Minister: Marv Vose

Home of the Free?

Zechariah 9:9-13

There is within each of us a deep, deep desire to be free.  I'm convinced it is a part of the human soul.  We long to be free, unfettered, and able to do as we please.  It is especially bad, this longing, after a hard day at work, where the boss seemed dictatorial or the rules didn't make sense.  Or maybe it was a hard day on the diet.  The draw of that chocolate covered sundae was so strong and you just wanted to rip up the diet book and throw it away!  Or maybe the Doctor said, you have to start exercising--again.  And that is just your most unfavorite thing in the whole wide world!

It starts early.  Real early!  Kids start rebelling at the rules as soon as they realize there are rules. 

One Mom had sent her youngest, Jason, to catch the school bus.  Jason was about six-years-old.  But Mom's morning was interrupted by a knock at the door.  She flew to the door only to find Jason, the kid who was supposed to be getting on the school bus.

She said, "What are you doing here?"

He said, "I've quit school."

"Quit school," Mom asks.  "Why have you quit school?"

Without hesitation Jason says, "It's too long, it's too hard and it's too boring!"

"Jason," Mom says, "you have just described life.  Get on the bus!"

Kids think that when they grow up, they will be free.  If they can just get a job so they have money, life will be incredible.  If they can just get that license to drive the car they will really be free!  They can do wherever they want!  Grown-ups know better.  One person described freedom as "being able to do what you please without considering anyone except your wife, the police, your boss, your life insurance company, your doctor, your airline, federal and state authorities, and your neighbors."  You get the idea.

With the Fourth of July just around the corner, it is worth asking how free we really are.  We are celebrating independence, but how free are we really?  I was pondering that this week and this is my answer.  Yours may be different, but this is my answer.  I think we are free to choose our own Master.  We are free to choose that thing, person, idea or whatever that will control us. 

Now that is a pretty important freedom: to be able to choose what our Master is.  That's big stuff. 

Choosing ones Master is an important freedom.  When Jesus lived, the country was under the oppression of Roman rule, but they had another master to contend with.  The church of the day oppressed the people, as well. 

Maybe you have been watching the supposedly free, democratic elections in Zimbabwe.  President Mugabe is forcing a run-off election even though his only opponent, whom he has arrested several times, has withdrawn for fear of his own life and the lives of his supporters.  They would love to be able to freely choose their master, but its not going to happen this time!

In war-ravaged Sudan, you can buy a slave for $15.  Did you know that.  That's right.  Many of them are Christians.  Women or children sold for $15.  The men have been killed.  According to Michael Horowitz, who spoke at General Conference in Cleveland, two million Christians have died in Sudan at the hands of the Islamic Fundamentalist Sudanese Government.  Hard to imagine in this day that something so archaic and barbaric is still being practiced. 

But in this country, we get to choose our master today.  We don't have to pay taxes without representation.  We are not run by a foreign country.  (Unless, of course, you consider Washington, D.C. a foreign country.)  The church can't force you to do anything.  We do not live in fear of slavery.  But there are other masters and some of them very obvious, but others are so slick and subtle that we don't even recognize them until they are running the show.

The obvious ones include all of the addictions that seem so pervasive in our society.  They run the gamut from drug and alcohol addictions to work addictions and computer addictions to TV and computer games.  But they end up running the show.  We can choose those addictions to be our Master. 

Or we can choose the more subtle ones.  Just about anything can get a hold of us if we are ready to allow it.  Take for example, "fun."  This Fourth of July week-end is a great time to talk about fun.  Even fun can trap us.  I'm not talking about your ordinary garden variety fun, the kind we all need and want, but a different kind of fun.  The kind that can run us and really isn't "fun" anymore.

It is the kind of fun that tells us that everything is life really ought to be fun.  If it isn't fun, then something is wrong.  That idea of fun is the kind of idea that sends some people to their pushers and others to their liquor cabinets.  It sometimes pushes us to take medications for depression, when we really ought to be checking to see what needs to be dealt with.

I once counseled a man who was enslaved by fun.  Now I know that sounds silly, but it is true.  He was 38 years old at the time I talked with him, but he really had the maturity of an 18 year old.  Everything in his life had to be fun!  He was a brilliant man, but he wouldn't take any promotions at work, because the work was boring and besides, it might interfere with his fun.  So he stayed on the assembly line at the factory.  He was married, but he had been "going out on dates" since the third day of his marriage.  Can you imagine that?  Finally his marriage broke up, or rather, I should say, he broke it up.  He couldn't stand himself, anymore, but he was convinced that he couldn't change.  And he really thought he was right.  Here was someone who was trapped by having fun. 

What's so amazing is that virtually anything has the power to trap us.  Almost anything.  We can take one thing off the throne of our lives and something else takes its place. 

It's like the book Animal Farm.  When I was in high school, that book was required reading.  In case you are from a different era and they didn't make you read that book, let me review it for you.  It was about a farm where the farm animals became dissatisfied with the way the farmer was running the farm.  So the animals decided to stage a revolution and get rid of the farmer. They decided that the animals would run the farm and if the animals did it, then things would be much better.  But an interesting thing happened.  After a while the animals who were running the farm began to act just like the farmer whom hey had revolted against.  The animals who were running the farm started to wear clothes, just like the farmer.  They started to eat just like the farmer.  They started to run the farm just like the farmer had done before!

So it is with whatever we decide to put on the throne of our life.  It starts top run us.  It starts to rule us, no matter what it is.

There is only one exception to that rule.  At least as far as I know, there is only one exception.  Really, only one.  That exception is the king talked about in our scripture today.  The king who is triumphant and yet humble.  The king who rides into Jerusalem on a donkey.  Do you remember how Jesus came into Jerusalem for the last time?  He was riding on a donkey.  Many believe that his act fulfilled this prophecy.  He was living out the prophet Zechariah's prediction.

When I read that scripture, I couldn't help but think about how funny it would be if the presidential contenders, Barack Obama and John McCain, drove to Colorado Springs, not in a campaign bus or a limousine, but in an old, beat-up VW beetle.  Wouldn't that be funny?  Can you imagine that happening?  But if one of them did, you would know that we had a different kind of presidential contender on our hands.

That's the way it was with Jesus.  He didn't come as a warrior king, riding on a white stallion, but a king to set his people free.  Really free.  When he came, he gave us a whole new idea about what a king is supposed to be like.  People weren't expecting that kind of King.

It is like the story of Orville.  Orville worked for the Grindit Company.  He was the very lowest employee.  He worked in the basement sorting mail and running errands.  One day, while he was working, Orville notice a bug. He was about to smash it flat when the bug spoke.  He said, "Spare me and I'll grant you a wish."  Orville couldn't pass up a deal like that, so he said, "I want to be promoted to the second floor."

The very next day, Orville was working on the second floor.  But what was that?  Footsteps up above.  Orville realized there was a third floor.  The very next day, Orville was promoted to the third floor.  Each time he was promoted, he got more pay and more status. His rise to the top was meteoric.  He went to the tenth floor-then the twentieth floor-then to the thirtieth.  Before long he was lounging around the indoor pool on the ninety-sixth floor of the Grindit Company and enjoying the good life.  But after a while, he was investigating and found some stairs to the roof of the building.  He climbed up the stairs and out on to the roof only to find a boy praying to God. 

Orville was upset.  "What are you doing up here?  Who are you praying to?"  The boy answered, "I'm praying to God," and the boy pointed to the heavens.  Orville was really upset now.  The bug was summoned again and Orville demanded, "Make me God!  Make me the highest.  Put me in the kind of position the King of the universe would hold."

And do you know what?  Orville got his request.  The very next day he was back in the basement in the mailroom.

You see Jesus turned upside down the whole idea of King. Instead of exercising power and authority over his subjects, Jesus came to set them free.  Really free.  He did it not by demanding obedience to exterior rules, but by allowing people to change their hearts and their desires from the inside out.  That's what happens to us as Christians.  What we desire, what we long for, what we want is changed and when we want what God wants then we have that perfect freedom.

That freedom is available for everyone.  It's been available for a long time.  Because of what Jesus did so long ago.  Near the city of Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil is a remarkable facility.  It was started 20 years ago by the Brazilian government, when they turned the prison over to two Christians.  The institution was renamed Humaita, and the plan was to run it on Christian principles.  With the exception of the two full-time staff,  all the work is done by inmates.  Families outside the prison adopt an inmate to work with during and after his term.  Chuck Colson visited the prison and made a report.

"When I visited Humaita I found the inmates smiling-particularly the murderer who held the keys, opened the gates and let me in.  Wherever I walked I saw men at peace. I saw clean living areas, people working industriously.  The walls were decorated with biblical sayings from Psalms and Proverbs. My guide escorted me to the notorious prison cell once used for torture.  Today, he told me, that block houses only a single inmate.  As we reached the end of a long concrete corridor and he put the key in the lock, he paused and asked, "are you sure you want to go in?"

"'Of course,' I replied impatiently, ‘I've been in isolation cells all over the world.'  Slowly he swung open the massive door, and I saw the prisoner in that punishment cell: a crucifix, beautifully carved by the inmates-the prisoner Jesus, hanging on cross.

The guide said softly, "He's doing time for the rest of us."  And so he is.

I'm not as free as I would like to be, but I am one of those "prisoners of hope" that Zechariah talks about.  I am free and I know I will become more and more free because of the master I have chosen.