July 4, 2004

"Self-Evident Truths"

In 1964, a new sitcom went on the air, and became a hit, more or less instantly, for CBS. It was about a group of passengers who went on a brief cruise, only to find themselves marooned on a desert island. Each episode featured wacky schemes to escape the island and return to civilization. Can you tell me the name of this sitcom? Of course, everybody knows “Gilligan’s Island,” and everybody knows that the story was made up out of thin air. After all, if the Professor could make a radio out of a coconut, how come he couldn’t patch a hole in the boat?

But here’s a true story: Sherwood Schwarz, the creator of “Gilligan’s Island,” was in his office only a few weeks after the show went on the air when the commander of the Coast Guard came storming into his office holding dozens of telegrams. Each one said the same thing—“Every week we see these nice Americans stranded on a desert island. Why can’t you send a ship and rescue them?”

None of those telegrams was a joke—they all came from viewers who were terribly concerned about people they saw on an imaginary show. After all, if it’s on TV it must be real, right?

Now we can laugh at that story. How many of us know somebody dumb enough to think that Gilligan’s Island is real? How many of us are sitting beside somebody…No, never mind, we won’t go there. But we believe that we know the difference between truth and fiction, and truth is not to be found on TV. Even the “reality” shows that are all the rage don’t have much to do with reality—no offense, but they’re all loaded with people who are way better looking than anybody I know in real life. Truth is what happens when you turn off the TV and step outside. As Jesus said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”

Nevertheless, an awful lot of people live under an awful lot of illusions, don’t they? They don’t recognize the truth about themselves, about others, or about the nature of the world we live in or the enemy we face. And one of the ways people live under illusion is that they like to kid themselves about what it means to be free. I think Christ hit the nail right on the head when he said “Anyone who commits sin is a slave to sin,” because sin is the most slippery slope there is.

Nobody who sins the first time is a slave to sin, but each time we commit an offense, from a lie to a theft to an extra-marital affair, it gets easier to do it a second time. People live in deep denial about their ability to break away from their bad habits. My dad would regularly stop smoking for months, then start again. Stop, then start. Lung cancer finally did what the Nazis in World War II could not—kill my father. But he finally stopped smoking for good.

No, it doesn’t take long to become a slave to habits, including habits of sin. Christ’s truth is that we all have been living in slavery to sin, but the good news is that we all have the right to freedom, because of his love for the world. Today is the day when our country celebrates freedom. We celebrate the courage of the Founding Fathers who declared this country to be independent of the English king. And it did take tremendous courage. After all, the American colonies were pretty equally divided: one-third wanted independence, one-third was loyal to the king and one-third wanted to see who was going to win before they stuck their neck out.

We especially celebrate the unique, divinely-inspired genius of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, and among these rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Please don’t quibble with me about whether Jefferson meant to include women, or blacks or Indians or anyone else as rights-holders. Just zoom in on words like truth and creator and liberty. Put those three words together in a sentence. “Here is truth: our creator gave us all the right to be free.” From there it’s not hard to imagine Jesus standing in front of a crowd that probably included some of his friends, some of his enemies and some people in between, waiting to be convinced, and telling them, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”

Those words are often quoted, even carved into government buildings. The idea is that people who know the truth will be able to govern themselves, which is what democracy is all about. But that’s not exactly what Christ had in mind. It’s important to hear all of what Christ said in this passage from John’s Gospel: “If you obey my teaching…you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Suddenly we will realize we’ve been living in slavery, and what’s more, we’ll realize that just as our political freedom was won for a purpose, so Christ won our spiritual freedom for a purpose.

What then is the purpose of freedom? It is not, as many incorrigibly selfish people would assert, given so that each individual can do whatever they please. Quite the contrary. The Apostle Paul summed it up 2,000 years ago: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” He referred to the slavery of sin. These were revolutionary words Paul was writing. Most people, then as now, were perfectly content, like a pig slopping in mud, to live in slavery to sin—because real freedom brings real responsibility.

I refer again to one of my all-time favorite comic strips, Calvin and Hobbes. One particular strip showed Calvin the little boy and his friend Hobbes the tiger having a grand time one summer day, running around, playing games, staring up at the clouds, looking for buried treasure, throwing water balloons at Susie the neighbor girl, reading comic books, just having a ball. And then Calvin’s mother asks him to take out the trash, and the last panel shows Calvin muttering, “Boy, some fun summer this turned out to be.” Isn’t that how people are? Even the slightest restrictions on their so-called freedom make them holler “Back off!”

As Christians we find the concept of freedom to be very flexible and yet very rigid and firm. It is very flexible in that we believe that every man and woman has the right to their own conscience. In fact, that’s one of the basic principles of Presbyterianism—a person is ruled by their own conscience. Yet we know that freedom can also be very restricting. How can freedom be restricting, you ask? God grants all humans freedom of choice, but however they choose to act, they must take responsibility for their actions and accept the consequences.

Yet many Americans don’t want to accept the consequences of their actions. Even when you can show people that their actions have made a train wreck of their lives, they still don’t want to change their ways. One of the wisest saying I know talks about the consequences of people’s actions. “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging!” But there is plenty of evidence that Americans just don’t know how to handle freedom. I came upon an essay about how we Americans are slaves today just as much we ever were.

We have taller buildings, but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less. We buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, and less time. We have more college degrees and less sense, more knowledge and less judgment, more experts and worse problems, more medicine and worse sickness. We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too mad, stay up too late, get too tired, read too little, watch too much TV and pray too little.

We have multiplied our possessions and bankrupted our values. We talk too much, listen too little and hate too often. We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life. We’ve added years to life, and drained the life out of our years. We’ve been to the moon and back, and have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We do larger things, but not better things. We’ve cleaned up the air and polluted the soul. We’ve conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more and learn less. We plan more and accomplish less. We’ve learned to rush, but not to wait.

We build more computers to handle more and more information, and print more copies than ever, but communicate hardly at all.

Financially we’re rich, but spiritually? Not so much. And at least part of the reason why is that we don’t understand the truth of Christ’s freedom, and the truth is that to be truly free, we have to join Christ in being the servant of all. So today I want to share four thoughts on how to really liberate ourselves in Christ’s freedom.

It is liberating when we recognize our place in God’s plan for the universe. One day early in his career Christ found himself back in his hometown of Nazareth for the Sabbath, and already developing a reputation as a preacher, he was asked to read from the sacred scrolls. He stood up and opened the scroll from the Book of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has chosen me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom to the captives and vision to the blind, to release the captives and announce that today is the day when the Lord will save his people.” And then he sat down, looked the rulers of the synagogue in the eye and said –“That’s me. I am proclaiming liberty throughout the land.”

Elie Wiesel was a teenager during World War II; the Nazis held him and his family in concentration camps and most of his family was wiped out. By the end of the war he was near death, too, from starvation and disease. So were all his fellow prisoners. But then came the day of liberation, when the American army arrived and broke down the fences. Weisel remembered one big strong black man who looked around at the horrors inside the camp and the walking skeleton prisoners, and he fell to his knees sobbing in disbelief and grief.

And the captives, now free, walked up to this sobbing man and put their arms around him to comfort him. That’s what Jesus wants us to do: He said, listen to my good news. Understand my truth. I have come to liberate you from slavery and blindness and oppression. And what I want is for you to extend that comfort to another who is suffering.” Do you know why the Liberty Bell is called the Liberty Bell? It’s not because it rang on the first Fourth of July, although it did. No, it’s because the words of Leviticus were engraved on the bell, years before the Declaration of Independence: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land and all the inhabitants thereof.”

It is liberating to be reminded that true greatness is to found in serving others. George Washington never chopped down a cherry tree or threw a coin across a river, but one of the best stories about him happens to be true. In 1783, after American freedom had been won, Congress was in hopeless disarray and couldn’t pass a bill to pay the soldiers who had fought for the nation. As a result, many of the officers were plotting a military takeover of the government to get what they felt was coming to them. But they knew they had no chance for success unless Washington agreed to be their leader.

So Washington met with the leaders of this new rebellion, knowing what they wanted and what they expected of him. He tried to talk them out of taking the law into their own hands, saying “Is this what you fought for? To give up the freedom you won?” But they would not listen. Finally Washington told them that he had a letter from a congressman who promised to see that the veterans were paid. He fumbled with the letter, then took his eyeglasses out of his pocket. Only a few close aides had ever seen Washington wear glasses. He said, “Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray, but blind, in the service of my country.”

This humble act changed the tone of the meeting. Gradually the anger fell away, and some of the officers went away wiping their eyes at the sight of their leader who had grown old in leading them to victory.

It is liberating when we remember the sacrifices that others made on our behalf. This land is ours today because others sacrificed their effort, their money, even their lives for us. In the same way, this church is here because others sacrificed for us. The older I get, the more I appreciate the reality that you and I have had it remarkably easy, because others did the heavy lifting. Others blazed the trail, we just follow along. We stand on their shoulders, as a church, as a nation, as a civilization, and we need to defend what they built with everything we can muster.

When we appreciate the sacrifices that others have made for us, then our attitude towards serving others is liberated, it becomes more like George Washington’s—it’s no longer a burden to serve, it becomes a privilege to serve. And how are we to serve? A few verses after Paul urges the Galatians not to go back to the slavery of sin, he writes, “For you, brethren, have been called to freedom; only do not use freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one other.” That includes speaking kindly to one another, and forgiving one another, as Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you.”

Finally, it is liberating to declare this dependence day—dependence on God and dependence on his son Jesus Christ.

Most people, myself included, have trouble asking for help. We want to be independent, to stand on our own and not owe anyone. One of the things that life teaches us as we get older, however, is that none of us are self-sufficient. There’s a lot of irony in the fact that we learn skills so that we can be more independent and then get more dependent. Do you remember what it was like to learn to swim? Somebody was there to catch you until you learned to float, then gradually backed away until you were on your own.

 But our spiritual life was never meant to be independent. Jesus said, “If a man remain in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit, but apart from me, you can do nothing.” Nothing that matters. Nothing eternal. Nothing that really works over the long haul. Nothing will work without being connected to Christ—not our government, not our schools, not society as a whole. How many of you would agree with me that our nation in many ways is seriously off the tracks? If we want our lives to work, we need to depend on Jesus. If we want our nation to work, we must depend on Jesus.

The truth of freedom, what Christ wants us to understand from his teaching, is this: with freedom comes responsibility. We are free in this country, thank God. We are free from foreign rule. We are free from fear, especially fear of death and fear that our sins will condemn us. Christ has granted us forgiveness as a free gift. But there is also freedom to…freedom to share what God has given us. Freedom to serve others in his name. No matter how much we want to, there is no escaping that responsibility. Celebrate your freedom today, but never forget that there is a price to be paid for it.