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.

Reformation Day with Confirmation: October 30, 2011

Preacher: Pastor Carrie B. Smith

John 8:31-36

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Among your options for movie-watching this Halloween weekend is a film called “Anonymous”. Set in Elizabethan England, “Anonymous” spins out the story of Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, who is the true author of the plays that have been falsely attributed to the no-good, amateur, imposter William Shakespeare. “To be or not to be, that is the question”, “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears,” and “This above all: to thine ownself be true.”—none of this was written by the man famously known as “The Bard.” Shakespeare, it turns out, was a fraud!

Now if this information about Shakespeare is news to you, then you also may be interested to know that it was the CIA who really assassinated JFK. And it just so happens that reptilian aliens were behind the plot to destroy the World Trade Center. Oh, and don’t forget the most important fact of all: Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene had a family together, and their descendants are alive today and living in France.

These and other so-called “truths” can all be found in books or on the silver screen. In fact, if you think up the craziest idea possible—reptilian aliens master-minding 9/11, for example—you can probably find an online community dedicated to that very same belief. Conspiracy theories are nothing new, but the free flow of ideas in the internet age has made “the truth” extremely hard to pin down. What makes a theory “true”? Academic research? A million followers on Facebook? Ten books on Amazon? Or seeing it played out on the big screen by our favorite movie stars?
Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but these days it seems the truth is in the hands of the movie producers and the web-bloggers.

The Gospel lesson for today, Reformation Sunday, is also about the truth. In John chapter 8, Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” The truth, he assures them, lies not with the Romans or the religious authorities or even with established tradition. Truth, says Jesus, is in his Word.

I wonder: if we heard Jesus saying these things today, would we call him a conspiracy theorist? Would we, like that small group of his followers, wonder if Jesus really had the truth on his side? After all, a sandal-wearing, long-haired radical, challenging long-held beliefs and claiming to have exclusive rights to “the truth” could be the guy appearing on the next episode of The History Channel’s hit conspiracy show “Ancient Aliens.”

Jesus could be just another guy with a crazy idea…or he could be Jesus Christ, the son of God. He could be Jesus, our brother, who walks with us. He could be the one we’ve been waiting for, the Savior of the world, the king of love, the lamb of God and the prince of peace! Jesus could be who he says he is: the way, the truth, and the life.

Today, we have 22 young disciples being confirmed at Bethany, thanks be to God! Twenty-two young people, who in baptism were already sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever, will come forward to have their faith affirmed through the laying on of hands and prayer. We rejoice that these young disciples have said “We know the truth, and the truth has set us free.” Amen!

This is a joyful day, but contrary to certain conspiracy theories, Confirmation is not graduation from church. And the Confirmation program is not a two-year process of downloading secret information into teenage brains! Faith isn’t about knowing facts.

But faith is about knowing the truth and being set free because of it. In preparation for this day, each of our young confirmands wrote a faith statement. The idea was for them to articulate what they know to be true about God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Now I read all of these faith statements, and I can tell you that our young people did not write lists of facts, or theories of the universe, or systematic theologies. Instead, they wrote the truth—the truth as they have experienced it through hearing the Word of God, receiving the body and the blood of Jesus in communion, and through living in community with you here at Bethany.

Here is a sampling of the truth that sets us free, as the confirmands in the class of 2011 understand it:

“God is always there for me.
When God is on your side, numbers don’t count and size doesn’t matter.
God walks with me.
God pays attention to me.
God makes me strong in hard times.
I am a gift from God to the world!
God will help me make difficult decisions.
Even when I can’t hear God’s voice, God is there.
God knows the future…God gives us a future!
God heals us and helps us to bear pain in life.
God forgives and loves everyone!
I can trust in God!
God has been with me every single day, and knew me before I was born!
Even when I have doubts, God is with me.
I don’t have to do anything special to have a relationship with God!
God gives me courage to do what is right, even if it is unpopular.
God helps us learn from our mistakes."


***
Now this last one was interesting to me, especially coming from a group of teenagers, because some of us were teenagers once, and we never made mistakes, ever. Amen?

Actually, the truth is…we all make mistakes. We all, in fact, sin. And one of the truths that didn’t make it on this list of faith statements is the one Jesus mentions in today’s Gospel passage: “Truly I say to you: Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave doesn’t have a permanent place in the household; the Son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

Most of us have no way of understanding what true slavery is like, but I think teenagers (like our own confirmands) know very well what it means to feel like slaves. Teenagers know what it means to be slaves to fashion. They can feel like slaves to popularity or to achievement. They may feel they are in bondage to the judgment of others or to the expectations of teachers and parents. In some cases, teenagers may feel stuck with the life situation they were born into, or to the limitations of their town, their school, or their neighborhood.

Most importantly, teenagers can feel bound to the mistakes they’ve made.

The truth is, we all feel bound to our mistakes. We feel enslaved to our failings, our mistakes, our pasts, our addictions, or even to our grief.

But sisters and brothers, on this Reformation Day, we give thanks for the truth that Martin Luther brought to our attention: that we are saved by grace through faith, apart from works. The Son has set us free, and we are free indeed! Amen!

Sisters and brothers, God has said “yes” to each of us in our baptisms. God has said “yes” to us, while we were yet sinners and even though we fail even to live up to our best intentions.

Teenagers feel like they hear “no” a lot…but today I pray that our confirmands will hear God’s “yes” loud and clear. And as these young people affirm their faith today, I pray that you will also hear God’s resounding “yes” to you!

Yes, you will make mistakes.
Yes, you are forgiven.
Yes, the cross and the resurrection were enough, no matter what!
Yes, you are loved because of who you are!

And yes, you have gifts and talents that are needed in the world and in the church.

This isn’t secret knowledge. It isn’t a conspiracy theory. It is simply the truth as we know it. Thanks be to God! Amen.