FREEDOM---Where are YOU From?

"FREEDOM" ---Where Are YOU From?

To All the KING's Men,

Janis Joplin sang, "Freedom's just another word...for nothing left to lose..." Richie Havens just sang, "Freedom, Freedom." Maybe you can hear Mel shouting that same mantra dressed up like Willyum Wallace in "Braveheart." Martin Luther King, Jr. preached about it. People have lived and died over it. They have marched for it. They have sat down for it. They have gone to war for it. Some even came back from the battle zone to appreciate it. This weekend in America (AND ESPECIALLY THIS SUNDAY all around our synod) we celebrate it. Freedom. And, actually, Janis, it just is not another word...but I know you were singing Kris's song...

Bishop Rinehart has asked us to consider where we have come from to the land called the United States of America. As "sojourners" we all have roots even though it can be said of most of us that we are "not from around here..." yet some of us have been here a while...and there are still some who are coming to live in the USA. Have you given any thought lately to the freedom you have and what price your family paid to secure it? Here's my short story...

In my my family genealogy there are four main bloodlines... the Gigees, the Halls, the Wilsons, and the Schultzes. My mother's mother's family (Schultz) came to America around 1870. They came to build steel mills and my Great-Grandmother learned to walk on the boat coming from Mecklenberg, Germany to the USA. My mother's father's family (Hall) have been in the Carolinas as far back as the 1600's. They were farmers and later worked in textile mills. My father's mother's family (Wilson) has been around a long time in New York and my father's family (Gigee with a variety of spellings) owned land in NY before the Revolutionary War. They emigrated to the American colonies from England, Scotland and finally, Germany. They all ended up in Ohio. and one might say my roots, then, are deep in the American experiment. And then there was this Yankee boy from Ohio who came to Texas in 1972 and for all practical purposes...stayed...

P.S. That's also when I learned the difference between a "Yankee" and a "da*n Yankee."...just ask me...

So, how did you get here? How long ago? Was it just you? Your parents? Their parents? From where? Do you feel rooted? Do you feel displaced? What will you do with your freedom this season of your life? These are the kinds of questions that must be asked in from time to time... so, remember...that Abraham's (the Bible guy..not the president from Kentucky) father was a "wandering" Aramean... Joseph's brothers sojourned down to Egypt ... Moses led the 'hapiru' people out of slavery back to the land promised the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and that those who claim the name of Jesus seem to be always on the move...

Last thought...Jesus said, "if the Son makes you free; you are free indeed." Obviously, a freedom Jesus felt was worth dying for... AND Martin Luther made the great comment about the power our baptism and the identity we claim in it... "A Christian is a perfectly FREE lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject of all, subject to all." ...

And so we are... be God's servant...be a KING's man... you are free to choose...

One man @ a time; no man left behind,

Brian