Slavery and Freedom

Slavery and Freedom: John 8:31-36

This sermon was put together with the help of "Keystone, the youth group at St Peter's Church, Littleover.  I really enjoyed spending some time with them over a couple of weeks, thinking about what it is to be Christlike, and particularly about this teaching from Jesus.

This passage is about freedom and slavery, truth and deception, and life and death.

Jesus has been teaching in the Temple in Jerusalem for a week or so, going in every day, sitting there and holding forth to those around, engaging the religious experts in debate. In that time he's said some pretty controversial things about himself, and about the way that the people of God are living out their faith.

These things have provoked different reactions among those who have been listening. Some have decided that he is a dangerous rabble rouser, who threatens their power, someone who needs to be silenced. Others have had faith in him, have believed him, have wanted to follow him.

But Jesus is always clear about a couple of things. He's not very interested in head knowledge alone. He is interested in our whole beings and lives. He's an all or nothing type of guy. Throughout the gospels he makes it clear that choosing to follow him is a costly choice, it is a choice that must be made whole heartedly. It changes our whole lives. But the other thing is that Jesus offers freedom, life in all its fullness, depth. As good as it can be. Jesus is an all or nothing type of guy.

So he puts this offer before these people who have bought into his teaching so far. He says, “belief in me doesn't just mean that you think what I say is a good idea, it doesn't mean that you think that if everyone was to live like that then the world would be a better place. Here is what it means. Belief in me means living in my teaching. It means holding to it, through thick and thin. It means owning it and putting it on.

Here's a rain coat. If it's raining it's no good agreeing that a rain coat is a good idea. If you are standing around in the rain, getting wet, It is no use you agreeing that it might keep you dry. It's no good agreeing that if people were to put them on, everybody would be a lot drier. You have actually got to put it on, and keep it on. While it's raining, you've got to live in it, hold to it.

And if you do, you will experience the truth that keeps you dry. Just as if you hold to the teaching of Jesus, you will experience the truth that makes you free.

Have you ever been caught in a downpour without a coat? You're miles from shelter, and you know you've just got to put up with it. Before very long you are wet through. You are so wet that you've almost forgotten that it's raining. You are so wet that it doesn't make any difference that it is raining any more.

The guys Jesus was speaking to were in that kind of situation. They had lost track of the truth. When we were reading through this last week, someone asked, “How can they say that they had never been slaves”. The whole history of the Jewish people included slavery. They had been slaves in Egypt, before God had sent Moses had led them to freedom. They had been in slavery in exile in Babylon before the return to Jerusalem. They were currently living in a land occupied by the Romans. On the religious side they had built a whole raft of laws and rules and regulations governing every aspect of their lives. And yet they claimed to be free. They had lost connection with reality, with truth, and had forgotten that it was raining and that they were soaking wet.

On top of this, Jesus has in mind an even deeper form of slavery. Everyone who sins is a slave to sin.

This is really important so I want to spend a little bit of time on it.

Everyone who sins is a slave to sin. What does this mean?

A slave is somebody who is owned. A slave has to do what their owner commands. A slave is not free to do what they want to do, when they want to do it. A slave has to go where their owner sends them. A slave is not paid for their work. Their owner might shelter them and feed them, to protect an investment, but there is no guarantee of this.

At the root of all sins, all wrong actions and thoughts, is the sin that is about rebellion against God. Sin is saying to God, “actually I think that I can run my own life, thank you very much.” Sin ignores the fact that God created us and loves us and makes me, myself, my desires, my wants, the most important thing in the world.

Jesus teaches that anybody who sins, which is everybody, has bought into this attitude and is kept captive by it.

This is because when we rebel against the God who creates and loves us we damage our relationship with God, and are separated from God. God is the source of our life and strength, we've sent God away and now we don't have the things we need to repair the relationship with God or with other people. We do not have the strength to break out of the patterns of thinking and behaviour that put ourselves first.

We have cut ourselves off from the source of our life. And, in the end we have to go where our owner tells us to go, which is to death.

There's a great paraphrase of this in the Message translation. “anyone who chooses a life of sin is trapped in a dead-end life and is, in fact, a slave”. This is not saying that people enslaved by sin will end up working in McDonalds for the rest of their life. It means that those living without Jesus will find themselves up an eternal cul-de-sac, with nowhere to go. Literally a dead end.

One of the problems with slavery to sin is that it is deceptive. When someone is a slave of sin, very often they are so wet that they don't notice that it is raining. They stand with the guys in this reading and say, I'm not a slave, what do you mean, “set me free”.

This is particularly a problem in cultures like ours. I don't know about you, but sometimes I look around at my friends and my colleagues who have a good job, a happy family, a secure house and are enjoying life, without Jesus and I lose sight of their chains. They don't feel like they are slaves, and they probably won't until they come to the dead end. They can't see their chains, and if we lose sight of them, how can we tell them about freedom?

The good news is that Jesus doesn't leave us there. Freedom is available. If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. You can be free from sin, there doesn't have to be a dead end, there can be life forever.

How come Jesus can set us free? If all people are trapped in this cycle of slavery to sin and selfishness, how can a person free us?

This is the revolution that Jesus announces. He is not a slave, because he has never sinned. He has always lived in the teaching that his Father gave him. He has always done the will of his Father. Jesus is the Son in the household of God. Jesus is God's perfect Son. Because he is the Son, he has the right and the resources to free slaves.

I think that this teaching is expressed beautifully in a hymn about Jesus that Paul quotes in his letter to the church at Philippi:

"Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,

but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a slave, being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death -- even death on a cross!"

God, in Jesus, came to live on earth. He looked like a slave, but because he never rebelled against God, he never was a slave. The slave master sin had no power over him. This means that when he went to death, he didn't go because he had to, as the slaves do, but because he chose to.

And it is, of course, at the cross and in the resurrection that we see the power of God to break the hold of sin and death. And that power is available to all those held in captivity by sin, if they believe and hold to Jesus' teaching.

I've used that phrase a lot tonight, without explaining it, so I want to make one thing clear. This is not about following a new set of rules that Jesus came up with. This is about accepting Jesus' teaching that we are slaves to sin. Holding to the teaching that we need to be freed and believing that Jesus can free us. If we hold to this teaching, we will experience the truth of freedom.

To stretch my coat metaphor a bit further. Jesus points out that we are soaked through. He offers to dry us off and give us a coat. If we believe him, accept that we need him to dry us off and get us dry then he will. We can take the coat and put it on.

This doesn't mean that we never get wet again, the rain blows in our face, our hood falls off, we stumble in a puddle. But Jesus is here with us, by the Holy Spirit, lifting us up, drying us off and walking on through the storm with us. We are free from the slavery of sin, our life is better now in relationship with Jesus, and because we are freed by the Son, we are truly free to live for ever.

It doesn't stop there. There are people around us stumbling through the storm, wet through and blinded. We have been freed to live, and to bring other people to the source of freedom, truth and life. In the end it's all about Jesus, because he is the way, the truth and the life.

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