Sounds of Freedom

These are my thoughts for this week.  They are based on the Scriptures for Sunday, July 2, 2017, the 4^th Sunday after Pentecost (Year A) – Genesis 22: 1 – 14, Romans 6: 12 – 23, and Matthew 10: 40 – 42.

What are the sounds of freedom?  What sounds or words do you associate with freedom?  Granted, there are many choices one could pick but the first sound that I thought of was Richie Havens singing “Freedom” at the Woodstock Festival back in 1969.

The story is that Richie Havens was the opening act for the festival and only scheduled to sing a few songs.  But, for whatever reason, the next couple of acts had not arrived and the organizers asked Richie to keep playing.  So, he played and he played.  And after playing virtually all his material, he began to improvise on the song, “Freedom.”

The ability to improvise is not as easy as it might seem.  If one is not versed in the fundamentals of one’s trade, it is literally impossible to improvise.  So, when I hear this song, I am reminded that freedom is more than a word and that we must work on the fundamentals upon which freedom is based.

And there is another song which reminds me of the fundamentals of freedom, “Find the Cost of Freedom” by Crosby, Stills, & Nash.  As the words of the song state, the cost of freedom is buried in the ground.  Unfortunately, there are those who see the way to freedom through war and are quick to go to war when other means can achieve freedom as well.

I am reminded of the closing lines of Patrick Henry’s speech on March 23, 1775.  We all are aware of this speech for the closing line, perhaps echoing Joshua’s proclamation from Joshua 24: 15, “As for me and my family, we’ll worship God.”

“I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

But it is the line that precedes this is just as important when considering the words and sounds of freedom,

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the prices of chains and slavery?”

Those who heard that speech that day were probably well aware that Patrick Henry’s wife, Sarah, was mentally ill and there were those who felt that the best solution was to have her committed to the public hospital in Williamsburg.

If Patrick Henry had agreed to this treatment, his wife would have been locked in a windowless cell and chained to the wall with leg irons.  Rather than accept this, he chose to keep her home, in a well-lit and well-ventilated two-room apartment with 24-hour attention.  It should be noted that when Sarah died, she was died a Christian burial or religious funeral service because it was felt her mental illness was caused by possession by the devil.

The cost of freedom goes beyond the sacrifice of a few and to finding a way to maintain freedom.  Sadly, in today’s world, there are those who wish for others to die for their country while ignoring the wounded and maimed.  And when the wounded and maimed come home, they are quickly forgotten and monies that could be spent on building freedom are spent on additional weapons of war.

The next words of freedom come from Jesus.  In John 8: 32, we read that we are to seek the truth and the truth will set us free.  It is interesting to note that some of those who heard those words felt that they were already free because they adhered to the laws, rules, and regulations of the time.

But those laws, rules, and regulations gave freedom to those who wrote the laws, rules, and regulations; for the rest of the population, all they did was to enslave and entrap the population.  When people began to seek the truth for themselves, instead of relying on others, then freedom became a possibility.

And that leads to the last words of freedom.  When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his “I Have a Dream” speech on August 28, 1963, he spoke of people working together to seek the common goals of all humanity.

The words and sounds of freedom are many and various.  They echo through the ages and presage the future.  And while individuals speak the words of freedom, they require the work of all the people, working for all the people and not just a select few.  One cannot be free if someone else is not free.

So as you celebrate freedom, remember what you are asked to do.

 

Defining Freedom

This is the back page for the 4^th Sunday after Pentecost, July 2nd, 2017, bulletin of Fishkill United Methodist Church.  It was written by one of the youth of the church, Miles Cobb.

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There are some misconceptions about freedom today, such as nobody can tell you what to do or that everyone has equal rights. A third definition, perhaps the closest to the truth, is that freedom give us the right to speak as we want and declare our opinions

For most people, to be free means that no one is commanding them or that they are not being held against our will. The right to do whatever we want is not a realistic possibility.  You could argue that if you want to steal from a store or trespass onto private property, then you should be able to do that. Doing whatever you want is a possibility, but there are consequences. The second way of defining freedom that I mentioned above is that everyone has equal rights, but this is not a reality. In America one of our mottos is equality, but groups such as African Americans, women and LGBTQs are continuously discriminated against. In the ideal American nation discrimination would not exist, yet it does.

Finally, there is a fourth way of defining freedom.  In the Bible freedom is described as a blessing by God that grants self-control and the ability to love. By this definition, through God and Jesus we are all free. When God created humans, He blessed us with consciousness and the freedom to love. This is what being “human” means. The quote that I always associate with freedom is 2 Timothy 1:7- “For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” Today, as the idea of freedom is becoming more and more convoluted, there is always this single verse to remind us how to be free in the heart of God.

Dealing with Our Struggles

Here are my thoughts for the 4^th Sunday after Pentecost, 10 July 2011. The Scriptures for this Sunday are Genesis 25: 19 – 24, Romans 8: 1 – 11, and Matthew 8: 1 – 9, 18 – 23.

I am at the New Milford/Edenville United Methodist Church (Location of Church) again this morning. Summer services start at 9:30 and you are always welcome there.

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I think that I mentioned last week that I have two daughters, born three years apart, and of course, I am exceedingly proud of them. When I think back to the days when their mother was pregnant I remember how we could feel them moving about, anxious to leave the womb and get on with life. There isn’t much that I would trade for those experiences and the birth of each of my daughters.

I found out a few years later that twins are a natural occurrence on both sides of the family. There is some folklore that says that when there are twins in your family, they will appear in every other generation. And it was my generation’s turn to have twins but it wasn’t to be so perhaps when my grandchildren have children of their own, the trait of twins will appear. Still, I can only imagine what it might have been like to have the doctor come out and tell me that I was the father of twins.

That is what is so important about the reading from the Old Testament for today. As any parent will attest, there is something unique when you feel that young child begin to move inside the womb. We would like to think that Rachel was overjoyed to feel the twins moving inside of her but we also know, from our reading of the Old Testament today, that the struggle between Esau and Jacob that began in the womb would continue long after they grew up. And this would have naturally given her concern.

It should be natural for siblings to struggle, to strive and compete against each other. But it should be friendly and competitive. I didn’t play football when I was growing up; actually, I was involved in something more important, band. It is not often that a parent can watch their children compete against each other and be able to root equally for each of them. But both of my brothers played football and there is the memorable game in our family history when Raleigh-Egypt High School played Bartlett High School. The uniqueness of this game was that my brother Terry played halfback on the Bartlett offense and my brother Tim was playing for the Raleigh-Egypt defense at the same time.

But there are times when the prophecy of Esau and Jacob comes true for other families as well; times when the struggle is serious and deadly. With this being the 150^th anniversary of the Civil War, we are reminded of the struggle that engulfed this country and tore families apart and pitted brother against brother.

But the greatest struggle that each one of us face each day is an understanding of who we are and what our purpose in this world might be. We find ourselves struggling with questions of why does hunger, sickness, famine, and war exist in this world? We struggle with questions about poverty and wealth and who is truly favored in God’s eyes. We know that there are answers to these questions and we expect our church to be the one place where we might find those answers.

We want a certain degree of structure in our lives; we want our laws to be firm and fast, clear and concise. We hear so many people today say that if our society was a true Christian society, based on Judeo-Christian law, then we wouldn’t have all these problems. The only problem with this particular logic is that most people don’t know what the law they are referring to actually says. This is the image of the church, of a fixed and inflexible institution, out of touch with today and insisting on an adherence to a set of laws that perhaps don’t even exist in the Bible.

Against this backdrop we see individuals leaving the church, not singularly but in groups. They look at the church today and wonder how it came to be and why it cannot answer the questions that make up the meaning of life, even when that is often the unstated reason for the church.

Barrett Owen has written an interesting article entitled “Why Millennials Rarely Connect with Churches?” The Millennial Generation is that generation born in the period from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s; they are the children of the Baby Boom Generation. It is a generation that is leaving the church and there are many that cannot understand why.

It is a migration that goes beyond moving from home to college and onto their own lives; it is a migration from the church itself. It is a migration that confounds many parents and church authorities alike. And many experts would say that if we understood this generation, then we might be able to “save the church.”

And though we should be careful when we make generalizations about a collective group, be they Millennials, Generation X, or Baby Boomers, if we understand what they are thinking, perhaps we can understand what we have to do. First, let me say that creating a list of solutions based on these ideas is called marketing and marketing the church will never work.

So, with that caveat, here are some thoughts on the Millennial Generation:

• They do not care about the institutional church. They do not tithe and have rejected traditional church offerings. They will refuse, reject, and rebuff denominational loyalty if it means causing separation, marginalization, or ostracizing an individual or a group of individuals.
  
• Words such as “community”, “intentionality”, and “ecumenism” are mentioned long before words such as “doctrine”, “controversy”, or “resurgence.”
  
• They are finding alternative and creative forms of giving.
  
• They are building foundational beliefs about faith and morality that are based on experiential truths as opposed to doctrinal or creedal statements. This is not your normal Sunday school lesson they are learning and developing!
  
• They will say that Jesus is the fullest expression of God’s love but they will also say that it is not the only expression. They will say that they are spiritual but not religious. They will seek to find God and they are not necessarily looking in the traditional places.
  
• They have a lot to offer; they have optimism and a need for reconciliation which is desperately needed in this world today. They are motivated, not offended; they care about creation, people, worldviews, religions, art, creativity and beauty.
  
• Faith, for millennials, is less about doctrine or institutional fellowship and more about experiential learning. Beliefs that speak of wholeness over segregation and separation, love over hate, commonalities over discrepancies, activism over bitterness, shared stories over division and missional engagement over doctrinal supremacy have become their heart’s cry.
  

Owen wondered if all this adds up to the death knell of today’s church. As Owen put it, “Giving up on financially supporting denominational bodies or larger institutions is a risky hope. It’s a hope that something new will emerge. But since this group doesn’t like division, corporate advancement or institutions, I wonder what could ever create enough momentum to have longevity?”

And then Jesus spoke of the sower sowing his seeds in the garden. Some of the seeds landed on rocky ground, where they withered and died. Some landed amongst the weeds and while they grew for a while, they too eventually died, choked by the other plant growth that stole the nutrients. But some landed on fertile soil, where they flourished and grew. And there was a good harvest amongst those that landed on the fertile soil.

What type of church do you have? Is it one filled with rocks and boulders, one where seeds planted have no chance to grow? Or is it one filled with weeds and other plants that choke off the growth of the other plants? Or is it the one with the fertile soil that gives growth to new ideas and plans?

I have seen some churches where this latter field exists. But I have also seen many churches that are rocky and nothing grows as well as many churches that have much growth but most of the growth is in the form of weeds that choke off the growth of the good flowers. And I know that you can turn a church that is filled with rocks or one with weeds into one with fertile ground. It is a matter of whether or not the church members wanted to get involved and get their hands dirty. I doubt that many today who long for such a church, a church where faith is more than a word, even know that such a church once existed.

The early church was an experiential church; it was church, not of words but of deeds. Experiential learning does not take place in the classroom; it takes place in the field. And the church of two thousand years ago bears little resemblance to the church of today. The churches that Paul wrote about met in people’s houses and not specifically built sanctuaries. In fact, when many gathered together to read the letter that Paul had recently written them, they probably gathered in secret because there was the fear of persecution. The structured church, with denominations and doctrines, is a product of the post-Constantine era, the period when Emperor Constantine made Christianity the de-facto state religion. If we were more like those early churches, or even more like the early Methodist churches, perhaps we wouldn’t be struggling as much today.

Paul points out that if Christ is a part of our life today, the struggles we face are minimal. Our own self becomes secondary when Christ is the center-piece of our life. Somewhere along the line we became convinced that the church was about us and not Jesus or God. And when that happened we started to become the church that now either scares away or drives away those who offer much hope. Pastor Owen is right that the Millennial Generation will not find what it seeks if it runs away from what it fears; the same is true for us and sometimes all we have to do is look around and know how true that is. But we can deal with our struggles if we quit dealing with our struggles and begin doing the work of God. The challenge is there and the call is there. If we do not answer the call, our struggles will continue for we will continue seeking answers. But if we answer the call, if we accept Christ into our heart and soul, then we can quit dealing with our struggles. And if we begin to make the church what it once was, then we will help others to deal with their struggles as well.

Last week, I used “Be Thou My Vision” as a preparation hymn, to prepare you for the message. Today, I use it as the invitational hymn, to invite you to vision the world that lies before you. Shall it be a world of rocks and weeds, a world of struggle and strife, or will it be a world of wonderful growth and wonderful harvests?

A Crisis in Faith

Here are my thoughts for tomorrow, the 4th Sunday after Pentecost.  The Scripture readings are Genesis 12: 1 – 9, Romans 4: 13 -25, and Matthew 9: 9 – 13, 18 – 26.  This has to be one of the toughest posts I have ever written.  Many things are going on in my life right now (and most of them are not good) and the crisis in faith that I see in the world is impacting my life.  But I have not given up hope nor have I renounced my faith as many might have done.

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The other day I was reading a report about problems with science education in this country. In response, one commentator blamed religion for the problems. This commentator then proceeded to list a number of references which, he claimed, proved that those who are religious are mentally ill. While I would say that I could personally be characterized as a “bit flaky”, I am not sure that I would go as far as questioning my mental stability. It is also interesting to note that this same commentator used the same exact comments in explaining why this country is having difficulty dealing with the idea of global warming. This commentator, along with many others on the extreme left of the theological spectrum, blames religion for the problems of society and the world.

Of course, while this is all going on, we have those on the extreme right of the theological spectrum telling us that we are in the “End Times” and that Armageddon is imminent. And it is all due to secular humanists and their agenda of decadence and immorality.

I cannot imagine that the problems of the world can be directly attributed to the various religions of the world nor am I willing to accept the notion that God is determined to destroy this world because some people do not willingly accept the notion of a omnipotent God. Yet, while I hold the views of those on both the extreme left and extreme right with disdain, I look around and wonder what is happening.

The cost of gasoline rises almost every day, sometimes by the hour, and we hear that the energy companies are making record profits and that tankers loaded with crude oil are parked off shore because there is no place to unload their cargo of “black gold.” We wonder who is benefiting from this because it doesn’t seem to be us.

And with the rise of the cost of energy comes the rise in other goods and services. We, as a country and as a society, have no real understanding of the relationship between the cost of crude oil and the cost of other materials that are dependent on the production of crude oil. We are watching the breakdown of airlines as they attempt to balance the desire of the public for low cost travel with the rising costs associated with that travel.

Our political system, once perhaps the envy of the civilized world, has turned into a 21st century equivalent of the Roman Senate, where every Senator seeks the power of Caesar and election is accomplished by coup d’état, backbiting, and conspiracy.

It seems to me that “conspiracy” has become the watchword for every event that has taken place in recent years. We are not willing to accept the obvious if we can somehow create a more sinister conspiracy. Pair “mortgage problems” with “conspiracy theory” gets 410,000 hits in a Google search; pair “rising oil prices” with “conspiracy theory” and you get 789,000 hits; “energy crisis” with “conspiracy theory” gets 1,420,000 hits; even “society problems” paired with “conspiracy theory” gets 2,490,000 hits. Granted that many of these results are combinations of the various words but it is clear that many people see conspiracies lurking in the shadows where there is nothing but discovery. Even religion and faith have become intertwined with the notion of conspiracy theories with the success of the DaVinci Code as a book and as a movie.

We are quite willing to accept a conspiracy theory as the answer for the problems of the world because it is easier to do so than it is to accept the real answer. The cause of mortgage crisis may be more related to societal greed than anything else. The rise in fuel costs may be more a reflection of the fact that we have lived with cheap energy for so long that we are totally unaware of it’s real cost. Our political process has broken down because we have let it fall apart; too many people have long accepted the idea that they could do nothing so they have turned a blind eye to the process. Now, with the process seemingly controlled by the rich and powerful and their special interests, it is breaking down.

We have longed placed our faith in a system. For many years, it was a faith well placed and it was a system that worked. I believe that the system still works but we, individually and collectively, must take action to fix the broken parts.

I could not help be amazed when people could not understand how Albert Gore, Jr. could win the popular vote in 2000 yet lose the election to George W. Bush. After all, have most people not studied the Constitution in at least high school? If they had remembered what they studied, they would have remembered that it is not the popular vote that decides who is president but the Electoral College.

People complain about rising fuel costs today and there are times when the complaint is justified. There are any number of reasons why the cost of energy is climbing in this country, but this country has always had relatively cheap energy and the rise in prices may just be an adjustment between what we are paying and what people in other countries are paying. But we are not ready, let alone understand, this explanation. We have long lived in our little world insulated from the outside and now the outside is somehow seeping into our comfort zone.

We see people living on the street. We see long lines of people outside food closets and hear how the lines get longer each week. We are told that we are the land of plenty and opportunity but the plenty is disappearing and the opportunities limited. We live in a world where we expect the answer to our problems now and when we don’t get the answer we want immediately, we question the system.

We are undergoing a process where our view of the world is changing from one where the answers all come from “above” (through religion) to one in which all the answers come from “below” (through science and rational thought). In doing so we, as individuals and as a society, have transformed God from what He is, was, and will be into what we want him to be. We have transformed God into our servant, coming when we need Him.

This transformation and change has not taken place overnight but rather has been slow and gradual over the history of the church, religion, and mankind. It is a transformation and change that began when the church became part of the establishment, not a thorn in its side. The transformation and change has, I think, only become more apparent in recent days because of everything else that has happened recently.

This change and transformation has created a world divided by and between faith and reason, a world where adherents of the faith proclaim everyone else doomed and without hope and where adherents of an empirical lifestyle proclaim that those who have a live in faith are hopeless mental cases. It is a world where you must choose one side or the other but not both. Those of us who live in both worlds are slowly being squeezed by both sides.

It is apparent that you cannot be a scientist and a Christian in today’s society. If you declare that you are a Christian, there are too many people who will proclaim that your scientific credentials are fraudulent (and that you may be slightly mentally deranged) while declaring that you are a scientist puts you in the realm of un-believers.

And as I write this piece, the state of Texas Board of Education is considering a new way to teach evolution. But this new way is nothing more than a disguised attempt to introduce creationism by circumventing the courts and their opinions concerning the teaching of creationism and intelligent design. All this will do is widen the gap between faith and reason, not bring it closer together.

But, as I have written before, a life based solely on empiricism and without faith is a life without vision. Albert Einstein put it this way, “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.” You maybe successful in your life but you do not know where you are going or if you are ever going to get there. I also wrote that a life based solely on faith will provide you with a vision of where you are going but cannot give you the means to get there. (“Just a Thought”, 6 January 2007).

I wonder how society would react or respond to the three acts of faith that are given in today’s lectionary. What would the neighbors of Abram say today when he announces that he is moving from his established home and headed to places unknown because God has told him to do so? What would the people say when Abram tells others that he is to be the father of many nations when he doesn’t even have any children and his wife, Sarai, is beyond child bearing age? Would his neighbors seek to have him committed as mentally ill? We are a society that looks very cautiously at those who claim to hear voices telling them what to do so what would we do if Abram were our neighbor and fried?

What are we to say when a man loses his daughter to illness and seeks out a holy man to somehow bring her back to life? What are we to say when a woman, plagued by an illness for twelve years, desperately seeks a cure that will give a normal life? We see examples of those who proclaim that they have the ability to cure illnesses by a simple touch, just as Jesus did, but we are skeptical of those claims. Perhaps our skepticism is brought about the repeated exposure of such modern day holy men as fakes and charlatans; perhaps our skepticism is brought about because we have a greater trust in traditional medicine that we do in alternative forms of healing.

But is our skepticism justified? Remember that the miracles of healing proclaimed in today’s Gospel reading are not the first times that Jesus had healed someone. So the people are coming to Him for healing because they know that He can heal them. Keep in mind that the woman in this story, because of the nature of her illness, has been ostracized by society. She is no longer welcome in society because her illness has made her unclean. She, more than the synagogue leader, is desperate for a cure and she will do whatever she must in order to gain that cure. To venture out into society and come that close to Jesus is to risk all that she is and has. The leader of the synagogue most certainly had to risk the wrath of his colleagues by showing confidence in the Galilean preacher who was stirring up the countryside.

There are those today who are similarly desperate; they are quite willing to risk all in an attempt to find a cure because they have tried everything else or because society is not willing to try. And it is only natural that there will be those who will seek to take advantage of those who are desperate for their own benefit.

But the problem is not that there are those who take advantage of people’s desperation but that we let them take advantage. We do not challenge these charlatans and we do nothing to help those who seek help. We who truly believe have let those who do not abuse our faith and, as result, blacken our faith.

Faith requires some action on our part as well. Faith requires that we take a step outside of our comfort zone and go into areas that we are not altogether comfortable with. Faith requires that we put into action something so that we are able to obtain that which we seek. Those who seek must be able to find what they seek.

It is still a sore spot in my life that on a night when I was in the midst of the greatest crisis of my young life, a seminarian and would-be pastor told me that my baptism as an infant did not count and that I was condemned to a life in hell. I was seeking solace in a time of need and all I was receiving was further pain. Had I not had others who cared for my spirit, I might have walked away from the church that night.

But today there are too many others who act like that preacher-in-training, offering condemnation and rejection when love and grace is needed. When Jesus Christ was crucified that first Good Friday some two thousand years ago, two other men were crucified as well. One of the two rejected Christ, mocking Him as did the soldiers guarding them. But the other recognized the inequity of Christ’s punishment and begged forgiveness for his sins, the cause of which put him on the cross. Even in his own public and personal agony, Christ gave the grace that so many people seek today.

There are too many people today, who like the synagogue leader and the women, seek answers but are rejected by the church. These seekers do have faith but it is a faith that is being tested and it is the church that is testing the faith.

It certainly had to be by faith that Abram gathered up all that he owned and headed towards the unknown land. And it was on faith that Abram took God’s word that he, Abram, would be the father of many nations when he was ninety some years old and had no children.

Abram’s inheritance would only come about when he traveled to the place that God directed him. This required that he move from where he was settled and established and go to an unknown place at a unknown distance away. And society had virtually barred the woman for any societal contact because of her illness; for her to seek Jesus in any manner would have brought a greater response of wrath from society than anything the synagogue leader might have encountered.

If we do not understand what it is that is the basis of our faith, then we cannot act in faith. Too many people act as if faith were gained by following a series of steps, each one to be taken in turn. Faith is the reward for following and obeying each step. If living by and through the law was all that was required, then faith and any promise provided by faith would have no validity. And I think it would be safe to conclude that we may take Paul’s comment in Romans (Romans 4: 13 – 25) to hold true whether we are talking about any spiritual law or any physical law.

And those who proclaim the superiority of the law as the means by which faith occurs have to re-evaluate what it is that they are saying and doing.

Perhaps it is time that we as a church determine what it is that is the basis of our faith. I have written before, as have others, about the alarming lack of Biblical understanding among modern day Christians. This lack of understanding has a dramatic impact on how society views the church. Perhaps we need to undergo a massive Bible study so that we truly understand what it is that we are and what it is that we believe.

If we do this, maybe we will understand that the Bible is not a historical or scientific document but one that explains who God is and who we are. In doing so, we can show that the Bible is not a collection of lies, half-truths, or myths designed to cloud our minds as some on the left would have to believe.

Maybe, if we do that, we will understand that the Rapture is not a Biblical concept but rather the ideas of a nineteenth century Bible scholar. Maybe, if we study the Bible with as much conviction and effort that we put into determining who the next American Idol will be, we would know that Paul did not write all the letters that he is supposed to have written and we would better understand why he wrote what he, in fact, did write.

Maybe, if we began a new study of the Bible, we would find out that there are in fact other religions that believe in the same God as our God. And such belief is not bad or limited.

Maybe, if we began a new study of the Bible, we would find that the major emphasis of the Bible is the love and care we are to have for all mankind and to make sure that all of God’s children are fed and clothed. Maybe we would find that we are not to reject someone because their race, creed, or lifestyles are different from our own.

In these times, my faith is being tested; it is both my personal faith and my faith in a system in which I have lived. I trust in the Lord that He will not forget me nor let me down; but I also know that I must seek the solutions that He is providing for me. I will question my faith and, like Job, I will seek answers from God.

And while I wonder about the system in which I have lived and whether it will last, I realize that I can change the system if I try. After all, one man died on the cross to save my life and in that death the system was changed.

I am not asked to die but to work to insure that the change that was brought about some two thousand years ago continues to be made. But the church may die if it does not respond to this crisis in faith, if it does not look at the answers it offers to the people who seek answers and seek solace and comfort.

There is a crisis but it is a crisis that can be solved if we believe.