Freedom and the Prisons We Carry With Us

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Emmanuel Episcopal Church
February 21, 2021
5 Epiphany, B
Genesis 9:8-17
1 Peter 3:18-22

Mark 1:9-15

Freedom and the Prisons We Carry With Us

So last year, during Lent in the middle of early pandemic lockdown, someone wrote, “This is the lentiest Lent I have ever lented.”  I think we might could say “ditto” at this point.  In all sincerity, we’re still in a pandemic, and we’ve just been through a winter storm that has left us without power, without water, with broken pipes, and during which some have died in their homes from hypothermia and carbon monoxide poisoning.

There’s a lot of work to be done to fix broken pipes and homes, and there’s work to be done with continued pandemic response, distancing, juggling school and work, juggling work and safety.  With everything going on, now we have the season of Lent?

You bet we do.  The problem with calling this “the lentiest Lent I have ever lented,” is that, while funny, it kinda misses the point of Lent and mischaracterizes Lent as a season of hum drum darkness and sadness.

Lent is a season of joy.  Joy is often thought of as happiness or merriment, a temporary reprieve from the challenges of life, and while there is joy in happiness and merriment, joy is more than that. Joy is also being set free from that which binds us.  Joy is being released from prison, and joy is the work that accompanies that freedom and release.  Joy is gratitude for that freedom, and joy is walking through the challenging times and the happy times with that freedom, freedom from whatever bind us, freedom from whatever prisons we find ourselves in. 

So Lent is a season joy because Lent is a season of repentance, a season of work, and here’s the work:  to accept the freedom Jesus proclaims and to let Jesus release us from prison.  In that freedom and release is the joy of Lent.

Peter said that “[Jesus] was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison…”  What did Jesus say?  What proclamation did he give?  I suppose we don’t exactly know what Jesus said to those spirits in prison, but my assumption is this, that Jesus’ proclamation to those spirits in prison was was the same as his proclamation to the people on Earth:  “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”  To those who had died, Jesus proclamation was, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Be released from your prison, even you who have died.  That, my friends, is joy.

So Lent is a season of joy.  Lent is a time to repent and believe in the good news.  Lent is a time to listen for Jesus’ proclamation coming to us in whatever prison we are in, and to let Jesus release us from that prison.  

Perhaps some of us have given something up for Lent, a 40 day fast from something in our lives which we enjoy.  What we’re doing there is creating a tiny sorrow, a tiny longing, a tiny prison from which we want release.  We then seek Jesus’ help in this to overcome that longing.  We seek Jesus help to release us in this tiny way so we keep developing our trust and reliance on Jesus.  Giving something up for Lent is one way to practice the joy of accepting Jesus’ freedom, of accepting Jesus’ release.  

Lent is spring training for the upcoming regular season which happens…every day of our lives, ok, so bad analogy.

Another way to live Jesus’ freedom every day is to serve others.  Doing so takes us out of ourselves and our own needs, our own longings and prisons.  In serving others, we often find our problems diminished, that we are doing far better that a we thought we were.  Serving others as we turn to Jesus for guidance and strength helps to release us and give us new freedom.  

So as we have this season of joy to seek further release from our various prisons, in
what prison do you find yourself?  Fear?  Anger?  Scarcity?  Jealousy?  Feelings of discontent and raging against aspect of society that you just can’t abide?  All of these and more are the prisons we find ourselves in, and with Jesus’ help, we can be freed from all of them.  Turning to Jesus every morning in prayer, specifically asking Jesus to free us from our particular prisons.  Spending time each day in meditation to calm our minds and bodies and to give those things which imprison us over to God.  Spending time talking with others, trusted friends or small groups within our church about our prisons and the release we need and the release we have experienced.  Spending time each day with scripture, trusting and getting to know Jesus ever more fully as the one who frees us from our prisons, the one who proclaimed that the kingdom of God has come near.

Remember then also that Jesus’ message of freedom and release from prison is not only an individual message.

In what prisons do we find ourselves in our society?  Prisons of injustice, the wealthy and seemingly important given passes for crimes while many of the poor and marginalized are given heavy sentences.  Prisons of poverty which trap people who work full time for low wages in order to live in poverty.  Prisons of political discourse so  heated and polemical that people are losing their minds.  People are becoming so enraged with political discourse that they will fight, with words, with fists, with guns, even to the death in order to stop those on the other side of the political discourse.  

We have prisons of isolation, prisons in which whole communities don’t know one another, don’t care for one another, and don’t particularly want to…not out of malice, just out of fatigue and fear.  We have prisons of greed, people with so much more than they could ever need finding that it still isn’t enough to sate their desire for more, or that it still isn’t enough to calm their fears of not having enough.

We have prisons of racism, xenophobia, bigotry, and discrimination.  All of these prisons and more, we have in our society, and these are all prisons which we can work with Jesus to dismantle and set ourselves and our society free.  

We can advocate with our lawmakers for greater justice in sentencing.  We can advocate for better wages for essential workers and spend our money at organizations where we know they are paying their workers well.  We can disengage from angry political discourse and seek more civil discourse.  We can get to know our neighbors and check on them during times of winter storms and freezing pipes…many of us were doing just that last week.  We can work with organizations which strive against racism, discrimination, poverty, and injustice.  

Doing any of that work will bring us into a holy Lent and help to free us from our own prisons, as well as to help free society from it’s prisons.  Such is the joy of Lent.  Such is the joy of Jesus who came to free people from their prisons, to free societies from their prisons, to free the world from it’s prison.  Such is the joy of Jesus who came proclaiming, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” 

So, I Tend to Be Kinda Grouchy

Brad Sullivan

Maundy Thursday, Year A

April 13, 2017

Emmanuel, Houston

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

So, I Tend to Be Kinda Grouchy

I tend to be kinda grouchy.  There’s my Good Friday confession a little bit early. 

So this has been for me a fantastic Lent.  Lent is generally my favorite time of year because it’s this time of year when we get to be more intentional than usual in seeking help from God in some aspect of life, or we seek to give something up so we can further our dependence on God, and this Lent I had not come up with anything to give up by the first Sunday of Lent.  Ash Wednesday came and went, and I was thinking, “I don’t know.  I don’t eat much chocolate so that’s not going to do much…” 

Then I was talking to a Gentleman on the morning of the first Sunday of Lent, and he was talking about how Lent had been great.  He had this laundry list of things he had given up.  We’re talking chewing tobacco, coffee, alcohol, every coping mechanism a person could have, and he had gotten rid of all of them, and so I was thinking, “That’s gotta stink…,” but it had been a fantastic Lent for him because every time he started thinking about, “I really want this, or I really want that,” he took it as an opportunity to pray.  So, he was loving it, because it was this constant drawing nearer to God that he got to have.  I was thinking, “Thank you!  That should have been obvious, but thank you, and that’s what I’m going to do now.”

So, I decided to give up being grouchy for Lent.  There was one night when I was angry and upset, and it wasn’t really about my life, it was listening to the news and hearing about all the awful stuff and getting so incensed about all the bad things in the world and finally saying, with tears streaming down, “God, I cannot take this anymore.  Please get rid of this.  Get rid of this anger.  Get rid of this overreaction to everything.  I don’t want it anymore; I’m done with it,” and he took it. 

It was gone, and I felt fantastic.  I was less grouchy, less grumpy.  I had a greater capacity to be a loving person.  That has been my Lenten practice for the rest of Lent.  Every time I start getting agitated, or worried, or upset about something, I stop, and I pray, “God, please take this from me.  I don’t want to deal with it.  I can’t deal with it.  Please take this from me.”  Then I can go about and deal with whatever was getting me upset in a much more loving way. 

So it has been a fantastic Lent, and I offer that story because we’re coming to the end of Lent.  We’re starting what’s known as the Tridium, the three days, and Maundy Thursday as we’re remembering our abandonment of Jesus at the end of this service.  We’re remembering, tomorrow, the crucifixion of Jesus and the horrors of humanity.  Talk about grouchy, here was a guy loved people far too much for humanity to allow him to live, and so we’ll be remembering just how huge our capacity for atrocities and darkness is. 

Jesus knew that was coming, so he gave his disciples this new commandment, and knowing full well his disciples’ and our capacity for darkness, his final commandment was not a warning against darkness.  His final commandment was not, “Guys, try not to be terrible jerks to each other.” 

His final commandment was “Love one another.  Even as I have love you, love one another,” which tells me that despite our capacity for darkness, Jesus knows that we have a capacity for love, and not just a capacity for love, we have every bit as large a capacity for love as he does.  He didn’t say, love one another kinda like, near to how I have loved you.  He said, “Love one another as I have loved you.” 

We were made in God’s image.  Jesus was fully human.  So, every bit as much the capacity for love that Jesus has, so do we have.  That is what he left his disciples with on the night that he knew they were going to leave.  Amidst all of the darkness of the world, amidst all of the darkness that was to come, he wanted them to remember and to live out their capacity for love. 

That is what I have found this Lent in asking this continual prayer of help from God, that ultimately, asking God to help us to take away the darkness leaves us free to love.  Jesus has taken care of our darkness.  He has taken it, and he asks us continually to offer it to him, so that we then may be free to live out a life of love, a life full of every bit as much love for one another as he has for us.