What Jesus Means by Freedom
Scripture: Luke 4:16-21
Rev. Richard H. Thompson, January 24, 2010

I once asked an older pastor I worked with what it was he hoped would come from his ministry. He thought deeply for a moment, and answered, "I just want to see people freed up."

There was no time to go into what he meant by "freed up". Or what freedom really means.

On the one hand we live live a free country, don't we? We've got a Constitution and a Bill of Rights. Thank God no one blocked the door to the sanctuary this morning. It's not like this everywhere.

On the other hand freedom is not just a matter of political system. "Freedom" means "from" whatever it is that holds us down, from what holds us captive. It's a strange irony that a person can have all the freedom granted by a constitution and still be trapped.

I wonder. What if we asked Jesus the same question I asked that old pastor? What do you suppose he would say? This passage found in Luke's gospel, chapter 4, gives us a clue. After the time of testing in the wilderness we're told that Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, returned to Galilee to teach in the synagogues, including his home town synagogue, First United Nazarene down on Main Street (Main because it was the only street, Nazareth was a very small town), where Jesus grew up. As any adult male member, Jesus had his turn to read from the Scripture and then to make comment, sort of like a sermon. Luke describes what happened this way:

"He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.' And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, 'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.'"

Luke wants us to feel the anticipation in the congregation. Everyone watched as Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down to teach, because teachers always sat to teach. Luke tells us "all eyes were fixed on him..." (Sort of like what happens here... right? Right?)

Jesus said, "Today, this scripture is fulfilled as you listen to me..."

So here is our answer. What Jesus is trying to do. To paraphrase, "I just want people freed up."

It's how God loves you, and me, and all of us, and this world. God wants to free us all up.

But this begs the question: what holds us captive? What has us in its grip? What keeps us from what God wants for us? I mean Jesus read from Isaiah who prophesied these words 600 years earlier to what was left of people taken off into exile in the Babylonian Diaspora. Isaiah preached to people who were refugees, who wondered if they would ever see their homes again. A lot of people in the world today are living as refugees. But that's certainty not our situation.

Isaiah seems to have borrowed imagery from 900 years before his time, of the Hebrews' deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Just the way millions live in oppressive regimes today. A Christian world watch organization estimates that 100 million Christians are actively persecuted for their faith right now! It's easy for us to forget, and to assume that everyone has the same "rights" and "freedom" we have. They don't.

We know that about half of the 6.7 billion people on the planet today live on less than $2.00 a day. 93% of the world's population don't even own a car! When I was in college we were told that in L.A. there were 9 million people and 15 million cars! That's almost 2:1!

These all too graphic images from Haiti show what poverty does to people. It's its own kind of captivity.

But that's not us. If your income is $25,000 a year you are wealthier than about 90% of the world's population. So there is no comparison.

When Jesus read from that Isaiah scroll that day around the year 30, He was reading to Jews living under Roman rule administered by a ruthless local dictator who used state terrorism to extort whatever he wanted. I mean we have our debates about paying taxes, but there's just no comparison.

So what does Jesus' declaration of what he has come to accomplish in Luke 4 have to do with us wealthy and free American Christians? Here's a hint: Jesus also read, "and recovery of sight to the blind." Now this might be taken literally of course. Jesus did in fact restore physical sight to the sight impaired. But I get the sense that Isaiah and Jesus also were talking metaphorically - not just about literal "blindness", but another kind of "not - seeing". It's hard to know what you can't see. It's its own kind or "captivity" - to think you get it, when you really don't.

It's not being able to see the connection between things that leads to the refusal to see that causes us to be stuck and trapped by our own assumptions.

There's a certain kind of monkey that can be captured by using a jar with some food inside. The monkey will take the food and hold onto it with a death grip so that his fist won't come out of the mouth of the jar. But he won't let go the food. Because he cannot "see" the connection between his insistence on holding on to what he must have, and his being held by the jar. So he is easily trapped and captured.

(Death grips make fists. Then you loose your use of the opposable thumb. You can't play the piano, or throw a football, eat sushi, or stroke a child's hair when your hand is like a fist.)

We get trapped by what we believe we must have. This is what an addiction is - what we believe we must absolutely have in order to be well or happy, or even to survive. Maybe we tie our very identity, our self-concept, to whatever it is we hold onto. It could be a job. It could be the need to always appear competent, or successful, or just to "look good".

This happens in our relationships. Over the years we develop patterns of interaction that define not only how we relate but also how we view the other person. But the thing is, we don't see it. Say a spouse suddenly realizes that a negative pattern has to change. That his marriage is stuck in repeating the same conflicts the same way. Maybe he finally gets tired of beating his head against the same wall. So one day, in the middle of yet another typical battle he is determined to do something different. Instead of blowing up or stomping out the front door he decides to stick in, and to listen. And then, maybe, says something like, "Well, here's what I've got say about this. I hear you. I need to think about it. Let's table this until tomorrow and go to a movie. I'm buying." That spouse is trying to break an old pattern. He or she is trying to find a new way. But the other spouse won't let go. She won't let him try. This new way seems fake. Unfamiliar. Not who we are. This is suspicious. Some kind of ploy. So the new way is met with sarcasm, "Oh, what's this? Now you're going be nice?" What's happening? That old pattern holds that relationship... captive.

It's hard to see when it's happening. It's called "blindness".

It happens all the time. After Jesus finishes preaching the people at First United Synagogue wanted to kill Him! Who did He think He was? The Messiah?! The reading from Exodus is set in the wilderness after the Hebrew people had been delivered from slavery. They were freed from captivity by many mighty acts of God a pitched battle between Yahweh and Pharaoh who believed he was a god and had the power to hold an entire empire under his spell. Maybe this is why God hardened Pharaoh's heart, to help that blind man see. Maybe that was how God had to love Pharaoh.

But the Hebrews were not just held captive by Pharaoh. They were also captive to a whole way of life. To a whole set of patterns, and values, and self-concepts. We can see how blind they were in their wanting to go back to making bricks! It's a deeper kind of captivity, isn't it? It's a captivity of the spirit. It's from this kind of captivity that Jesus wants to free you and me.

God wants to help us recover our sight. To help us see. To give you, and me, and this world "vision" instead of blindness.

My father was captured in North Africa early in 1943. The Germans transported him along with thousands of other American G.I.'s to prison camps in Germany where they were held behind barbed wire fences and towers where soldiers with rifles kept a watch on them for the next 26 months. It got pretty discouraging. No one knew how the war would turn out. No one knew whether they would ever see their loved ones, or their homes again. You can settle into a pattern of thinking that says, "I'm a prisoner. This is what I am. This is what I do. I walk in circles ... I try to stay alive."

One day a YMCA shipment arrived in the stalag. It was a crate filled with band instruments. My dad played flute and clarinet in the Army marching band. Other guys played drums, trombone, trumpet. There was even a tuba! They organized a stage band. They traded cigarettes for materials and ripped boards out of their dormitories to build a stage and started performing every chance they had. They came up with skits. Guys sang songs they had memorized. Some composed new music. The guys in the band had a mission - to help the prisoners remember who they really were. To lift spirits. To stay human. Even as they sat in prison, to help keep the vision alive - to "see" beyond the barbed wire. To free them up.

It occurs to me that worship does the same thing, or at least it's supposed to do the same thing. To help us "see" beyond ourselves, to break through old patterns, and assumptions to restore in us a vision of what's beyond whatever it is that might hold us. And the courage to step out.

As our Lord put it, "To recover sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free..."

It's how God loves you, and me. God wants to free you and me up.

Richard Stearns, the president of World Vision, remembers October 1987 when the largest single-day stock market crash since 1929 took place. He writes,

"In one day, Renee and I lost more than one third of our life's savings and the money we had put aside for our kids' college education. I was horrified and became like a man obsessed, each night working past midnight, analyzing on spreadsheets all that we had lost, and the next day calling in orders to sell our remaining stocks and mutual funds to prevent further losses. (Of course that turned out to be the absolute worst thing I could have done.) I was consumed with anguish over our lost money - and it showed.

One night, when I was burning the midnight oil, Renee came and sat beside me. 'Honey,' she said, 'this thing is consuming you in an unhealthy way. It's only money - We have our marriage, our health, our friends, our children, and a good income, much to be thankful for. You need to let go of of this and trust God.'

Don't you hate it when someone crashes your pity party? I didn't want to let go of it. I told her that I felt responsible for our family and that she didn't understand. It was my job to worry about things like this. She suggested we stop and pray about it - something that hadn't occurred to me - so we did.

At the end of the prayer, to my bewilderment, Renee said, 'Now I think we need to get out the checkbook and write some big checks to our church and the ministries we support. We need to show God that we know this is His money and not ours.' I was flabbergasted at the audacity of this suggestion, but in my heart I knew she was right. So that night we wrote some sizable checks, put them in envelopes addressed to various ministries, and sealed them. And that's when I felt a wave of relief. We had broken the spell that money had cast over me. It freed me from the worries that had consumed me. I actually felt reckless and giddy - 'God, please catch us, because we just took a crazy leap of faith.'

And He did." (Hole in Our Gospel, pp. 213 - 214)

Notice how Stearns put it, "relief", "broken the spell", "freed me".

It's how God loves us. And here's the thing, hearts freed up are opened up to what God wants to do. I'm amazed as you are at the outpouring of generosity toward the people of Haiti. It seems the whole world has stepped up. I have to wonder why? Why do people care about the people of Haiti? I think there is evidence here of the Spirit of God at work on our planet. Larry King raised over six million dollars! George Clooney's telethon on Friday night raised 58 million! WPC last week, in a single appeal, raised over $23,000. A pastor friend in a church struggling with finances, facing a 25% reduction in their operating budget, made an appeal on behalf of Haiti and $10,000 was given! Why? Something has been broken loose, something that holds us. And now resources are flowing: rescue teams freeing people from the rubble, medical supplies, doctors, nurses, prayers lifted up, new friendships that in some cases will endure for years. Perhaps a new day has come for the people of Haiti God help them, and us, because it will be a long, slow, difficult journey toward that vision Jesus has for us all.

It begins with God's love, freeing you and me, up.

Thanks be to God.

Amen

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Questions for Reflection.