Freedom
Faced
with the great Depression and hostile axis powers, President FDR gave his famed
speech outlining Four freedoms:
Freedom of speech, Freedom to worship, Freedom
from want, and Freedom from fear.
And
as we celebrate Martin Luther’s Reformation… we would do well to consider the
four Freedoms of the Reformation
—a sort of restatement of the central points of our faith:
Freed by the Son,
Freed through faith,
freed for our neighbor,
and freed to follow Jesus!
The four freedoms of the Reformation.
Prayer
Freed by the Son, Freed through faith, freed
for your neighbor, and freed to follow Jesus!
The four freedoms of the Reformation!
You are freed by the Son!
We are saved by grace…
freed from the powers of Sin, Death, and the Devil
by God’s beloved Son Jesus and his actions on our behalf…
He is Emmanuel
—God with us,
he came down that we might have life
and have it with abundance.
He is the Crucified Christ
—with us to the end,
with us in even the worst experiences of our life!
He is Our Resurrected Lord
—bringing us with him
to the place where no mortal
may trod,
the very dwelling and very face
of God.
All
of this is a free gift for us
—making us right with God.
You’ve been made right with
God.
When
God looks at you,
God does not see any enmity,
see any division,
see any separation
—does not see where we’ve fallen short,
where our lives get cut short,
where we’ve been sorely tempted
—no!
God sees a Beloved Child
—sees Jesus when God looks at us!
The Son has made you free, you are free
indeed!
You are Freed through Faith!
The Truth will make you free!
“It’s unbelievable though!” you
might say.
“There has to be strings
attached,” you may mumble.
“That’s not how I’ve experienced
the world to work,” you might rightly answer.
And we do live in an If/then kind of world
—if you do X, then you’ll get Y.
A transactional world,
a world weighed down by sin, death, and the devil…
And that’s why we continually need the
reminder
in word and sacrament,
in confession and forgiveness,
in the community of the church
—whatever form She takes.
The reminder that we find our rest in a because/therefor
God.
—Because God has acted for you in Jesus Christ,
therefore you are free indeed!
The continual creation of faith
—the proclamation that
“The Truth will make you free!”
That’s it! Truth!
Grace is true.
God who has promised you new life in his son,
is trustworthy.
You can believe, with your whole self,
this salvation already given to you by the one who gave his whole self for you!
Have confidence that Christ is for you.
A fellow seminarian, once a Pentecostal,
now an ELCA Bishop, named her moment of being freed through faith this way:
Simply being looked in the eye and told:
“When you understand that God chose for you to be saved and that you did not
choose your own salvation, then you’ll understand God’s amazing grace.”
We’re saved through faith
—a confident trust in the trustworthiness of God.
You are Freed
for your Neighbor
You’ve
already been made right, now what?
God doesn’t need your works, but
your neighbors do!
The
vertical relationship between God and humanity is already addressed,
now we can focus on the horizontal relationships with each other!
We’re
freed from a divided, zero-sum, way of living,
we can now multiply God’s blessings for all the earth!
It’s
all the cherry on top!
Every moment of our lives is a simple response to God’s unfailing love.
Freed
from all heaven storming ambition,
you can love your neighbor as yourself!
To
quote Luther:
“A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.
A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject
to all.”
You
are Freed to Follow Jesus!
Everything about how God
acted in Jesus was rather astonishing
—the Christ on a cross,
the Son of God executed
by religious people and the political powers that be
—the conquering savior entering Jerusalem on a donkey,
not a warhorse
(Because the donkey… makes all the difference)
God in the last place you would
think to look!
What
an adventure, being his disciple,
being someone who gets to follow after Jesus!
Finding him
and following him,
wherever he may go
—the ever gracious surprise
and strange joy
that comes from following your savor!
Continuing in his word and in his truth
—truly you are his disciple!
The four freedoms of the Reformation!
Freed by the Son, Freed through faith, freed
for your neighbor, and freed to follow Jesus!
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