God, this morning we gather to remember that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Freedom is on our lips this week especially, and we pause to give you such thanks for the particular freedoms we enjoy as citizens of these United States of America. Today, we remember with gratitude all whose labor and lives make it so.
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free, yet right here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, far too many of us are being held captive. Held captive in prisons and detention centers. Held captive by standards and stimulants. Held captive by lives abundant in work yet scarce in pay. Held captive behind the walls of our expectations and assumptions. Held captive by our fears and prejudices, sins and ideologies, despair and cynicism. Held captive by our bitter anger toward each other that seems to grow with every election cycle, every news cycle, every life cycle. Captivity harms the captive and the captor alike, denying both the gift of freedom. And it is precisely for freedom that Christ has set us free. Liberating God, we are profoundly grateful that our understanding of freedom doesn’t rely on the human limits of its imagination. For your holy word tells the story of your freedom work throughout human history – from Israelites enslaved in Egypt through the first Christians paralyzed by their fear.. And today, we trust that you can free your people once again. So release our hands firmly gripped on our votes, our dollars, our weapons, our distractions, our fountains of youth and prosperity, our ways of life. Release us to grab the hand of a neighbor in need, or to plant seeds of your good fruits. Release us from the ways of death into the way of new life. Delivering God, we know that it is from troubles and fears and distress and evil and enemies and even death that you guide us from one way to another.
So rescue us from our indifference and inaction. Pull us out of our pits of despair and our corners of uniformity. Transform the graves where our pride and greed and independence go to die, into tombs of resurrection where even the worst things are made new. For even as Paul tells us that “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free,” that freedom comes with a reminder that it not be used ‘as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.’ Unbind us, o God. Unfetter the gospel of Jesus from all the ways we water it down and make it easy and bend it to our will. Unveil our eyes so blinded by our own selves. Unlock us, and set us loose to proclaim good news in this world. This is why you have freed us, liberating God, so that we might submit to the bondage of love we have to you and to our neighbors. This is why you freed us, delivering God, so that we may act with great boldness. For freedom, you have set us free!
Would that we live in such a way! Would that such a truth set us free. We pray all these things to you, o God, trusting that you take our meager
attempts and use them for your glory. Yours is a glory revealed not in the rockets’ red glare, but in the light of the One who shines so firmly in the darkness such that not even the darkest of nights can overcome it. We pray these things in the liberating light of Jesus Christ our Lord who taught us how to pray, saying…