Worthy Fruit - or, When Life Gives You Apples......

Gospel Lesson: Mathew 3:1-12 

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming,  "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."  This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.' "  Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.  Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan,  and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.  But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bear fruit worthy of repentance.  Do not presume to say to yourselves, "We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.  Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.  "I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

Sermon: “Worthy Fruit”

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(or…) When life gives you apples….

About two weeks ago I brought home from church a grocery bag half full of apples. A friend of mine had posted on her FB page that her backyard tree was bearing sweet Fuji apples, way more than they could use. Free to anyone who wanted them. But they were wormy - must be carefully cut into pieces. 

The bag sat around for a few days, until I could get at them.

One of the things I loved about my brief season of “ real” retirement - which consisted of six months since May of this year, when I finished my studies - is that I have time to sit down and do things like trim up 20 pounds of little apples to make applesauce. Most of my life has been filled with multitasking - at least 3 things happening at once - and now to be able to sit down for however long it takes to trim apples is a joy and a blessing. I will admit that the laundry was running in the background, though - I still seem to find ways to do two things at once!

I didn’t really know what wormy apples would be like. I guess I have always bought the pretty, fully-grown, nicely shaped, healthy-skinned apples.

That’s not what these were like at all. They were small, misshapen, puckered, and each one had either multiple tiny holes or one big cavity in it.



As I rinsed them and sat down to start cutting into them, I wondered what wormy apples would be like on the inside. Would I cut one open and find a worm popping out to smile at me like the Richard Scarry books I used to read my kids?  

Well, it wasn’t like that at all. It was basically nice apple fruit, and yucky apple fruit. And every apple had some good fruit.

Now, that didn’t mean that I used every apple. I didn’t have the patience to deal with some that were extra ugly - I just cut them in half and tossed them into the scrap pile.

But I thought as I worked about how every single apple had something salvageable, useful, in it - and I may not be willing to take the time to save every good piece of it, but God does - God sees our ugly selves, our wormy souls, the sin that is in each of us, and God looks past it to the good fruit that is also inside every one of us. This is the fruit that is worthy of repentance. No matter how messed up or broken or incapable of doing good we may feel, or we may see others as being, we all have good, and God delights in that good, and encourages us to use that to bear even more good fruit. 

How many of you recognize the name Antoinette Tuff? She is the woman who talked Michael Hill out of a terrible potential tragedy in late August of this year, when he walked into her school near Atlanta one morning, loaded up with weapons and ammunition. Both Michael and Antoinette had good fruit in them - and both of them had difficult, ugly pasts that also misshaped them and made life extra challenging for them.

Antoinette’s life was a mess at the time this had happened. She was struggling to care for a child with multiple disabilities. Her husband had left her after 33 years of marriage. She had been so despondent that she had tried to take her own life. If you imagine yourself in Antoinette’s shoes, you can begin to understand how hard it could be to overcome the ugliness and sadness, the discouragement of her life, to get up every morning and go to work as a receptionist, to get through the day with no real way of knowing how or when things would ever get better for her.

Michael’s life was a mess that morning too. All we know about him is that he hadn’t taken his medications, that he thought he needed to be hospitalized for his mental illness, and that in the depths of his illness, he had gathered up guns and ammunition and headed for the school where Antoinette worked.

And what had perhaps looked at its beginning like another humdrum, boring day, same as all the others, for Antoinette, became a defining moment. And for her it was defined by her faith, by anchoring on her faith, as she said her pastor had been preaching just recently. And so not only did she step out – way out - in faith and courage and hope that morning, but she very intentionally sought out the goodness in Michael – she calmed him, she reassured him, she encouraged him, and clearly she spoke loving kindness and compassion to him – even though he was heavily armed and had already shot off a few rounds to show what he was capable of.

Bear fruit worthy of repentance. What does John the Baptist mean by that? We know that to repent means to turn – to turn away, certainly, from evil and sin and its grip on our lives, but even more it means to turn toward, to anchor on, to choose the straight path, every time we have the opportunity to choose. Repentance doesn’t happen once for all time. That’s why we acknowledge our sinful nature every time we gather for worship, in our words of confession. And it’s why we remind ourselves, and one another, that our pardon is already assured, undeserved, unearned. It’s grace. It’s the peace of Christ that we share with one another. It doesn’t make the brokenness go away. But it says that it’s OK to turn from it, to recognize and to focus instead on what is good in one another, to love one another and to work together, even with those who we would rather judge or turn away from, or run away from, so that together we can add up all our fruit, all our good fruit, all that is worth the courageous act of repentance, in order to help build up the kingdom of God.

So then, out of a bag of ugly apples, blemished, partly rotten, invaded by worms that made them damaged goods, we can gather together their goodness, and we transform them – dare I say merge them together - into delicious, useful, worthy, applesauce.

Into something that doesn’t look like what it started as, that makes use of the good, that steps away from the inevitable bad parts, that rejoices that God has promised that every branch that bears good fruit will be pruned – will be pruned – for the purpose of bearing more good fruit; and that, just like Joseph said, even when his brothers intended to do harm to him, God intended it for good.

So let us find strength in knowing that God sees the good in ourselves and one another, let us joyfully accept the grace that comes from the Holy Spirit to forgive us for what is not good, and let us be the body of Christ to one another by acknowledging the good in each other and by working together to bring unity, and reconciliation, and to build up the kingdom of God, in this Advent season and always.

Friday Five on Food (on Saturday!)

Weekly Questions from revgalblogpals. Here goes!

1) Is there a food from a foreign land whose reputation led to trepidation when you had a chance to give it a try? Did you find the courage to sample it anyway? If so, were you pleasantly surprised or did you endorse the less than favorable reputation that preceded it?

Eww.  I am remembering in detail a meal at a Chinese restaurant in NY/Chinatown, at which my former college roommate (who I was meeting up with for the evening, and who was always more daring than me!) told the owner to bring us a meal he would serve to us if we were Chinese. We were served many things I'd never seen before; most of them were wonderful! But I actually tried to eat the sea cucumber when it arrived, I really did. It was the worst gag reflex I can ever recall. And I had the same reflex several years later, when I saw one at a "petting aquarium." Ugh!

2) What food from your own country/culture gets a bad rap?

My heritage is Italy and Cornwall. It's hard to think of something that has a bad rap from either place!

Perhaps the Cornish pasty, which looks heavy and uninspired, and are sometimes made badly by places that sell them, but when it's made right, it is a blend of the best flavors I know. Beef, potato, onion, and rutabaga (not carrots - that's a Finnish pasty!), with a good lard crust so you can pick it up and eat it. And lots of ground pepper. Glad fall weather is coming so I can start up the oven and make some soon.

3) Of what food are you fond that others find distasteful?

Lima beans? Brussels sprouts? Beets? Lox? None of them sound distasteful to me, so I'm not sure if they qualify!

4) Is there a country’s food, not native to you, that you go out of your way to eat?

Indian Dosa. There's a restaurant in Ann Arbor that fashions them into all sorts of shapes - cylinders and so forth - and stuffs them with wonderful things. But they are so interesting and crispy and large! I love them.

5) What is your guilty pleasure food?

It's gotta be ice cream. I really have to keep it out of the house, because I just can't resist its clarion call from the freezer to me!

Bonus: What was your most memorable meal (good or bad), either because of the menu, the occasion, the company, or some other circumstance that makes it stand out?

For my then-husband's 50th birthday, I invited some friends and family members to join us for dinner and I made a number of the Italian dishes from the movie "The Big Night" (google it if you're not familiar, and try to watch it sometime!). The entire meal was amazing, but probably the highlight was the Timpano - layer after layer of pasta, sauce, meatballs, sausage, cheese, all enclosed in a crust, baked, then cut into slices that include all those amazing layers. It was unbelievably good and fun to make! One day I'll bring my best friends together and do it again.

Walk on By..

“WALK ON BY…”

It’s great to be back! I loved being here earlier this year serving as your intern, and I’ve really been looking forward to seeing you all and to worship with you again, ever since Fran asked me to come while she was gone on a well-deserved vacation, so thank you so much for inviting me back.

One of the things I learned during my time with you is that I really love the process of finding the sermon in the scripture.

The act of reading and wrestling with the stories, finding what’s new or unfamiliar, and the time spent in prayer and brooding about the themes that I find, reading commentaries, and then finally pulling it all together into a sermon that hopefully says what it needs to say, and not a whole lot more than it has to say, all that was a learning process that brought me great joy and challenge each time.

So I have to tell you that I got a good laugh when I saw the gospel text for today, which is the story of the Good Samaritan. My first thought was, Oh, that’s great! Thank you, Lord! How many times have they heard a sermon based on this? What am I going to do with this that they haven’t already heard? And the irony was, even though I’ve heard it so many times myself – it’s was like working with a brand new thing for me, because it’s the first time I’m preaching it!  So I moved into the sermon writing process with all the openness and humility I could bring, and as always, the Holy Spirit took me places I didn’t expect.

Let’s pray.

Gracious God, may we hear this familiar story in new ways today, and may we be moved with compassion to learn what you desire from us, and to do your will in all the unplanned and unexpected circumstances of our lives. May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Listen with me once again to this familiar story.

Luke 10:25-37

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" He said to him, "What is written in the law? What do you read there?" He answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." And he said to him, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live." But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, 'Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.' Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" He said, "The one who showed him mercy." Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."

The question in this passage that is typically held up to the light and examined is the one the lawyer asks Jesus up front: Hey, just who is my neighbor, anyway? Eugene Peterson, in his Message translation, calls this a trick question – and that this legal expert is looking for a loophole when he poses it.

Of course, Jesus is not easily duped by this guy. And so he tells a story, and ends with a question posed right back to him – not who is MY neighbor, but – Who was the neighbor to the man in trouble?

And given the choice of three responses – the priest, who was a leader in the Jewish faith; or the Levite, who was something like a designated lay priest or an associate; or the Samaritan, who was considered not even worthy of attention by a Jew – this legal expert can not even bring himself to say “the Samaritan”.

He responds instead by saying, and you can almost hear the underlying sarcasm in his words, “the one who showed him mercy.” To which Jesus says, OK – so go and do likewise. Go and show mercy. Go and be sure that you don’t just walk on by, like the others did.

So why did the Samaritan show mercy when the others did not?

The story tells us that the other two saw him, but then they crossed over to the other side of the road, whereas only the Samaritan came near him. And the act of drawing near to him is what led him to truly see this man’s awful situation – he had been beaten and left for dead – and so he was “moved with pity.” Other translations say instead of pity, that he was moved with compassion. Now compassion can be defined as a gut level feeling of empathy for the suffering of others. And being moved means doing something about it.

How many of you have ever seen the movie “Tootsie”? It’s a complicated plot, but the main thing is that Dustin Hoffman takes on the persona of a woman to get work, and obviously he gets into all sorts of crazy situations, and of course he learns a lot in the process.

Now there’s a short video clip of an interview with Dustin Hoffman that’s been really popular on the internet recently.

In it, he talks about an epiphany he had that came from drawing near, and experiencing the world through the filter of another.

Dustin Hoffman Interview Clip

What do these two stories have in common – the Samaritan’s response to the man who has been attacked by robbers, and Dustin Hoffman’s reaction to being made up to look like a woman?

Both stories include a description of what it means to “walk on by”, and also the impact that happens when we “draw near”, come close.

Hoffman’s epiphany was that he would, in essence, cross the street when a woman didn’t meet his expectation for female beauty. He wouldn’t have bothered, in the past, to get to know her, to learn what was interesting or unique or special about her, because, as he said, he had been brainwashed to believe she didn’t matter.

Because he brought himself near to the experience of another in this way,he was moved with compassion to do something.

The priest and the Levite crossed the street when they were faced with a situation that didn’t fit the way they wanted to experience life; a situation that was not neat and not tidy and not according to rules and regulations. As long as they didn’t have to come near, they would not be moved with compassion, they would not have to do something.

If we don’t come close, we will not be moved. If we don’t come close, we will not have the experience of knowing many, many, interesting people… because we, too, have been brainwashed.

So why don’t we come close? And how much of that might be brainwashing rather than reality?

Sometimes it’s because we are afraid. It may be a reasonable fear, or it may be a fear that has been passed on to us, a fear that has no basis when it is held up to the light. We live in a world that wants to eliminate all risk, and so anything that might go wrong becomes something we don’t want to get ourselves into, even though the chances might be great that things will turn out just fine. So we take what we were told as children – “don’t talk to strangers” – and we continue to practice this as adults.

And we rely on our filters to tell us what’s safe and what’s not – who’s a stranger and who’s not. But we have got to ask ourselves if those filters have gotten clogged over the years. We’ve got to realize that those clogged filters can cause us to make snap decisions that can have terrible, long lasting consequences. We must draw near to others to have any hope of knowing if our filters make any sense anymore.

Sometimes it’s because we are just too busy. Our work demands our primary attention. Our families are going in so many directions, and we must help them, must be there for them. And then there’s time at the gym for ourselves, and choir practice and session meetings, and all the host of other things we cram into our days and nights and lives.

How can we possibly let any of those things slide by stopping to be a neighbor?

But we must ask ourselves what priorities we are serving with the way we fill our lives, and also what it would take to make us rearrange our priorities.  For example: I remember the time my dad had a medical crisis. I had young children, I had a high powered stressful job, and for the next four months just about everything got minimal attention from me, so that I could be present for him and my mom. Will I shift my schedule to help another, to show mercy, to someone who’s not in my family or circle of close friends? Jesus tells us if we insist on saving and protecting our own lives, we will lose them, but if we lose our lives, put them out there for Jesus’ sake, accept the consequences, we will save them.

Sometimes it’s because it seems it won’t matter. What good will a dollar or five dollars do if I give it to this homeless person, on this corner, this one time? The problem is so large, Lord, and I am so small. It seems like the tiny drop in the bucket that I am able to offer is just a wasted effort.

And I really want to be productive with my donations! Surely there must be a program out there that is trying to solve the bigger issue, the systemic problem. I’ll write a check to them instead.

But – that would not involve coming near, and we would miss learning firsthand about the lives of the people we serve. And if we believe that God puts people and situations in front of us to teach us to trust, and to love, and to serve, then we really need to think differently about our responses to the people and situations we encounter. We may not be able to fix the whole situation, but often there is something we can help to address just by being present at that moment.

Our gospels are filled with parables from Jesus about people bringing less than what is needed – the boy with five loaves and two fishes, the widow giving her last two pennies to the synagogue, even Jesus using ordinary stuff like water and mud – and from these came miracles.

 We tend to think about all this from an individual standpoint, and that is part of it. We should each come away from this gospel lesson asking ourselves if we are neighbors, and where, and when, and for whom. But I think there’s an important message here for us as the church, as the body of Christ, as well. I think this parable can help us see what it means for the church to be a neighbor, and to show mercy.

But to do so means facing the ways we have likely been brainwashed as the church as well. How shall we learn to suspend judgment, and to trust, each time we have a chance to be the body of Christ for someone in need? How can we retrain ourselves as a congregation to offer time and space to the stranger – ways to provide a listening ear, a willingness to stop and sit and be moved by the compassion that we do feel, without being overcome by the natural anxiousness that arises when we consider what we ought to do? What if it was less about plans and more about being present, tangibly caring?

How can we show mercy by making a start at new ways of serving, even if we realize that we can’t do it all? Can we learn greater trust that God will bring the right things together, the things that are out of our control anyway, so that God’s will can be fulfilled in a situation?

What kind of neighbors has the Holy Spirit shaped us to be? What kind of situations does the Holy Spirit present to us these days? As we respond, can we – will we – reflect the Samaritan or the others? Will we pass by the other side, because we have been brainwashed, because we are afraid, or don’t have enough time or resources or energy to take on helping another, or can’t handle it all ourselves?

When we are open to the spontaneous holy guidance of the Spirit, we will see with new eyes, we will recognize needs differently as they come our way, we will recognize strangers as those to whom we are called to be neighbors, we will embrace the compassion that pushes us off of complacency, and turns us away from hostility. God willing, we will be able to act on compassion, and not fear, with confidence that God is always creating a new thing, and that God seeks for us to draw near and participate, and that God will bring it to completion.

Let’s pray.

God of grace and mercy, Help us to be neighbors to those in need, and to not just walk on by. Move us with compassion, and give us new eyes to see the wonder in each and every person, every one your beloved child, so that we can be the kind of neighbor you desire, the kind that shows mercy beyond measure. In Christ we pray – Amen.

Jill A. Mills

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

July 14, 2013

What Kind of Freedom is This?

Galatians 5:1, 13-25

For freedom Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. 

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.

For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.

Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.

For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want.

But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law.

Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry,sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.

I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

There is no law against such things.

And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.

The church where I preached this sermon on June 30, 2013, does a “fifth Sunday surprise” whenever a fifth Sunday comes up during a given month. Based on the theme of freedom and input from me, the worship team chose to use this video as the “surprise” portion of worship. I built the sermon to connect with it.

Video shown before sermon: Lost Boys of Sudan  (10 minutes)

Special thanks to my friend and brother in Christ, Paul Gatluak Both, for letting me tell a bit of his story as part of the sermon. Paul is in South Sudan right now for the next two months; your prayers would be greatly appreciated.

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It seems like an appropriate week to be talking about freedom.

This coming Thursday our nation will celebrate 237 years of independence. This week is also the 150^th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, a devastating although critical battle in our country’s Civil War, which resulted in the abolition of slavery. And in just this past week, a number of our basic freedoms have been addressed by the Supreme Court and by the Congress – specifically, voting rights, marriage equality, and immigration rights.. So, in the words of the Gettysburg Address, it is altogether fitting and proper that we should talk about freedom this morning.

But we can’t talk about freedom without understanding what still keeps us in chains. Beyond the more well-known and horrible forms of slavery, where people are bought and sold, there are other forms of slavery that affected people’s lives in Paul’s time, and that affect us today as well.

When Paul says, “stand firm, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery,” he is referring to the rules and requirements of the Jewish Law. The Galatians were mostly Gentiles.  Some Jewish-Christian missionaries were telling the Galatians that they had to be circumcised like the Jews, and follow certain dietary laws, to be true Christians. When Paul found out about it, he was outraged. As Paul writes just before our passage, those who want to be justified by the Law have cut themselves off from Christ. This idea of “favor comes from good behavior” directly contradicts Paul’s core foundation for our faith that we have been saved by God’s grace alone. He tells them and us, you either follow the Law, guided by your own interpretation, or you follow the Truth, guided by the Holy Spirit.

We run into the same problem today when we try to turn the Bible into a rulebook for how to live our lives. When Christians today try to live good and holy lives by figuring out what the Bible says is correct and not correct,  the problem is not whether we are doing the right or wrong thing. The problem is that we have turned off the path of trusting and following Christ. Our path is diverted away from freedom  and into the slavery of trying to earn our salvation.

The story of the Bible is not a set of rules, but rather a story of God’s love for all God’s people, despite the mess we make of things at every turn.

The Bible is not the only rulebook we are encouraged to follow. The systems and institutions that surround virtually every aspect of our lives all come with their own rules and requirements. In the video about the Lost Boys of Sudan, we saw how governments create a form of slavery by imposing oppressive rules, especially when these rules change without warning, and the people living under them must change their lives accordingly.

The boys in the video were forced to flee for their lives from their Sudanese homes, and then several years later they were evicted from Ethiopia and had to flee again.

Rules and requirements create slavery for some people in every form of government, whether democratic or not. Each of the changes made this week by our Supreme Court and Congress may be interpreted as freedom for some and slavery for others. This is the problem when systems and institutions trump the commandment Paul says is the sum of all the law, to love your neighbor as yourself.

Our economic system also creates rules and requirements that enslave us.  Poet and author Wendell Berry wrote in an essay that ““Most people are now finding that they are free to make very few significant choices. It is becoming steadily harder for ordinary people – the unrich, the unprivileged – to choose a kind of work for which they have a preference, a talent, or a vocation; to choose where they will live…or even to choose to raise their own children.  …..And most individuals (“liberated” or not) choose to conform not to local ways and conditions but to a rootless and placeless monoculture of commercial expectations and products…… We want the liberty of divorce from spouses and independence from family and friends, yet we remain indissolubly married to a hundred corporations that regard us at best as captives and at worst as prey.”[1]

And there is cultural norm slavery, too. If we want to keep up with the latest fashions, or home décor, we must buy and dispose of things, over and over and over again. If we want to fit in, to be accepted by our peers, we must look and talk and dress and behave in a certain way, and set aside anything that doesn’t fit the culture. This is a form of slavery, because it masks who we truly are, and it sets up rules and requirements for what is called happiness in the present culture, at the present time.

Besides rules and regulations, the other primary source of slavery revolves around constant care and feeding, whether it’s the maintenance of our own self interests, or the expectations of ourselves and others. Both result in slavery, because they pull us away from what God calls us toward.

When our minds and our hearts become cluttered by forms of self-gratification – the idols, and addictions, and lusts that so easily creep in and consume us – these things take over our lives and crowd out all the space in our hearts for loving one another. Paul addresses this issue when he says, “do not use freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence.” He addresses it directly, because there was concern about what the Gentiles would do with their freedom if they were not bound by the law. Those Gentiles who had come to believe in Christ had certainly lived lives of self-gratification up to that point, so it was a reasonable concern.

It’s a reasonable concern for us too. Emptying ourselves does not come naturally. We are filled with anxieties that we try to tamp down by adding things to our lives, and these things can expand into habits, and behaviors, and addictions that spiral out of our control. And then we are talking about slavery again.

The expectations of others also become chains that enslave us, filling up our lives with priorities that crowd out God’s call to us. The needs, wants, and comforts of our families, friends, and workplaces leave little time and space in our busy lives. And we come to believe that all the things we do for all of these people are essential, that none of them can be set aside.

And then there are the regular visits to the gym, and the bucket lists we make for ourselves, and our life plans and goals….well, there is so much to do and so little time to do it.

And then we hear Jesus, in our gospel passage from Luke today, as he responds to those who say they want to follow him. He calls them all to set aside their excuses and their other priorities. Even the reasons that sound reasonable to us, he tells them and us that we must set them all aside to follow him. Their excuses to Jesus were their chains of slavery to the things of the world. “I can’t quite yet because…”….. “I’ll be ready to go as soon as…”. The hard message of these words straight from Jesus, is that our first priority is to follow him.

Being guided by the Spirit means letting go of all other rules and requirements, all other needs for care and feeding and maintenance, anything that gets in the way or stops us from loving one another with all our hearts, all our souls, all our minds and all our collective strength.

Whatever keeps us from loving one another is a form of slavery.

It diminishes us, it diminishes the body of Christ, and it diminishes the world.

But enough about slavery! Let’s talk about freedom. Nelson Mandela once said, “To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

As we hear from Paul, true freedom is loving one another, even to the point of becoming slaves to one another. Full servanthood is what’s expected. We are slaves again, but to love each other.

We are free only when we can empty ourselves for one another, be fully generous with all that we have to help one another, guided by the Holy Spirit. We are free then to be the people who God made us to be, to be free Children of God, no matter what our circumstances.  And this brings us back to the Lost Boys of Sudan.

You see, I have a dear friend and brother in Christ, named Paul Gatluak Both. He has been a classmate of mine at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, and he is one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. He came to America in the 1990s, and has lived in Iowa and upstate New York. He is married with two young boys. And he is filled to the brim with love, for God and for others. When you get to know Paul, you know immediately that sharing the love of God is truly his number one priority, in word and in deed. (Pictures of Paul projected; see bottom of post).

You see, Paul has known oppression perhaps more deeply than any of us here can imagine.  And yet he lives his life filled with abundant love and joy in Christ, and by loving others freely.

[A funny thing happened while I was finishing up this sermon Saturday morning. A FB chat popped up just as I was working on this section, and it was Paul. He wanted to let me know that he had arrived in Africa safely, and to thank me for the prayers and support. He has gone back to South Sudan, this newly formed country, with supplies of medicine that he has gathered through a donation drive in Dubuque over the past six months. He will be there for two months before coming back for his last year at seminary. What a Holy Spirit moment it was to jump into a conversation with Paul as I was deciding what to tell all of you about him!

And here is what he said to me, and what I am glad to be able to pass on to all of you: “We serve a great God.”]

There is a well known quote about freedom in the book by Viktor Frankl called Man’s Search for Meaning, and it reminds me of Paul and the other Lost Boys. Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist and a Holocaust survivor.

He writes, “Everything can be taken from a person but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

We are called to freedom: the freedom that comes from a heart filled with an attitude of love, and emptied of all that wants to keep us in chains; the freedom that Christ gave to us in the form of unearned grace; the freedom of knowing we can never measure up, and Thanks be to God, we are not called to try.

We are called to love one another, above all rules and regulations, above all expectations and self-interests;and when love and compassion become our top priorities, setting everything else aside, and not looking back….then we have found true freedom.

Paul Both and sons at McDonalds

Paul and Jill at UDTS Commencement Weekend 

Paul and mother in Ethiopia

Paul and sons

Paul at UDTS Library

Paul with results of medicine donation drive to bring to South Sudan

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[1] Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, 151-52.