Fly, Ducks, Fly!

Audio of “Fly, Ducks, Fly!” recorded during worship. (12:46)
Delivered at Evangelical Lutheran Church, Mt. Horeb, WI. Reformation Day.
Texts: Jer 31.31-34; Rom 3.19-28; John 8.31-36

Every Sunday at the duck pond, the ducks all gather together at duck church. Every Sunday, the duck preacher ascends the pulpit and cries out, “Ducks! You have wings! You can fly, ducks! You can soar through the heavens and break the bonds of gravity. You have the ability to take wing and float through the air! Fly, ducks! Fly, for you have wings!” After the service, the ducks file past the duck preacher and tell him how inspired and uplifted they are by his words, and they all waddle home.

It’s a bit ridiculous, isn’t it? To spend so much time hearing about their ability to fly and the great gift of their wings, and to then waddle slowly home. But we are very much like those ducks. We come here today, and much as we do every week, we hear Christ speak these words to us: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free!” and we respond, “Yes Lord! I know the truth, and I am free. Thank you, Lord, for freeing me!” and we go home and continue our lives in captivity.

We claim this wonderful freedom in Christ, but where is it? If we are free, how does this freedom affect our lives? What difference does it make to the world that we are free? How does that freedom affect how we treat the bank teller, the woman on the street begging for change, the man who stole your wallet? What does that freedom mean to you?

Luther writes in his Treatise on Christian Liberty that “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none,” and “A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” These two contradictory statements are both true, he claims, because our faith in God and God’s promise of life and salvation frees us from fear of punishment, from obligation to the law, from the need to earn God’s grace, and from guilt and shame for our failings. God has given us wings. Of course, those wings are no good to anyone unless we fly. God’s freedom allows us to fly, allows us to serve, it gives us the power to continue in Christ’s word and truly be his disciples, to know the Truth that God’s commandments are not given to lead us to righteousness, to make us better people, or to make up for the sins we commit, but instead are an open invitation from God to take part in God’s continuing work of creation and participate in God’s redeeming this broken world.

500 years ago, the Church obscured this Truth. It held God’s promise ransom, used it to bribe and blackmail God’s free and justified children into good works and worship attendance and giving money. We observe Reformation Day in celebration of God’s work to liberate the Church and God’s promise from that captivity through the work of servants like Martin Luther. But the reason we continue to celebrate Reformation Day now, the reason we have bothered to change our paraments from green to red, is to remind ourselves that the Church is always in need of reformation. Just as God’s love invited men and women like Martin Luther to work for reformation then, God’s love continues to invite us into God’s work of reforming God’s Church.

Too often, people come to churches looking for the very freedom we proclaim, but they see the preacher exhorting the ducks to fly, and the ducks waddling home. Church to us is worship on Saturday or Sunday, giving our offering in our envelopes, singing our hymns and doing our volunteer projects around the building. The problem is that our service stops there. Too often our Christian liberty and love does not extend beyond these walls. We are afraid to go out and get our hands dirty, afraid to fly. It is that fear, fear of failure, fear of going outside our comfort zone, fear of the world that holds us captive and keeps us waddling on the ground. It is that fear that stops us from freely serving and loving God’s people.

If we are ever to explain freedom in Christ to the world, if we are to have any hope of being able to show people the magnitude of God’s promise, then we must live it. If we are to convince the ducks that they too have wings, then we must fly. This is what it means to be a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all. Free from any obligation or duty, we voluntarily and joyfully go out to share this good news with the world that they too might experience God’s freeing promise. In Christ, we are free from holding grudges, free from cynicism, free from suspicion of people asking for help, free from “what will the neighbors think.” God’s promise frees us to screw up, to give generously to thieves, to hang out with outcasts, to visit the lonely and depressed, to break bread with hookers and swindlers. God frees us to love dangerously. It’s like this poem* I saw recently: “I slept, I and dreamt that life was joy; I woke and I saw that life was service; I served, and I found that service is joy!” No matter what we do or don’t do, we can’t lose. Having given us wings, God is inviting us to fly.

This is dangerous. It’s much safer on the ground. Jesus himself says that we will suffer for this. People will take advantage of us, they will harm us, they might even kill us. The world does not understand free grace; it understands, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” And so, we stand to lose everything: our dignity, our money, our time, our comfort, but in the words of the hymn†, “were they to take our house / goods, honor, child, or spouse, / though life be wrenched away, / they cannot win the day. The Kingdom’s ours forever!” Whatever we may lose, even our lives, cannot compare to what we have already gained in Christ. This is what it means to be a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.

Martin Luther lost much to proclaim this good news. Though it meant excommunication from the Church, the loss of his friends, the loss of liberty, even a death sentence hanging over his head, his faith in God and his Christian liberty compelled him to preach on. Where he could have sat back, rested on his knowledge of God’s promise and kept silent, instead he spoke and wrote and preached, boldly proclaiming, “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise!”

If we really trust that God is in control, then we know that God can even redeem hardship and suffering and bend it to God’s will. We know this because of how God took the shame and failure of the cross and turned it into a God’s greatest  victory. We seek joy and happiness in our own comfort and desires, but God can turn even our suffering into joy.

If we claim to believe that God has set us free, then let us exercise that freedom and rely on God’s goodness. If we claim to believe in God’s goodness, then let us exercise that goodness and rely on God’s promise. If we claim to believe that we have wings, then let us fly. I am here today to tell you, Ducks, that you have wings. You have wings, Ducks! Fly!

*Poem by Rabindranath Tagore
†Words to “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” text tr. hymnal version, Lutheran Book of Worship (1978)