sermon: FREEDOM!!

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I know what it feels like to be a slave. We all do.

Many of us know the feeling of being a slave to nicotine: I cannot imagine anyone in this day and age does not know what smoking does to the human body: that the tar that is slowly coating the insides of our lungs will doom us to an early death; that the combination of nicotine and carbon monoxide robs our brains and muscles of oxygen and can cause heart attacks and stroke, but we do it anyway because we are slaves to that irritable feeling that comes over us when we’ve gone too long without a smoke; that grouchy, twitchy feeling that forces us outside in –40 degree weather, or a hurricane just to feed that craving. I used to smoke; I know how that feels.

We all know what really needing a Big Mac and fries feels like, or a Kit Kat peanut butter bar…oh we know we shouldn’t – we should have an apple or some low fat cheese, or maybe dinner. But we are slaves to those cravings and we see the results of being slaves to our cravings; bus seats are being widened, some airlines are charging passengers by the pound, clothes are being re-sized so that the consumer need not face the fact that they now require their own zip code. The risk of an early death or diabetes associated with obesity doesn’t put us off, does it? No, when we need a cheeseburger we need it NOW.

We are all slaves.

But what if someone walked up to you one day and said, “Drop everything. Follow me.” Would you do it? Some crackpot stranger shows up at your office, or your house, or approaches you while you are in the lineup at the bank, and He says: “just drop everything you’re doing and follow me.” Would you do it? Probably not. And why should you?

It’s ridiculous. Leave everything and everyone you know? Give up your job, your life, your family, your life savings… give up everything to follow some crazy man?

Well, what if that crazy man could give you the most precious thing any human being can possess; something so valuable that people will die for it; something so priceless that people will kill for it?

What if He could give you your Freedom? Would it still be so crazy?
16As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 17"Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." 18At once they left their nets and followed him.
19When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. 20Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

Simon, Andrew, James, John….a bunch of fisherman! They did it. They just dropped everything to follow Jesus.

And so did I. For my freedom. And over the next few weeks, we are going to take a good, long look at that glorious freedom that we have in Christ..

Many of you know that I converted to Christianity: that I came from Judaism, via paganism to Christ. Now while I don’t believe that conversion is a matter of choice, but you have to choose to deliberately find a church and be baptised into the Church.

But why?

Duke sent me a brief write up by a scholar named Walter Wessel that said, in part: "one in five Canadians believes Jesus Christ's death on the cross was faked & that he married & had a family." Queen’s religious studies professor Richard Ascough said "The Da Vinci Code is winning the day." Madonna’s latest Confessions concert tour features her being crucified on a disco-ball covered cross. The mood against Christ & Christians is growing."

Why would any sane human being choose to become a Christian? Would the disciples have been so joyful if they’d known what kind of trouble they would be in because their mouths were so full of the gospel?

Well, I’ve been asked to tell you a story so crazy, so cockamamie, so ridiculous that it could only be true. It’s a story about God; it’s a story about freedom. And if you think that stories like the one i am about to tell can only be found between the dusty pages of the family bible, let me tell you differently!

I was born into a family of Jewish holocaust survivors, and I was always the strange one because in our family (as in many secular Jewish families) Judaism was not about God; Judaism for us was summed up by the holidays at which we gathered to eat, the weddings we went to to eat, the bar and bat mitzvahs we went to to eat, the funerals we went to to eat…. Hey, Jews do a lot of eating. This is some kind of secret?

I was the odd stick in that family because to me, God mattered. Somehow I knew that God mattered more than anything in the universe. I just wasn’t sure why. I pestered my grandfather to teach me the Torah, I learned to speak Hebrew, I once even announced that I wanted to be a rabbi when I grew up. I went to a Hebrew parochial school, but I kept getting thrown out of class for blasphemy because I would pester the rabbis on difficult points of theology to the point where the principal called my parents into his office one day and gently suggested that a traditional Jewish education might not be the best thing for me.

Like many kids, I spent much of my teens telling God I didn’t believe in Him, and in my late teens I stumbled into a spiritual movement that was just exploding at the time: I discovered Witchcraft. Cue the scary music.

Many of you have seen my tattoo, a tattoo I keep to constantly remind me that there was a time when I did not live in the light; a time when I was a slave – and while my sojourn in paganism has given me much to repent of, and much to atone for, it DID have one great benefit: it taught me in no uncertain terms what being a slave really felt like.

Wicca was my Egypt, my Babylon.

Wicca is a supremely self-indulgent exercise in debauchery. It teaches one to indulge in every sensuous pleasure: good food, wine, and lots of it! Cigarettes, leisure and cheap, easy relationships. Wicca teaches that indulging these passions is a good thing, that it nurtures and honours parts of ourselves that Christianity hates. It teaches that Christianity is a vile and repressive faith because it stunts the full flowering of physical human pleasures.

So, like a good pagan, I nurtured those sensuous parts of my being, and I became a slave to my cravings, my indulgences, my excesses: I ended up a heavy smoker, seventy pounds overweight, with an alcohol problem, living with a man I couldn’t stand and never married.

Oddly enough, after many years in witchcraft, I became deeply disillusioned and disappointed. I was still looking for God only this time I knew why. I was desperately unhappy: I was afraid of mirrors, I had a hacking cough and severe asthma and I was completely unable to break the chains I could feel wound tight around me. I was desperately seeking God, but He seemed to be hiding. So I went looking for Him in Buddhism, I took another look for Him in Judaism; I even went looking for Him in the Church of Scientology. He wasn’t there either, but I am still getting lovely letters from Tom Cruise. I still ate too much, drank too much, fell into cheap and easy relationships with men that never went anywhere. I was the person Christ was talking about when He said : I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. (John 8:34)

Flash forward to September 11, 2001. We all remember where we were that day – I was in the Holy Land, celebrating my cousin’s wedding. And while I was in Israel, where I have family, I began to have a series of experiences that I will tell you right now, I am deeply uncomfortable sharing with people outside the church, because they look at you like you are a complete crackpot. But you all… well, you are the kind of people I think just might understand what I am about to tell you.

One day, walking down the street in Jerusalem, I was overcome by the strangest feeling: I was overwhelmed by the sense that it would be a really cool thing just to praise God. I had no clue where this feeling came from at the time, and I don’t remember being particularly eloquent or poetic about it – it was more of a “hey God, nice job!” sort of thing, but that need to somehow acknowledge and worship God for His creation seemed to come from deep, deep inside, as though each and every cell were participating in the act. The sense of lightness, of happiness and almost giddiness that came with it was unprecedented. Well, maybe not unprecedented. Praising God in the streets –like at Pentecost - was happening again, and this time in me. In Jerusalem! It was as though the chains that bound me were loosening, and I was beginning to wriggle free. It was as though I could hear Peter's voice ringing in praise off the walls of Jerusalem!

So I joined in.

A bit later, I was overcome by another feeling… this time, it was an overwhelming feeling that it would be really neat just to pray. Now as a Jew, prayer was always a corporate act, always in Hebrew and always accompanied by much mumbling and swaying back and forth. But this time, all I wanted to do was find a quiet spot, a comfy chair, close the door and spend some time talking to God. About anything. About everything. About nothing in particular. And I could feel the chains loosening even more.

It was the strangest thing I’d ever experienced. You see, I always assumed that when I found God it would be because I had been looking for Him to free me.

I never imagined that when I found God, it would be because He had come looking for me.

Now, as a Jew I had always been told “don’t read the New Testament! It’s anti-Semitic!” I said ok, and kept away from it. As a pagan, I had been told “don’t read the New Testament! It’s the book of our oppressors, those that burned your mothers at the stake!” So again I said ok, and kept away from it.

But this time, suddenly, I decided that I wanted to see for myself what all the fuss was about. After all, I was free to do just that! And I wanted to know who this Jesus character was that everyone made such a big hoo-haw over? So I went out, and I bought a bible, and as I began to read about Jesus’ birth, His life, His ministry, His teachings…. I fell in love.

But even more than that, I had the most incredible, overwhelming sense that FINALLY, FINALLY I was hearing the truth. Finally, I was getting the answers I’d always looked for; finally, I had found God. Finally, I could see the road to freedom laid out ahead of me. As I read the truth of Jesus Christ I realized that to gain my freedom, all I had to do was become a slave to Him. All I had to do was drop everything, follow God, obey His Word, uphold His laws and freedom was mine. The freedom that Christ paid for with His life was mine. I could just taste it……

A Christian writer named Mike Cleveland says:
Through the gospel, we are both given liberty and taken captive. We are liberated prisoners of sin who have become thankfully enslaved to God. We are freed prisoners who have been taken into joyful captivity to Christ. This is the power of God’s grace. This is the beauty of God’s grace… God’s grace forgives sin and breaks the power of it. God’s grace removes the burden of sin and sets us free from it.

If a bunch of fishermen could drop everything and follow God I certainly could, and in surrendering to God’s will, I have gained a freedom I never imagined possible. Because, from Pentecost on, followers of Jesus shouted “Christ makes you free!” - I am free!

In obeying God’s Word, I find I have been liberated from the chains of my old life:

In choosing to follow God’s commandment to “love one another” I have been freed from the petty jealousies, rivalries and unpleasantness that plagues so many modern social enterprises; and in return have been blessed with the community here at the Rez.

In trusting that Jesus will “take the wheel”, I have been freed from the worries of tomorrow and the stresses of today: I am free to simply work hard, do my best, and trust that all will unfold as God intends it to.

In choosing to follow God’s commandments relating to chastity before marriage, I have been freed from the pain and the crushing disappointment of cheap, superficial and demeaning relationships.

When money is tight, I am free to still give to the guy on the corner begging for change, or to the church, or to my buddy who I know is just short of cigarettes and beer – because I KNOW the Lord provides. I am free to simply turn my pockets inside out without worrying whether or not they will be refilled.

Becoming a slave to God is the most liberating thing!

What a completely insane story. A woman, perfectly happy in her secular, super-size-me world – never saying no to a piece of cake, with a pack-a-day habit, a troubled relationship with food, alcohol and men, who engaged with the people around her only to the depth required to discuss last night’s episode of CSI is found by God, seized by God, compelled by God to join a faith that is being prosecuted, persecuted, cut back, stepped on, sneered at and ridiculed…….why, why? would anyone CHOOSE this path?

Simple. Because as I said, down this road lies freedom.