As Americans we value freedom. Our country is built on it. And in a little over a week, we will make some choices we hope will preserve that freedom.

Our political freedom is important to us, but we hardly know what it would be like if we didn't have it. It would be hard to imagine it. Would we know if it were slipped away from us little by little?

What about spiritual freedom? We may not make as big of a deal about this as we do our political freedom, but it should be even more valuable to us. Political freedom affects our life in this world. Spiritual freedom affects life here in time and forever in eternity. As a result, it would seem like it would be easy to know if you didn't have it. But just a second ago, I said we wouldn't know what it would be like to not have freedom in our country. At the same time, if we were born without it, we wouldn't know what we were missing.

Kids nowadays are shocked to find out their parents didn't have cell phones and I-pods or DVD players in the van. Hey, we didn't even have DVD players. When we were growing up we might have had some video games, but I remember Atari's pong-and that was new. A friend's family got a personal computer. This was cutting edge. Wow! They have a computer. Now, our kids and grandkids look at us and say, "How did you ever survive?" Some of you spent your childhood without indoor plumbing. How did we survive? How did we survive? We didn't know what we were missing.

How do you survive without freedom? If you don't know what it is, you don't miss it. You can't know that you don't have it, if you don't-which is exactly the case with the Jews Jesus is talking to. What do you mean, "freedom, Jesus?"

They knew he wasn't talking about political freedom. They didn't think they were slaves. But what was the situation in their day? The religious leaders had taken 10 commandments and expanded them into over 700. 700 something commandments to help them keep ten.

It sounds crazy. Keeping track of 10 is a lot easier than trying to keep track of 700. But they made them up to explain how to keep those ten. "You want to keep this particular commandment, here are the steps to do it." Here's the problem, they're providing these so they can keep them.

Isn't that what I just said? Yeah, I think I did.

They provide these extra commandments so people can keep the ten. And that's the problem. They are implying that people can actually keep them. "We have provided help for you by explaining these, and now you ought to be able to keep these."

Now, what is someone supposed to conclude when they are given helps to follow the rules? What are they likely to think when religious people, people representing God are telling them, "We want to help you keep these rules?" Is it to help them be good, loving people, helpful to others, or to keep the rules for the rules' sake? And why keep the rules? Isn't it because this is what God expects? Isn't that what people expect God to expect? Isn't that what we expect people to expect God to expect? Did you get that? To put it simply: God expects us to keep the rules.

Are they slaves? You bet! They are slaves to these rules. They are slaves to the expectation that God expects them to keep them. They felt God's demands, His pressures. And worse, He was a holy God who couldn't expect anything less than complete obedience, because he hated anything less than holiness.

Is this only the case for Jews of the 1st century? Hardly. This is the plight of all humanity. You and I are slaves like this from birth. We are born slaves. We are born not only with these expectations, but these pressures.

Do we know it? Not immediately. That's silly, we're babies. We don't realize those things for a while, but it starts coming to us early on and it's what we always revert to. We always revert to the expectation that God expects us to keep these rules. If we were to think about it more, we might become terrified, when we came to realize what are God's expectations, but generally we just expect God to expect us to keep His commandments. And we are right to expect it. Shoo!

Let's change our approach a little bit. We sang about this in two different hymns today. The first one, the hymn of the day said it like this: From sin our flesh could not abstain, sin held its sway unceasing. The task was useless and in vain, our guilt was ever increasing. The next hymn in the hymnal says the same thing with different words, "Fast bound in Satan's chains I lay… These lines sound like they are describing slavery. These are Satan's chains because he's the one who lead our first parents to put these chains on, and every generation has those chains.

O.K. These hymns can be a little heavy. There is some rich theology in there, but maybe a little too rich for some of us. So, how about a children's hymn, one that is commonly heard at Christmas. "I was in slavery…" Can you believe it? Have you ever noticed it? The same truth is described in a children's song. The adult one just describes it further, because it knows adults can handle it, but it's the same truth. We are born slaves and we remain slaves until Jesus sets us free.

Indeed, that is what Jesus has done. You may have been born in slavery, but you have been reborn a freeman. Jesus has set you free by His death, His payment. It is right to expect God to expect you to keep the commandments. In fact, it is right to see that He expects you to keep them perfectly. It's even O.K. to see that He expects it, because although we can't do it, we don't have to anymore. Jesus has done it for you. Both hymns go on to talk about it. That is what is so bad about these religious leaders. They didn't point to them being kept, they pointed to everyone keeping them.

Like Jesus said, "If the Son sets you free, you are free indeed." You are no longer slaves. We sing about our former condition, so we recognize what we have been freed from, so we see what God has done.

Unfortunately, those Jews did not realize what Jesus was talking about. They believed He was the Messiah, God's Sent One, but they didn't realize how great it was that He was here. After the Pentecost, they did. That was when the Holy Spirit brought them to realize what Jesus was all about. Yes, they really were free. They had been slaves, but now they were not anymore, and they had the rest of their lives to discover what this freedom meant.

They had to watch closely that they didn't slip back into the slavery, though. Isn't that a concern with every election? We don't want to be enslaved by anything. We have to watch so closely, to make sure something doesn't slip our freedom away. It's the same way with religion.

Paul was watching this very closely. He knew human nature and its tendency to revert back to slavery, and he saw it happening with his congregations. He tangled with some religious leaders who were talking to the Christians in the Galatian area, who were telling them that their inclinations were right. These Christians thought that they would still have to try to keep the Law even though Jesus has saved them. And these leaders were saying, "Go with your hunch, run with this, it's right. Doesn't it feel right? Don't let Paul enslave you with his teachings." And Paul was so insistent, so firm, so unyielding to their innovations, that it looked like they were right, that he was the one that was keeping them enslaved. But he knew.

In fact, history bears it out. When people like Paul and the pastors who followed him stopped watching, slavery crept back. It comes either by considering this freedom, license, license to sin or by letting the Law back in the place it wants to be. Either way, by the time Luther came around, it was full-fledged slavery again. The people were afraid of God. The Father was seen as a harsh task master, and Jesus wasn't any better. They were aware they had to follow the commandments, but didn't realize it had been done for them. The good news of the Gospel was buried. In its place, the Church spoke of rules that pleased God, like going to church and witnessing the mass being celebrated, buying masses for the dead to shorten their time in purgatory, pilgrimages which were supposed to make a person more holy, and of course, indulgences, the forgiveness you could buy. All they heard what was they were supposed to do.

Along came some preachers with messages that seemed extremely radical. God has forgiven them in Christ. The Law has been fulfilled by Christ. God is actually loving. They didn't realize how oppressed they were, but they knew if this was true, it would be life itself. People flocked to these churches, and despite the threats on their life, they held to these newly discovered doctrines. The freedom they had found in the Gospel was worth dying for. Even if they couldn't enjoy it, even if they were killed for it, they would know the Gospel would be given free course, and others would enjoy the freedom the Lord wanted His people to have.

The freedom they preached then, is still here. We still have it in the Lutheran church. In fact, you have it. Does it feel like freedom? Sometimes it doesn't feel like it because you haven't known what it's like to not have it. It's there, though, in all that God has done for you, all that He gives you.

Your baptism sets you free from the fear of not being saved. Your baptism sets you free from the fear that you need to keep all the commandments. Your baptism tells you God has freely paid the price for your disobedience. Your baptism tells you that Jesus' death was done for you. The Lord's Supper tells you that God actually became flesh and blood, and that He wants His people to receive it regularly. The Lord's Supper says this is forgiveness for you individually, as the Lord's flesh and blood goes into your body. It tells you that God actually comes into our presence. The Absolution is the free pronunciation of forgiveness, no strings attached. This is freedom.

Don't ever turn away from these things. This is all God's work. The Word and the sacraments, that is God giving to you. This is the heart of your freedom. Perhaps it might sound like Law by saying don't ever turn away from these. But when you do turn away, when you make something else the main point of your worship, then, by default, it has to be what you are doing. What you are feeling, how you are responding. That is Law.

Placing a hungry person in front of a table full of food and telling him to eat freely, is not Law. No, he is hungry. He may not even wait for the invitation. But telling him he better be grateful, telling him he better enjoy the food, telling him to be sure to show his gratitude to the host of the meal, ruins the experience.

What we are doing here, what Jesus was talking about, and what Martin Luther and the other reformers rediscovered is all about spreading that feast so the people of God can eat. It's setting people free who are bound in chains. This is what you have. It is setting you free. Don't say, "Yeah, but it doesn't feel like a feast; it doesn't feel like freedom," because when you do that, you are no longer focusing on the feast, on the freedom, but on your reactions to it. You will lose exactly what you are looking for.

It really should be no wonder, then, that people coming from churches that don't have the Word and Sacraments, are thrilled to find what you have. They have known what it's like to be without the freedom. They do not want to go back. I'm not saying they weren't Christian. Nor am I saying they were not devout or really committed. I'm just saying they didn't know what they were missing until they came to a church that focuses on God's gifts. They begin to discover the freedom Jesus had been talking about.

We have people, converts to Lutheranism in our congregation who could tell you this, and I have heard it repeated in many others. One guy I just met this weekend. He was a host on an evangelical radio station, but he was looking around for spiritual relief. He met a Lutheran who directed him to a church that kept the gifts of God central. He was nervous, though, because he had heard about others like him who worshiped at a Lutheran church and knew they were home, and he was afraid it may not go that way.

He bit the bullet, though, and finally decided to go. It was exactly what he was hoping. He wrote in an e-mail, all excited, "Now all I have is confirmation, communion and I'm a member!"

It doesn't happen in everyone's case like this. Sometimes people don't realize the oppression, because it may be subtle, or they just didn't feel the pressure others have felt, not really hearing what the law demands. But when the Holy Spirit convinces them that God is not joking, that He created humans to be perfect and expects nothing less from us, when they realize they have lost the joy of salvation because they have had conditions placed on their salvation, then the freedom Christ brings is cherished above all. That is the freedom Jesus was talking about, the freedom you have been given.

AMEN