The Insulting Bonds
Sermon
An Idle Tale Becomes Good News
Messages On Lent And Easter Themes
A part of Jesus' mission was "to proclaim release to the captives" (Luke 4:18), yet there came a time when he himself was made a captive. They "arrested Jesus and bound him."
Hands were required to do this, and other hands were put to different uses that night. The chief priests counted out money with their hands. Judas Iscariot held out his hands to receive that money. Peter warmed his hands at the fires of those who were disposing of Jesus. The other disciples wrung their hands in fear and desperation. Pilate washed his hands in a vain attempt to escape guilt. But Jesus' hands were bound, tied to secure him as a prisoner, to insure that he did not escape.
It is ironic that "a crowd with swords and clubs" came to arrest Jesus (Mark 14:43), and that in the darkness of the night and the loneliness of an olive grove. Jesus himself was struck by the absurdity of this. It represented a gross misunderstanding of the kind of person he was and of the purpose that guided him. Then still another indignity was added when they got out their ropes and tied his hands. They were not going to risk any attempts on his part to resist arrest or to inflict injury or to escape from them.
Such action was an affront to Jesus. He was gentle and kind, thoughtful and loving, and here they were, treating him like a common criminal. What an insult! There was nothing distinctive about the appearance of those bonds, but the innocence and purity of the man they bound have made them infamous. They were insulting bonds!
The Captivity They Did Not Bring
They were intended to insure Jesus' captivity, but there was a kind of captivity they did not bring to him. For instance, they did not bring the captivity of harmful habits.
The ancient historian Plutarch, in writing about the ninth century B.C. Spartan ruler and lawgiver, Lycurgus, tells of his concern to exclude any persons or practices he felt would not be beneficial to his people. Plutarch says, "He was as careful to save his city from the infection of foreign bad habits as men usually are to prevent the introduction of a pestilence."1 What wisdom!
In more recent times, writer F. Scott Fitzgerald had this same kind of concern for his daughter as she was growing up. In a letter to her, he acknowledged his worry about her smoking and some of her other activities. He promised her more privileges when she was a little older, but said, "I don't want them to become habits that will turn and devour you."2
Habits have a way of doing that, and if they are harmful habits the bondage is debilitating and destructive. But Jesus knew no such bondage as that. His hands were tied, but the bonds of harmful habit were not wrapped around his life.
Neither did he experience the captivity of enslaving attitudes, such as the prejudice that controlled some of those who plotted his capture in the Garden of Gethsemane that night. Charles Lamb, the English essayist and India House clerk, is said to have acknowledged, "I am, in plainer words, a bundle of prejudices, made up of likings and dislikings." Jesus, too, had his "likings and dislikings," but he was never guilty of "pre-judging" without regard to the true facts.
Maya Angelou says, "Prejudice is a burden which confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible."3 What if Jesus had been bound by that? But he was not. His captors bound him, but that captivity did not bring the bondage of prejudice -- or hatred or fear or envy. More than a few in our day find themselves imprisoned by such spirits as these, but Jesus never did.
He never knew the bondage of crowd pressure either. He had plenty of such pressure, but he never succumbed to it. He had the strength and courage "to keep the world," in Robert Frost's words, "from hurrying and crowding him too much."4 He was his own person, unswayed by the pressures of the crowd. He moved with purpose, independent of the push and pull of those who surrounded him.
Jesus could have taken a vote among his disciples to decide whether or not he should go to Jerusalem that last time, but he didn't. Neither did he ask them, there in the Garden of Gethsemane, if they thought he ought to slip over the Mount of Olives and away from Jerusalem. His conduct was never determined by what others might think of him. He never toned his message down in the face of conflict and opposition.
When Karl Barth was beginning his revolt against theological liberalism in the first quarter of the twentieth century, he wrote to a friend: "I read today a statement by Chr. Schrempf: whoever swims against the stream cannot do it arm in arm with others."5 It is all right to be "arm in arm with others" when you can do it with integrity, but Jesus would not sacrifice principle for popularity nor conscience for conformity. So he was taken and bound, but he never knew the captivity of crowd pressure.
Augustine prayed to be loosed "from the chains which we made for ourselves."6 We do tie ourselves with all kinds of chains -- the chains of harmful habits and enslaving attitudes and the desire for ease and affirmation and approval of others. These are real bonds, but they were never about Jesus' life. His enemies seized him and bound him, but he was not bound by such things as these.
The Freedom They Did Not Affect
This means then that he knew a freedom those bonds could not affect.
Henri Nouwen was writing to his nephew in the Netherlands about spiritual freedom. He mentioned several persons, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who had known that freedom in spite of bodily imprisonment, and said: "Amid the most frightful forms of oppression and violence these people discovered within themselves a place where no one had power over them, where they were wholly free."7 Jesus knew that kind of freedom, and it was not disturbed by the bonds that made him a prisoner.
Jesus' freedom was an inner freedom, a freedom of the spirit. This is not a freedom that is attained by shaking off all restrictions and ignoring all limitations. Real freedom is not the looseness some think it to be. To be free is not just a negative condition; it has its positive side, too. One is not simply free from, one is also free for.
Jesus was free to love; he was free to forgive; he was free to serve; he was free to respond to God, to commune with God. And the reason was that he had a kind of enslavement that freed him from all other enslavements.
C. S. Lewis wrote once about a time in his life when he had a deep-seated hatred of authority. No word in his vocabulary expressed deeper hatred than the word "interference," and he thought of Christ as the Great Interferer. He wanted some place in the innermost depth of his soul which he could surround with a barbed wire fence and guard with a "No Admittance" sign.8 Lewis was right in seeing that a Christian can have no such place or sign. Christ himself had nothing like that in his life. God was the supreme authority in his life, and that is the kind of authority we need in our lives, too.
But the wonderful thing is that when we begin to give Christ such authority, we begin also to experience a quality of freedom that is finer than any we have ever known before. New Testament scholar John Knox said, "We are bound till he lays his strong hand on us and poor till he claims all we have."9
A song that was popular some years ago begins: "I wish I knew how it would feel to be free; I wish I could break all these chains holding me."10
Some people are chained by habits they have formed, some by attitudes they have developed, some by pressures others exert upon them. In a more positive vein, some are bound by commitments they have made or ideals they have embraced. A biographer of President Herbert Hoover, writing about his grinding, self-lacerating labor, said: "No galley slave of old was ever more firmly riveted to his drudgery, for he was chained by his surpassing sense of duty."11 There is much to be said for that kind of bondage, but even some of these may wonder "how it would feel to be free."
The cry for freedom is a loud cry today. It is a political cry and also a very personal cry. But unfortunately not everyone understands what genuine freedom is. Too many are interested only in being loose. The freedom Christ had in the midst of his bonds was an inner freedom, a spiritual freedom, and it came from disciplined commitment and obedience to God. He was free because of the Master he had, and those man-made bonds could not affect that freedom.
That is the freedom we need, and we will have it when Christ becomes truly the Master of our lives. Then we can sing that we know how it feels to be free, because Christ breaks "all these chains holding me."12
____________
1. Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, Great Books of the Western World edition (Chicago, London, Toronto, Geneva: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952), Vol. 14, p. 46.
2. Andrew Turnbull, editor, F. Scott Fitzgerald: Letters to His Daughter (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1963, 1965), p. 27.
3. Maya Angelou, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (New York: Random House, Vintage Books Edition, 1986, 1987), p. 154.
4. Edward Connery Lathem, editor, Interviews with Robert Frost (New York, Chicago, San Francisco: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), p. 135.
5. Karl Barth and Eduard Thurneysen, Revolutionary Theology in the Making, translated by James D. Smart (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1964), p. 111.
6. Augustine, The Confessions, Great Books of the Western World edition (Chicago, London, Toronto, Geneva: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952), Vol. 18, p. 17.
7. Henri J. M. Nouwen, Letters to Marc About Jesus, translated by Hubert Hoskins (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987, 1988), p. 17.
8. C. S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1955), p. 172.
9. John Knox, A Glory In It All (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1985), p. 43.
10. Billy Taylor and Dick Dallas, I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free, copyright 1964 and 1968 by Duane Music, Inc.
11. Eugene Lyons, Herbert Hoover: A Biography (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1964), p. 218.
12. Taylor and Dallas, op. cit.
Hands were required to do this, and other hands were put to different uses that night. The chief priests counted out money with their hands. Judas Iscariot held out his hands to receive that money. Peter warmed his hands at the fires of those who were disposing of Jesus. The other disciples wrung their hands in fear and desperation. Pilate washed his hands in a vain attempt to escape guilt. But Jesus' hands were bound, tied to secure him as a prisoner, to insure that he did not escape.
It is ironic that "a crowd with swords and clubs" came to arrest Jesus (Mark 14:43), and that in the darkness of the night and the loneliness of an olive grove. Jesus himself was struck by the absurdity of this. It represented a gross misunderstanding of the kind of person he was and of the purpose that guided him. Then still another indignity was added when they got out their ropes and tied his hands. They were not going to risk any attempts on his part to resist arrest or to inflict injury or to escape from them.
Such action was an affront to Jesus. He was gentle and kind, thoughtful and loving, and here they were, treating him like a common criminal. What an insult! There was nothing distinctive about the appearance of those bonds, but the innocence and purity of the man they bound have made them infamous. They were insulting bonds!
The Captivity They Did Not Bring
They were intended to insure Jesus' captivity, but there was a kind of captivity they did not bring to him. For instance, they did not bring the captivity of harmful habits.
The ancient historian Plutarch, in writing about the ninth century B.C. Spartan ruler and lawgiver, Lycurgus, tells of his concern to exclude any persons or practices he felt would not be beneficial to his people. Plutarch says, "He was as careful to save his city from the infection of foreign bad habits as men usually are to prevent the introduction of a pestilence."1 What wisdom!
In more recent times, writer F. Scott Fitzgerald had this same kind of concern for his daughter as she was growing up. In a letter to her, he acknowledged his worry about her smoking and some of her other activities. He promised her more privileges when she was a little older, but said, "I don't want them to become habits that will turn and devour you."2
Habits have a way of doing that, and if they are harmful habits the bondage is debilitating and destructive. But Jesus knew no such bondage as that. His hands were tied, but the bonds of harmful habit were not wrapped around his life.
Neither did he experience the captivity of enslaving attitudes, such as the prejudice that controlled some of those who plotted his capture in the Garden of Gethsemane that night. Charles Lamb, the English essayist and India House clerk, is said to have acknowledged, "I am, in plainer words, a bundle of prejudices, made up of likings and dislikings." Jesus, too, had his "likings and dislikings," but he was never guilty of "pre-judging" without regard to the true facts.
Maya Angelou says, "Prejudice is a burden which confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible."3 What if Jesus had been bound by that? But he was not. His captors bound him, but that captivity did not bring the bondage of prejudice -- or hatred or fear or envy. More than a few in our day find themselves imprisoned by such spirits as these, but Jesus never did.
He never knew the bondage of crowd pressure either. He had plenty of such pressure, but he never succumbed to it. He had the strength and courage "to keep the world," in Robert Frost's words, "from hurrying and crowding him too much."4 He was his own person, unswayed by the pressures of the crowd. He moved with purpose, independent of the push and pull of those who surrounded him.
Jesus could have taken a vote among his disciples to decide whether or not he should go to Jerusalem that last time, but he didn't. Neither did he ask them, there in the Garden of Gethsemane, if they thought he ought to slip over the Mount of Olives and away from Jerusalem. His conduct was never determined by what others might think of him. He never toned his message down in the face of conflict and opposition.
When Karl Barth was beginning his revolt against theological liberalism in the first quarter of the twentieth century, he wrote to a friend: "I read today a statement by Chr. Schrempf: whoever swims against the stream cannot do it arm in arm with others."5 It is all right to be "arm in arm with others" when you can do it with integrity, but Jesus would not sacrifice principle for popularity nor conscience for conformity. So he was taken and bound, but he never knew the captivity of crowd pressure.
Augustine prayed to be loosed "from the chains which we made for ourselves."6 We do tie ourselves with all kinds of chains -- the chains of harmful habits and enslaving attitudes and the desire for ease and affirmation and approval of others. These are real bonds, but they were never about Jesus' life. His enemies seized him and bound him, but he was not bound by such things as these.
The Freedom They Did Not Affect
This means then that he knew a freedom those bonds could not affect.
Henri Nouwen was writing to his nephew in the Netherlands about spiritual freedom. He mentioned several persons, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who had known that freedom in spite of bodily imprisonment, and said: "Amid the most frightful forms of oppression and violence these people discovered within themselves a place where no one had power over them, where they were wholly free."7 Jesus knew that kind of freedom, and it was not disturbed by the bonds that made him a prisoner.
Jesus' freedom was an inner freedom, a freedom of the spirit. This is not a freedom that is attained by shaking off all restrictions and ignoring all limitations. Real freedom is not the looseness some think it to be. To be free is not just a negative condition; it has its positive side, too. One is not simply free from, one is also free for.
Jesus was free to love; he was free to forgive; he was free to serve; he was free to respond to God, to commune with God. And the reason was that he had a kind of enslavement that freed him from all other enslavements.
C. S. Lewis wrote once about a time in his life when he had a deep-seated hatred of authority. No word in his vocabulary expressed deeper hatred than the word "interference," and he thought of Christ as the Great Interferer. He wanted some place in the innermost depth of his soul which he could surround with a barbed wire fence and guard with a "No Admittance" sign.8 Lewis was right in seeing that a Christian can have no such place or sign. Christ himself had nothing like that in his life. God was the supreme authority in his life, and that is the kind of authority we need in our lives, too.
But the wonderful thing is that when we begin to give Christ such authority, we begin also to experience a quality of freedom that is finer than any we have ever known before. New Testament scholar John Knox said, "We are bound till he lays his strong hand on us and poor till he claims all we have."9
A song that was popular some years ago begins: "I wish I knew how it would feel to be free; I wish I could break all these chains holding me."10
Some people are chained by habits they have formed, some by attitudes they have developed, some by pressures others exert upon them. In a more positive vein, some are bound by commitments they have made or ideals they have embraced. A biographer of President Herbert Hoover, writing about his grinding, self-lacerating labor, said: "No galley slave of old was ever more firmly riveted to his drudgery, for he was chained by his surpassing sense of duty."11 There is much to be said for that kind of bondage, but even some of these may wonder "how it would feel to be free."
The cry for freedom is a loud cry today. It is a political cry and also a very personal cry. But unfortunately not everyone understands what genuine freedom is. Too many are interested only in being loose. The freedom Christ had in the midst of his bonds was an inner freedom, a spiritual freedom, and it came from disciplined commitment and obedience to God. He was free because of the Master he had, and those man-made bonds could not affect that freedom.
That is the freedom we need, and we will have it when Christ becomes truly the Master of our lives. Then we can sing that we know how it feels to be free, because Christ breaks "all these chains holding me."12
____________
1. Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, Great Books of the Western World edition (Chicago, London, Toronto, Geneva: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952), Vol. 14, p. 46.
2. Andrew Turnbull, editor, F. Scott Fitzgerald: Letters to His Daughter (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1963, 1965), p. 27.
3. Maya Angelou, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (New York: Random House, Vintage Books Edition, 1986, 1987), p. 154.
4. Edward Connery Lathem, editor, Interviews with Robert Frost (New York, Chicago, San Francisco: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), p. 135.
5. Karl Barth and Eduard Thurneysen, Revolutionary Theology in the Making, translated by James D. Smart (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1964), p. 111.
6. Augustine, The Confessions, Great Books of the Western World edition (Chicago, London, Toronto, Geneva: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952), Vol. 18, p. 17.
7. Henri J. M. Nouwen, Letters to Marc About Jesus, translated by Hubert Hoskins (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987, 1988), p. 17.
8. C. S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1955), p. 172.
9. John Knox, A Glory In It All (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1985), p. 43.
10. Billy Taylor and Dick Dallas, I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free, copyright 1964 and 1968 by Duane Music, Inc.
11. Eugene Lyons, Herbert Hoover: A Biography (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1964), p. 218.
12. Taylor and Dallas, op. cit.
