Freedom

Texts:

Psalm 74

1 Samuel 16:14-23

Revelation 20:1-6

Last week was a hard week.  A parishioner to whom I felt very close died, and - at the same time as this, though not related - I encountered the most difficult situation I have seen since arriving on internship last September.  It was a week of few words and of clinging to Romans 8:26.  Alas, the time has come to pick up the pieces and to help usher life back to "normal."  

Speaking of "normal," the texts for today are not.  These are the texts sci-fi novels and movies are made of.  I think that there is a reason that Saul's evil spirit that departs when David plays the harp and the rising of those who had not apostasized to reign during a 1st (versus a 2nd) resurrection do not make their way into the Sunday lectionary.  I'm not sure the authors of these texts knew what to do with them, let alone those who can only surmise the thought world or situations which gave rise to these texts.

In the midst of texts that seem so outside our reality, so foreign, so unknowable, there is great promise:  "2 He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, 3 and threw him into the pit, and locked and sealed it over him, so that he would deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years were ended."  There is a promise that evil will be overcome and that it will no longer have power over us.  The good news is that we have already been freed from sin, from death, and from the power of the devil.  Living into that freedom is difficult when we have so many reminders of that which binds us.  Whatever binds us, Christ has bound himself to us.  In binding himself to us, we have been made free.  In having been made free, we have been given the courage to set others free as well.