Sermon for February 8th

Today’s reading from 1st Corinthians is a widely used and widely misunderstood passage. I’m going to be honest with you, I don’t know exactly what it means. If you come up to me and said, “Pastor, what is Paul telling us to do?” I would tell you that I don’t know and that THAT is the beauty of it. THAT is what the freedom of a Christian is all about. Paul isn’t telling you what you have to do. He’s reminding you that you are free to do whatever needs to be done for the sake of the gospel.

But while I do not know exactly what the passage from 1st Corinthians looks like specifically, I am aware of some pretty awful ditches we can fall into trying to follow his words. We can end up slaves in our search to be free. So, I’m going to do my best not to give you any so called “answers” to what Paul is talking about but, instead, trust that the Holy Spirit can handle that on its own. Perhaps this passage has already begun working on you, breathing life into your imagination about how you might share the news about Jesus in a new way. I’m going to do my best to get out of the way and let God do his thing with you. Today, my intention is point out the traps, so that you don’t find yourself a slave, or enslave others, to a new kind of law now that you have heard that you are free.

In order to make this passage a little more contextual, we are going to talk about its relationship to ecumenism, since there are few topics that are more hallowed or admired today in the religious community than ecumenical partnerships. Ecumenism, at its foundation, means getting churches of different denominations or denominational affiliations to work together for the sake of gospel. Why should we argue about little doctrinal differences among different church bodies when we are all after the same thing: sharing the love of Jesus those who do not know him both in word and in deed? Ecumenism takes many different forms of course, but it often either facilitates opportunities for different churches to compromise and work as one or to assimilate and become one just as Jesus prayed in John chapter 17, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” But while that verse from John gives many a reason, a purpose, for ecumenical discussion, the passage today from 1 Corinthians gives the tools and the path to put ecumenical talks into practice.

Paul writes, “For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them.” Martin Luther referred to this passage in his treatise called, “On the Freedom of a Christian” where he writes down two propositions for describing the Christian life, “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”

You see, when you know Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are free from sin, death and the devil. You’ve only got one foot left in the grave. The no longer has the final word for you—it cannot touch you. You do not have to be focused on what you are supposed to do or what you are not supposed to do. That’s not going to save you; only faith in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ can save you. You are free.

Equally true, however, is that you are still living on this earth surrounded by your family, friends and neighbors who still need food, water, shelter, friendship, protection, education and, above all, love. You salvation is not dependent on following the rule, “Do not murder,” but your Aunt Mildred would certainly appreciate it if you refrained from strangling your Uncle Bert the next time he hits you up for money. You are not following the ten commandments for God, you see, you are following them for the sake of your Aunt Mildred.

You feed your children good food not because you are striving to “be like Jesus” but because you’d like to see them grow up free from scurvy, osteoperosis and obesity. While you, as a Christian, are free, ultimately, to do whatever you want, as long as someone else lives on this earth, you are a slave for their welfare, for their protection and for their happiness. So, when conversations turn to discussions about ecumenism, relationships with other denominations or churches how might we respond? Well, the free Christian asks, “How can I serve, how can I help, how can I love, what can I do to make this relationship work?”

It is the FREEDOM that you have in Jesus Christ that makes this whole system work. Without believing that your salvation was signed and sealed by Jesus’ death on the cross, you wouldn’t have the time left in your day to serve anyone. You’d become self-obsessed. Either you would spend all your time working out your own salvation by yourself or, worse, you’d serve other people because you had to,
because you thought it was “the right thing to do” in order to “get right with God.”

There are many things that churches and denominations do, whether you call them choices, preferences, rules or traditions. Many, if not most, of these things are not written down or commanded in the Bible. They are done with for good reasons, perhaps for reasons of culture, or to maintain discipline or, as we know, because it’s always been done that way, but they are not necessary for salvation and we all know it! The Lutheran Reformers called these things adiophora-indifferent things. Not unimportant things, but indifferent to your salvation. Things neither commanded by God nor forbidden. These are things that can be changed or compromised or gotten rid of all together. It is not necessary to have hardwood floors in a church right? Even though we like it. It’s not necessary to kneel for communion, even though we have begun to again. It is not necessary to actually meet in a church at all, “For wherever two or three people are gathered in my name I will be with them,” Jesus promises.

What then is necessary for the church to be the church? Not a location. Not particular traditions. According to our Lutheran Confessions, we believe, teach and confess that the church “is the assembly of all believers among whom the gospel is purely preached and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel.” Word and sacrament. That is what is necessary. Anything else can change. But not God’s word. Not his laws and promises. And not your need to hear it. The freedom you have as a Christian is kept intact by reminding you, through God’s Word that you are free—free enough to become a slave for another.

Many of you know something about my personal experience with this issue of Christian freedom. I became rostered with the Lutheran association called LCMC, Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, instead of the ELCA, when my freedom as a Christian was put in jeopardy at the end of seminary. A few years ago, the ELCA and the Episcopal church, made an agreement to be “in common mission” with one another so that, for example, a Lutheran pastor could serve at an Episcopal church if the need arose. The only stipulation was that the ELCA would need to accept, or at least tolerate, the Episcopal church’s understanding of ministry according to something called the historic episcopate.

According to Carl Braaten, a Lutheran theologian, “The historic episcopate entails the orderly transmission of the office of bishop . . . to ensure faithfulness to the gospel and to safeguard the unity of the church. A bishop is ordained through prayer and the laying on of hands by bishops already in office.” By tracking these ordinations back through history, the Episcopal church says that they can ensure steadfastness to Jesus’ message.

From this point forward, every new bishop and pastor in the ELCA was expected to be ordained by a bishop through the laying on of hands—all those previously ordained would be “grandfathered” in. As I mentioned before, Lutherans believe that in order to have the church, one must have the word and sacrament and ordinations can be done by anyone, though normally by pastors or bishops. Now, unless you argued for an exception to the rule, an ordination MUST be by a bishop. I asked for an exception but my request was denied. Therefore, in fact, I had no freedom, in order to be a pastor, it was concluded that I MUST be ordained by a bishop.

When something neither commanded nor forbidden by God, when something indifferent is made necessary, your very freedom as a Christian is at stake. And if your freedom is taken from you, this passage from 1st Corinthians no longer applies, for you can longer say that you, “are free with respect to all” for only by being a slave to God’s Word, are you truly free to serve someone else. Ironically, when my freedom as a Christian was in jeopardy, when I was told, “You must! No exceptions”, I HAD to say, “Then I must not, for the sake of my freedom in Christ.” I do not believe that my authority to preach or to forgive sins comes from a bishop or a tradition.. It is only by God’s authority and according to his Word that I can do anything as a pastor.

When you are in the midst of loving your neighbor, no matter what church they belong to or do not belong to, you are free to do whatever you want to love them, to help them and to let them know Christ’s love. You can wear a tie or jeans to church, you can sing to an organ or to a praise band, you can meet in a chapel or out in a park. As Paul says, you can become all things to all people in order that they might hear of Jesus Christ and know their salvation. But as soon as you demand that all people wear jeans to church, you are no longer free to welcome those in suits. Even more distressingly, you undermine their faith in Christ by adding a law that is not commanded by God, making it seem that outward appearances are more important to God than the faith of the heart. If a member of the church says, “You MUST do something to be a true church” the free Christian says, “Then I MUST NOT! The only thing I must do is hear God’s demands and his promises and trust his Word alone.”

There is one thing that is necessary for our freedom in Christ and that is Jesus Christ himself as we hear him preached and grasp his promise in our baptism and the Lord’s Supper. If we change or lose his words we are lost and become slaves again. If we add to his words we bury Jesus from our eyes. True freedom, the freedom of a Christian, is to be enslaved to the Word of God, bound hand and foot to Jesus Christ himself, who has broken the chains of sin, death and the devil for you and given you the freedom to love with a radical kind of love. Adapting to the world around you, giving voice to the oppressed and welcoming strangers in your midst while never budging from the hope that you have in Christ Jesus. Never watering down God’s word, but giving Jesus as living water to parched souls.

My prayer for you is that you would take home this passage and read it on your own again. Pray that God would lead you to serve others in whatever way that looks like, to become a real and true part of their life, to understand their pain and love. And when you bring Jesus Christ to them, don’t forget the commission you have been entrusted with. You are to bring them Jesus in all his fullness, nothing more and nothing less than what has been revealed in the Bible. Only then can all people know what true freedom is and be able to become a slave for someone else for the sake of the gospel. For the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.