June 26, 2016
SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER
PENTECOST
The Rev. J.D.
McQueen, II - All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Diego, CA
“For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand fast
therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.”
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Luke shows us what Jesus is all about when he preaches in
the synagogue at Nazareth.
v Quoting the prophet
Isaiah, he proclaims good news for the poor, release to the captives,
sight to the blind, and liberty to the oppressed;
that God’s promise of freedom had been fulfilled.
v Throughout his
ministry we see Jesus freeing us from everything that oppresses us – thirst,
hunger, loneliness and isolation, disease, spiritual oppression, even sin and
death itself.
Freedom is just as
popular today as it was then, yet so many people, even
Christians, struggle with this same message. Why?
v Here’s an example
I’ll never forget.
While I was home
visiting after my first year of seminary, I met a group of college friends at
one of our favorite bars near the school.
v When a guy sitting
nearby heard that I was going to be a priest, we got into a surprisingly
deep conversation about the faith.
v I was so excited to
talk about the freedom, healing, and peace I was
experiencing as my relationship with Jesus got deeper, and how just tasting that
had really begun to set my life on fire.
v The longer we
talked, the more engaged he got, and I
could tell that the Holy Spirit was speaking to things in his heart that
he hadn’t even brought up.
v So then, when our
groups started going in different directions, I was a little surprised to hear
him say, “That’s awesome, man, I’m happy for you. But I just
can’t be that good.”
Rejecting
a relationship with God because “I just can’t be that good” is a tragedy,
because not only is it a total misunderstanding of who God is,
but of who we are as well.
God is not the divine spoilsport
who ruins our fun, but a loving Father whose joy is to bring about our flourishing.
v When we think “I just can’t be that good,” it’s like sulking
because Dad kept us from going through the secret door that
was going to open when we stuck his keys in the electrical outlet.
v Or being upset that even though he knew we wanted to
grow up and be a detective, he made us go to school instead of practicing
by pretending to be Sherlock Holmes.
We need God because
we’re like little children.
v We don’t really understand who we are and we can’t tell the
difference between freedom and slavery.
v So when God draws near to us, it’s not to make us less
of who we are, but to make us more.
That’s why Paul tells us not
to focus our lives on gratifying the desires of the flesh.
v It’s not because the flesh is bad; God created both our
souls and our bodies.
v Then Adam becomes a living soul when God breathes his own
divine breath, his Spirit, into him.
v So when our bodies and souls work together with the Holy Spirit, our physical
realities help us understand the deeper spiritual realities of God’s
love, and we can use our physical bodies to help build up our souls.
When we live by the flesh alone,
the physical realities don’t build up souls or reveal the greater
realities – they actually do the opposite.
v For example, uncontrolled sexual desires don’t reveal the
greater reality of love or prepare us to receive it because
that’s the opposite of love.
June
26, 2016
v You can’t give away what you don’t possess, so you can
only love to the degree that you can control your own selfish
desires.
v In fact, the more you equate “love” with “pleasure,” the
more you numb the desire for the real thing and then leave
yourself unable to live into that kind of relationship when you want to.
v It feels like freedom in the beginning, but ends in
slavery.
Now, even if we’re not consumed
with gratifying the flesh, Paul doesn’t let us off the hook.
v He says that “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the
flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk
by the Spirit.”
v To be who we really are, those who belong to Jesus, we have to be free
to live and walk by the Spirit.
We can’t just passively say “thy
kingdom come, thy will be done,” but be ready to make it happen.
v The Holy Spirit will lead us to do this, but we can only respond if
we’ve “crucified the flesh”; not ignored, resisted, or
even wounded, but crucified.
v It’s really easy for us to be satisfied with ignoring, resisting,
or even wounding the flesh, but that’s not what Paul says.
v If we let a little of the selfishness of the flesh stick around it’s
like saying that we’re totally fulfilled by our marriage and it means
everything to us, and so we’re faithful 90% of the time.
Now, if you’re anything like
me, there are times where you think, “Lord, I just can’t be that good.”
v Pay attention to the times when devotion to Jesus
feels like slavery.
v Ask God to show you where he’s saving you
from yourself, where you’re pretending instead of living.
Pray and pray, and don’t be
discouraged that God has more to offer than you’ve asked for – instead ask him
to help your unbelief, so that you can be free to trust in his love. June 26, 2016
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“For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.”