Free At Last Pt. 4
{Well I} woke up this mornin' with my mind
stayed on freedom.
Woke up this mornin' with my mind,
stayed on freedom.
Woke up this mornin' with my mind
stayed on freedom.
Hallelu, hallelu, hallelujah.
With this song and many others brave, non-violent freedom fighters faced the taunts, jeers, threats and violence of their enemies.
Songs like this one wafted from the buses, lunch counters, and county jails that were so often the battle ground of the Civil Rights Movement. As you can probably guess the common theme in these songs was freedom. The simple ability to live as a normal average American with all of its rights and responsibilities. But what does freedom look like and how will we know we’ve achieved it? Will we be free when the greater white community apologizes for slavery and segregation and espouses an honest commitment to integrate us fully into America? Will freedom’s day dawn when great numbers of black folks no longer languish in cyclical poverty
About 4000 years ago another group of people stood at the base of a mountain fresh from the shackles of slavery and poised on the brink of freedom. What would freedom mean for them? How would they live out, enjoy and preserve their freedom? Perhaps the key to that question lies in the first command YHWH spoke to His people. "You shall have no other gods before Me. Exodus 20:3.
Could it be that the first principle of freedom is knowing who you are, why you exist and to whom are you accountable? Is it possible that human freedom by definition is the ability to know, love, serve, worship, obey and delight in the Covenant Lord.? If that’s true then it follows that any other definition of freedom will not only fall short but also lead eventually back to slavery. When the Lord commanded His people to refuse to acknowledge other gods He wasn’t tacitly admitting the existence of actual sub-deities. Rather He charged His people not to fall into the trap of seeking their identity, dignity, destiny, significance, joy, worth and security in ideas, notions, beliefs and ideologies that merely beat a path back to bondage.
Idolatry is perhaps mankind’s most destructive sin. The belief that one can derive ultimate meaning and satisfaction besides or apart from the one true living Lord always leads down the path toward slavery. Does that mean that the Hebrews should have been content to remain slaves in Egypt and never prayer for or desired temporal political freedom? Of course not. Remember freedom is the state in which one can know, love, serve, worship, obey and delight in the Lord without restrictions. Yet, there forms of slavery that don’t involve literal chains, shackles and overseers. The Hebrews didn’t experience full liberation just because they fled from Egypt. That would not happen until they gave themselves over fully to serve and worship their Covenant Lord.
It is likewise for black folks. God graciously worked through the efforts of humble, wise, brave and persistent saints to release the fetters of segregation enabling us to have some of the same opportunities to live like other Americans. Yet we are not free just because we can stay at any hotel we wish, eat at any establishment we desire or even vote for an African-American presidential candidate.
As long as we persist in finding our primary identity in our ethnicity whether that be colored, Negro, Black, Afro-American, African-American or black who just happens to be American we are still in bondage. As long as our worth is tied to our bank account, the hunk of steel we drive, the 2500 hundred sq. ft. home we may not be able to afford and the name brands on our children’s clothes we are still far from the promised land of freedom. The more we believe and fight for a destiny that only ends in our ability to access the excesses of the American dream the more true freedom will slip through our fingers like fine sand. As long as our joy is grounded in our temporal circumstances and thus our worship is summed up with the phrase ‘when the praises go up the blessings come down’ freedom will elude us like Barry Sanders evaded flat footed linebackers.
Until and unless we define freedom as the blessed privilege of knowing, serving, worshiping, obeying and delighting in Jesus Christ and reject the god of absolute individual autonomy our liberation will remain nothing more than a mirage, myth and illusion.
To Him Who Loves Us…
Pastor Lance