Lectionary blog for May 6
The Sixth Sunday of Easter
Acts 10:44-48; Psalm 98;
John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17

Writing in USA Today (May 8, 2006), Presbyterian Pastor Henry G. Brinton made a helpful “two kinds of Christians” argument. Or rather, he argued that each of us carries two, often contradictory, religious impulses—one is obligation-keeping, the other is liberation-seeking.

I have found this a helpful tool for thinking about my faith. I have begun to ask myself: “Which of my religious notions is based in obligation-keeping and which are rooted in liberation-seeking?”

Pro-life or pro-choice, peace activist or military defender, capitalism or socialism, science and/or religion—which impulse rules in which area?

Our Scripture lessons invite thought on this question. In I John and John’s Gospel, we hear a lot about obligation-keeping, “I command” and “Obey his commandments” and “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”

On the other hand, the story in Acts is all about liberation. Peter is liberated from an exclusivist attitude toward the gentiles’ need to follow certain rules and regulations in order to be accepted by God. And the gentile believers are liberated from a potentially very uncomfortable surgical procedure and other lifestyle restrictions. Peter and his friends also discover how freely God pours out the Spirit on whomever God chooses, strangely ignoring us and our notions of whom God should bless and love.

Peter verbalizes his understanding of this shift from obligation-keeping to liberation-seeking when he turns to his friends and asks, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” (Acts 10:47).

The tricky thing is balancing somewhere on the tightrope between obligation keeping and liberation seeking.

Most of us know that pure obligation-keeping religion leads to an oppressive, stifling, regimented legalism that creates communities of faith with blinders on, unable and unwilling to respond either to the world or to God’s new movements of the spirit.

On the other hand, pure liberation-seeking leads to “tossing to and fro and blown about on every wind of doctrine,” (Ephesians 4:14) seeking the next new thing (whatever it may be) that will turn us loose from whatever restriction we currently feel oppressed by.

When I was in college, I was what I now jokingly call a Metho-Bap-Terian, a generic mainline Protestant with a toe in several churches and my heart and commitment in none.

Feeling called to ministry, but not knowing which denomination to align with, I went to my religion professor for help. He didn’t give me an answer—but he did give me a tool for thinking. (Good professor, right?)

He told me that almost any decision in life is about finding a balance between two equally valuable things: freedom and security. The freer you are, the less security you have and vice versa.

Often we try to increase our feelings of security with God by trying to restrict both our freedom and God’s. We try to draw clear and unbreakable lines between what’s OK and what’s not OK, between who’s in and who’s out, even between what God can and cannot do.

And it is very scary to embrace the freedom that comes with realizing that those lines are fuzzier than we thought, and that God, being God, is free to do as God pleases and to love whom God loves whether we like it or not.


We try to draw clear and unbreakable lines between what’s OK and what’s not OK,  between who’s in and who’s out, even between what God can and cannot do.


In his Preface to the Old Testament, Martin Luther had this to say: “Therefore faith and love are always to be the mistresses of the law and to have all laws in their power. For since all laws aim at faith and love, none of them can be valid, or be a law, if it conflicts with faith or love.”

My Sunday school-teaching mama told me once that Jesus had to command us to love one another because, all too often, love is not easy. If love were easy, no commands, no orders, would be necessary. As it is, there are times when we need the command to love so that we will continue to behave in loving ways, even when we don’t feel like it.

G.K. Chesterton said, “In one place in the Bible Jesus told us to love our neighbors. In another place, he told us to love our enemies. This is because, generally speaking, they are the same people.” Again, the command is very, very clear because the task is very, very hard.

So, what is it that the gospel calls us to today? Some of us may need to think about establishing a few guidelines, obligations to keep, for our lives. A little discipline never hurt anybody. Think of it as diet and exercise for the soul.

But most of us need to think carefully about, and then change, whatever attitudes and behaviors we are carrying around that may protect our own security but which also hamper the freedom of others, restrict our freedom to love them.

It is said that during the early days of the Reformation someone insisted to Luther that the “obligation” to go to confession and to attend Mass every week needed to be retained. “If we don’t require it, they won’t do it.” Luther replied, “Well, that is just the risk we will have to take for the freedom of the gospel.”

The question for us today is this, “What risk are we called to make for love of God and neighbor, for the freedom of the gospel?”

Amen and amen.

Delmer Chilton
Delmer Chilton is originally from North Carolina and received his education at the University of North Carolina, Duke Divinity School and the Graduate Theological Foundation. He received his Lutheran training at the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary in Columbia, S.C. Ordained in 1977, Delmer has served parishes in North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee.

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