THE FOUNDATION OF FREEDOM
Scriptures: John 8:21-33
Galatians 4:21 – 5:1
Forty-four years ago on July 4 I was imprisoned in a jail cell in Baltimore, MD. OK, have I got your attention now? I thought I saw some of you with a kind of a “Say what?” look on your face. I guess I’d better explain.
July 4, 1963, quite possibly could be pin-pointed as the date when the institutional church really got involved in active demonstrations to further the cause of civil rights. The Baltimore chapter of the Congress on Racial Equality had asked the New York chapter of CORE to help with an effort to integrate the Gwynn Oaks Amusement Park. This request coincided with the first meetings of the National Council of Churches’ Commission on Religion and Race, and several of us who were on the Council’s staff at the time felt it would be important for the church to show and not merely talk about its commitment to civil rights.
So, on a hot July morning (though probably not as hot as this one), perhaps a couple hundred of us boarded buses in New York, rode to Baltimore, gathered in various churches, and then left in small groups of blacks and whites together to seek admission to the Gwynn Oaks Amusement Park – which at that time did not allow African-American people to use the park. When we got to the gate and asked to be admitted, we were arrested for trespassing, taken to jail, and booked. I spent the night in a cell with five other young men, one of whom was Mickey Schwerner, who the next year was killed in Mississippi, and we talked the night away in wonderfully spirited conversation, as, I guess college students and recent graduates in a rather tense situation are wont to do. The following morning we were released on our own recognizance. The charges were later dropped as Gwynn Oaks eventually integrated its facilities. No, I don’t have a criminal record following me around. But the issues that caused us to go to Baltimore are still around 44 years later, as that deplorable 5-4 Supreme Court decision this past week demonstrates, rolling back legitimate efforts to integrate school systems just to satisfy five justices’ idea of what it means to consider race.
Now, I recount this 44-year-old July 4th experience not to blow my own horn about involvement with the civil rights movement, which was pretty minor, not to say minuscule (just think about the years in jail of a Nelson Mandela or the deaths that occurred like Mickey Schwerner). But I’m relating it to make a couple of points. The first is that once you have spent even one night locked up, unable to go somewhere else of your own free will, you begin to appreciate a bit more why freedom is so important to us both as Americans and as Christians. It’s not so hard to understand why those colonists of the 17th and 18th centuries felt that any attempt to keep control over them was constrictive and oppressive – like the Puritans who fled England for Holland and then came to the New World in 1620 as Pilgrims so that they could find a place to be free to worship as they wanted (part of the heritage that we celebrated last week in Hartford at the UCC’s General Synod and 50th anniversary celebration). It makes you realize why Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death” is not hyperbole. Not to be free from oppression can feel worse than a living death.
But the second point is, I think, more important. And that is that the freedom we have either as an American citizen or as a follower of Christ comes with a price tag. We are, as the title of a National Council of Churches’ pamphlet intended for young people puts it, “Called to Responsible Freedom”. To act on behalf of a cause that you believe to be right may involve you with breaking the law of the land. When that happens we must be prepared to face the consequences and not try to skirt responsibilities for our actions. That’s the core idea behind Jesus’ statement “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s”. God’s law of love often demands that we obey a higher authority, but that demand doesn’t cancel out the price we may have to pay to the civil authorities.
“Responsible freedom.” Wonderfully paradoxical phrase. Fits right in with so many of Jesus’ statements that throw us just a bit off-center like: “Those who lose their lives for my sake and the Gospel’s will find them”; “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all”; “Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me”; “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth”. Indeed, all of the Beatitudes show how Christ wants us to think and act outside the boxes of our logical, linear minds so that we may encounter and embrace an absurd, illogical world with the help of a laughing, caring God.
“Responsible freedom”. Who among us wouldn’t want to be free? Both our country and our Christianity are solidly based on that principle: “let freedom ring from shore to shore”, one of our nation’s most beloved songs proclaims; “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free”, Jesus tells all those who would follow him, as we heard this morning in the scripture from the Gospel of John. Yet, solidly implanted in this principle for both nation and religion is the reality that those who are truly free exercise their freedom by being responsible in their relationships with one another.
What does it mean to be free? At one level it means to be independent from the dictates of others – that’s why the other name for the holiday we celebrate in three days is Independence Day. Freedom in this sense usually means that we consider ourselves to be free from any number of things. An adolescent or young adult finds independence to mean freedom from having to do the dishes or from coming home at a certain hour every night or from having to ask to use the car. But as we all know, the heady rush from these experiences of independence comes smack up against the reality of responsibility – having to make a living, or getting a good education, or making wise and caring decisions in your relationships with others.
At another level freedom can be contrasted with slavery. When Paul was writing his letters the modern idea of democracy was, of course, unknown. Even the Greek democratic ideas were based on a ruling elite. Slavery was a wide-spread and much-accepted practice. So, in Galatians Paul could use the fact of slavery and that Abraham had had sons by one woman, Hagar, who was a slave, and another, Sarah, who was free, as a way of making his point, through allegory, that we who are a new people in Christ need no longer consider ourselves enslaved – no matter what our earthly circumstances may be. For Paul to conclude his allegory with the assertion, “So then, friends, we are children, not of the slave but of the free woman,” was a truly radical and empire-shaking affirmation. In effect, Paul was saying, a person need no longer feel themselves to be enslaved once they have experienced the liberating spirit of God in Christ.
Paul then sums up with one of the boldest and most ringing declarations in religious literature: “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Tommy, in The Who’s rock-opera of the same name, joyfully sings a similar thought when he is released from the prison of his deaf-dumb-and-blind-ness: “I’m free. I’m free. And freedom tastes of reality. I’m free. I’m free. And I’m waiting for you to follow me.”
Like Tommy, like Sarah, like an independent young adult, Christians are free from quite a bit: we are free from the fear of death, free from the need to have to please others, free from being concerned with what the world thinks of us. In a word, we are free from fear. Remember what I said two weeks ago? Jesus is constantly saying to us “Be not afraid”. This freedom from fear is the great gift Christ offers to us when he presents us with the truth about the Kingdom of God – the truth that ultimately will set us free.
But in some ways this is a strange freedom that Christ and Paul are offering. It is not simply freedom from the law or freedom from slavery. Paul hints at this when he begins the passage we read this morning with this somewhat mysterious question: “Tell me, you who desire to be subject to the law, will you not listen to the law?” The allegory he goes on to tell, then, is a way to help us hear the law rightly. That means living with the law, interpreting it, and then, if necessary, rejecting it in order to become the free men and women who live under the law of God’s love. You know, I bet if we thought long and hard enough about it we could think of circumstances when it would be right – morally, lovingly – to break every one of the Ten Commandments! For instance, telling a Nazi storm trooper you are not hiding a family of Jews in your attic when in fact you are is, at one level, breaking the Commandment about not bearing false witness – but who would argue that you are not witnessing to a larger good?
For the Christian, freedom is not just freedom from; it is freedom for. We are free for service to others. We are free in order to meet needs, to give of ourselves. Martin Luther puts the paradox this way: “A Christian is a perfectly free Lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” The opening line of our closing hymn also catches up this same paradoxical truth: “Make me a captive, Lord, and then I shall be free.” Freedom in Christ may mean no longer being enslaved by the forces of the world around us, but it also means being captive…or, rather, captivated…by a Christ who offers us a way creatively to use our freedom in service to a hurting world.
The foundation of freedom is service. That’s true whether we’re talking about a community or a nation or a church or the whole people of God. Our call to responsible freedom means a call to use our freedom to serve the needs of those who cry out to us. By accepting that call we can shout with Martin Luther King, Jr., “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, I’m free at last!”, for freedom in Christ has indeed become our reality.
Amen.
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
July 1, 2007