THE ANGLICAN CHURCH
OF
ST. JUDE’S
Advent 1, 2009
November 29, 2009
TITLE: “The Most Free Person Who Ever Lived”
TEXT: RSV St. Luke 3: 1-6
PREACHING TEXT: St. Luke 3:4
THE PREACHING OF JOHN THE BAPTIST
Fashions in language come and go. But it’s likely that use of the word “uptight” will
remain fashionable for a long, long time to come. According to some social scientists,
the “uptight “ person is not neurotic, but normal. It is fashionable, it seems, to get
uptight about all the things everyone else is uptight about. It is fashionable [normal],
it see ms to be uptight about “getting ahead”; uptight about paying the monthly
bills; uptight about political problems; Uptight about social problems; even uptight
about being uptight…
The uptight person, the excessive “worry-bird”, is enslaved by an inflated notion of
his or her ability to manage the future. But, we should not ---dare note --- be uptight
about tomorrow and tomorrows, tomorrows. Tomorrow belongs to God. If you
want to give God a good laugh, tell Him about your plans for the future.
In St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, he describes himself as a “prisoner of Christ
Jesus” [Eph.3:1]. Yet in his letter to the Galatians, he wrote, “When Christ freed us,
He meant us to remain free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to the
yoke of slavery... my brothers, you were called, as you know, to liberty. {Gal. 5:1113].
If these statements appear to contradict each other it is because we have not
understood that one becomes “a prisoner” of the Lord only through an exercise of
freedom of the highest order. Becoming a prisoner of the Lord is accomplished only
by the free act of unreserved, total, voluntary surrender to Him.
“The Truth shall make you free,” wrote the Apostle John. Only by allowing the
truth, which is Christ to completely overtake us – to “enslave” us so to speak – can
we free ourselves from the bonds of the “uptightness” of our time. There comes a
time –perhaps for many of us, but, now is the time – when we must let go, hang
loose, and surrender our future to Divine Providence.
The word “Serendipity” is rooted in an ancient Persian Legend in which the three
Princes of Serendip are searching for a certain treasure. Although they fail to
discover what they are looking for, nevertheless they keep finding things of even
greater value. “Serendipity” is the ability to “hang loose” in anticipation of
discovering happy surprises. The Serendipitous person is free-spirited enough to
expect the unexpected.
In today’s Gospel Text, Jesus tells us that even when you get the feeling that the
whole world is crashing down on you, it is possible for you to hang loose. “When
these things begin to take place,” He says, “Stand erect, hold your head high,
because your liberation is near at hand” [Lk. 21-28].
The freest Person who ever lived was Jesus. He was the supreme freedom. He was
even free to go to His Cross, He made this point over and over again:
I lay down My life….
No one takes it from Me …
I lay it down of My own free will … [Jn. 10:17-18].
Yes Jesus was the freest person who ever lived. Voluntarily, He made His Father’s
Will Supreme. Consequently, His entire life was an act of Love!
As we move into the Advent Season and open ourselves up to let Jesus Into our lives
more fully, the awful coldness down there at the center of our beings gives way to
the warmth of His Presence; the fatigue gives way to new physical strength; the fear
and anxiety and uptightness gives way to peace and joy. This actually happens as we
receive God’s Power and Love through Jesus Christ. This coming Christmas, I pray
we shall all walk the streets thanking God for the Gift of His Son, a debt we shall
never be able to repay.
This coming Christmas Day, I pray that we shall have cast off all traces of cold
religiosity.
This coming Christmas Day, I pray that we shall walk all the streets as living
symbols of God’s deep, life-warming, life-giving love.
This coming Christmas Day, I pray that we shall voluntarily make the Father’s Will
Supreme in our lives.
In a Peanuts cartoon, Lucy holds her little portable radio up to one ear. “Listen”,
She says to Charlie Brown. “Don’t you think some nice music in the morning is a
good way to start the day?” Charlie Brown answers, “I never worry about how I
start the day … it’s how it ends that bothers me.”
Most of us are like Charlie Brown; it’s how our days end up that bother us.
Most of us can remember being asked in a funeral parlor, “Are you going to the
cemetery?” We should remember that the answer is never a flat “No”! Sooner or
later we all are going to the cemetery. Yes, I’m going to the cemetery. And you all
are going to the cemetery. And everybody you love is going to the cemetery. But the
cemetery is not the end. Death never has the last word. Death shall have no
dominion because Almighty God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, has conquered
Death. Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!
Thanks be to God for the gift of His Son who liberates us from our uptightness
about life --- and, miracles of miracles, even about Death!
AMEN.