Sermon Archive
A journey to freedom
Sermon preached by Donald Reid at Holy Communion on 27 July 2004
As we heard in that second reading, an extract from Paul's letter to the developing community of followers in Galatia (in modern day Turkey), Paul tells the believers 'Christ has set you free! So do not let yourselves be burdened again by the yoke of slavery!'
You have been set free! Christ has set us free!
I suspect most of us don't feel totally free, even if we wanted it. We are not free to choose many, if not most, of our own personal circumstances or the hand that we have been dealt in life. So what does Paul mean?
The popular spiritual writer Anthony de Mello tells a story which might illustrate this. It's about a nomadic tribe who travel by camel through the desert, moving from place to place. One evening when one of them is tying up all the camels after that day's journeys, he finds when he gets to the last camel that somehow it's lost its tether, so there's nothing to tie it up with. But this doesn't faze him because he knows how the camels think. So he simply goes through the motions of tying up the camel and the camel -- standing chewing its food and watching him thinks 'Ah, I've been tied up'. And sure enough, the next morning when they get up, that camel is still exactly where it was left. So they load up, untie the camels and prepare to move off. But the last camel refuses to go: and they realise it still thinks it's tied up, even though there is no rope! So they then go through the motions of untying it, and the camels feels released, and moves off happily with the caravan.
The point of this wee parable, of course, is to illustrate how we act: how we often think we are bound -- to what? To convention? To religious rules or teachings? -- when in fact we are not. No we bind ourselves, inwardly, when in fact we are free.
And of course, religion is one of the things which binds us. That's what the word means: it's from the Latin verb 'religare' which means 'to bind'. Perhaps that's why religion is so problematic: some people achieve freedom within religion, others achieve freedom by rejecting it (and perhaps then falling for other things which enslave them).
Paul knew this very well and this is really what he was writing about. He himself had been a strict, observant Jew, indeed he was a Pharisee teaching and obeying all the rules and regulations of the Jewish faith until the moment of his dramatic breakdown, his conversion - when he became a follower of Jesus. Indeed this was the very issue between him and the Galatians -- some of them wanted to stick to the demands of the Jewish law, to show what kocher Jews they were. But Paul counters this by saying 'NO! you have been set free! Do not let yourselves be burdened again by the yoke of slavery!' And remarkably he sums up all the rules and regulations of the Jewish faith in a single command 'Love your neighbour as yourself' (5:14).
What? A religion with a single high order commandment like 'love your neighbour' but which doesn't then tell you how to do it, how to keep a scorecard? You mean each of us has to find his or her own way? Now, that is scary. People don't like that much freedom.
So how do we cope with this?
One way we cope is by copying others or picking up received opinions, sometime uncritically or lazily. Look at the disciples following Jesus. Here they are, in today's Gospel (just to take one example) setting out with him on that fateful journey to Jerusalem when they are sent packing by a Samaritan village because they were Jews. So the disciples think to themselves, 'how should we react to this? What does a good disciple do in these circumstances?' And they remember Elijah in the Hebrew scriptures and think 'ah yes, we call down fire from heaven'. So they ask Jesus -- just to check this out that they've got this right -- if they should do that. And Jesus tells them not to be so stupid. So much for affirmation. It must have been very hard following Jesus -- this free man, this maverick. (Well, it is, isn't it!)
But how often so we imbibe received opinions, patterns, prejudices from all around us and dare to act them out as if we really know them to be right! The media, our peer group, social convention -- all of these tell us what to think and do, not always rightly.
Another way we typically respond is to play safe: like the people invited to join Jesus on that journey who say yes -- but let me go and bury my father, or say goodbye to my family first. The point is: they had very good reasons but the effect is that we say 'Yes, Jesus, we will follow you Jesus, we will join your band of the free -- but tomorrow. Freedom beckons and we are hesitant, resistant.
Paul knows its scary so he provides a checklist of do's and don't's so we can gauge our inner freedom. Don't be made un-free (enslaved) by the desires of the flesh (sexual immorality, debauchery, hatred, jealousy, rage, selfish ambition etc etc) but he says, show your freedom, your detachment by qualities such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. The funny thing is that even as he is pontificating about this Paul reveals he himself is not so spiritually 'free'. In his quarrel with the Galatians about whether or not those who followed Christ should observe Jewish laws such as circumcision, he slips in a comment to the effect that when they are being circumcised 'he hopes the knife slips'. That verse -- 5:12 -- was edited out of today's reading!
So it seems that having the self-possession of a genuinely free spirit is tricky, even for an apostle. It's a journey to freedom we spend our lives making -- so we must hope we have 'time for amendment of life' - and a journey on which we learn as we go: and in which we make mistakes, many mistakes. The important thing is to travel the road. And there are milestones.
At the beginning of the journey we find predictable reactions from people -- like Jesus,
rejected by those Samaritan villagers at the beginning of his journey because he was a Jewish teacher on his way to Jerusalem
but feted by other Jewish leaders who invited them to his home.
But as the journey progresses, these responses reverse: so that he comes to be
welcomed by the Samaritans, the outcasts, the unclean
and rejected by the religiously conventional.
It is his freedom, in the way he brings the law to life and lives it, and does not fall for lazy prescriptions -- which endears him to the hungry and thirsty, those who know their need of God -- and which earns him the hatred of those who think they've got God contained and who think they represent God and place themselves at the top of a heirarchy.
Paul is right. Jesus set us free. Not from all the circumstances of our lives because we all have to have some circumstances, some particulars about our lives! We have to be someone and we can't all be the same. So whatever our circumstances, the task is to find inner freedom.
It is to be remembered, after all, that the people of Israel were once actual slaves in Egypt and one Jewish rabbi, Rabbi Enoch commented: it is not the fact that they were slaves in Egypt that God abhorred. It was the fact that they accepted it. In their spirits they had become slaves.
So whether in the eyes of the world we are this or that, the important thing is for us not to accept a slavery imposed on us by others whom that suits very well. Like that camel, we might think they've tied us up but they haven't, we are free and we are to live as free people and encourage others around us to find their freedom too.
O God of life, fill us with the desire for your disturbing freedom and fire us with longing to speak and live your uncontainable Word, which we have heard and seen through your Son, Jesus Christ the free. Amen
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