The plan of God is that all should be free. All free. Free from the things that keep us from what God intends us to be. Free from oppression, free from hostility. Most of all, free from sin and death. That is the ultimate plan of God. We who have yearned to breathe free have not been mistaken, because as we yearned to breathe free we were acknowledging the plan of God. Freedom is God’s plan.
However, here and now, in this life, we must put up with maltreatment and disease, poverty and sorrow, disappointments and limitations. But we have gotten over because we believed that God would give us freedom from everything that oppressed us. In His time and in His way, that is what He will do.
In the Christian calendar, today is Transfiguration Sunday. It marks that very special moment when the Lord Jesus and His nature were revealed. On the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus was transformed from the ordinary to the extraordinary, He was changed from His everyday appearance into a glorious, heavenly appearance. It must have been a wonderful moment, to have seen the glory that God had put into Jesus.
But did you know that Transfiguration applies to us too? Did you know that God is about transforming us too? God wants to take our every-dayness, our ordinariness, and change it into glory. No matter what we look like, no matter where we have come from, no matter what our situation in life is, we can be changed. We can be freed from whatever holds us back now, we can become something more than we now are.
This morning we have planned a unique experience in the Word and words. We will weave Scripture and poetry, speech and sermon, together, and trust that it will demonstrate something about transformation. We will weave the Word of God and other words and create for you a moment of insight about change. We will catch a glimpse of what God wants to do, for each of us. The plan of God is that all should be free.
Now symbols are important. Pictures, images, all these things communicate a great deal. When we read the text about the Transfiguration of Christ, look at the picture presented there. It says that His clothing became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach. That’s an image. That’s a symbol. In the culture of Judaism, whiteness was a symbol of purity. It spoke to them of the glory of God. That’s why we have put up the white altar cloths today. Whenever the church celebrates the glorified Christ, it wears white. It wears white because in the culture in which the church grew up, white was a symbol of purity and glory.
But could it not have been otherwise? Could not other symbols have been chosen? Could not other colors have been selected to show how God transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary? Of course they could. Of course other images could have been chosen. Without question.
The ancient sage who wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes saw this. Despite all the negative feelings he had; despite his weariness with the world, still he is able to say something very positive about what God has done for us:
Ecclesiastes 3:10-13, p. 455 KJV
“He has made everything beautiful in his time.” To be specific, God has made all humanity beautiful. God has given us particular characteristics and special qualities, so that we are not all exactly alike. And yet we do share in knowing that we come from one creator, we live in one destiny, we are all loved by our Father. Paul said it far better than I possibly could, when he stood, as a Jew, on Mars Hill in Athens, and spoke to the Greeks, an entirely different race of people:
Acts 17:24-28 p. 959 NRSV
As Paul quoted the poet and affirmed that God made all peoples, giving each special qualities, so also the poet RuNeil Ni Ebo acknowledges that God has indeed made everything beautiful in his time; and that God has made it so that in our own cultures, in our own ways, we would hear God, find God. Listen and feel the beauty of God’s creation. Listen and remember that whatever images we use, God is transforming us all into His image and after His likeness.
A Poem for Thought
The plan of God is that all should be free. All free. Free from the things that keep us from what God intends us to be. Free from oppression, free from hostility. Most of all, free from sin and death. That is the ultimate plan of God. We who have yearned to breathe free have not been mistaken, because as we yearned to breathe free we were acknowledging the plan of God. Freedom is God’s plan.
Thank God for men and women, over the years, who have seen this great truth and who have lived by it. Thank God for those who have not allowed their spirits to be broken, though their bodies may have been in chains. Thanks be to God that, as another poet said, “Truth crushed to earth shall rise again.” Thanks be to God that there has always been a vision of living beyond the limits.
The classic statement of that vision comes from the Apostle Paul, in the Galatian letter:
Galatians 3:27-29 p. 1006 NRSV
Sojourner Truth was one such person. In a time when there were serious limitations on being a woman, and on being a person of color, this woman of color stood and declared herself to be free. She yearned to breathe free. Truth, crushed to earth, rose to speak.
“Ain’t I a Woman?”
The plan of God is that all should be free. Free from oppression, free from hostility, most of all, free from sin and death. That is the ultimate plan of God. We who have yearned to breathe free have not been mistaken, because as we yearned to breathe free we were acknowledging the plan of God. Freedom is God’s plan.
Listen to how far God will go in order to give us freedom. Listen for the work of God, which, in Christ, He performed for a man named Lazarus. Look at God’s transforming work! Lazarus, yearned to breathe free. But Lazarus had died and had been put in his tomb. Yet not even that is too much for our Christ!
John 11:38-43
Maybe you have recognized the phrase I have been using, “Yearning to breathe free.” It may sound familiar to you, because it is in the poem written for and placed at the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. It was written as an expression of the hopes and dreams of all those who came past the lady with the torch on their way to freedom from oppression elsewhere. By a wonderful coincidence, the author of that poem was named Lazarus, Emma Lazarus. From the heart of this 19th Century Jewish woman named Lazarus, will you hear a message that is in wonderful parallel with the story of a First Century Jewish man named Lazarus? Both of them yearning to breathe free.
“The New Colossus”
Once again, the plan of God is that all should be free. What Christ did for Lazarus helps us to see it.
I
When Jesus Christ called Lazarus out of the tomb, from the bondage of death to the freedom of life, He not only made Lazarus a free man, He also brought Lazarus out from the stench of death. He got Lazarus out of that smelly, stinking hole into which circumstances had plunged him.
Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days." Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"
I smell the stench of death all about us. Does not the world we have created make us choke with its smell? What a hell-hole we have made! A place where people die, nameless, in abandoned basements, and newborn infants are discarded like yesterday’s newspapers, in the stairwell of a dormitory. A community where a child’s legs are snapped in two like dry twigs because somebody is tired of changing diapers. A city which still has the highest rate of infant mortality in the nation. All about our society there is the stench of death; we need somebody to take us away from this. We need somebody to free us from the aftermath of oppression.
You see, people can be free politically, but still carry the stigmas of their oppression. Why do death and disease, crime and misery, stalk the poor urban neighborhoods of this city?
The issue is that too many have not walked away from the stench of death, even though they have been freed. Political freedom, getting the vote, ending segregation, gaining access to jobs, all of that was and is important. All of that had to be pursued, still needs to be pursued.
But if we continue to keep the stench of death about them, we are not fully free. If we keep on behaving as though we were nobodies, then we are not free. Dare I suggest that the time has come in history when no longer is it enough to write off certain behaviors because slavery did it. Or segregation did it. Or discrimination did it. Dare I suggest that the time has come in history when we can no longer go around finding excuses for destructive stuff? It’s just not good enough to focus on the patterns of the past. But let us now commit ourselves to living with such integrity, to achieving such high moral character, to such Christlikeness, that no one can ever claim again that there is the stench of death about any of us.
Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” Christ wants to transform us; Christ not only wants to make us free, He wants to remove us from the stench of death. We yearn to breathe free, we can be changed from glory into even more glory. Praise His name!
II
Now probe a little deeper with me. When Jesus Christ called Lazarus out of the tomb, from the bondage of death to the freedom of life, He not only made Lazarus a free man, He also called on the everybody else to cut the bindings that still held Lazarus back.
[Jesus] cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."
“Unbind him, and let him go.” Even after Christ has done His liberating work, there is still plenty to do. Even after Christ has broken the bonds that hold people back, there is still a great deal for God’s people to do. It’s one thing for a man to be told that he is free now, go ahead and live your life; it’s another thing for somebody to help him do it. It was one thing for emancipation to free the slaves; it was quite another thing to give them what they needed in order to survive.
It’s one thing for a child to live without ever having known segregation, and I praise God that our children don’t have any first-hand idea what that felt like. But it’s another thing for them to segregate themselves because they cannot read well, to separate themselves because they cannot use the English language, to fall behind because they cannot compete in the job market. Unbind them and let them go!
It’s one thing for a young mother to be told, “You’re free now. You don’t have to live like your mother and your grandmother did. You can take care of yourself, you can rise to great heights.” It’s one thing to affirm how a young woman yearns to breathe free. But, I tell you, it’s another thing completely when she turns up in the divorce court and has to run around and sue for child support, all because nobody ever really helped her or her man learn anything about marriage. Oh, there is a lot to be done to help free people become truly free. Unbind them, and let them go.
You will understand me, I hope, if I get a little passionate on this point. From time to time folks will say to me, “Don’t start any ministries.” Don’t deal with these problems. Deal with the spiritual stuff. Deal with religious things, churchly things.”
But I know, as surely as I know anything, that the call of Jesus Christ to His church is to redeem lives. To redeem lives. The call of Jesus Christ to His church is to bind up the broken-hearted and to set the captives free. It is to free the oppressed and to make the wounded whole. Friends, that is not just some kind of religious mumbo-jumbo. That is real. That is concrete. That is just as real as the bindings that wrapped up old Lazarus coming out of that tomb. The fellow had been raised to life by Christ; great! But then the call of Christ to those standing around was, “Unbind him and let him go.” Give him the tools he needs in order to be what God intended him to be. He yearns to breathe free, but he cannot as long as he is bound up in ignorance, as long as he is tied up in joblessness, as long as he and she are locked up in unhealthy homes. Unbind them and let them go.
We’ve done some things for this community. We are trying to redeem a few children, a few mental patients, some elderly folks, some youth. That’s good. But, I tell you, there are a whole lot more people in this community who are wrapped up in bindings, and we need to be working at letting them go. Unbind them and let them go. They are yearning to breathe free, but they cannot, not unless you and I, the church of the life-giving Christ, will step in and follow His command. “Unbind him and let him go.”
III
But there is one more thing. And really it is the most pointed of all. There is one other facet, and I would not be true to who we are if I did not finish with this.
When Jesus Christ called Lazarus out of the tomb, from the bondage of death to the freedom of life, He not only made Lazarus a free man, He also made Lazarus face himself and own up to his eternal destiny. When Jesus Christ gave Lazarus back his life, He made him think about his ultimate personal reality in a whole new way.
Think about it. Lazarus had gone through an awesome experience. He had suffered some kind of pain or illness and then had died. But now Jesus has given him back his life. How long do you think it took Mr. Lazarus to figure out that he was going to have to die all over again? Did you ever think of that? Lazarus died and was brought back to life, but then he had to die all over again. I just kind of wonder if there were not some days when he almost wished Jesus hadn’t done this!
But surely it meant that Lazarus had to face up to himself in a whole new way. It meant that this man who had been dead and who was alive again had to think a whole bunch about what he was doing with his life. It meant that he had to think about his eternity.
If you and I really stopped to think about death and life, about our eternity, wouldn’t it make a difference? Maybe we wouldn’t waste so much time on silliness; maybe we would put time into relationships, into loving and caring for one another. Maybe we wouldn’t spend so much money on superficialities; maybe we wouldn’t worry so much about hair and skin color and facial features and all of that, because God wants to transfigure it all anyway. Maybe we wouldn’t wallow so long in shame and blame, because we would find out we are children of God. Black or white, slave or free, male or female, Jew or Greek, what does it matter, in the end? We can become children of God! If, like Lazarus, we had to think about out eternity, wouldn’t it make a difference?!
One of our members wrote yet another poem, and asked if I could include it today. I gladly do so, with profound thanks to Vivian Watts Fauntleroy, its author, for honoring me with this opportunity, and with the expectation that she will understand if I have altered it just a little. Her poem is entitled, “Know Who You Are”.
Know who you are. You are ancient Africa, her rhythms, her rivers, her lushness, her wildness. Mother of her kings, mother of her common folk. You are alive, proud. You are free.
Know who you were. You were newborn America. Your sweat, your blood, your tears tilled her soil, planted her crops, rocked her cradles. Her South’s economy was welded to your backbone. You were slave.
Know who you are. You are post-Civil War America. Providing bedrock for your family, building out of slavery’s pain, slavery’s shame, churches and schools. You, too are her inventors, her artists, her scientists, her musicians. You are survivor.
Know who you are. You are Twentieth-Century America. Praying-in, sitting-in, marching on. Unwilling to wait longer for your God-granted right to the equality your great contributions to this land, now yours, should long since have bestowed. You are American.
Know who you are. You are space age America. At Twentieth Century’s sunset, born. Touch your ancestral memories. Add to those your self-vision. And know, it is for you only to determine where you will go; what you will be. You are free. You are free.
Know who you are.
And yes, know that when you yearn to breathe free, you can become a child of God. Know that when you yearn to breathe free you can receive the gift of life. No stench of death, no bindings, no shame, no fear. No sin, no death. Eternal life. Life. Freedom. Freedom. Life.
Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” “Lazarus, come forth!” Lazarus heard. Lazarus came out of his bondage, sorrow, and death. Will you come? Will you?
