What’s the difference between right and wrong? There are times when we don’t even think about it. We know what’s right and we know what’s wrong. It is always easier to think in terms of absolutes when a choice is at arms length – when it doesn’t directly affect us. It is much more complicated when we look close at hand. This is especially difficult when we raise children and we want to teach them right from wrong. We can write up a list pretty easily, but almost as soon as they can talk our children ask us, “Why?”

         It’s not always the rules that are the problem. It is the living and the doing that is difficult. We would have no trouble here listing all Ten Commandments. I’ll bet many of you could recite the greatest commandment as given by Jesus. We probably know the golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The trick is to live by that rule.

         When we first hear that rule we are apt to think of it in a negative way. Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want done to you. Don’t step on my foot because you wouldn’t want me to step on yours. Jesus urges us to think a little more positively. We should actively seek to live in such a way that we would want others to act towards us. We want to help our neighbors because we would want them to help us in time of need. This is just how Jesus describes the obedient and disobedient son in the parable. It is the one who worked that obeyed.

         Even here I think we limit the scope of what God wants for us. God wants us to do more than to be nice and kind. Jesus wants us to die. I know that this is not the most popular way to express what we believe. We come to church for comfort and strength. We hope to meet our friends and we want to be uplifted and inspired by our time together. We also come here to die.

         We are really longing for something different than what we know. As much as we seek help and support, we are really looking for a new world. We want a new heart and a new spirit. We want to live new life – eternal life – resurrected life. To get this we have to die first. The people of Israel had to put to death all the old definitions of themselves so that they could stop being slaves and become the children of God. The tax collectors and prostitutes had to repent and turn their hearts to enter into a new relationship with God (a new relationship to which the chief priests and elders were also being welcomed into.) When we baptize a child, we are declaring sacramental death so that we can also proclaim resurrection. The child dies in the waters of baptism so that they can be born again.

         We don’t use the language of death, but we are forever trading old expectations for new ones. If we look on an infant just before they are baptized we don’t see a dying soul, begging for new life. We don’t see loss or sin or failure. We see the future and our hearts are filled with hope.

         The child may look perfect in our eyes today. Tomorrow is different. We know the child will grow. We know the child will learn right from wrong and that he or she will often choose the wrong. The first time the child willingly chooses to do the wrong thing, it is a little death for the parents. They know that their perfect child is not perfect. This death of perfection is a blessing because it opens the deeper path of learning about why we choose the right thing and not the wrong. It is the first step in that child learning what it means to say that they are sorry and receive real forgiveness and be restored in a new way to their family.

         The day when that child tries to play baseball and can’t throw or catch, it may also be a little death for the parents. They discover that their child will not grow up to pitch for the Red Sox. That little death opens the way to discover the gifts that God is already growing in that young person. Some day the baby will grow up and go to his or her first prom. Maybe they have a great date and we hope the relationship blossoms, but the young couple breaks up. It is painful and there are many tears. The death of that relationship is the beginning of a new understanding of what it takes to be in relationship with another person. They learn for the first time that it is what they give that brings them closer to another, not what they can get out of another.

         In the letter to the Philippians, Paul is encouraging the church to continue in their sacrificial support of others. He reminds them that it is this emptying that leads to life. We often think it is the other way around. We think that if we surround ourselves with more and better stuff, our lives will be enriched. Jesus shows us that the true direction is completely opposite.

         Even though Jesus “was in the form of God, (he) did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

         As we raise our children and as we find our way we discover that we are not in an unending race to get more for ourselves. Our race is to give away as much as ourselves as we can while we can. The result is not the stress and anxiety over scarcity that mark our age. The result of giving ourselves to others is that we find life – and if we are lucky, we help others find life as well.

         Our call today is to teach the rules to those given into our care – and then to go beyond the rules. God wants more for us than to be merely good. God wants us to live. In the waters of baptism we have already died. The freedom to live our resurrection is at hand. Let us follow the tax collectors and prostitutes who have gone before us walking the way of the cross that leads to life.

          This weekend we celebrate our independence. Many of us have a day off – literal freedom. We may participate in patriotic events or watch fireworks. We might just stay home and take it easy. We think of freedom as the absence of restraint. We are free to do what we want. If we look back, even at our own history, we see that freedom requires as much as it allows. Charles Kingsley, an Anglican priest once said, “there are two freedoms – the false where a man is free to do what he likes; the true where a man is free to do what he ought.

         Very early in our nation’s history, the founding leaders learned that a declaration of freedom was only the first step in obtaining it. They began to wrestle with questions we have yet to answer. There is no pure freedom. We cannot preserve freedom without laws and institutions to protect it. Someone has to pay for it, and it will involve an agreed-upon infringement of freedom.

         We do not celebrate freedom from responsibility. To be free we must be ready to protect the weak. We have to set aside our personal desires to support the greater needs of the whole community.

         Jesus offers us an easy yoke. He is approached by the disciples of John who asked if he were the messiah. Jesus is reflecting on the ministry of John with the crowd. He realizes that they did not accept the message of John or of Jesus. They are like children singing songs in the marketplace. John had a serious tune and they called him crazy. Jesus played a joyful tune and they called him a drunk. Both John and Jesus offered a new way of living a life with God. The old way of following an ever-growing list of laws, as interpreted by a religious aristocracy, had become a yoke that was too heavy to bear.

         Jesus, the carpenter, knew how to make a good yoke. He knew how to fit a yoke to an animal so that its burden would be easier to bear. Jesus offers us a new yoke – but it’s still a yoke. We would like to throw off our burdens. Jesus wants us to bear a different one.

         Paul (in the letter to the Romans) wrestles with his own inability to live the way he knows he should live. Paul knows that the law (the teachings and traditions) is true. The very fact that he can’t obey all the law proves that the law is good but powerless to help him. It’s not enough to know right from wrong. There is only freedom when we can choose right from wrong. Paul continues using imagery from the world of slavery that was common in the Roman world. No one can free a slave but the slaves’ master. Who frees Paul? Jesus is Paul’s new master who can free him from the body of death – the endless cycle of wanting one thing and doing another.

         I think that this is the yoke that Jesus offers us. It is not easy in the sense that it is without weight or difficulty. The burden we may be called to bear may seem impossible. For many who hear this, the yoke is the cross. Christians die because of their faith. Jesus doesn’t say it is easy, but that it is easy to bear.

         We know this in all the choices of our lives. Whenever we act to please others or live our lives according to someone else’s plan, we are burdened and crushed. Life becomes drudgery. If we ever have the freedom to choose what we will do, especially in order to help the people we love, then that burden is much lighter. If I become a lawyer because my father wants me to be a lawyer, then I will be miserable and unhappy no matter how much money I make. If I become a teacher because I love to teach, or a parent because I love children, then I will accept all sorts of sacrifice to do the thing I love for the people I love.

         This is that sort of burden. Jesus calls us to take something on. We are called to set aside all the baggage we think we ought to carry. We are invited to let go of all the cultural expectations that we think we ought to do and take on instead the burden of following him. It is not easy. It will cost us time and money. We will set aside prestige and power in order to become servants. We will have fewer things and more people will have a legitimate claim on our attention and our resources. We may be more bound but we will be more free.

         As we celebrate our independence, it is good to think about why we are free. We are free to do the good that God desires of us. We are free to set aside our own needs to serve the legitimate needs of others. We are free to stop thinking about our own ego and become willing servants of God. In doing so we not only serve others, we let go of burdens that have never helped us in the past. As we become more and more the servants of God, we become more free in our spirits. The more we are bound to God the more free we become, until we are truly free and at peace.