"Christ and the Nation"
The role of faith in preserving freedom.
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, June 30, 2002
Text: Acts 26:19-32
For many Canadians and their families, the first place that they entered this great country was on Pier 21, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. From 1928 to 1971 that pier and that harbour were the first sight that many immigrants had of this great land. Throughout these years more than a million people came to this country from overseas. Fifty thousand war brides arrived here during World War II through that pier and over the years a hundred thousand refugees. During World War II it was a place where 494,000 Canadian troops departed for Europe and other parts of the world. It was a place where 3,000 evacuees from London during the bombing were able to find safety. Over the years it has stood as a symbol of Canadian freedom and of a Canadian welcoming presence.
This summer, I am going to be visiting Pier 21, but it really came back to my mind just recently how important it is that we understand and appreciate in this nation the allure of freedom and how important it is to be a welcoming nation. It came to my mind, believe it or not, right here in the parking lot of this church.
Not long ago there was a gentleman walking slowly through the parking lot. I was in my car behind him, anxious to get to my parking spot and he was moving so slowly that I almost blew my horn and made a gesture for him to get out of the way; but the Lord restrained me and I was glad he did. I was patient and the man just kept walking slowly. Finally, he went into a car and when he went into his car he came out with a great big book. He took a pillow from the back seat and he went and he sat on a concrete slab right outside this door. I went over to this gentleman, naturally wondering why he was here, and asked him if he wanted to see one of the ministers and he said: "No, thank you. That's fine."
I said: "Well, is there any other way that I can help you?"
He said: "No, I'm fine."
And so, being the curious type, I wouldn't let that suffice. I said: "Are you sure that I can't do anything for you?" for I saw in his hands that he was reading a huge book entitled: The Law of Contracts. I thought anyone who wants to read The Law of Contracts on a sunny June morning must have something very wrong with him.
I said: "May I enquire then as to why you are right here at this moment?"
He said: "Well, if I must tell you, I'm waiting for my wife. She is actually in your building."
I said: "Well then, is your wife someone who has come to see me or one of the ministers?"
He said: "No," and he just hung his head down and said "No, actually she has come to the food bank.
I then decided that there was a story in this man's life for his accent was very thick. I thought what is a man doing, clearly a clever man, reading The Law of Contracts sitting on a pillow waiting for his wife to go to the food bank.
Well, as I introduced myself as one of the ministers here in this church, his heart just opened up and it all poured out. Here was a man who a few years ago had left Russia, where he had practised law. He had been with the Moscow's equivalent of the Department of Justice, and he had left that position for many and sundry reasons, to work in private practice, if you can call it that. After a number of years he felt that he and his family could not live in freedom, could not exercise true justice, and he could not practise law as he believed it to be. And so he and his family moved to Canada, a land of freedom.
Throughout the last few years he has been seeking to requalify once again in law and this summer is writing his bar exams, something that our family knows a little bit about. I sat down with him and I said: "What brought you to Canada? Could you have gone to any other country in the world?"
He said: "Yes. The first thing that made me want to come to Canada was its hockey players, let's be honest about this. But after the hockey players, there is one word and it is the freedom - the freedom of my family to live and grow up in prosperity, the freedom to think free thoughts, the freedom to move without any constraints, the freedom to practise not only law but justice. That's why I came to this country."
He said: "Since I arrived here it has been a struggle. I'll be honest with you. It's hard for me and my family with the pride that we have from our traditions to come to a food bank to be supported; but I will give up everything, anything to be where I am now."
When we sang O Canada this morning and that magnificent line. "God keep our land glorious and free," I couldn't help but think that the freedom we have is something we take for granted so often but millions of people throughout the ages have found that it is something so precious that they are willing to give up almost anything, sometimes even their lives, to be on the shores of this country and this great continent.
But I am always asking myself the question: "How do we preserve, how do we protect, how do we improve the freedom that we have?" For freedom is something that is beautiful and is like a plant. It must be watered. It must be pampered. It must be fed. Like anything beautiful, if you leave it and forget about it, it will wither and it will fall and it will die. Freedom is something that needs to be cherished and loved and fed.
Now, my friends, I am a Christian and this is a Christian church. I am not a political scientist, much as political science interests me. I am not a sociologist, much as I need to observe society. I am not a psychologist, important as that may be. I am someone who is, and we are people who are under orders. We are under orders from the Gospel of Jesus Christ; and so, therefore, we must ask the question: "What role does our faith play in preserving the freedom of our land? What role does the church have in a land that espouses freedom as one of its great virtues?"
I turned this morning to that classic passage from the Book of Acts, a passage that is one of the great treatises on freedom in Christian literature. For here was the Apostle Paul, a man in chains, a man in bondage, a man who had been arrested by Romans and Jews alike, a man who had had both cultures in which he was brought up turn on him because of his proclamation of his faith in Jesus Christ. Nobody in the whole of the New Testament understood the importance of freedom more than Paul, and in this great treatise on freedom we find something magnificent. To understand it, we must understand the protagonists that are within it.
The first protagonist that we meet is this man called Festus. Festus was the successor to Felix as the Roman Governor of the area of Judea. When he got there, he found that Paul was innocent of all the charges against him and felt that he should have no punishment. But the problem was that he could no longer stand the pressure to turn Paul over, and so he suggests that Paul go to Jerusalem and appear before the Sanhedrin.
Paul, in response, makes the remark: "No, I am a Roman citizen. I appeal to Caesar."
Festus, therefore has to hear Paul's case; but knowing that he is not ready to hear it or to understand what Paul is talking about, he brings in the King, Agrippa II to come and advise him on the situation.
Agrippa was a fascinating man. He was the second protagonist. He was the seventh and last of the family of the Kings of Herod. According to the historian Josephus, he had a scandalous, incestuous relationship with his sister Bernice, who was always at his side. (Even in this story, Bernice was sitting next to him as they passed judgement on Paul.) King Agrippa had decided that Paul should be heard in Caesarea and should be brought to judgement.
So together, Festus and Agrippa listened to Paul make the great declaration of his own personal faith, a faith that understood the power of his freedom. Although he was the prisoner, in this story it was in fact Festus and Agrippa who were in chains. Although Paul was the one who was being judged, it was what Paul said that brought judgement on Agrippa and Festus. They were the ones who possessed everything but had nothing. Paul was the one who possessed nothing but had everything, because what Paul had was freedom, Christian freedom.
When you look at the life of Paul, how he addressed the likes of Agrippa and Festus and before that, Felix and others, you can see that Paul was not intimidated by the power of the state. He was not intimidated by the power of those who in earthly terms were making judgements over him, because the Apostle Paul knew that his freedom was greater than anything that could be imposed by the state or by power.
Recently I have been re-reading a wonderful book by Jacques Ellul Entitled: The Politics of God and the Politics of Man. In the beginning of this great book Jacques Ellul makes a number of very interesting points. He says that "as human beings we are, in fact, not mechanical: We are born independent, even independent from God; that we even have the right, we have the opportunity even to turn on God and to criticize God."
I was just reading in a golf magazine a few months ago - you see, I read the Bible and golf magazines side by side - a story of the great golfer Tommy Bolt, an American golfer with a beautiful swing. The story goes that one day in a very important tournament Tommy Bolt had made six putts in a row. Every single one of them had gone ´round the rim of the cup and shot out. Six in a row! Finally he dropped to his knees, threw his club in the air and said: "All right, God, why don't You come down then and just fight me like a man?"
Well, we are in the clear. We are free. We can say "God, come on down and fight us like a man." We have been given that freedom. We are not mechanical beings but for all our independence, says Ellul, we are also people who live in bondage.
We may live in bondage to our circumstances. We live in bondage to our impulses, to our health, to our culture. We live in bondage to the mores of the day and the zeitgeist of the world in which we live. We live in bondage to our own limits of our psychology or education or economic state. You see, we are independent but we are not free. No one of us can just do whatever he pleases. That's not freedom. There might be independence but it's not freedom.
Jacques Ellul writes: "We are enslaved to everything, everything except God." Here is the term.
We might be enslaved by things that happen around us, and in society, and within us; but it is God's desire that we live free. The only way that we can live free, however, is if we understand first and foremost that the ultimate in life, not the penultimate, is God.
The Apostle Paul went so far as to say: "You know, God has not done anything in the corners, whether it be Moses or the prophets, but especially the greatest, the crucified and the risen Christ. I know. I believe in this God. This God has liberated me and freed me and so therefore, Festus, therefore, Agrippa, therefore, Rome, therefore, Jerusalem: You have no hold over me. I am free because of my faith; because I know that there is ultimately one to whom even you, even you, the powers of this world, are ultimately accountable."
Here is one of the great myths, I think, of our culture: Who are we fooling when we think that if we remove the phrases "In God We Trust," or, "One Nation under God," or, "God Willing," or, "God Bless Us," or, "God Keep our Land" we are not, and all powers on earth are not, ultimately going to be accountable to God? Let us not mock the One who made us all. Let us not mock the One who gives us freedom. As far as I'm concerned, these words are only a symbol: They are only a symbol of truth.
Paul had the power and the conviction of that truth. That is why he could say to Agrippa, a man who was judging him but sleeping with his sister: "You must repent. You must turn your back on the things that you have been doing and you must live a life that is godly."
But what right did Paul have, a man in chains, to pass judgement on the people who were judging him? He didn't have any right, save that of the freedom that he had in God whom, he knew, was greater than all the powers of the world. But they made fun of him.
I love the sarcasm in this great passage. I love what Festus says to him: "Paul, for all your learning, you are out of your mind."
Agrippa says to Paul (it's a wonderful phrase.): "You almost make me want to be a Christian."
But Paul would not be deterred. No. He said: "I wish that you had what I have [and then with a bit of humour] but without these chains. You judge me; but men, I am free. I am free because I am a servant of God."
But you see, my friends, that freedom flows into the way in which a society works as well. It is not just an individual passion to be able to say that.
I was reading a clipping from a newspaper recently and I would like you to hear this: "The world is too big for us." wrote the editor, "There is too much doing, too many crimes, casualties, violence, and excitements. Try as you will, you get behind the race despite yourself. It is an incessant strain to keep pace and still you lose ground. Science empties its discoveries on you so fast that you stagger beneath them in hopeless bewilderment. The political world witnesses new scenes so rapidly that you are out of breath trying to keep up with them. Everything today is high pressure. Human nature just can't take much more."
My friends, was that editorial written last month? No, on June 16th, 1833 in the Atlantic Journal. Isn't that wonderful? Even 180 years ago people were feeling the strain and the pressures of life. It doesn't matter what culture we live in, it doesn't matter what area or what era we live in, there is a sense that human beings still feel very much as if they might be independent but not free; that they still live in many bondages around them and our society, for all that it talks about our freedom, so often does not allow us to experience it in our spirit and in our existence. For all the freedoms that we have, as I have said before, we have become so complacent.
Maybe September 11th shook us all a little bit, although I sense that that is dying away from our psyche. Maybe some of the economic problems that were a result of that, maybe some fears about stock markets and accounting and all the issues relating to business cause a tremor, maybe the environment and the problems that we are experiencing cause us a little dismay; but still, I think, we have a sense of a bondage. We don't know quite what it is that is going to set us free.
I've got to tell you today: I got up very early this morning to watch the World Cup Final and, with all due respect to my German brothers and sisters, you lost to a better team. But, you know, what I really noticed this morning - and I was celebrating with the Brazilians and I thought they'd played glorious soccer - but I watched something at the end. I watched them rip off their shirts and get on their knees and pray. I saw on their T-shirts "Jesus loves you. One hundred per cent for Jesus."
Now, I know a lot of this can be farcical and a lot of this can be really silly because I don't think, honestly, God cares who wins the World Cup once England is out of it. (I've wanted to say that for weeks.) But here were young men born in the favellas and the barrios of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, who grew up, one of them - Ed Nielsen - kicking cans along his street because there are no soccer balls. Here he is, when he wins the great prize, getting on his knees and holding hands and at least acknowledging the source of his life and of his hope.
For all our affluence and for all our freedoms I sometimes wonder whether we are not the ones in bondage, not them; because really, true freedom comes not from outside, but from within. True freedom comes from the spirit of God. True freedom comes from Jesus Christ.
In a wonderful statement on democracy Robert Arnett once wrote: "Humanity is good enough to make democracy possible. Humanity is bad enough to make it necessary. Humanity is alike enough to make it universal. But for even democracy to work, the people must realize that there is something greater than themselves."
After I had sat down and discussed the Law of Contracts in Russian with this gentleman out here in the parking lot, after he was getting ready to leave, he said: "I want to thank you for taking the time and a moment to speak. I want to thank your church for feeding me. But most of all, in my home country while the church is powerful and people like you are important, I realize my people will never be free completely until they realize the source of what those church leaders espouse."
That goes, I believe, for every nation under Heaven. Our freedom will always be through God. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.