06/29/2025 ~ Proper 8 ~ Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time ~ Third Sunday after Pentecost ~ 2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14; Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20; 1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21; Psalm 16; Galatians 5:1, 13-25; Luke 9:51-62 ~ Heritage Sunday ~ Service of Worship Held in the 1759 Meeting House. VIDEO OF FULL SERVICE: https://vimeo.com/showcase/7960701/video/1098165908

What Was It Like?

“For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” — Galatians 5:1.

I’d like to start my comments today with an experiment, a test of our ability to imagine something together. I going to ask that you imagine yourself in a specific time and place, New York City in the year 1894. Back then the city was just Manhattan. The Bronx, Staten Island, Queens and Brooklyn did not merge with Manhattan, until 1898.

So to start this, please close your eyes, place yourself in Manhattan, right at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue in 1894. I’ll be quiet for a couple seconds so you can imagine that. (Slight pause.) What’s that like? What do you see, feel? (Slight pause.)

If you were successful you can now say, “Gee! What that preacher said today really stinks!” You see, if you were successful you could smell, pardon the expression, residue of horse!

This was before cars. There were some 150,000 horses in the city. Each one produced about 30 pounds of residue. That’s a total of 3 million pounds a day and does not include 40,000 gallons per day from that other system of elimination.

So now let us try to imagine a different time and location. Earlier you heard the Declaration of Independence was first proclaimed publicly in Harpswell on the steps of this Meeting House, steps on which you walked on this morning. I’ll ask you to place yourself here, at this Meeting House, for that event in 1776.

Now as a reminder, remember Maine did not exist. We were a part of Massachusetts. A copy of the Declaration probably arrived by horseback, delivered by the Post Office which was created by the Continental Congress in 1775. (Slight pause.)

Can you hear those words? What did it feel like to hear those words, words about everyone created equal, equal to kings, endowed by a Creator with unalienable rights? (Slight pause.)

Well, later in that year of rebellion against a king, Thomas Paine published a pamphlet. I’ll bet you know the opening words. “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

In the third paragraph of that work we find this. (Quote:) “My secret opinion has ever been… that God Almighty will not give up a people… or leave them unsupportedly to perish.” (Slight pause.)

This work was published in Philadelphia on December 16th 1776 and read to Washington’s troops on December 24th, just before they crossed the Delaware. So do em a favor— place yourself there, with those troops. What did that sound like, feel like? (Long pause.)

This is what we hear in Galatians: “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Slight pause.)

If you come to a Kellogg Church Bible study— after a hiatus it will restart on Monday July, 28th and all are welcome— at that Bible Study we try to be aware we need to place ourselves among the people who first heard or read this letter. And we have no illusions about doing that. It’s hard to do, place ourselves in that time and place.

But we do need to try to understand these words the way they did. Only then can we begin to try to unpack and unwrap what it might mean to us and for us here, today.

And for us today, freedom has connotations it did not have for Paul. A thesaurus these days would identify freedom with autonomy— as in freedom to do as I please. But that would not have been Paul’s understanding. So we should not apply that modern outlook. Instead, we need to be intensely inquisitive, discerning as we delve into the text.

Indeed, freedom in Christ must not be confused with a license that fails to understand responsibility and involves obligations. I would suggest the freedom embodied in this writing is a concept of freedom different than the kind of freedom many insist on today— the aforementioned “do as I please” kind of freedom, the “my way or the highway” kind of self-centered sentiment we seem to hear so often today.

Hence, I think an appropriate question to ask of this text— something else we do in Bible study is ask questions of the text— it seems the appropriate question to ask of this text is simple. How is the freedom these words embody to be lived out?

I think Paul’s message on that count is clearly stated. We need to be reliant on the Spirit of God. Why?

When we rely on God these fruits of the Spirit become tangible and Paul lists them: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Put differently, if you hang out in churches you might find many people that take the love of God and the love of neighbor, the things that get talked about in church, you might find people who take that seriously. We may not be perfect, us folks in church, but we take that seriously.

Equally, once we pay attention to the freedom with which the Spirit might endow us, we need to take the next step. We need to honor, respect and love all our neighbors. In short, seeking the common good really means something. (Slight pause.)

In a direct way that brings us back to the events of 1776 and how the patriots of that era thought about freedom. I mentioned earlier the words about the equality with which we are endowed by a Creator, those unalienable rights— life, liberty, happiness.

In fact, with our Twenty-first Century mind set we tend to emphasize the autonomy this list implies. But I suspect the founders who wrote those words and even the folks here in Harpswell who first heard them might have had a different take.

That different take is illustrated among words we find at the end of our Declaration. (Quote:) “…for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor”— mutually pledge Lives, Fortunes, Sacred Honor.

In short, the members of the Continental Congress gathered in assembly and by extension the citizens of the states, the people here in Harpswell, relied on one another for mutual support. They sought the common good.

That sounds to me at least similar to the message Paul was trying to transmit. Loving your neighbor means seeking the common good, supporting your neighbor.

This brings us to once again the reality of both this Meeting House whose steps you crossed this morning and the newer structure dating from 1843 across the road. Since its founding this Congregational Church has meant being community and supporting community.

Indeed, the word congregation means an assembly of people. And the initial and first and real reason for this group of people to assemble was and it still is mutual support, community support, the common good.

I think that fact once again sends us to Paul’s words, since I think they comment on how mutual support, the common good, happens. (Quote:) “For freedom Christ has set us free.” So we need to (quote:) “Stand firm… do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Amen.

ENDPIECE: It is the practice of the Pastor to speak after the Closing Hymn, but before the Benediction. This is a précis of what was said: “As I said this earlier a basis of a Congregational church, the Kellogg Church, is community, mutual support, the common good, in this case the Kellogg Church and Harpswell. And indeed, in an email to the members just this week I said the pastor is not the church. Who is the church? To paraphrase our other founding document, we the people are the church. Let us as a community seek the common good. And yes, in order for us to be effective as we strive to enhance the common good there is one requirement. It’s the discipline we call love.”

BENEDICTION: May we love God so much, that we love nothing else too much. May we be so in awe of God, that we are in awe of no one else and nothing else. Amen.