THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIANITY V
This sermon is about freedom. On Thursday of this coming week the United States will celebrate our 237th birthday. I hope you will review what you considered important and sacred about your citizenship in the United States. I believe our freedom in the United States is a gift from God and we have a responsibility to exercise our freedom in a way that honors all of God’s creation on the earth and as human creations. Thomas Jefferson understood our freedom as a gift from the Creator God: “Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis-a conviction in the midst of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?”
Regardless of how each person interprets the use of freedom in the United States, a moral and Godly basis is needed if the concept of freedom is to make sense.
Christianity as it has developed in the United States expresses faith as being free from sin and oppression. Christian freedom expects, even demands, a respect from all of humanity. At the center of our belief structure as Christians is an intense desire for justice.
Paul in his letter to the Galatian churches establishes the right of all people to the gift of salvation through faith alone. Faith comes first and then our obedience as a response to God’s gift of freedom and resurrection in Jesus. I believe that in Paul’s mind freedom and resurrection are the same gift. Death is defeated and our freedom will be lived out for eternity. We are saved and we have a responsibility as long as we are on this earth to work for the freedom of all humans. We obtain freedom through justice.
In the last five weeks I have noticed that I have been absorbed with Paul’s complete turnaround, in church language, his conversion. It is in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians that we have the words of the institution of the Lord’s Supper. In the Lord’s Supper, the Mass, we have the symbol of our role in the Church. The Lord’s Supper is a memorial of the work of Christ to save us. In also gives us an opportunity to remember our life in the earthly service to Christ. The Lord’s Supper is a celebration of God’s help in our lives. We are blessed to have the gift of the Spirit in our lives. The law of God is expressed in one law, “love your neighbor as yourself.” This is a statement of justice. Every human being needs to be loved because I know the love of God to me. The Lord’s Supper is a celebration of freedom. We are freed from earning God’s love to celebrating God’s love as a gift. I believe the Development of Christianity is best understood as the in breaking of God into our world, first as Jesus as the Christ, and then as Holy Spirit. Between our conversion to complete dependence upon god and our death and then eternal life with God, the purpose of the Church and of its members who are the followers of Christ is to work of justice.
In 1932, a brilliant young French philosopher, Jacques Ellul, was converted to Christianity. Ellul called his conversion: “a very brutal and very sudden conversion.” He became a very critical and insightful observer of modern technology upon the world. Ellul was a not a pacifist and saw a need for the protection of freedom in our world. He was a member of the French Resistance during World War II. Ellul died in 1994 but I believe his work will help us in the Church to walk the line between the true worship of God in Christ and the modern idols which call the Church away from the promises made to humanity by God in Christ. In Paul’s day the threat to the Church was to abandon Christ only for salvation with a blend of Judaism and Christianity. In our day the threat to the Church is to abandon our faith in Christ alone with the seductive symbols of love found outside of our faith in Christ. The Lord’s Supper is the symbol the church uses to convey the truth of the Christ. Jesus dies for our sins, and we remember the sacrifice he made. We remember the promise we have to eternal life. In the Lord’s Supper we declare the ways God has helps us to live and work for Christ on this planet. In the Lord’s Supper we celebrate the freedom we have from death and the right we have to work for justice even if it costs us our life. “If we live by the Spirit, let us walk by the Spirit.” The Church are those Christians who live by faith and work for the freedom of all people.