The Gospel passage for this week contains possibly the dumbest thing anyone ever says in the whole Bible.
Jesus comes to those in the Jewish community who believed in him, with a tremendous offer. “Continue in my word,” he says, “and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free. You will know freedom such as you have never imagined it and you will do astounding things.”
Instead of welcoming such an awesome future, his hearers scoff. “You will make us free? We are the descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone!”
Is that right?! What is the most important story in the history of the descendants of Abraham in the Old Testament: it’s the story of Moses leading them out of slavery and into freedom.
That statement is repeated 10 times in Deuteronomy alone, as well as in Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Jeremiah. The Ten Commandments, the centerpiece of Old Testament law. Time and again, in verse after verse, we read the voice of God saying to them, “Remember when you were slaves in Egypt and how God brought you to freedom.”, begin in both Exodus and Deuteronomy with the words, “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the house of slavery.”
Not only that, but what is the second most impactful event in Old Testament history? Probably the exile, when the descendants of Abraham were hauled off into slavery again, this time to Assyria and Babylon at the fall of the Northern and Southern kingdoms, events that are central to the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Isaiah, Daniel, several minor prophets, and the Psalms.
The crowning absurdity of this claim that they have never been slaves is that every year at the Seder celebration, the Jewish people celebrated and remembered what? Their deliverance from slavery.
God delivering the Hebrews from slavery into freedom is the central act of the Old Testament; it’s what gave them their identify. How could they miss that?
As I reflected on this, I came to the uncomfortable realization that white Christians in the U.S are making a similar absurd claim. Jesus comes to us with the same offer. “Continue in my word and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free. You will know freedom such as you have never imagined it and you will do astounding things.”
The prototypical white American response is that we are already free, that we are free like no people has ever been free before. Rugged individualism is the core of who we claim to be. We are slaves to no one. Never have been. Never will be.
The absurdity of this claim is obvious when we consider that Jesus’ words in Luke 16:31: “You cannot serve God and wealth.” The absurdity is even more stunning when we consider that the wealth of the those who hold it in this country is built on the enslavement of fellow human beings and the expropriation of indigenous lands.
We claim to be free people who serve God, while ignoring the fact that wealth is what we primarily serve in our lives; in fact, we are slaves to it, and to the ways it has been created.
This was made stunningly clear to me in recent news reports about Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia sportswear. Chouinard felt he was trapped in a corporate world that worships only wealth.
He saw that the onslaught of perils that plague individuals, humanity as a whole, and the earth itself result from our enslavement to wealth. His solution was to give away his entire company, worth $3 billion dollars, to fight climate change.
“The earth is our only shareholder,” he said, basking in the freedom this decision has made possible. “Hopefully, this will influence a new form of capitalism that doesn’t end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people.”
That’s a pretty good example of “the astounding things,” that Jesus promised would come with freedom.
Jesus says in our Gospel passage that we do not have to be locked into the old ways of doing things that have always produced division and injustice and wars and want and starvation. We can get free of that. We can do that by remembering that just as the descendants of Abraham were slaves in Egypt and God led them out of bondage to freedom, so too, we have been slaves to wealth and to the fear and selfishness that keeps the world in turmoil. We can remember that Jesus shows us a way out of that to the promised land.
Reformation Day is a good time to reflect on this Gospel lesson. The Reformation was a bold attempt to recover our memory of the God who loves and redeems us from slavery. It was a daring initiative to use that memory to break loose from the shackles that bound the church to a false past filled with failure, and a present filled with failure. It was an attempt to stand up and say “yes” to God’s offer of a new future, lived in the reflection of God’s mercy.
On this Reformation Day, Jesus comes with the offer to set God’s people free. How do we respond? By indignantly clinging to our arrogant claims of personal freedom? Or by remembering that we have been slaves to sin, that Christ has set us free, and because of that, we are able to do astounding things never before imagined.
Hymns to consider:
Break Thou the Bread of Life
Amazing Grace
