Creekside Church Sermon of January 17, 1999 "Bound to Be Free" Matthew 3:13-17	Rev. David Bibbee
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Mike and Myra were sick of the city. They had enough of the confinement, congestion and noise, so they moved to the country and built their dream home where they savored the tranquility, fresh air and open spaces. They felt at peace and secure, but it was short lived. Their home was broken into and robbed. They installed a high-tech security system, but they still didn't feel secure. They erected a high fence and bought three mean dogs to patrol the perimeter of their property. Lying in bed, surrounded by a fence, Dobermans, dead bolts and motion detectors, Mike says to Myra, "So much for freedom. Our haven has become a stockade."

Curious, isn't it, how we long to be free, yet find freedom so elusive. Teenagers want the freedom of adults and adults want to be free like teenagers. The poor want the freedom of the rich, while the rich long for the simplicity and freedom of the poor. Everyone longs for freedom, and believe it's in someone else's possession. We pursue it like a Holy Grail, but few find it. "The naturalists haven't yet found a living specimen," someone said. Maybe it is because the kind of freedom we are after doesn't exist.

But one thing which the Christian faith promises those who take the trouble to check it out, is freedom. Truth can be known and the truth shall make you free. This truth has a name and a face. The old prayer which says, "Jesus, in whose service is perfect freedom," defines the true nature of freedom.

In Matthew's account of Jesus' baptism, we begin to understand what freedom is and how we possess it...or more accurately, how it possesses us. John the Baptist was holding the KINGDOM COME CRUSADE at the Jordan River when Jesus came to be baptized. John wanted nothing to do with it. If there was to be a baptism, John would be going under with Jesus doing the honors. But Jesus insisted that he be baptized to, "fulfill all righteousness". Righteousness, as Jesus defines it, means acting in accordance with God's will...doing what God wants done. We wonder why Jesus who was without sin should be baptized since John's baptism was for the remission of sin. He didn't need it. What Jesus did need, though, was to align his will with God's. He didn't break upon the scene with demonstrations of power, performing a healing or walking on water. He got on his knees in the Jordan, and went under. "This is my beloved Son," God said. The pleasure God expressed was over Jesus' desire to be obedient to the mission which God had for his life.

Jesus was the most free person to ever live. He didn't pattern his life according to public opinion polls. He wouldn't dance to anyone else's music but God's. The key to Jesus' freedom was his obedience. "Obedience" is a tough one for modern ears. The connection between obedience and freedom isn't apparent. Many would say obedience is the antithesis of freedom. Obedience conjures up pictures of stern, stone-faced teachers with knuckle cracking rulers ready to punish any infraction of classroom rules. Obedience means towing the line drawn by some authority figure whose orders you follow not because you want to, but because you have to. Obedience lessons are for dogs...not people.

We would just as soon eliminate obedience from our vocabulary, if we could, but not freedom. Freedom is what sets us apart from the rest of the world. We have freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of choice. We can choose regular or curly fries, thin crust or pan pizza. The major task of growing up, we're taught, is to become independent, to think for ourselves, to look out for ourselves, to cut the apron strings, to get the car keys and go where you want when you want, to go off to school and not have anyone tell you when to come home or when to get up, to master a subject so we can land a good job and earn a good salary so we won't have to depend on others for our wellbeing. The goal of growing up is to become independent, autonomous, unencumbered, free.

And what has this notion of freedom gotten us? America, the land of the free, is the world leader in violent crime, murder, imprisonment, pornography consumption, sexually transmitted disease, abortion, single parent families, drug consumption and teenage suicide. This is freedom? What kind of freedom do you have when the stands you take are governed by public opinion? How are you free when you must do drugs to be accepted or hop in the sack to be loved? This is freedom? I don't think so. This is why the church dares to ask its members to be obedient. Becoming a Christian is based upon a different set of assumptions. Growing up means becoming independent, society says. Christianity says growing up means becoming dependent. Society says, "Be detached." Christianity says, "Be grafted into the body of Christ." One talks of self-will. The other says, "My will is not my own till thou hast made it thine." One says, "Act in your self interest." The other says, "Save your life and you'll lose it. Count others better than yourselves."

You've heard the story of John Newton. He was curious about Christianity. One night while his cargo ship was in the middle of the Atlantic, he was in his cabin reading a sermon by John Wesley. Suddenly his eyes were opened to the evils of his actions. John Newton was a slave trader. His ship was full of slaves bound for America. With stunning clarity he suddenly saw that he was the one who was really the slave and the only way to be fully free was to be obedient to God. So he ordered the ship to turn around and sail back to Africa where the slaves were freed. And on the night of his conversion he wrote what is arguably the best-known hymn in the world, "Amazing Grace."

Thomas Merton said, "When God asserts his rights over us, we become free." Jesus' first public act was baptism. It was the sign of his obedience and submission, the sign of God's rights over him.

Thinking of Jesus' baptism gives us pause to remember our own and the ways we have and have not been obedient to Jesus. When you were baptized, when you promised to accept him, serve him, share and be bound to him, you were bound to be free. Freedom is living in grateful obedience to God so you won't be jerked around by what the world calls freedom.

When our kids get to be Laurie Arnold's age, developmentally they begin to "individuate", as the psychologists say it. They begin to distance themselves from Mom and Dad. They put on new ideas and behaviors, test limits, and in general, become royal pains in the neck. And when they start listening to the world's slick sounding appeals, hopefully they will have already heard and absorbed christianity's counsel on what makes for real freedom. Hopefully we are teaching them that freedom isn't a release from something, but obedience to something. We will always be in the service of something. It's not a question of whether you will serve, but what or who you'll serve.

This is why Frederick Buechner says we are wise to choose a master in terms of how much freedom we get for how much obedience. There is no one we can be bound to, save God, who can truly make us free. As we will sing in just a moment, "Make me a captive Lord...and THEN I shall be free." Your ability to hear the invitation to obedience depends on where you are in the journey. Someone has said that, "Obedience to the will of God is a curse for the demons. Obedience to God's will is law for the servants of God, but obedience is freedom for the children of God."

Baptism expressed Jesus' complete confidence that life would best be lived on God's terms. He knew he was to be about his father's business of loving, forgiving and healing. "He didn't count equality with God a thing to be grasped," Paul said. "He emptied himself, became a servant, humbled himself and became obedient, even unto death on a cross."

Christianity has changed forever the definition of bound and free.

In Uganda on Easter Sunday, 1973, Pastor Kefa Sempangi led seven thousand worshippers in the celebration of the resurrection. After greeting people following the service, he walked to the vestry, unaware that five men with rifles had walked in behind him. They were the secret police, assassins for the dictator Idi Amin. The rifles were pointed at Kefa's face. Their leader then said, "We are going to kill you. If you have something to say, say it before you die." Kefa began to shake. His tongue wouldn't move. But then in a voice that didn't seem like his own, he said, "I don't need to plead my own case. I'm dead already. My life is dead and hidden in Christ. It is you that are in danger. I will pray that after you have killed me, God will forgive you."

The leader's look of hatred changed to curiosity. He lowered his rifle and ordered the rest to do the same. "Will you pray for us now?" the leader said. "Yes," Kefa said. "Please bow your heads and close your eyes." Not knowing if it was a cruel trick, he kept his eyes open. "Father in heaven, you have forgiven men in the past. Forgive these men also. Do not let them perish in their sins. Bring them to yourself. Amen." The assassin's hateful faces had changed. "You have helped us," the leader said. "We will help you. Don't fear for your life. It is in our hands and you will be protected."

Later these men began attending Kefa's church and eventually made a commitment to Christ. They used their positions to help members of the church who are in danger, and even helped many of them leave Uganda. Kefa's obedience to Christ helped them hand themselves over to a new leader.

There is freedom, then there is freedom. Baptism is the sign that we have limited our obedience to one master who loves us most and possesses what is best and gives it to us when we take His will more seriously than our own. May we be bound in Him because it is for freedom that Christ has set you free.

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