A Sermon by The Rev. Roger Bower

The Call of Freedom

The Rev. Roger Bower

St. Margaret's Episcopal Church & School

Deuteronomy 10:17-21 | Psalm 145:1-9 | Hebrews 11:8-16 | Matthew 5:43-48

It is with great joy that I welcome you all here this day. It is a special time for all of us especially on this Fourth of July weekend but before we get any further I want to clarify something and make sure there are no misunderstandings; for those who have read the front cover of the bulletin, no I am not Deacon Margaret Watson. What’s a guy got to do to get his name in the bulletin?

I hope everyone had a good time. Our community gathered at the park in Palm Desert on Friday with the nice "cool breeze". Who decided we would have hamburgers at four o’clock in the afternoon? Let me tell you it was so hot. We played games and ate hamburgers and hot dogs and it was really wonderful. People asked me, "What did you think about your first fourth of July in the desert?" I am suffering from schizophrenia. Last year my family and I were in upstate New York in Lake George in sweatshirts and blankets watching fireworks as the cold icy mist came upon us. My father-in-law got me this advertised on T.V. special. You fill it up with chopped ice and water and spray it; it’s a "mister". Closest thing I could get to New York.

Nothing tops the first time I celebrated July fourth as a priest. A bunch of Roman Catholic nuns asked me to come say mass on July fourth. We got together and had a very solemn high mass and they served a great pot roast dinner. We went out into the quadrangle afterwards for some ice tea and I saw Mother superior in the back with a grin on her face. In downtown Bryon, Texas, a whole bunch of nuns shot off fireworks. All I could think of was the newspaper tomorrow stating, "Priest in the slammer with nuns."

It was great celebration as a country this year. We have had parades, fireworks and barbeques. Our President led us with a statement, "Today we truly celebrate our call of freedom and liberty. Truly, today all people are proud to be called Americans."

We come here this day in a very solemn and special way as we celebrate our nation’s history, our nation’s present and our nation’s future. And we ask God’s blessings on it as we gather as an Episcopal community in Palm Desert.

I have been pondering what that call of freedom means over this past week. I would like to share with you four things that I have come to with my reflections that have been meaningful to me as to what the call of freedom really means, personally.

The call of freedom is a call of confrontation. It is hard for us to believe sometimes. We believe America is a land of peace, liberty. We remind ourselves on July fourth that the writers of the Declaration of Independence said, "All people were created and our God has given us unalienable rights. That among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Do you know that those words were the result of conflict, of thought and philosophy? Conflict led them to that moment where they said these United States were declared independent.

If you go online or look in your history books, there is a paragraph that is before that preamble. The writers of the Declaration of Independence said, "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them, they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." Our forefathers came to this point of confrontation and drew a line in the sand and declared the United States independent. That confrontation led to the freedom we celebrate today.

In the scriptures today we meet Jesus of Nazareth in the fifth chapter of Mark’s Gospel. We meet a Jesus who confronts the social and religious leaders of his time and says, "You have heard it said that you must love your neighbors and hate your enemies. I say to you this, love your neighbors and pray for your persecutors." Jesus confronts the people and laws of his day. He presents a new way, a new life in God. Do you allow yourself to be confronted by Almighty God? Do you allow yourself the opportunity to come before the Lord and be confronted with what is really you?

M. Scott Peck and a book called "The People of the Lie". In his book he states that basically there are two types of people. Sinful people, those who know we do wrong and act wrongly. We repent of our sins and ask God’s mercy and forgiveness and are transformed by God’s Holy Spirit. Then there are evil people, those who refuse to know the truth about themselves and refuse to change their lives by what God tells them. If I ask today how many are sinful people? And then how many are evil people? Not very many would raise their hands. We wouldn’t tell if we were. We put layer upon layer of deception, sometimes we have so many layers we become unknown not only to ourselves but to our neighbors, friends and family and even to our God. We must have the confidence to confront ourselves and look in the mirror and say, "What do I need to change about myself? How do I need to be transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit? How can I treat my family better? How can I treat my colleagues better? What can I do to better the kingdom of God in this valley?" The Call of freedom is the call of confrontation.

The second element is the call to contemplation. Prayer. Our pledge of allegiance states "One nation under God." Our forefathers assumed we would call upon the power of the Almighty and ask God’s directions, help and support. What do we do? We extract prayer from our lives, schools and communities, and even from our churches. If we look at St. Paul we find that he was transformed by an encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. Some think as we read the Acts of the Apostles that we believe immediately Paul went out and preached the good news. That is NOT true. If you read the letter to Galatians, we discover that Paul, for three years, prayed, fasted and contemplated what that experience meant.

Jesus in the scriptures today says, "Pray for your enemies." Throughout all of his missionary teachings here on earth with his disciples he taught them to pray like this, "Our Father who in heaven, hallowed is your name." He tells his disciples to call the Father Abba, Daddy. We, too, are called to have that intimate sense of prayer.

Do you take time to contemplate God’s action in your life? Do you take time out of your busy life and say, "I wonder what God meant for me in this? I wonder what God was saying to me in that? I wonder what God’s direction is in my life? I wonder what God wants me to do." Think about our community. Do we come together on our knees and pray that God will lead us as a community of faith? Does everything we do flow out of our sense of prayer? Does everything we do flow out of our contemplation? Do we take the time to sit and ask the question, "What does God want?"

I think sometimes our Vestry, Altar Guild and Men’s and Women’s ministries tend to react to this and that. Do we take the time to ask what the Almighty wants? Call for freedom is a call to contemplation.

The third element of the call of freedom is the call to participation.

It was a cold, January day in 1961. Young, brash John Fitzgerald Kennedy got up and made his inaugural address on the steps of Washington D.C. This is what he said, "Ask not what your country can do for you but ask what you can do for your country. Let us go forth my friends, my fellow citizens to lead this nation, to believe God will send his blessings upon us and we can transform the world." We believe that we are called to participate in God’s life. In the letter to the Hebrews, we meet Abraham who was called from the Ur of Chaldes to go to the land of Cana. What did the bible say? "He obeyed God and he went." "From that life which was almost dead many descendents were born." Abraham transformed the world by being obedient and participating in God’s life. Through all the scriptures we have examples of people who did that. Moses, Abraham, Sarah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, even the mother of our Lord, Mary. "Let me participate in your life God, let it be done unto me according to your will."

John Henry Fosum, a writer of spirituality states that there are four types of people. Taken from the ancient mariners as archetypes, he state that people who hug the coast. They do not stray far from the coast. They do not get very far but they do not break anything along the way. Those people are called conservatives. The second type of people is those fool-hardy folks that just launch out there without any kind of plan. They usually get themselves killed. If they do survive and find something, they do not know what they have found because they did not know what they were looking for. We call them rebellious types. The third type of people are followers. They will follow the captain. Conformists. The key to living a spiritual life he says is to chart your own course in the commandments of God. Participating in God’s actions. Setting your moral compass by the words and stories of Jesus of Nazareth. These are the people who fully participate in the life of Christ.

An old Baptist minister said, "Son, in order to make a church work, you have to get skin in the game." I thought it was pretty profound. In the life of St. Margaret’s church, do you have skin in the game? You have gifts that I do not have. You have gifts that Deacon Margaret does not have. You have gifts that the Vestry does not have. We need you. We need each other. We have great visions and hopes and dreams for our parish family but we need you. Contemplate what God has in store for your life and take the time to figure out God’s actions in your life then put "skin in the game" and let’s get going! Call to freedom is the call to participation.

Lastly, the call of freedom is the call to miraculous expectations. Hopes for the future. On a foggy, Pennsylvania morning in Gettysburg, a tall melancholy man named Abraham Lincoln looked down upon the field of hundreds of dead soldiers from the North and South and he reminded us of the hope of the future. He said, "From these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. That we here, highly resolved, that these dead shall not die in vain. That this nation, UNDER GOD, shall have a new birth of freedom and the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Fabulous words echoed many years later by Martin Luther King, on the footsteps of the Lincoln memorial. In a famous speech, Martin Luther King said, "I have a dream that one day every valley may be made exalted and every hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough place will be made plain, crooked places made straight. The glory of the Lord will be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. This is the hope of our nation." Words of miraculous expectation.

The Bible tells us again that Abraham believed that the city of the foundations of the future that which was in heaven. He did not just set his eyes on the land of Cana. He set his eyes beyond that. We have to have the courage to pray for that sense of vision and the confidence to know that God will make it happen.

Here’s a little humorous story to help put that in perspective. A west Texas town many years ago was dry, means there was no "booze" in the city. On the outskirts of town a tavern owner opened up a tavern. This small Baptist church got on their knees and prayed that God would deliver them from this evil whiskey. They prayed and prayed. About two o’clock in the morning lightening struck and the tavern was burned to the ground on which the tavern owner sued the church. They went to court and the church got a fancy attorney and he said, "It is their fault. They were doing the booze thing." The old judge looked at him and said, "I don’t know. What I do know is the tavern owners are the only ones who believe in the power of prayer any more."

Do you believe in the power of prayer? Do you believe that God can transform your life? Confronting our own weaknesses do you think God can transform this nation with all of our faults? We are called to be a people of miraculous expectations and glorious hope. That is the call of freedom. We are called to be a people that confront ourselves. We are called to be people of contemplation that pray for ourselves, communities, churches and our nation. We are called to be people of participation who have "skin in the game". And we are called to people of miraculous expectations.

If we accept the call of freedom today, the Bible tells us that God will be the God of praise. He truly has done wondrous and awesome deeds for our world and nation. Truly we are blessed. On this day we say, "God Bless St. Margaret’s Church and God Bless the United States of America".

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