Get Busy Livin’, or Get Busy Dyin.’

Delivered at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church, Swift Falls, MN. Pentecost 6/Proper 8C.
Texts: Gal 5.1, 13-25; Lk 9.51-62

“For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Freedom is on our minds this week. Not only do we have Paul’s admonition in Galatians, but this week we also celebrate our Independence Day, the day when we became a free country. This week we will remember and celebrate all the freedoms we enjoy as Americans and all the men and women who gave of themselves so that we might maintain those freedoms.

To us, freedom most often means power. It is the power to overcome those who oppose us, the power to stand up for ourselves and not to be forced to submit to the power of others. It is this kind of freedom that we celebrate: our freedom from the British, our freedom to rule ourselves, our freedom to live our lives as we please without too much interference from the government or other people.

In the same way, Paul writes that we are free. Where once God’s people were subject to the laws of Torah, now we are free from obligation to those laws. The promise of Christ is ours, regardless of how we follow or do not follow the laws of Moses. And yet, the Galatians to whom he is writing have begun to give up the freedom and submit themselves once again to the law.

The Galatians are not alone, however. Even though we exercise our freedom as Christians to eat pork and wear cotton-poly blend and plant many different types of vegetables in the same garden plot, we do the same thing. We take the warnings, the advice, and the admonition of Paul and Peter and James and John and turn them into laws that we can follow, a way to prove to ourselves and to everyone else and perhaps even to God that we are “righteous” people.

If we have been freed from the law, why should we want to go back to slavery to a set of rules, whether from the Torah or from Paul’s letters? The simple fact of the matter is that too much freedom is scary. If we are completely on our own, we are afraid that we won’t know what to do, that we won’t do it right. We want some sort of guidelines for how to be God’s people in the world—and that is what Jesus and Paul and James and Peter and all the rest have given us: guidelines! But we idolize those guidelines and submit ourselves to those rules instead of to God.

You remember the movie The Shawshank Redemption? Andy Dufresne is wrongly imprisoned for murdering his wife and her lover, and in Shawshank Prison he meets Red, a man locked up for murder for most of his life. While they are there, another prisoner, Brooks, is released on parole, but he’s been “institutionalized;” he can’t function on the outside. As much as he wanted to be free from prison, the lack of rules, the lack of structure, the loss of his identity and his community when he left was too much, and he ultimately commits suicide.

Back inside the prison, Andy dreams of freedom and Red resigns himself to a life of incarceration. Red knows he is an institutionalized man, that like Brooks, he wouldn’t make it on the outside. He realizes that he needs the prison, that he can’t live without it. Andy eventually escapes, and Red is left behind. He is happy for Andy, and longs to be free like him, but he dares not hope that he ever will be, in part because he fears he will not survive it.

Like Red, we have lived our whole lives with rules and regulations and guidelines and ordinances. We long for freedom, but at the same time we fear it because we are, in a sense, institutionalized.

Red is eventually granted parole and works at the same job Brooks had when he was paroled. He’s free, but he still lives in lingo, in world between incarceration and freedom. He can’t even go to the bathroom without asking permission because he “can’t squeeze a drop without say-so.” He’s out of prison, but he’s still not free. It isn’t until he remembers what Andy said to him before he left that he truly leaves the prison behind. He realizes that he has a choice: “get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.” It’s Andy, with his vision of hope and a future in Mexico, that gives Red something to live for again, something to help him “get busy livin’.”

Luther writes in his “Treatise on Christian Liberty” that “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.” Like the Galatians, we have the promise of Christ through grace, and nothing can take that away. We are free from coercion or compulsion when it comes to our salvation. No person can take it away from us, and God has promised not to. We are utterly free; but free for what? As Red discovered, freedom by itself can be a dangerous thing. Now that we don’t have to do anything to earn God’s favor or ensure our salvation, what do we do? The Church must get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.

“A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.” Luther immediately follows this statement by writing, “A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” Christ has shown us, Paul has told us, Luther has reminded us that the way we as Christians get busy livin’ is to give our lives in service to the world. We have not been freed ‘just because;’ as Paul tells us “For freedom Christ has set you free.”

We were created in love by God to be free. God then gave us the law to protect us, to guide us, and ultimately to remind us that free as we are, we are nothing without God. Christ freed us from bondage to the law so that we might use our freedom to make others free as well, to be living signs to the world of a God who loves and cares for people and promises life rather than obligations and restrictions.

We are called to lives of Christian service not out of obligation, or bribery or compulsion—we are free—but out of love. As free Christians, we have the option of living out the same love in our own lives toward others that God has given to us. This week, we will remember men and women, civilians and soldiers, who sacrificed for their country. Some made the ultimate sacrifice. They did this not out of compulsion or for personal gain, but because they believed in what our country stands for, because they cared about their fellow citizens. For this same reason, we offer our lives in service, we make our own sacrifices for nation and neighbor, but the kingdom which we serve is the kingdom of God. We recognize that our neighbors are not just those close to us, but our brothers and sisters across the world: the immigrant, the lonely, the oppressed, the poor.

We do need to be careful of the temptation to fall back into slavery of the law. We live in an age of “5 simple steps to get your life back on track,” but when it comes to God there are no steps to take, no rules to obey, no guidelines to follow that can make us “good enough.” Instead, God has promised us the kingdom and sealed that promise with the waters of baptism. It is a promise that is assured: we are free. The question we must answer for ourselves is how our freedom is showing God’s love and serving God’s purpose in the world.

“For freedom Christ has set us free.” Just as we have been freed, God is working to free the whole world from the power of sin and evil. As God’s free people, we may do whatever we like—drink or don’t drink; come to church or don’t; care for our neighbors or ignore them—but whatever we do, we remember that we have been freed from obligation to the law in order to live for Christ. Whatever we do, we do it in order to best love and serve God and neighbor. This is the fulfillment of the law. In the words of Andy Dufresne, “It’s time to get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’.”