Pastor's Page
At the end of the book of Judges we hear the ominous statement: “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.” Talk about a recipe for disaster!! While anarchy may sound good in principle—at least to some people—it can no more form the basis for a society oriented toward the common good than you or I can jump off a cliff and fly. As Christians we have a sound theological explanation for this, summed in the word “sin.” Despite our best intentions, we mess up, get it wrong, go down the wrong path. So to think that everyone can do “what is right in their own eyes,” and things will turn out just fine has the same odds as picking the winning numbers for the Mega-Mucho Lottery every day for the rest of your life. It just ain’t gonna happen.
No, every society/community needs some form of order, however flexible, a shared set of values that provide a basis for life together. Of course, this involves change over time, and the record of history and the rise and fall of nations proves this to be inevitable. Right now, there is a debate going on in our country as to what some of those values are that unite us as Americans—the economic rights of the individual versus our responsibility to others, fear of the outsider/immigrant versus the ideal expressed on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses, yearning to breath free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
Such a debate is a healthy sign of the freedom we celebrate as citizens of this fair land, giving witness to the fact that no political authority can tell us how to think. And yet as people of faith, we know true freedom is much more than that, that we are called to focus on being “freed for” rather than “freed from.” In Christ we are freed to love and serve, to give and reach out to those around us with the same grace and mercy that is ours in the Lord. In that freedom—not to do whatever we choose, but to seek God’s will and God’s way revealed in the One who teaches us that the greatest of all is the servant of all—we are delivered from the lies that would have us believe that life is all about getting what I want, when I want it, about building up treasure on earth instead of seeking first God’s Kingdom. Life based on that kind of freedom is nothing more than bondage to the self, despite the fact that our consumer culture would have us believe otherwise.
Thank God, we are made for something much greater than a life imprisoned by “me, myself, and I,” as poet W. S. Merwin reminds us here: “We have one story, and one story only, to tell in our lives. We are made to believe by our culture and televisions, our politicians and movie stars that is the story of money and wealth, but these are small, impoverished tales and whispers that have made us restless and craven; they are not stories at all.” Instead, the story we are called to tell is summed up here in Paul’s letter to the Galatians: “You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only don’t let this freedom be an opportunity to indulge your selfish impulses, but to serve each other through love. For the whole Law is summed up in a single commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself.”
By the grace of God who sets us free in our Lord Jesus Christ, may your life tell that story for all the world to read.
Grace and Peace,
Patterson