Free at Last

Sermon - October 26th, 2014

Affirmation of Baptism Service

Free at Last

Pr. Paul Cannon

Grace and Peace Bethany Lutheran, a special welcome to all our guests ... and to our Confirmation class of 2014, I say,

Free at last, you are free at last!

Confirmation students, you guys are now free!  You’ve written your essays, you’ve done projects, been to camp, you’ve acolyted and turned in sermon notes, you’ve completed service hours and been to fellowship events - you’ve done a whole lot of stuff!

Some of you have younger brothers and sisters going through confirmation right now.  Feel free to laugh at them.

But YOU, you are done! You are free!  

• You don’t have to acolyte from today onward. In fact, this might be the last time in your life that you ever have to wear a white robe again!  
• You don’t have to listen to my sermons ever again.  You can sleep right through them, and unless you snore - nobody will know.  
• Nobody at church is ever going to make you volunteer for stuff, which (in any case) is kind of an oxymoron if you think about it.
• And you don’t have to go to fun youth events anymore - like Mega Trampoline.  You are perfectly free to stay at home and do your homework if that’s what you prefer.

Freedom is awesome and you guys are just starting to get your first taste of what that means.  Most of you are now in 9th grade.  You’ve started high school, which means that when your parents try to tell you what to do, you respond with an eye roll.  I get it.  You are longing for your freedom.  You don’t want your parents telling you to clean up your room.

But parents, if you think it’s bad right now, just wait, because in a year or so, a lot of your kids are going to go through driver’s ed (a terrifying thought if you know these kids!) - and when they do, freedom will take on a whole new meaning!

Freedom is a beautiful thing!

And so, not surprisingly, Jesus has a lot to say about freedom too.  He’s talking to his followers and he tells them, If you follow me, “you will know the Truth, and the Truth will make you free.”

That’s what today’s all about.  It’s your day to say that following Jesus is something that you want for your life.  Today you get the opportunity to say that this faith journey you’ve been on is something that you want to continue.

And Jesus says that when you follow him, he will make you free!

But let me be the first to tell you that Christian Freedom is a strange kind of freedom.  It doesn’t mean you can do whatever the heck you want.  Martin Luther, and I hope you all know by now that I’m not talking about Martin Luther King, the original Martin Luther once famously said this:

A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.  (And...)

A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.  

Or in other words, you are free and you’re not free. Get it? I didn’t think so.  Luther’s favorite thing to do was to confuse people with paradoxes.  

So let me try an analogy.  Has anybody ever seen that TV show, “Undercover Boss?”  

If you haven’t, it’s a pretty simple premise. It’s a reality TV show, where CEO’s from big companies like Subway would spend a week working in some of the lowest level positions that the company had to offer.

It’s a fitting analogy for what Christian freedom is like.  As followers of Christ, we are free.  We’re like the CEO.  We can kind of do whatever we want, and nobody is going to fire us.  We’ve been baptized.  God isn’t going to kick you out of the family when you mess up - even if you mess up big time.  

We’re the undercover boss here. Nobody is going to force you to do good things in your life.  God is not going to ground you if you don’t show up to church every week - though I can’t say the same for your parents.  You’re the CEO of your life.  You are a perfectly free Lord of all.  Subject to none.

And yet...there’s the other side of the coin. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant to all, subject to all. As followers of Jesus, we think of freedom differently than the rest of the world, because we know what we are being freed from.  

You see Jesus tells us that we are being freed from sin.  Sin is kind of a loaded word, because it can mean a lot of things, but at its most basic, sin is simply selfishness.  And that’s what I mean when I say sin, I mean selfishness.

In Christ, you’re free from sin. And if sin is our own selfishness, then what that means is that the thing that keeps you from being truly free, isn’t your parents, it isn’t school, it isn’t church or confirmation classes, it isn’t that you can’t drive yet - the thing that keeps you from being truly free is you.  

Jesus saves you from yourself - so that you are free to live as unselfishly as you can. And in that sense, freedom is service. Think about that.  If you had to do good works in order to get into heaven, ultimately all those good things you did, would be selfish. They would just be for your own good.  

And so, our Lord Jesus, died on a cross so that whoever believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life. If that’s true, then heaven is no longer a bribe to make us do good things. And so, as Jesus said, “If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

And that’s what today is all about.  You are free.

You don’t remember it, but when you were babies, you were all baptized.  And when that water was sprinkled on your forehead, a bunch of people made promises to you - your parents, the congregation, and the most important of which, was God.

God’s promise, was that you was that you would be connected to the death and resurrection of Jesus. You would be a part of his family - and being a part of God’s family means that you are free; You’re not a servant anymore.

You might remember that I asked each one of you in your interview if you wanted to be Confirmed.  And the reason I asked you that is because now it’s time for you to make those same promises that were made to you when you were baptized.  This isn’t your Mom’s choice.  It’s not your Dad’s choice.  It’s not your grandparent's choice. It’s not my choice.  It’s yours.

Class of 2014, you are going to make some promises.  

• You’re going to promise to continue this life of faith with the church - not alone (because alone is ultimately selfish), but with this community of people.  
• You’re going to promise to listen and share God’s word, to listen to the voiceless and to pray for the people around you.
• You’re going to promise to live Christ-like lives to the best of your ability - and that means to live unselfishly,  serving others and working to make this world a better place.  
• And when you realize you screwed up, like we all do, you are going to promise to seek forgiveness at the communion table and do it all over again.

To live free means to live unselfishly.  Confirmation class of 2014 - Do you think you can do that? If so, give me a “Yes.” Are you willing to follow Jesus even if it takes you places you didn’t want to go?  If so say “Yes.”  Do you think you can live for others, even when it’s not in your best interest?  If so say, “Yes.”

Then, Confirmation Class of 2014, you are free indeed.

Come Holy Spirit, Come.

When It Reigns

Sermon - When it Reigns

Matthew 22:15-22

Pr. Paul Cannon

Grace and Peace, Bethany Lutheran Church, from God our creator, the Holy Spirit that connects us, and Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord,

I was really in the mood this week to preach on something happy.  This whole last week and half of my life has really been a comedy of errors.  

It all kind of started last week on our way into the city to see a play, when our GPS had us driving in circles.  My in-laws were in town, and traffic was backed up terribly on the highways, so Google Maps told us that it would be faster to get off the freeways and use some city roads roads instead.  

I’ll never believe Google Maps again.  At one point, we literally came full circle, and passed the same school...twice.

Then last Sunday, my Cincinnati Bengals were poised to kick a game-winning 36 yard field goal in overtime to win the game … and the kicker missed it!  The game ended in a tie, which somehow felt worse than a ls

Then on Monday, when the office had the day off, I went with my wife, my brother and his wife and a few friends to go apple picking.  But when we were sitting down for lunch that day, I threw out a disk in my lower back.

It was one of those weeks that reminded me of the great quote from Mel Brook’s, Young Frankenstein, when one character says to the other “It could be worse!”  And the other one asks, “How?” And he says, “It could be raining!”

And I mean that literally, because right after I threw out my back, like in the movie, it started raining.

It was one of those weeks.

Yes, I could have really used something happy and light to preach about this week, but instead I got the story that has to do with taxes...When it rains...it pours.

Some religious leaders come up to Jesus, with a question that they hope is going to be a wedge issue - because no matter how Jesus answered it, it was going to make some folks mad.  

“Hey Jesus,” they asked him, “Should we pay our taxes?”  Nothing like a question about politics to get folks mad at you.

But Jesus answers in a roundabout way.  He asks one of them to take out a coin, and asks them who’s picture is on it.  And they answer him that it was the face of the emperor on the coin.

So Jesus tells them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give to God what is God’s.”

Good answer.

Let’s think about those words.  What belongs to the Caesar? The coin does.  It has Caesar’s image on it.  It must belong to him.

But the more interesting question is, what belongs to God?  Really.  What belongs to God?  If Caesar owns the coin because his image is on it, then where is God’s image?  

Genesis 1:27, “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

We bear God’s image.  We belong to God.  “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give to God what is God’s.”  

Don’t just give of the coin, Jesus insists, give of yourself.  But, what do you give to the God who has everything?  What do you give back to the God who gave you everything, including the coin?  

If you are given everything, then maybe we should give back everything - time, talent, money, resources - all that stuff, yes.  But it’s really much deeper than that.  You give back your heart to God.  

Remember those three great Christian values we heard about in our reading from Thessalonians today? Faith, hope and love?  Those are the things that God truly desires from us.  That should be our offering to God every day.

And that’s a lot to ask, I know.  Because sometimes, we have weeks like I had this past week.  You get lost.  You feel like you are losing at life.  You find yourself in pain.  And then it starts to rain on you...literally or figuratively. When it rains, it pours.

Those days you don’t feel particularly loving.  Those are the days you don’t feel hopeful.  Those are the days you don’t feel faithful.  But it’s particularly when it’s hard - when life is pouring on you - that it matters most.  Your teenager is fighting with you at home?  Love them even more.  Struggling with your faith?  Go pray and talk to God about it.

And hope...hope is something that I think we could all use a dose of these days.  It’s been a tough couple months, here at Bethany. I know more than most. We said goodbye to a Pastor this summer.  We’ve had our fair share of change and conflict.  And at times it feels like we are getting rained on.

But all of this - all of us - belong to God.  We bear God’s image.  And where God is present, there is all kinds of hope.  And so hope is what God asks us to give back.

This summer on our mission trip, every night all the church groups would return from a long day of serving.  We would gather for worship.  And our site leaders from Youth Works, would lead us all in an exercise of hope that they just called “Yay God.”  

And these exhausted kids, who had every right to complain after a week of manual labor and sleeping on floors, would raise their hands, and offer for the group, where they had seen God that day. And when they finished, everybody would snap their fingers...and say...Yay God.  

Sometimes they would lift up somebody who went the extra mile to help that day. Yay God (snap).  Sometimes they would lift up the way they saw God at work in the faces of the community.  Yay God! (snap)  Other times it was the way that God was accomplishing work - fixing broken homes, spending time with the sick, the old and the young.  Yay God! (snap)

They were moments of hope.  They were “Yay God” moments.

We have those too.  This week, I got a call in the evening at home from an unknown number, which is usually a bad sign.  But it was Sharon Saunders, who we’ve been praying for, to tell me that the doctors hadn’t found any cancer at her latest bouts with Chemo. Yay God. (snap)

In our God, we find hope in the most peculiar places - none more peculiar than the cross.  Through an instrument of capital punishment, as Christians, we proclaim our greatest hope for life.

That’s what I would like us all to do today. We need to start practicing a little bit of hope in the rainy times.  We need some “Yay God” here at Bethany and in our lives. 

Think of a "Yay God" moment in your life. Write it down.  Give thanks to God even in tough times.

You’ll be amazed at the incredible ways that God is working in and among you despite all the stuff that’s happened this past year.  There is so much hope - too much, to not be hopeful in our God.

There are days, and sometimes weeks and even years where it rains, and when it rains, it pours.  But as those who bear the image of God, it is our job offer hope back to this world  - especially in the rainy times.  So let faith, love and hope be your offerings.  Because in our God, faith, love and hope reign eternal.  

Yay God.