Freed to Be

“Freed to Be[i]”

Romans 6:1-14, 20-23

First Presbyterian Church Clarksville

Harmony Presbyterian Church

July 8, 2012

Ordinary 14

The Reverend Dr. Robert Wm Lowry 

            When I was in seminary, one of our assignments in first year worship class was to attend three worship services in Christian traditions not closely related to our own and one non-Christian service other than Jewish.  When the lesson began, I was most concerned about attending the non-Christian service.  I don’t have the patience to sit quietly for Buddhist meditation, the Hindu temple was an hour and a half away in San Antonio and that left the imposing structure that was, at the time, the only Mosque in Austin.  So with a few classmates alongside, we laid out our calendar for a week of unfamiliar worship; Sunday morning at the Orthodox church, Sunday evening mass at the cathedral and Wednesday bible study and worship at the Pentecostal church followed by Friday prayers at the Mosque.  I was a little nervous and did not know what to expect but at least one of the services was Protestant.

            In hindsight, my worries were misplaced.  The Orthodox service was filled with the beautiful music and imagery so central to that community, the evening mass was led by the youth group and a bright young priest whose sermon was a challenge to see beyond our religious boundaries to the whole of the human family, and the Imam’s sermon on Friday was about how a life of prayer and thanks to God cannot lead to anything but peace, hope and friendship with all humankind.  I did not agree with all of the theology offered in those services, but I had no trouble connecting with the different perspectives that were offered and letting them into my own internal theological conversations.

            In the end, it was the protestant church on Wednesday night that really stuck in my craw.  The bible study was entitled something like “Made in God’s Image” but it might as well have been called “Women Don’t Have Anything to Say Worth Hearing and God Doesn’t Want Them Talking Anyway.”  Peppering his talk with limited one and two verse readings from scripture, the preacher did his level best to teach the group that men are spiritually and functionally superior to women.

            Now as a first year seminarian I did not know my bible as well as I do now and I have never known it as well as that guy did, but as someone raised since the age of 9 by a single mother who worked hard every day for her children and two grandmothers who were the definition of steel magnolias, I knew in my heart of hearts that the bible this guy was quoting was not the same one I knew.  I thought about arguing with him, but I guess some form of the wisdom that you don’t fight with a guy who buys ink by the barrel held me back.

            If nothing else, that encounter sharpened my own theology.  It gave me an opportunity to at least internally sharpen my response to such theology down the road.  That is how our theology really grows; by hearing and learning to respond to those theological arguments that just don’t jive with our understanding of the Gospel of Christ.

            By the time he writes to Rome, that is exactly what has happened to Paul.  Scholars agree that Romans represents a mature Pauline theology.  The themes he begins to articulate in Ch. 6 are ones that arise from his sermons preached in places like Ephesus, Corinth and Philippi.  He has been sharpening his arguments and learning to counter some of the more common objections to his theology. 

            Think about that bit at the end of Ch. 5 when Paul writes that, “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”  You can just see the wheels turning in the minds of those old Corinthians until one finally asks, “so, Paul, if more sin brings more grace and we want all the grace we can get, wouldn’t the good thing be to sin more often?”  That would certainly make an interesting evangelism technique.  “Join our church, we sin more than anyone in town.”

            By the time he is writing to the Romans Paul has learned to expect this sort of argument and he stops it in its tracks.  He poses the question and before the wheels can start to turn with his audience, he answers that no, we do not need to sin more we need to understand that the relationship between sin and grace is not the same as the relationship between dirt and soap.  It is a bit more complicated than that.

            All of this sin and grace- freedom and redemption- comes not in discrete batches in individual lives but in the larger context of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  In baptism, Paul says, we have been buried with Christ in death so that we may be raised with him in new life.  We are, in Christ, made free.

            We are set free.  Sounds good, right?  Sounds like a pretty simple thing…we are freed from sin.  Feels good, feels right.

            Let me ask you this…do you feel very free?

            For my part, I lean into the promise that in Christ Jesus we are freed from sin, but I have a difficult time thinking that it is not still an important part of the human condition; a big part of my life, your life and the life of the world.  I just feel in my gut, like I did at that awful bible study, that this is not the whole story; that here is something more to this whole discussion that just a bumper sticker saying “free at last free at last.”

            Sin is still in fact big; big for me, big for the church, big for those who HAVE, through baptism been buried with Jesus in a death like his.  I see too much evidence in my own life, too much evidence in the life of the church, that sin still has a strangle hold.

            Recall the words of 1 John, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”  Or the words of John Calvin who reminds us that we are all totally depraved.  Not partially depraved, not somewhat naughty, not a little bit sinful, but totally depraved.  We are saturated with sin; soaked in it from head to toe.  A friend referred to our freedom from sin as being a bit like being freed from fatty foods while working at Krispy Kreme donuts as the official taste tester!

            Sin is always a part of us.

            So what does Paul mean when he speaks of our freedom in Christ?  What is liberation from sin?

            When we step back, and look at the whole of the gospel that Paul so wants us to allow to define our world, we see that liberation from sin does not mean to be without sin;

            or that sin has no power over us;

            or that we are no longer human and subject to our human fallibilities and brokenness;

            or that we are somehow better than others

            or more loved than others

            or less likely to sin.

Rather, liberation from sin means that we have new vision in the world;

            that sin’s strongest eternal ties are broken

            that through grace we understand the consequences of our sin in the world

            that we have courage for the struggle against sin in the world

            that we recognize that though sin may have a hold on us, Christ holds us yet firmer and when the time comes for one of those holds to break, Christ will hold fast.

            Our freedom from sin does not mean that it has somehow been banished from the world and our sight forever, but that sin can no longer claim dominion over our lives.  That position has been taken by God in Christ.

            Shirley Guthrie, the late theologian and great Presbyterian churchman was fond of saying that our freedom in Christ is not merely freedom from it is freedom for.  We are freed from sin and for the world. We are freed from death and for life lived anew.  We are freed from despair and for hope.

            Liberation, Guthrie reminds us, comes with a cost.  Jesus Christ does not come into the world to free us from responsible living or to free us to a life of leisure.  He frees us not from but for the work of God in the world.  While once we were slaves to doubt, fear and hate we are now called to be servants of faith, hope and love.  And our living is called to be a reflection of those virtues right here and right now. 

            When we are freed from our slavery to sin, Paul tells us, we become slaves to righteousness. 

            We who live in a democratic society bristle at that language of slavery and servitude.  And for good reason, those words have great historical baggage in our culture.  However, when read in light of the gospel, being a slave to righteousness means, as Karl Barth puts it, that “through God” we are “free for God.[ii]”  We are freed from all other authority in this world and bound only to the authority of God; the authority of the author of grace and salvation.

            How is that authority shaping your life?  How is the authority of God reigning supreme in your life?  Those are important questions for we who, residing on this side of the empty tomb, have heard and have answered the call to live as servants of God.  And what shapes that life is no mystery.  Remember the words of the prophet:

For He has told you, human one, what is good and what the Lord requires from you: to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8

            That is the righteousness to which we are bound and that is the life we are to lead. 

            So, friends, remembering that sin is yet with us, remember also this; that sin’s grip has been loosened and one day will fail.  That though we may time and again fall victim to its temptations, we are no longer bound as slaves to sin.  And until that day when sin is truly no more, may we each and every one bind ourselves to the righteousness of God that our lives may reflect the faith, hope and love that God commands from us and that our broken lives and broken world so desperately needs.

            In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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[i] As with others in this series of sermons on Romans, I am indebted to the insights of a member of my study group.  Dr. David Bender presented a sermon by the same title to our group in March 2012 and his insights and attention to this text were of great help in the preparation of this sermon.

[ii] CD I.2.271.