It’s the story behind the story behind the story behind the story. The story is the success of the best-selling book and the runaway hit movie Seabiscuit. The story behind the story is the horse that beat all odds during the days of the Great Depression and gave vicarious hope to millions of Americans who were down on their own luck and on themselves. The story behind the story behind the story is the three men — the owner, the trainer, and the jockey — whose lives mirrored the horse in defeat and victory both. The story behind the story behind the story behind the story is the author of the book, Laura Hillenbrand, whose life also connects to Seabiscuit and the three men.

Hillenbrand emerges from obscurity with this book and movie to become a household name, which is remarkable because she hardly emerges from her house. For more than a decade the author has suffered from the debilitating effects of chronic fatigue syndrome, a disease stigmatized by many doctors as well as laypersons who don’t understand it. Her case of CFS is coupled with Vertigo, making it difficult for her to look down at a computer screen or read for very long.

In the midst of all this, Laura began to research the horse, and especially the jockey, Red Pollard. She “bonded” with him, she says, as she came to see their struggles as one. Before long she was identifying with the other characters as well, with their suffering and dreams. Says she: When I was writing, I became a storyteller, not an invalid. She felt that she was living in her subjects’ bodies, so much so that she forgot her own. When you do research like that, she says, You can kind of walk around in their body. [Dallas Morning News (1 Aug. 2003):1A, 14-15A.]

Picture the Apostle Paul writing to the church at Ephesus from his jail cell. He is a prisoner, but it’s not his physical imprisonment that defines him. I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, he writes. He is bound to Christ, in other words, more than he is bound to his chains.

Paul has just finished a theological flourish about how the church is a chosen community that manifests the inclusive and loving character of God, because it is formed in Christ. And now he is about to tell us how we ought to live as a result of that. But we would expect him to be celebrating true freedom in Christ, notwithstanding his bonds, and telling us to do the same. But Paul knows something we need to learn, especially as Americans: there is no such thing as freedom without a master.

Our country’s founding ideology is based on the idea that we should be able to live without a master and govern ourselves, rather than obeying a king. And that is based on the Enlightenment idea that every person is a free agent — in moral rather than sporting terms. We think we have a God-given right to do what we want without anyone telling us what to want. Our ideal of a free person matches our ideal of a free country — independent, self-sufficient. A free person is one who has enough money and power never even to have to have contact with anyone else unless we choose to. But that is not how we are made, and it is not what we are made for. Maybe Howard Hughes was the closest thing to America’s ideal of the free man, but the reclusive billionaire grew into a bizarre human figure who died in isolation, a miserable man.

Frederick Buechner puts the matter well:A man has freedom to the degree that the master whom he obeys grants it to him in return for his obedience. He does well to choose a master in terms of how much freedom he gets for how much obedience. And this is true. You are free as an American only so long as you obey the laws of the land. You are free to satisfy your appetites unless they turn into addictions and enslave you, in which case you are no longer free. [Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (Harper & Row, 1973), pp. 29-30.]

So how can Christ make us free? Paul says that when Christ ascended to heaven he made captivity itself captive. It’s a kind of double negative that turns into a positive. Like “Nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee.” I guarantee you I don’t not like it, don’t you know?! Well, Christ entered into the bonds of a slave himself in order to undermine slavery itself, which otherwise gives nothing but death in return. Like multiplying two negative numbers and getting a positive, the Lord of life allowed himself to die in order that all the dying would live. Christ lives to give freedom to all who would live in his body. The power of his resurrection can be known even now in the lives of his people.

We are, therefore, perfectly free when we are perfectly bound to Christ, who is the only truly free person. Christ has mastered all the powers that enslave the world, and because he is resurrected from the last worldly power — death — he can grant us freedom in return for our obedience. Christians are free people because they know themselves bound to Christ in all things. Not all options are open to the Christian. You must come to feel as if you are walking around in the body of Christ, living for him.

Which brings us to the body of Christ, the church. Paul cannot imagine being a Christian without the church. People are always dissing the church these days, talking about being spiritual but not being part of any particular church. Paul calls the church the body of Christ. If you are bound to Christ, you are also thereby bound to other members of the body of Christ. You do not live for yourself; you live for others, just the way Christ did.

Everyone knows that life changes for a couple when they get pregnant. The mother realizes that she has a body within her body, that she is not free to make decisions about her life that will affect only her. And the same is true after she gives birth. Even fathers have responsibility to think of how their choices affect their children. And children likewise have to learn that their choices also affect their parents. We are part of each other, and never apart from each other.

In the same way, we live together in the church and have to learn to live for one another. Paul urges us to live with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. If that were easy or natural, he wouldn’t mention it. Be intentional about it, he says, because, like it or not, you are one with one another — one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. So whatever is good for you must be good for the body and vice versa.

David Duncombe is a former prison inmate who is now a pastor. He understands the church through this same lens of bondedness that Paul is using. In jail everyone understands they are day and night elbow-to-elbow with one another, like it or not. There are some fellow prisoners you like and some you don’t, but you share a common space and common hopes. You find out fast that you need each other to survive. You depend on each other every day. [Lectionary Homiletics (Aug-Sept 2003):2-3.]

Laura Hillenbrand says that while she was writing about the characters in the Seabiscuit story, My entire life wasn’t oriented around my body. My life had a purpose to it. … I felt like I was living for the people I was writing about. Living for the people she was writing about. That’s it. That’s the way the church has to understand itself. We do not live for ourselves. If we want to know true freedom in Christ, we can only know it in relationship to those with whom we share life in the church.

How do you do that? Really? How do you live for the sake of those to whom you are bound in Christ? Do you make it a priority to ask regularly in prayer what Christ wants for you to do with your time and resources that would bless your sisters and brothers in Christ? Are you serving in some ministry in the church or for the sake of the church in the community? A couple of thoughts:If you have gifts from God to offer and you withhold them from the church because you don’t make the time, you are hampering the church and yourself at the same time. If you have financial resources and are not giving at least 10 percent of your income to the ministry of the church in the world, you are harming the work of God and unfairly burdening your fellow members by your failure to take up your part.

Here’s one: Every time I walk down the aisle with a baby to dedicate, I ask you if you are willing to do anything and everything to welcome that child into the world and teach that child who God is and what the family of God is like. You say, We will, every time. But then many of you break your word when it comes to actual things you can do that you decline to do. For instance, we need dozens of volunteers to serve just four times per year in worship care with little ones during our 11:00 service. Parents of children that age have to serve six times per year — which is fair. But because we do not have the volunteers we need, we have to hire people who do not speak English to work there with our kids. Sometimes we are short because those who are scheduled fail to show up — even though they have been called and reminded every week. What is that about? We cannot be a great church and a healthy body if we cannot be good and faithful in the everyday important things like caring for children, showing up, and paying up. These are not peripheral things to the life of the Spirit; they are crucial.

We are bound together in Christ and to one another, but we are also abounding in gifts that Christ has given to each of us and all of us. The church has everything it needs to be what Christ wants it to be because you are here. But if you hold out on the church, the church then loses key gifts that we cannot compensate for. Let me clue you in: if you look for problems in the church, you will find them. If you look for solutions, you will line up to serve, and problems will become opportunities to show off God’s genius in giving us to each other so that we will function just right for those whom we have assembled in this place.

I imagine the Cowboys would like to have a proven quarterback and running back on their team right now. Bill Parcells would like to run the football and he would like to have big interior defensive linemen to run his beloved 3–4 defense. See, I still follow this stuff, even though I don’t talk about it much. But Parcells knows that he has to play with those he has been given. He can’t try to fit square pegs into round holes. So he tailors his team to his personnel.

Likewise, every church is different because we all have different personnel. Yet God has given us just who we all need to be the body of Christ in the world — bound together in him, abounding in gifts to the glory of God. But we must all be in the game. We are all depending on you to do your part, and you should depend upon us.