"You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love."

         On Wednesday evening, we hosted a Christian puppet troupe from Bulgaria. The three members explained that they had come to faith in Christ at about the time of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and the demise of Communism in Eastern Europe. They were inspired by the hope of freedom and the opportunities to bring light to the darkness. They chose to become puppeteers, a profession with much more tradition and acceptance as theatre in Europe than in the United States, because the Communists had made great use of puppet shows to indoctrinate children during those years. So now they use puppets to bring the Gospel to children, to bring messages of hope and love and kindness, to model a new way of living, to bring light to darkness, because they see there is so much darkness. They live very frugally and by faith, and perform at schools, orphanages and to developmentally disabled children. Their freedom has not led them to indulge the sinful nature, but to serve one another in love.

         Today we celebrate Independence Day in our nation. We remember that this country was founded in a call to freedom, a grand experiment in human government that has resulted in hope, blessing, prosperity and moral purpose and strength. This nation was founded with a goal of becoming a light to the world. It is a day to celebrate and to give thanks, to humbly remember the blessings of a heritage of freedom.

         It is also a time for us to reflect on whether the freedom we so highly value has not also led us as a people to indulge the sinful nature. We are aware of our enormous national appetite for drugs, the pervasiveness of sexual immorality, the extent to which we rely on violence, and our easy acceptance of greed. We confess the disastrous consequences of using our freedom to indulge the sinful nature. We are a nation in need of discovering how freedom can lead to serving one another in love. So, Galatians 5:13 speaks directly to our national life.

         So too, in the church we hear that we are called to be free, and we must not allow our freedom to lead us to indulgence in sin, but renew our life in the Spirit, which leads us to serve one another in love.

         Scot McKnight helps us understand this verse in his commentary. He says the word that is translated "to indulge" was originally a military term referring to an army's base of operations. It comes then to mean a platform, or an opportunity, or occasion. Though believers are free, they are not to use their freedom as a platform or base of operations for sin. Rather freedom in Christ is to be the basis from which we serve one another in love. This love is specifically focused. It is the love of Christ on the cross; it is the love that we receive when we are filled with the Holy Spirit, it is the love that is not just a feeling, but gets expressed in humble actions of service. Finally, "being able to love each other is not the result of self-discipline or human effort, it is a miracle."

         It is the miracle of serving one another in love that we want to look at and receive in a deeper way today. Perhaps a few stories will help. When we moved to Mount Vernon, a farming community, we let it be known that we would like to grow some vegetables. So Mel Elde, a retired dairy farmer, invited us to share his garden space. When we arrived to prepare the ground and plant the seeds, we discovered that he had already roto-tilled the plot and all was ready to simply drop the seeds in the ground. When we came in the following weeks to weed and cultivate, we could never find a weed: it was mainly a matter of picking the produce and drinking coffee with Mel and Myrtle.

         Then Mel died suddenly. The next spring we dug our plot by hand, and tried in vain to keep up with the weeds on our weekly visits. After that year the plot was simply planted in grass.

         The service that Mel had done for us by keeping the garden weeded and cultivated had lifted a great deal of hard work from us, and had resulted in a good harvest.

         It was about that time that I began to notice that whenever I would make my rounds of visiting the older members who lived in nursing homes or who could not easily leave their own homes, it seemed that I had always been preceded by three retired women: Vee, Erna and Eva. And when I would visit, I never encountered disappointment or complaining of that person being forgotten or left alone. I never had to feel guilty that I had waited too long. Rather there always seemed to be a cheerful welcome, because Vee and Erna and Eva had already been there. It was as if they had weeded the garden for me. So often I would see them in town, going from one place to the next, serving the older people, the shut-ins, and those in need. Their serving was making a difference.

         But there is one negative story. What happens when people do not experience serving one another in love? Julia was a member of our church who always seemed to be in desperate trouble, whose life seemed terribly confusing to me. We would give her clothing for her children, and then in a few weeks, the children had no clothes. When her cupboards were empty, we would fill them with food, but then word would filter back that she was selling the food we gave to her. So we had to stop helping her in those ways, although the church continued to care for her and she continued to come.

         Then she died suddenly, of a heroin overdose. It hit me hard. I did not know she was a heroin addict. Now the confusion made more sense. Just before she died she wrote her testimony of her life in Christ. I have kept it over the years. It begins, "I share this not for sympathy but to minister to others. I have had a stressful yet blessed life. As a child I suffered from emotional neglect and abuse. My father was a quiet subdued man, my mom a loving mother. Our family greatly lacked positive communication skills, the ability to share feelings and the ease to show loving support. Where there was a problem within our family they tried to fix it by running away from it or pretending it did not exist. They did not pray or seek help from others. I think they believed in God yet did not trust him even though they both attended the church." Do you notice the absence of serving love in her description?

         When there is no experience of serving one another in love, then the weeds grow, and overwhelm people. The ministry of service is vital, it is life-giving. We are in need of both receiving and giving such service. It can be very practical in bringing meals and writing cards, and visiting. It can be offering hospitality for traveling puppet troupes, or caring for the young on Sunday morning, or giving showers to new brides and mothers, or caring for Aaron Barg on Sunday morning, or seeking out those who are out of work, or caring enough to talk about the problem you would rather run away from.

         Do you see how important this is? Do you understand how each one of us is called in Christ, not to use our freedom to indulge the sinful nature, but to use it to serve one another in love? At the end of his life, when all the teaching and public ministry was over, Jesus gathered his disciples around a table. He stood up during the meal, and dressed like a slave, and he washed each of their feet. The washing helped them understand the cleansing that would soon come to them through his death on the cross. The humble service accomplished a kind of weeding in their lives, for they had been too pre-occupied with deciding which of them was most important. They needed to experience the humility that comes by being served by Christ.

         Then came the command, "You also should wash one another's feet."

"Do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature." We live in a country that is struggling with that right now, that is misusing its hard-won freedom with disastrous consequences. In Christ we have been given a much more valuable freedom. If we imitate the word in its use of freedom we will suffer a great loss. But if in the freedom of Christ, we serve one another in love, we will bring light into the darkness.

        Amen.