Independence Day

In Jesus’ inaugural address (his first public appearance where someone took notes), he chose to introduce himself like this:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
for he has appointed me to preach Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim
that captives will be released,
that the blind will see,
that the downtrodden will be freed from their oppressors,
and that the time of the Lord's favor has come.”
Luke 4:18-19 NLT

Jesus consistently set people free:

“Wasn't it necessary for me, even on the Sabbath day, to free this dear woman from the bondage in which Satan has held her for eighteen years?” Luke 13:16 NLT

And no doubt you know that God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. Then Jesus went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the Devil, for God was with him. Acts 10:38 NLT

Freedom is one of God’s core values. Bringing release from any kind of oppression. This is why our myths, legends and stories abound with tales of breaking dark power so liberty can flow once again. It’s who we are. It’s who He is.

Often it’s the frail and nondescript who do the breaking. A middle-aged hobbit with no history of adventure, sent with three bumbling companions against an evil more powerful than comprehension. They’ve got a snowflake’s chance in Mordor. Four children sent to melt an ice age of cruelty, and sent again to overthrow a despot. How laughable. As Trumpkin put it, “I suppose I’d better go back to King Caspian and tell him no help has come.”

Real-life stories also have unlikely heroes. A stuttering octogenarian, reluctantly dragged from the back side of nowhere to herd people instead of sheep. A little brother comes to bring lunch, then stays to bring down the enemy’s ace. Corrie ten Boom, a 60-something tea-drinking spinster, fond of embroidery and playing cards, finds herself in a more dangerous game of underground resistance, hiding Jews from Nazis.

They’re not who we would have chosen. Or how we would have chosen. But liberation happened in spite of our wildest disbelief.

Ultimately, a covert operation. An invasion of one. A baby, born into a kingdom oppressed by an empire’s taxing grip. Thirty-three years later, the coup de grace: one man’s death, unimaginably brutal.

And, we would have thought, unimaginably futile.

This is your idea of setting at liberty those who are oppressed? I’m supposed to find healing from cancer, in 2006, somehow related to the fact that in AD33 or thereabouts, your back was ripped to bloody dangling shreds of flesh?? You have got to be kidding.

Who would have thought God's saving power would look like this?

But this is how the stories go. Those who believe the unbelievable, see unbelievable results.

To me, that is the value of our core legends. It’s easier for me to believe in the myths of Aragorn, of Matthias the Warrior Mouse who saves Redwall Abbey, than to believe in what could happen in my own story.

I need to remember whose idea liberty is, and believe He wants me free, too.

That’s worth shooting off fireworks about.