On April 8 – just four weeks ago – he was released, after
DNA testing revealed he wasn’t the one who committed the crime.
All this, according to an article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
What’s it like to get your freedom back after 33 years?
Harward said: “You take your first car you ever have, you take your first
girlfriend, first kiss, first dog, first house, first child. You know how
excited you are in that moment. You put all those together and ramp it up about
10 times. That’s what I feel.”
The first thing Harward did was go to a restaurant and order
a big $10 cheeseburger. Then he went home to Greensboro North Carolina. He had
to get an I.D. card, and open a bank account. He had to learn how to use a cell
phone and look up stuff on the internet. At a public bathroom, he was amazed
that the toilet didn’t have a handle.
And he’s enjoying pleasures that were denied to him in
prison – like relaxing in the shade of a big tree. “It’s a great day,” he says.
“It’s Monday, and I’m in a park!”
Freedom. That’s what it’s about. The Christian faith is
about finding freedom.
Freedom – from whatever chains are binding you. Freedom – from
whatever burdens are keeping you from living life to the fullest, living the
life God wants you to live.
Sometimes we need to be set free from the chains others
place on us: Racism. Oppression. Homophobia. Economic injustice.
Sometimes we need to be set free from the chains that come
from within: Guilt. Regret. Fear. Greed.
Gazing into space through a giant telescope does prompt
those kinds of questions.
There are many ways to answer that question. Here’s one: Why
are we here? We are here to be free.
It’s freedom to be who you are, freedom to be who God made
you.
There is, of course, a future component to salvation. Jesus
talks about “the life eternal.” But that life
is something that begins now. The
salvation Jesus offers starts now. It
is freedom now from the chains that
bind us.
This work took Paul and Silas all over the known world.
Travel was long and difficult, but that didn’t stop them.
Philippi was about 1,000 miles from Jerusalem. When they
arrived there, they intended to go to a place of prayer.
They never made it.
As Paul and Silas were making their way, they met a
slave-girl, someone who obviously lacked the freedom they were teaching about. Her
owners kept her as a slave because she could tell fortunes, and the owners made
a lot of money off that.
The scripture says Paul was annoyed. Was he annoyed because
this slave-girl kept following him and harassing him? Or was he annoyed that it
was perfectly acceptable in that city to keep a girl as a slave so that her
owners could profit off of her?
Maybe both. I think it was both.
So Paul cast out from her the spirit that made it possible
for her to tell fortunes.
I have no idea what that means. Some of you want to believe
there are spirits and demons in the world, and that stories like this are to be
taken literally. Others of you surmise that these are just ancient descriptions
and explanations for things like mental illness. I don’t know what the right
answer is.
I do know that when Jesus cast demons out
of people, there was something really powerful going on. And the same can be
said here. Paul cast the spirit out of this slave-girl, which everyone
recognized as something really powerful.
You can tell that something really powerful happened here by
the reaction of the people. Her owners were furious. They immediately seized
Paul and Silas. (I’m not sure what Silas did here; I guess he was guilty by
association.) And they dragged Paul and Silas before the authorities, claiming
that these men were “disturbing the city.”
Disturbing the city? All they did was cast one spirit out of
one slave-girl. But in doing so, they had challenged an entire culture that
said it’s ok to enslave innocent girls just to make a profit; they had
challenged a culture that said making
money is more important than human freedom and well-being.
So now, by trying to free the slave-girl, Paul and Silas had
lost their own freedom. Instead of going freely on their way to the place of
prayer, they were locked in an innermost cell, with wounds bleeding, chained
and fastened in the stocks.
However, Paul and Silas believed that not even chains and
locks could take away their freedom. Their desire had been to go to a place of
prayer, and nothing was going to keep them from doing that. They
began praying and singing hymns to God, right there, in that innermost prison
cell. That prison cell became the
place of prayer.
I don’t know what the place of prayer was that they were intending to go to, but prayer can take
place anywhere. You don’t need a building to
worship. A lot of struggling congregations today think that if they lose
their building, their place of worship, they lose everything.
Paul and Silas knew better. They may not have reached the
place of worship they were trying to get to, but they knew that you don’t need
a big, fancy place of prayer in order to worship and pray.
It’s the power of God that brings freedom to those in
chains!
So Paul and Silas, and apparently other prisoners as well,
had received the power of God’s freedom. Against that power, no chains or locks
could hold them back.
They were free! Of
course, with the power of God, they always had been free in their minds. Now,
they were free of their chains.
Imagine how relieved they must have been! How excited!
Consider the joy of Keith Allen Harward upon his release from prison.
However…
There was a jailer… and the freedom of the prisoners meant a
loss of freedom for him.
He was responsible for the prisoners. If they escaped, it
would be his fault. I’m not sure what would happen to him if his prisoners escaped,
but whatever it was, he didn’t want to face it.
In fact, he was about to kill himself to avoid that
consequence, when Paul called out to him, “Wait!”
Here’s the thing about the Christian pursuit of freedom:
It’s not just about one’s own freedom.
A lot of Christians get that wrong. They think, “I’m
personally saved by Jesus, and life is good. I’ve got a personal relationship
with Jesus, my personal Lord and Savior…”
Do me a favor: stop using that word “personal.” It’s not
about a relationship between you and Jesus. Because that completely ignores the
neighbor who appears again and again and again in scripture.
The most important commandment is to love God and love your
neighbor as yourself, to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Scripture says “how can you love God if you don’t love your neighbor?” The
prophets instruct us to care for our neighbors.
And “neighbor” is broadly defined. The scriptural definition
of “neighbor” means your next-door neighbor, but also the far-away neighbor. It
means your immigrant neighbor. It means your Muslim neighbor. It means your
atheist neighbor. It means your homosexual neighbor. It means your transgender
neighbor. It means your addicted neighbor. It means your friendly neighbor. It
means your hostile neighbor.
Loving one’s neighbor is what it means to be a Christian.
And to love your neighbor, you need to help your neighbor on the road to
freedom, the road to wholeness.
Clearly, if you are only seeking freedom and salvation and
wholeness for yourself, you’re not living a Christian lifestyle.
Toni Morrison, the author of books like Beloved, told her students this: “When you get these jobs that you
have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that
if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then
your job is to empower somebody else.”
That’s exactly what Moses did, if you recall. He found his
freedom when he fled from Egypt and was welcomed into the house of Jethro. But
God sent him back to Egypt, because even though he was free, his people were
not. His people were left behind, still in slavery, crying out for freedom.
Some years ago, a series of books called “Left Behind” were
written, and a lot of Christians read those books and loved them.
They’re awful. And they were made into even more awful
movies. Yet they were popular, and when many Christians hear the phrase “left
behind,” it’s those books and movies they think of.
I think we need to change that. Because for Paul and Silas,
the phrase “left behind” referred to those who were being left out of the
freedom and salvation that God desires for all people.
Even though Paul and Silas walked into Philippi as free men,
they could not leave behind the slave-girl; they had to work to set her free as
well.
And even though Paul and Silas gained their freedom when the
earth shook and the chains broke, they could not leave behind the jailer; they
had to work to set him free as well.
That’s why we at Bixby Knolls Christian Church feel called
to work on behalf of all oppressed and vulnerable groups in our city and in our
world. It’s why we feed the homeless. It’s why we speak out on issues of racial
prejudice, and homophobia – It’s why we voted to be an open and affirming
congregation.
Because the freedom we have is not enough if others lack
that same freedom. We continue the work of ensuring that all God’s children are free, because their freedom and our freedom
are tied together. Only when all are free will we be free. Only when all are
free will the kingdom of God is present.
No comments:
Post a Comment