The Simplest Freedom

Galatians 2:15-21

3^rd Sunday after Pentecost

17 June 2007

 

This week, one of our sons has been exploring a concept that is new to him.  It is the concept of death. 

 

It happened innocently enough.  He was given a little stuffed puppy that looked remarkably like my old Rottweiler, Mocha, who died right before the boys were born.  When I saw the stuffed animal, I showed the boys my old dog’s picture, and Rob immediately declared that his puppy was also named Mocha.  Baby Mocha, actually, and my old Mocha was her mommy.

 

Later, he asked me when I was going to get my Mocha back, and if my friends were going to mail her to me.  “No,” I said.  “Mocha died, and we won’t be seeing her again.”  I figured I would be straightforward and honest, but without explaining too much.  “She died?” he asked.  “Yes, she died, and it was sad and I cried.”  That was it.

 

For the rest of the day, he would randomly announce to anyone who would listen, “Mocha died, and Mommy cried.”  It was clear that he did not know exactly what dying meant, but it was also clear that he understood that it was something significant, and that it was sad, and that it meant I would not see Mocha again.  He must’ve told us about it 50 times – or more.  The word clearly captivated him.

 

Later that night, he came and interrupted me while I was on the phone, with news he clearly thought was important.  “Mommy,” he said with some urgency.  “My M&M died!”

 

Like I said, he doesn’t really understand what the word means.  But obviously he knows that it’s something important and sad.

 

Perhaps our own understanding of the concept isn’t much better than that of a 3 year-old.  Death itself is a mystery.  The grief we feel in the face of it, nearly unmanageable.  The fact that none of us escapes it, horrifying.

 

And yet, this is what stands at the very center of our Christian faith – a death.  There is resurrection, too, sure.  But first, there is this horror – a crucifixion, a death.  It is the central claim of our faith – that Jesus died, and that he then rose again.  We say that he died for us.  We say that he went to the cross in our place.  We say that his resurrection means our life.

 

But this morning Paul says something more.  He says that we must die, too.  “I have been crucified with Christ,” he declares, “and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”  And like a three year-old rolling the word “death” over in our mouths, we can scarcely fathom what this means, or what its implications must be.  We just know that it sounds sad.  And hard.

 

Usually we speak of it in less poetic terms. We talk of self-denial, self-sacrifice.  We speak of setting aside our self-interest.  This puts the burden on us – we need to be less selfish, we need to choose the path of self-denial, we need to die to ourselves.  But how on earth do we do such a thing?  Who of us wants to die, even in a non-physical way?  We want what we want.  We want to do things our way.  We want things to go our way.  How can we possibly choose our own deaths?  How can we possibly say “yes” to being crucified with Christ?

 

Of course if we could do it ourselves, if we could make ourselves unselfish and pure-hearted and good, then what need would we have of Christ in the first place?  If we could simply choose the right way, the selfless way on our own strength, then why did he need to do what he did at all?  Staking our faith in Christ means that it is his faith – and his faithfulness – that saves us.  Not our own.  Being baptized into his death means that it is his obedience to death – and not our ability to be obedient or self-dying – it is his obedience that gathers us into himself, and that gives us the power to live more faithful lives.

 

When Paul speaks of being crucified with Christ, he is not talking only of some personal experience, some chosen death to sin.  He is making a confessional statement, one that implies the readers are joined with him in such a confession, that to be baptized into Christ is to be baptized into his death.[i]   And having been baptized into his death, we are lifted into his life, as well.

 

We got to see a baptism here in this room, last week.  Three of them, actually.  Three of our bright, beautiful, young people choosing the way of Christ, and accepting the fact that God in Christ has also chosen and claimed them.  You can speak of baptism as a cleansing or a new birth – and it is those things.  You can also speak of it as a death.  The whole body is pushed under those waters, like being laid down into a grave.  The whole life submerged, every area of life given up to this way, the way of Christ.  It is like a death.  Last week, after the baptism, you heard ancient words proclaimed over those waters, “We are buried with Christ in baptism, and raised to walk in newness of life.”  Those words also belong to the Apostle Paul, who wrote them to the Christians in Rome . 

 

“Newness of life.”  That’s what we’re all hoping for, I suppose. New life, good life, abundant life, eternal life.  We get up from those waters and we want everything to be better.  We want to be better.  Paul says it so beautifully – that having been crucified with Christ – “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.”

 

The story is told of an inspired performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, under the brilliant direction of Arturo Toscanini.  The audience stood and cheered.  There was curtain call after curtain call after curtain call.  The ovation went on.  Finally Toscanini waved his arms for the cheering to stop.  When the room grew quiet, he turned to the orchestra and shouted, “Ladies and gentleman, you are nothing!”  Then he pointed to himself and said, “I am nothing!’  Then he shouted, “Beethoven is everything!  Everything!  Everything!”[ii]

 

Paul is saying the same thing, only about Christ.  It is Christ’s music that wants to pour out of our lives.  “It is no longer I who live, but Christ,” Paul says.  “I am nothing – Christ is everything!  Everything!  Everything!”

 

We resist the notion that we are nothing, but Paul proclaimed it as good news.  And it is, isn’t it?  We spend so much time and energy and effort trying to be something, trying to be someone, trying to get somewhere.  Trying, somehow, to justify ourselves, our lives.  To make our lives mean something.  It is exhausting, isn’t it?  All this effort to prove ourselves somehow?   All this struggle to be better, to do better, to show that we are good?

 

Most of us, in addition to feeling the need to prove ourselves – or maybe because of it – also feel the burden of our deep flaws.  There is guilt over the ways we are not what we feel we should be.  There is anxiety over all that we have done or left undone.  Maybe there is some shame, too, that the persona we present to others for approval is not the real person, or the full person, that we are.

 

What would it feel like to lay it all down?  To get out from under all the guilt and anxiety and shame?  To let go the efforts to prove ourselves?  Maybe it would feel like a death.  Maybe it would feel like falling back into baptismal waters.  Maybe it would feel like lying down, like laying ourselves down into other arms, arms that once stretched out on a cross, arms that pull us into a life bigger than our own, and can bear us forward into a new reality.

 

Maybe it would feel like freedom, the simplest freedom of all.  Paul certainly makes it sound that way.  “No longer I … but Christ.”  The setting aside of the “I,” the letting go of the ego, the dying of the self – it is a freedom.  And from that freedom – the freedom of dying – comes something else.  The freedom to live a new life, the freedom to live the Christ life, the freedom of Christ actually living in us – which is not only gift but power.

 

The context of Paul’s acclamation here is his letter to the Galatians.  He was angry when he wrote this letter – unhappy with the fact that Jewish-Christians were trying to set up boundaries between themselves and Gentile-Christians, that they were attempting to make the Gentile Christians meet certain requirements before they could be considered Christian.  This rule-making, boundary-building, divisive kind of church life was the opposite of the freedom Christ had brought.  In Christ, there is no Jew nor Greek, Paul told them.  All the old divisions are laid to rest.  They are dead.  They have no more power.  When we have been united with Christ in baptism, we have been united with each other too.

 

So ours is not the only death that had to happen.  In Christ, religion dies, too.  Religion – built as it is on order and rules and who is in and who is out and what is wrong and what is right.  When we are baptized into his death, our religion dies too.  We are not the church, an institution – we are the church, the body of Christ that has died with him and been raised with him.  All our old divisions – dead.  All our old assumptions about who is in and who is out – dead.  All our old ways to justify our existence, to show ourselves as the right, and good – dead.  It is no longer I who live.  It is no longer you who lives.  It is no longer First Baptist Church who lives.  It is no longer the Protestant Church who lives.  It is no longer the Christian church who lives.  It is Christ who lives in me, in you, in us. 

 

It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?  That it is his life coursing through us, his priorities driving our decisions.  But is it true?  Is it only Christ pulsing within us, as individuals, as this church, as part of the whole church? When we wake up in the morning, is our first thought of Christ?  When we are stuck in traffic, is our first reaction from Christ?  When we deal with spouse, or child, or coworker, or friend, is it Christ acting and speaking through us?  When we come to church and worship here, and speak with each other afterwards, and try to work together and make decisions together and reach out together with love and hope and faith, is it Christ working through us?  Is it Christ’s purposes which are always first?

 

Truthfully, probably not.  We find it difficult or impossible to let Christ keep shining through, day after day, moment by moment.  We are not good at letting ourselves die and letting him live in us.

 

Truth is, we won’t ever be good at it.  We won’t ever be good.  We probably won’t ever fully shine with only his light.  That is one more notion that may need to die.  The notion that we can somehow do it.  That we can live a fully Christian life, in full Christian harmony with one another, with only Christ’s interests prevailing.

 

Maybe the best we can do is this.  We can get up each morning as if we were rising again from our baptismal waters.  We can say to our God, “On my own, I cannot die to myself today, you must help me do it.  You might even need to do it for me.  Help me let Christ rule.”  And when we get together as this little part of Christ’s body, this here church, we can cling to each other like people rising together from baptismal waters, and we can pray together, “On our own, we cannot die to ourselves today, you must help us do it.  You might even need to do it for us.  We cannot be Christ’s church on our own.  Help us let Christ rule.” 

 

In comparison to Paul’s mighty convictions, it might not seem like much.  But to pray such a prayer at all is a little death to self, and a trust.  It is putting ourselves in bigger faith than our own – staking our lives on Christ’s own faith, and trusting that to be enough.  We practice this – together and separately – little by little, and day by day, and who knows.  Maybe one day we will find ourselves proclaiming with Paul and all the saints a truth that we are also living towards: Christ is everything!  Everything!  Everthing!