I was teaching last night at the Lenten Soup Supper and I used this story from the news as an analogy for the Christian experience:

On August 27, 2009, law enforcement officers rescued Jaycee Dugard and her two children from captivity in which she had been living for 18 years. Jaycee, a blond blue-eyed eleven year-old was abducted from the streets in her home town in 1991. For eighteen years whe was a captive, living in subjection to her exploiter, and kept for the last few years in a backyard enclosure which was sealed off from society. Law Enforcement became aware of her siuation and set her free.

There are many ways that the Scriptures talk about what Jesus did for us on the cross and through the resurrection. The many different analogies are like different photos of the same event. One of the ideas used is “release from bondage/captivity.” In the life and death of Jesus, Christians believe that they have been released from some kind of captivity. Jaycee’s story illustrates what the Scriptures are talking about.

Humans have been captured. or abducted by an unlawful exploiter. He has kept us in bondage from our true life. In other words, whatever plans Jaycee and her parents had for her life at age eleven were destroyed by this evil man. In the same way, whatever plans God had for we humans was destroyed by the evil in the world that captured and held us. For humans who have not been set free from their captivity, they are unable to live the life that God designed for them. They are kept in a “backyard enclosure,” subjected to evil, and their life has been distorted and compromised. Easter is equivalent to Law Enforcement setting Jaycee free. We used to sing in the church I grew up in, “I’m so glad that Jesus set me free.”  He has broken the captivity in which we were held, released us into new life, and has restored us to relationship with the Father – like in the prodigal son story.

Christians believe that we are set free at our Baptism. (Again, there are many ways to describe what happens at Baptism…) We are released from the bondage and captivity that prevented us from living the life that God intended for us. That is the Good News, the Gospel.

But think about this. Once Jaycee was set free, her problems weren’t over. In fact, in someways they have just begun. She has to learn how to live in the real world that she has not lived in for eighteen years. She has to reconnect with her birth family, she has to learn to associate with her parents as an adult women, she has to learn to act on her own, and be responsible for herself, and learn to parent her two children in the outside world. And she must do all of this while the legal processes and court trials are going on.  There will be other people who will want to exploit her in different ways. The media will want her story, and the curious will seek to know her, and in the midst of all of that she will have to go through all of the psychological re-adjustment, and learn to live as a free women, both internally and externally.

Christians are just like the story. Once we are set free by the life and death of Jesus, we must learn to live as free people in God’s Kingdom. There is lots of adjustment, both internally and externally in our lives as we learn to walk in new ways. Disicpleship, or apprenticeship, is learning to live after we have been set free.

I’m so glad that Jesus set me free. Glory, Hallelujah, Jesus set me free.