Set free

from Helen

I have been described as many things, generally good but the strangest was as a toilet roll. It was strange and a little disconcerting. However, it became more so when it was used at Ian and I’s licensing service in Llandrindod. Not only that but it was used by the Bishop !

He was explaining that with me and Ian you buy one get one free. Do you remember those toilet rolls adverts. BOGOF – Buy one get one free. I was the free one but even so I didn’t have to be associated with toilet rolls. 

It is true though when something is on offer you end up buying it. If something comes free on an offer, you know 3 for the price of 2 then you will buy the correct number to get your free one. I had enough stock once of washing up liquid from doing this that I didn’t need to buy any washing up liquid for a year, and this was before we had a dishwasher so you can imagine how many bottles we had !

I was thinking about this when I looked at the readings for this morning. At the end of the reading from the letter to the Romans (6:12-23) there is an amazing verse that I want to think about this morning.

The verse is – For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This is incredible. We when left to our own devices would be in a bad state. Without Jesus we would be tied up in sin. Because God came to us as Jesus, died for us and rose again we can have eternal life. This is great. The ways things are without God will put us in a bad state away from our maker, not knowing the joy, love and freedom that God brings. But because of Jesus we can be free.

Free gifts can be so amazing and out of the blue sometimes that we don’t know how to take them. The gift of eternal life, the gift of God and His love and protection for us is incredible. 

The knowledge that we can start again and leave our sin behind is great but the problem is that sometimes we hold on to the bad things we have done. Sometimes we don’t let go of all that stops us from being close to God. All the things that stop us from enjoying the fact that we have been set free from all that holds us back. 

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

In the epistle reading we were told that we have been set free from sin, we can move on. The place we move on to is the joy of knowing more of God and His love in our lives. We have been brought from death to life, we are now to live in that knowledge. So why don’t we always live that way ?

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I recently heard that when Michelangelo died he left a lot of unfinished pieces of art. However , amongst these are four sculptures which look unfinished but they are meant to look that way. 

The four sculptures are:- Bearded Slave, the Atlas Slave, the Awakening Slave, and the Young Slave

Do you see the theme ? They are all about what it would be like to be enslaved, unable to be set free.

In these four sculptures Michelangelo had figures who were stuck in the marble that they were made out of. These four figure swill never be free from the stone out of which they were made which meant in turn that the bodies seem to be coming out of the stone but never completely, the figures will forever be stuck. 

What Michelangelo was trying to do was think of what it might be like to be stuck forever. For us, we have a choice of either  orgetting that we have been forgiven and so go back to what we have done wrong forgetting that we have been set free. Or we live as people who are free, people who are in a relationship with God.

You would think that this would make us able to be happy, well it does to an extent but we are still held back by all the other things that bother us. We can never be people who think, ‘well I’m alright nothing else matters.’ We are to help people to know the freedom that Jesus brings. 

We have the greatest gift ever. We must live that way, with joy and by that I don’t mean smiling a very odd smile all the time I mean by being content in the knowledge that we have been set free. 

The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

We are freed from sin, we can continually go to God and repent because we are free. We don’t want to be stuck as we have always been, we want to be able to move out into the world by taking Jesus with us, by being transformed more and more into the likeness of Jesus.

We do this as disciples of Jesus, as trying to be more like Him. As we change so others are changed. As disciples, people who have been set free we have a job to do and that job is to be more like Jesus. 

The presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church of the United States, Michael Curry described what we are doing as …

Discipleship is about loving as Jesus loves, giving as Jesus gives, forgiving as Jesus forgives, welcoming and including as Jesus welcomes and includes, doing justice and loving mercy and walking humbly with God.

This is what we are to do, this is how we say thank you for the best gift ever by being more like Jesus, by following Him and living like Him.

The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Let us rejoice in our freedom and give thanks. AMEN