"Called to Freedom"

Many years ago I worked in a refugee camp in Southeast Asia that housed people who had escaped from horrendous persecution in Laos and Cambodia. My job was to prepare them for a new life in America.

My students had fled their homelands literally in fear for their lives. Many of them had escaped in the middle of the night, leaving behind everything they owned.

They walked for days with little or no food through dense jungles and rugged mountains, knowing that if they were captured they would be killed.

In fact, most, if not all, of them had seen some member of their family die at the hands of the brutal regimes that had taken over their countries.

When they finally made it across the border to Thailand, they were put behind barbed wire fences patrolled by soldiers with machine guns. Inside the fences they were relatively safe, but they were not allowed to leave.

They still were not free.

Freedom was my students’ deepest desire. And to them, America was the symbol of that freedom. My students believed that when they finally reached America they would at last be free.

And so it was with deep distress that one of my students came to me one day carrying a letter from a friend who was already in this country.

“America is not a free country,” she announced in despair, waving her letter at me.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Of course, it is.”

“No, it’s not,” she adamantly replied. And then she began to read from her friend’s letter.

“In America there are rules everywhere,” she read. “Americans are told what to do all the time. Signs saying, ‘Do not smoke. Do not spit.’

“There are rules everywhere. I am always afraid I am going to break a rule. There is not freedom here at all.”

* * *

It seems appropriate that on this Sunday before the holiday celebrating this nation’s founding, that we are reminded that long before the Statue of Liberty, long before the Declaration of Independence, long before the first European settlers came to this continent – Christians were called to a life of freedom.

“For freedom Christ has set us free,” the apostle Paul wrote almost 2,000 years ago. “You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters.”

Paul was writing to the people in the church in Galatia, a church that he had founded. The people there were Gentiles who had converted to Christianity.

Unlike the earliest followers of Jesus, they had never been Jewish. But after they became Christians, they began to believe that they needed to follow Jewish law, including dietary laws and circumcision for men, to insure their standing before God.

When Paul hears of their superficial understanding of the faith he is furious. He tells them that no one can earn salvation by being circumcised or following a checklist of dos and don’ts that will insure they are in God’s good graces.

Salvation is a gift from God, accepted in faith and trust.

Those new Christians have something in common with the young letter writer who is new to America. They are so caught up in the legalisms that they cannot see the overarching freedom that is being offered to them.

We often fall into the same temptation today. How many times have you heard the life of a Christian described first as a life of freedom?

It’s far more likely to hear a life of faith primarily described in terms of what we should and should not do, what we should and should not believe, a check list of dos and don’ts that will make us good Christians.

When we do that, we are like the Galatians, trying to make God’s grace contingent on human actions. We, like the letter writer, become so afraid of breaking one of the rules that we live in fear, not freedom.

We become like the refugees, living behind barbed wire fences patrolled by armed soldiers. We may feel safe within the confines of the fence, but we’re not free.

Paul reminds us today that Christ calls us first and foremost to a life of freedom. Not a freedom that means anything goes, but a freedom that allows us to engage our faith passionately, with delight and joy and liberality.

“For freedom Christ has set us free,” Paul proclaims. God has given us salvation so that we need not be constantly burdened with worries about our eternal destiny or God’s favor toward us.

Instead, we are called to accept and trust God’s grace so that we may live a life of faith embodied in care for others, instead of only worrying about ourselves.

We are not called to do good works as a way of earning salvation, but as a response to the salvation God has already given us.

With freedom comes responsibilities and obligations, but notice again that Paul proclaims freedom first; that it is freedom that is the foundation of the Christian life.

“For freedom Christ has set us free,” Paul says. “Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters.”
And then, after the call to freedom comes the warning of the obligations that freedom brings. Paul is very aware that freedom can be abused.

“Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence,” he warns. “But through love become slaves to one another.”

Abuses of freedom, indulging ourselves, lead to things which separate us from God and one another – things like idolatry, greed, strife, jealousy, anger, dissensions and factions.

Paul reminds us that we do not need to be self-indulgent because we already have the gift of God’s grace. And so we are free to serve others.

Not to live confined by rules and regulations. Not to live as if we were surrounded by barbed wire fences patrolled by soldiers.

Not a life of narrowness, but a life of expansiveness and liberality and grace.

It is important for us as a church to hear Paul’s call to a life of freedom characterized by tolerance and a real concern for others.

The Episcopal Church, and the Anglican Communion of which we are a part, has historically been a church that has fought the temptation to narrowness. We have traditionally been a denomination of intellectual broadmindedness and liberality.

By liberality I do not necessarily mean “liberal” as it is defined in today’s political arena. The dictionary describes liberality this way:

“A willingness to give or share freely; generosity; absence of narrowness or prejudice in thinking; broadmindedness; tolerance.”

This kind of liberality sounds very much like Paul’s characteristics of the fruits of the Spirit, or a life lived in Christian freedom.

“The fruit of the Spirit,” Paul says, “is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.”

The fruits of the Spirit are not characterized by narrowness, but expansiveness. Not by constrictedness, but by liberality.

The Episcopal Church traditionally has struggled to embrace the freedom to which Paul calls us. We are sometimes criticized by others – and by some within our own midst – of being too free, for not having enough restrictions, for not clearly defining a list of dos and don’ts, of what we should and should not think and believe.

Certainly we must always be careful to be responsible in our freedom; not to abuse the gift that God has given us.

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Readings

2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14

Galatians 5:1,13-25

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.

Luke 9:51-62

When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village. As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

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