Free To Be Who We Are

Reformation Sunday
Texts: Jer 31.31-34; Rom 3.19-28; Jn 8.31-36

As I read St. John’s story, the first question that comes to mind is, “What is sin?” Sin is one of those words we church-folk use all the time, but I wonder if we understand what it really means. Sometimes it seems like we might all be working from different definitions.

That’s very much the same thing that’s happening in this story. As Jesus talks to these Jewish folks, it becomes apparent that they don’t see themselves as sinners. Martin Luther thought it was impossible for anyone to keep the whole law perfectly, but remember that just a few weeks ago we heard St. Paul say that he was “blameless under the law.” In fact, the Pharisees’ central teaching was that everyone should keep the whole law, even the rules intended only for the priests who served in the temple. They believed every average person not only could, but should be keeping all the commandments and purity codes, and the fact that they kept those rules while others didn’t made them more righteous, better people in God’s eyes.

Read more: Free To Be Who We Are

When Jesus says “anyone who commits sin is a slave to sin,” these folks would not think he meant them. They believe they are free. The great tragic joke in John’s story is when Jews speaking with Jesus say, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone.” Isn’t that funny? What about Egypt? What about Babylon? What about the Philistines, the Moabites, the Midianites, the Assyrians, and the Arameans? What about Rome? The real question is who haven’t the Jews been slaves to?

Jesus, on the other hand, clearly believes they are not free, that their willing obedience to the law does not make them righteous. And that makes me think that, before we can figure out what is meant by sin, we first have to ask what Jesus means when he talks about freedom.

What does freedom mean to you? What makes a person free? Those of us in the West—especially we Americans—tend to think of freedom as the ability to do whatever we we want. Is that freedom? When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait to be an adult so I would be free from my parents’ rules and could eat ice cream for dinner. Is that freedom? You know what, as and adult, I’ve done that! Not ice cream, but I’ve had candy as a meal—several times. I always feel like crap afterward, but that has never kept me from making that choice again. What I learned from that is that this isn’t freedom, but a slavery of a different kind: I’m captive to my sweet tooth.

The fact is that people are pretty predictable. When somebody hurts us, we want to hurt them back. We fear what we don’t understand. We want life to be fair. We all want resources and security enough to protect and provide for ourselves and the people we love, even if it’s at the expense of others. A clever leader can get people to do just about anything by understanding what makes us tick. In the end, people are much like billiard balls on a pool table: by applying the right force in the right direction, we can be made to do whatever the person with the cue wants. Maybe we are much less free than we think.

In John’s gospel story, however, Jesus is different. He is completely free; so free, in fact, that on the night in which he is betrayed by one of his closest friends, he doesn’t grab a sword or stage an attack or lash out in anger—even at the one who will betray him. Instead, he takes off his cloak, ties a towel around his waist, and washes his disciples’ feet. He doesn’t react the way any one of us would have reacted because he isn’t reacting at all. In the mist of a situation that he cannot control, he does not react; he acts. He acts out of love.

Why? Because Jesus knows the truth, and the truth has set him free. The truth is that he has “come from God and is going to God.” The truth is that he is God’s love given flesh. St. John says that this is the truth that he wants the Pharisees and Romans and everybody else to know: that we are all children of God, all of us have come from God and are going to God. We are all God’s love made flesh, because that’s the love that created each and every one of us. Jesus isn’t unique, he is the living evidence of this great Truth.

Jesus is free because, unlike the Pharisees in this story, he knows he is a child of God. I wonder if we are more like the Pharisees or more like Jesus. I wonder if we think and act as if we need to become children of God, like our place in the household is temporary, dependent upon our right belief or our ability to refrain from breaking certain rules. That’s not what Jesus thinks. Jesus knows that he belongs there—and he knows that we belong there. That’s why he says, “If you continue in my word, then you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

“If you continue” sounds like people need to make a choice to follow him, but I wonder if that’s what he really means. The word in Greek is a word that St. John uses a lot in his gospel, and it can be translated a lot of different ways: remain, dwell, continue, have a place. My favorite translation is “abide.” Jesus is free because he abides in the Father and the Father abides in him—but the Truth that he has come to bear witness to is that the Father abides in all of us, if only we will recognize it.

Elsewhere in John’s gospel story, Jesus compares this Truth to living bread from heaven, to a good shepherd, to living water, even to a wedding party with an abundance of wine. One image he uses is the image of the vine and the branches. The branches flourish while they abide in the vine, but when they are cut off, they dry up and are thrown into the fire. Jesus says, “I am the vine, and you are the branches.” If we are branches, we are naturally attached to the vine; it takes an intentional action to be cut off.

I wonder, then, if our belief that we must choose to follow Jesus—that we are independent branches trying to graft ourselves onto God’s vine—is actually what keeps us from being free. I wonder if sin—the way Jesus talks about it in John’s gospel—is not breaking rules or doing bad things, but denying the reality that God abides in us and we abide in God.

In the next chapter, Jesus will compare sin to blindness: not being able to see what others can. Jesus comes to restore our sight, just like he did for the man born blind; but the Pharisees refuse to see, and so “their sin remains.” There’s that word again: “abide.” They Pharisees choose to abide in their sin, rather than in God. They resist his message because they can’t give up their belief that God only likes people who do the right things. Do we ever do that? They would rather believe that they are free—that they have the power to save themselves—than admit their own mistake, their own blindness. They’re enslaved to that way of thinking. Their sin remains.

Religion that is about believing that God is trying to control or influence our behavior—even for our own good—sounds to me like a different kind of slavery. The specific rules may change, but the overall point is the same: to keep us from doing the “bad” things we sometimes want to do. On the other hand, religion that helps us acknowledge who we truly are and what we really want can set us free. I may sometimes want to fill up on candy because it tastes good, but knowing how my body works tells me what it really needs to thrive, how I can feel and be healthier and happier.

And that sounds an awful lot to me like what I hear Jeremiah and Paul saying. Jeremiah says that God’s new covenant will not be like the old one that was dependent upon obedience, the one that we broke. Instead of following rules meant for our betterment, Jeremiah says that this new covenant, this new way of living, will be grounded in each of us knowing who God is—and who we are in God. Paul says that everyone—even the blameless Pharisees—have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, God’s desire for creation, and that in spite of this, God chooses to forgive us, and that forgiveness is evidence of God’s righteousness. Rather than being constrained by a system of rules and consequences, God makes the free choice to forgive our iniquity and remember our sin no more.

So, who are we in God? I wonder if God’s freedom here might show us the truth. Are we terrible sinners whose bad behavior must be curtailed by force? Or are we beloved saints, abiding in our Parent as our Parent abides in us? Is that how we see ourselves? Is that how we see one another?

Having been freed from our sin, what have we been freed for? Has Christ freed us to boast in our own righteousness? To condemn others for what they do or don’t do? Is it to eat candy for lunch?

Reading these texts—and so many others—I wonder if we have been set free to understand both God and ourselves differently. Instead of subjects obeying a divine king, what if we could see ourselves more as children of the same heavenly Parent, or branches all abiding in the same vine? What if being free from the need to judge and label one another might help us to really, truly love each other, treat ourselves and everyone around us as saints, even with all our faults and mistakes? How would we then respond to someone who is causing harm to another, if we saw both victim and perpetrator as siblings, and loved them both? How would we act when we ourselves are harmed, or when we harm others? What might such a Church look like?

I do believe that is a question that just might start a reformation.