of shame. I was convinced that there was something 'wrong with me' that this had happened to me. (Yes, yes, I know my threshold for hard things was amazingly low. I can only describe my world as profoundly sheltered before this.)  And while it may have been fine to keep this to myself, my sense of shame was so profound that I did not want to go back to school.  And so the next day and the day after that and for several weeks more I faked being sick.  I was not, of course.  My mother and dad knew this. It became a battle of wills --- one that I know must have been breaking their hearts. They finally took me to our family doctor.  They did x-rays and discovered the beginnings of a stomach ulcer.  Before long, I was sent to a therapist in a place and time when this was almost unheard of.  Week after week she would ask if I had gone to school.  And time after time I would tell her I had.  Even when I hadn't. (I did not seem to be capable of reasoning that the 'truth' was sitting out in the waiting room in my mother.)   Funny, but that is all I really remember about those sessions.

So there you have it.  Even at the age of six, I had become a slave to sin.  I did not believe I could safely speak of what had happened and then, in my fear, felt I had to cover it up for I was deeply afraid of the 'truth' I thought it spoke about me.  One lie led to another and to another and people were hurt.  In this case most especially me.

Now eventually I did go back to school, of course. I learned to read and write, to add and subtract and eventually was passed on to the second grade which was a much more gentle experience. And I did not speak of my first grade trauma for a decade or more -- until time and space helped me to see that my offense was really quite minor and that my teacher's reaction to that and to so many things was not rational in the least. More than that, though (--- and this I am still learning ---) I was beginning to understand that our value as human beings is not measured by what we do or do not do. Whether we succeed or fail.  Whether we sin or don't sin.  Oh, I'll never forget the laughter at the supper table that night as this old story was pieced together and we shook our heads at that by-then-far-away six year old who thought she had it all figured out.  And who hadn't yet realized that only love and acceptance was waiting for her.  If only she could acknowledge that she needed it.

Jesus speaks to us today of truth.  And of slavery to sin.  And of his being our freedom as he both models and grants this unfathomable acceptance.  And we know in our gut, don't you think, as well as in our experience that truth sets us free?  But first it has to be spoken, received, and embraced.  Or so it seems to me. First we have to acknowledge our utter slavery to that which binds us up. And our need to be set free.  And that we have nowhere to turn but to the only one who can bring this marvelous gift  of freedom to us.

This is the wonder of Jesus' words for us today and every day.  It's not up to me or you.  You and I are to simply stand still in the unparalleled gift that as broken and hurting and yes, hurtful, too, as we are --- Jesus came to set us free. We can't do it.  All we can do --- all we have to do --- is know our need and be grateful in the gift.  All we have to do is cast aside the biggest lie of all: that we can do it all ourselves and that our value rests in that.  It does not.  And sometimes coming to that larger truth begins in simply speaking what truths we know here and now as best we can. Even or especially about ourselves.  I wonder how my first grade year would have been different if only I had done this.  I wonder what tomorrow will look like if I only do this then.

• I offer a long ago but not forgotten example of being enslaved to sin --- of being bound up in my own inability to speak the truth.  Surely we all have a thousand examples of this.  What comes to mind for you?
• Jesus says today that our freedom can only come from outside ourselves:  that we have to be 'set free' by him.  How do you see this coming to be?  How have you experienced this?
• Truth can be hard to come by. In life it often seems 'relative.'  Still, I think our freedom comes home to us when we simply do our best to speak it and to acknowledge our need to be set free,  in response to the giver of freedom, Jesus, who simply yearns to unbind us and set us free. What do you think?

Slavery and Freedom

John 8:31-36

Most of the time I really do understand Jesus’ first listeners today when they proclaim for all the world to hear that they ‘have never been slaves to anyone.’  For even though it may be obvious to anyone else that they are a people who  should know what slavery is for we who know their story know that as a people these children of Abraham were first enslaved in Egypt and then later by Babylon, and even then as they were speaking they were occupied by the Roman Empire.  Even so, as Jesus speaks to them now of slavery either their memory is short or their awareness is limited.  But I have to say that mine is took sometimes.  

Indeed, I expect it is even easier for you and me than it was for them back then to live in a kind of denial about slavery.   I say this now realizing that it was not that many generations ago when all of my ancestors arrived here and what I know of them is that they were mostly looking for freedom from hunger and freedom of opportunity and freedom from oppression.  Slavery does, in fact come in many forms and perhaps the worst kind of slavery is the sort where we have forged the chains which bind us ourselves.  Indeed, Jesus says today that we who do wrong, are in a very real way tied up with and by that wrong.  We who sin are enslaved to sin.  To pretend this is not so does not make it not so.  And if we are fortunate, the day comes when we can't live in our denial any longer.

And so while like Jesus’ first listeners I like to think of myself as free, still I am not.  This is how it has come home to me.

It was more than 25 years ago that I last underwent an actual physical fitness test.  It was a hoop we had to jump through as one of our ordination requirements then.  I wasn't necessarily out of shape yet, but it is so that I didn't pay that much attention to my physical well-being in my 20's. What I still remember distinctly about that session was that at the end the young woman who shared my results told me that I was losing flexibility already.  At the age of 26 I was already finding it hard to touch my toes.  To twist around. To move in even every day kinds of ways.

Ouch.  One would have thought I would have paid attention to this clear warning of what could only get worse.  One would have thought that I would have done something about this then before it was too late.  I did not.  Indeed, a quarter of a century passed before I even really noticed. And now I find myself noticing all the time. Especially early on Tuesday mornings when I force myself out of bed for an early morning yoga class.

Because, you see, I'm really bad at yoga.  Almost every Tuesday morning for over a year I have been stretching and holding and breathing.  And more than once I have almost laughed out loud when our instructor has us lying flat on our backs with arms and legs straight up in the air (or some such equally uncomfortable pose) and then invites us to relax into it.  "Relax!?!?  Really?" I think to myself and mostly don’t let myself mutter out loud.   Oh yes, all these years of not paying attention, of not moving in ways that would really stretch me, has resulted in my being 'bound up' --- enslaved even, if you will, in ways that indicate I may never really know full freedom of movement again.  

It is so, of course, that as Jesus points out today, sin can enslave us in much the same way. And I would guess that this is especially true when we find we have not paid attention to it in the way I ignored the warning about my physical flexibility a long time ago.  Indeed, I have had to learn countless times that our actions --- or lack thereof --- have consequences. Sin repeated over and over again leaves a mark, shapes habits, scars us in our very being. And while it is so that I can go long stretches of not paying attention to such as this at all --- the day always comes when I wake up and find I do really miss that one from whom I have been estranged for so long, when I realize that I am exhausted from behaving as though I have to do it all and have forgotten or failed to receive the gift of Sabbath for yet another week, when I experience that nagging resentment I sometimes do that results from my envying all the good things others seem to take for granted.  Oh yes, it is so that all too often I live in the same kind of denial that Jesus' first listeners must have when they claimed they had never been enslaved. Then I wake up and find it hurts to move in a way I once would not have believed possible.

And so I find I hear Jesus' words of promise today and I feel a kind of wonder at what he has to say. For I have neglected far too much, failed far too profoundly, ignored it --- whatever it is ---for far too long to ever know freedom again, haven't I?  Well, haven’t I?

And yet, that is not what Jesus says to us now.  In fact, he makes it sound almost easy, if not without pain.  For there is something to this stepping out of our denial and into the truth of who we are and what we have done or not done and who Jesus is that changes everything. There is something to simply knowing we need this gift of freedom offered to us now that brings freedom already.  Freedom from denial, for one.  Freedom from having to pretend I’m more than I am.  Freedom from believing it all rests on me.  Freedom from feeling the need to hide my failures, my hurts, my neglect and freedom to simply be all of who God made me to be among others who also fail and hurt and neglect and do wrong.  Oh, yes in that alone there is a kind of wondrous freedom.  In just not having to pretend anymore there is an amazing kind of freedom.  

And while it is so that this amazing promise of freedom does not mean that next Tuesday I will go to yoga class and be able to relax into whatever outrageous pose is modeled for me, that a relationship broken by neglect or hurtfulness will suddenly be as though nothing ever happened, or that the toll on my body and spirit by too many months or years of thinking it all depends on me will suddenly disappear.  Still for people of faith, this step into the truth is the first step and perhaps the most important one of all.  For this is the one that says that we do, in fact, know what slavery is first hand and that we also know that Jesus and his life and death and forgiveness is our only avenue to any kind of freedom that matters. 

Oh yes, it all begins with the truth that I am prone to even ignore well-meant long ago warnings that my actions have consequences.  It all starts with the truth that tis freedom Jesus offers now means something real --- not just in the next life, but in this one, too.  Indeed, standing in this wondrous truth is the best and only way I know that moves us closer to claiming and experiencing the freedom we long for. For this truth has us standing in the presence of Jesus in the fullness of all that we are this truth includes being offered the promise again that this freedom is not only possible, but that it is meant for you and me, too. 

• What experiences of slavery and freedom come to mind as you hear Jesus' words for us now?
• What does it mean to you to be 'set free?'
• What is the truth that Jesus speaks of today?  How do you know that to be the avenue to freedom in your life?

"Messiest Pastor Ever..."

John 8:31-36

To be sure, I am not one who can speak deeply from a personal experience of 'slavery' --- for it is not part of my own history. But then, as Jesus points out to his first listeners today, that sort of experience is not what he is speaking of at all.  Rather, the kind of slavery he points to today is the universal kind ---  for, in fact, we are each one of us 'slaves' to sin.  Let me tell you of a time when I knew this was so...

After greeting the faithful after the 8 a.m. service I looked down to see that I had spilled wine on the front of my alb.  We still had one more service to go that morning so I headed back to the sacristy to seek the advice of someone who would know better than I.  I stepped through the door and explained my dilemma, wondering if there was any way to remove the stain in the next hour.  Shaking her head, Carole said to me then, "You are the messiest pastor we've ever had."  She was laughing as she said it, but I could tell she wasn't really kidding.

To tell you the truth, I was shocked.  Oh, one glance at my desk will tell you that I am not the most orderly person around, but then, that is true of many other pastors.  Still while there was always a steady stream of traffic through my office and my 'messiness' was by then common knowledge, it was clear that in that moment she was not speaking of my lack of priority in getting papers filed or discarding junk mail.

In spite of Carole's light tone, I can remember standing still in my surprise at having been so 'found out' for I felt a sense of shame flooding me even before I knew what she was talking about. I can remember standing still long enough, too, to hear exactly what she meant.  It turns out that for many months now I had been spilling wine on the altar linens. And not just once a week-end, but often more than one time on any given week-end.  Clearly, I was entirely oblivious to this --- and more than that, as a result, had been going about my business for some time giving no thought at all to the extra work this was causing our very fine altar guild members.  I left that conversation determined to prove I could do better.

Now in my defense, there are good reasons beyond my own clumsiness for this.  For this is how it was.

It was the practice in that congregation to share the sacrament at every service every week-end. We had lovely gold plated chalices, however, which had a tendency to corrode if the wine was left in them for too long.  So the practice in that place was for the pastor, while she spoke the Words of Institution, to pour the wine into the chalice so as to minimize the time the wine would be able to do its damage.   Only the pouring ewer wasn't really a pouring ewer at all.  And so apparently, week after week, service after service, a tiny drop of wine would catch on the lip of the ewer and when I wasn't looking the deep red wine would dribble down onto the altar linen beneath it.

I hadn't noticed. But of course, the altar guild had.  It turns out they had taken to simply moving chalices around in order to cover up my stains between services so as to not have to clean up after me more than once a week, but until that morning not a one of them had said anything to me.

Well, after that I tried to change my ways, to prove them wrong, I really did.  Only service after service, week-end after week-end, the aforementioned design flaw in the pouring ewer made it so that no matter how I held it, no matter how carefully I poured from it, there was no stopping that single drop of red wine from making its mark three times a week-end.  After a few weeks of doing my best I took to simply running my finger along the lip of the ewer and then wiping my finger on a tissue I kept in the pocket of my alb for just this purpose.  Try as I might, I couldn't make it not 'spill.'  It felt a little like 'slavery.'

Now I could come up with a dozen other examples of what it is to be 'enslaved to sin' --- most much more profound than this one.

For instance, I could speak of my on again off again addiction to caffeine.  No, I don't believe the caffeine itself is sinful.  And no, I'm not saying that the experience of others is at all like mine. Still, if I 'm honest, I have to admit there is an ongoing pattern underlying my succumbing to temptation once more. I grow tired or stressed.  I'm taking on too much, trying to prove my own worth once more.  I'm insisting that there is so much to do (and pastors, you know how this can be) that I simply can't get my day off again this week.  Then it's four o'clock in the afternoon.  I'm returning from a hospital call with a full slate of meetings still in front of me.  I find myself in the drive-through ordering a diet coke.  The first sip tastes terrible and then the second and third suddenly have me revived.  And I'm right back where I started. A slave to caffeine?  Maybe.  More than that I know myself to be slave to my own inability to set boundaries on my time and energy, to rely on God and God's people more than I do on my own limited skills and abilities and energy and time. I know I am a 'slave to sin.'

Or I could speak of my fear of confronting hard things, of my once more not speaking up in favor of the hurting or the oppressed.  I could choose one example now and then make a list of the thousand tired excuses I've used over my lifetime for not doing what I'm called to do in the face of injustice.  I could speak of how it gets easier and easier to ignore as my fear defines me more and more.  Oh yes, that's slavery, to be sure.  That is what it is to be a 'slave to sin.'

And for that matter? My story about the wine dripping on the altar linens week after week?  Well, as I've sat with it again this afternoon I am more and more convinced my 'slavery' was not in my inability to make a ewer with a design flaw do what it would never do.   My 'slavery' was tied to my yearning to be liked in all ways at all times.  My 'slavery' was rooted in the moment of confrontation when I felt 'found out,'  'less than,' 'not enough' --- in that quick flash of shame I experienced then that led me to do all I could do to make it right.  No, I am not proud of my inattentiveness to the altar guild's need to constantly be cleaning up after me.  At the same time, I wonder now why I didn't insist instead that we look for a better solution than me using my index finger to catch the mess before it became a mess week after week.  Why didn't we simply purchase something that would work better?  And why didn't I say so, thus sparing every pastor who came after me from the same plight?

No doubt about it, we are all, at one time or another, or perhaps at all times, slaves to fear or doubt or pride or ....  you name it.  All of us.  And even in those times when I think I'm making progress.  When I stand up or step up or reach out or speak the truth even when I'm afraid.  Even then it is not enough for the struggle goes on and one day I think I get it close to 'right' and the next I'm right back in the drive-through paying the price for, if nothing else, trying once more to prove my own worth or value all on my own.

So thanks be to God for the promise that is ours in Christ Jesus today: that promise of freedom which we only get glimmers of in our life together now.  For to be sure, there was some freedom experienced by both of us in the moment an altar guild member finally told me the truth.  And I knew some freedom in the realization that they would love me even if I was" the messiest pastor they'd ever had."  And while I'm grateful for those glimmers, those make me look forward all the more to the day when I will know the freedom Jesus offers now. When I will know fully and completely that the only way I can be set free is if someone else does it for me.  And when I will live in joy and trust that this is already so. When I will feel no more need to prove my own worth or value for I will be resting in the certainty that God already did that by loving me.  When I will hear words like 'You are the messiest pastor we ever had' not as words to be proven wrong, but rather as words to be listened to and heard which may well provide moments when forgiveness can be extended and received and which can be followed up by together finding a new and better way.  Indeed, what a day that will be!

• How have you experienced 'slavery?'  Are you tempted, along with Jesus' first listeners, to argue that you have never been 'enslaved?'  Or is this part of your lived experience?  If so, how does that inform your hearing of this text?
• How do you understand yourself to be a 'slave to sin?'  What story would you offer to help another understand what this means to you?
• How have you experienced being 'set free' from sin?  How does that experience reflect the larger one Jesus offers in his words today?