“Freedom” 

Matthew 10:24-39

Amos 5:24 

It was November 17th, 1775, and it was hot. Let me tell you it was hot. I know, because I was there in Williamsburg VA, on that day. I told you I am older than I look! Well, ok, I'm not that old, but we did vacation in Williamsburg, where they portray a living history of colonial times. Though we were there in the heat of summer, in living history time it was November 17th, 1775. During the

Fall of 1775, the tension was rising as the colonies were moving toward independence from England. By November, the First and Second Continental Congresses had met. Blood had already been shed at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. Patrick Henry had proclaimed his famous words to the Virginia Convention, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!” It was powerful rhetoric. The movement toward the liberty and freedom that we celebrate this holiday weekend had begun. 

But on November 17th, 1775, the liberty and freedom that would eventually come to fruition was still hanging in the balance. Those who were alive at that time on that day did not know where the unpredictable events would lead them. The odds were against the colonies as they faced the great power of the British empire. 

One afternoon while we were there in Williamsburg, I experienced another perspective of the events of that time. Behind the Raleigh Tavern, where the dissolved House of Burgesses met in defiance of the Royal Governor, I heard a sermon given by an African American Baptist preacher. Whereas Patrick Henry spoke of metaphorical chains and slavery, enhancing the power of his

rhetoric, this preacher proclaimed the gospel from the perspective of real chains. As the men of the

Virginia convention and the Continental Congress talked about freedom from tyranny and oppression, he knew that their powerful rhetoric did not include him. Freedom for the African American slave population would hang in the balance for many long decades to come. 

Interestingly, on or around November 17th, 1775, the royal governor of Virginia had issued a

proclamation. Any slave who would take up arms for the Crown would be given his freedom- freedom from real chains, freedom from life on the plantation. So the slaves faced a very interesting choice: freedom with the British, or continued slavery on the side of the rebels. Their liberty was hanging in the balance. 

The white male members of the Continental Congress, the African American slave, and the citizens of the colonies faced critical choices in their day. They faced choices which would decide what lofty words like liberty and freedom would mean for their lives in their day. Their freedom was hanging in the balance. 

This morning, we heard the words of another radical who spoke of freedom. The apostle Paul was even more of a revolutionary than any of our countries founders. Paul spoke of a freedom more profound. 

“For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to the yolk of slavery.” He speaks not of economic, political, social or even religious freedom per se. He speaks of the freedom that underlies them all, the fundamental freedom of our whole selves, the deepest part being our spiritual selves. Through Christ, our spiritual selves have been set free. That freedom bubbles upward, shaping our political, our economic, our social, and our religious selves. 

What we learn from the Galatian church, however, and what is confirmed by our own experience, is that even though Christ has set us free, it takes awhile to discover it, and live like it. The powers that be, the forces that seek to enslave, seem to maintain a stubborn grip on our lives, and even though we have been set free, we struggle in bondage. This is why Paul says, “Christ has set us free (meaning, its a done deal)” in verse 1, and then in verse 13 begins exhorting them to live like it! We live in that tension between having been set free in Christ on the one hand, and yet having to discover it and live like it on the other. 

At issue in Galatia was whether or not the Gentile believers, in order to be full Christians, had to follow the Jewish law (particularly circumcision). There were those who were preaching a very big “Yes” to this question. But for Paul, observance of the Jewish law belonged to the age before Christ's coming. The Law (the Torah) was instructive, redemptive, and a gift of God especially for the Jews, but to require Jewish life and practice of the Gentile was a yoke of slavery. It

was a denial of the freedom that Christ brings, so Paul says to the Galatians, “don't do it! You're free! Realize, my brothers and sisters, that you're free!” As the Galatian believers pondered their choice, their freedom hung in the balance. 

According to Scripture, freedom belonged to us at creation. I would argue that when God says, “Let us make humankind in our image,” the creator is talking about planting in us the gift of freedom-the freedom to choose whether or not to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree, the freedom to choose whether or not to live in harmony and intimacy with God, our neighbor, and creation. 

Since then, Freedom has never been a settled issue. It is not something that is won once and possessed. The more we try and hoard it, the more elusive it seems. To paraphrase Princess Leia (speaking to Governor Tarkin on the Death Star in Star Wars), the more we try and tighten our grip on it, the more it seems to slip through our fingers. Jacques Ellul, in the Ethics of Freedom, writes: 

“The glorious liberty of the children of God is not the happy fluttering of a butterfly from one attractive flower to another. It is joyous, but it is also radical, hard, and absolute….Giving us our burden, God launches us into an unsuspected adventure, a conflict, which is finally that of freedom.”1 

Christ has set us free, yes. This sacrament of the Lord's Supper reminds us of that. It replants seeds of that same freedom in us that God gave to Adam and Eve in the garden. But this is not the end of the story, Paul says. Christ has set you free, now live like it! As Eugene Peterson preaches in his Message translation of our text, “use your freedom to serve one another in love; that's how

freedom grows. For everything we know about God's Word is summed up in a single sentence: “Love others as you love yourself. That's an act of true freedom.” (Galatians 5:13-14 MESSAGE) 

Let us choose freedom, my friends. 

Our countries founders chose and fought for freedom from British rule, establishing the principles and structures that would shape our nation. They chose freedom. 

Freedom was chosen by those who worked and struggled against the institution of slavery (people of faith, by the way, leading the way in the abolitionist movement). 

Freedom was chosen by Rosa Parks who sat down on the wrong seat in the bus and refused to get up. 

Freedom was chosen by those same sex couples who went to the courthouse in California to formalize their relationship in the eyes of the state. As legally married couples they claimed the freedom that has been and is still denied to them in most of the world. 

The examples go on. Like it was for Paul, the choice and struggle for freedom is more often than not difficult and controversial. It is 'radical, hard, and absolute.' Today we celebrate freedom, and rightly so. Yet, as many freedom fighters like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have proclaimed, as long as there are others in the world who are in bondage, as long as there are those in our world whose freedom is limited by economics, or abuse, or conflict, or injustice, or discrimination our freedom is not complete. 

As we leave this place, we are reminded that we can choose. We can choose not to torture. We can choose to live more simply. We can choose to not let our national identity and pride get the in the way of the health, welfare, and freedom of the whole human family. We can choose to not only be free, but, in and through the Holy Spirit, we can choose to set others free. 

We can choose to bear the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,

faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.” 

If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. 

I've been reading the book Peace: The Biography Of A Symbol, by our own Mike Sweeney, and it describes a march by those who chose freedom: 

“On a damp and chilly Good Friday, April 4, 1958, more than 5,000 warmly dressed citizens gathered in

Trafalgar Square to show support for the Ban the Bomb movement and the march on Aldermaston (an

atomic weapons research plant), and to walk the first few miles. After 15 miles, with a few onlookers sneering some 500 to 600 marchers walked, danced, and sang on, continuing on the 4-day, 52-mile-long march. Singing “When the Saints Go Marching In,” “Daughter Fair,” and “Down by the Riverside,” the marchers knew that they were involved in something momentous. Bystanders were seen in tears along the route, watching and wondering. Marchers included clergy, university professors, members of Parliament,

laborers, and families. According to Peggy Duff in her 1971 book, Left, Left, Left, 'While the bomb was its

[the march's] main occasion and theme, it was much more than that. It was a mass protest against the sort of society which had created the bomb, which permitted it to exist, which threatened to use it.'”2 

These marchers, in spite of the sneering, despite the criticism, did not want to live enslaved by the fear of nuclear war. They chose freedom. The struggle continues, and so does ours. 

Gathered around this table we are reminded that we have been set free. But this is not the end of the story, for we then leave this place to live that freedom more fully, and to share it more faithfully. We carry not only the symbol of peace, but as we leave this place we carry the freedom sign of our lives and the choices we make. 

Our freedom hangs in the balance.

Amen. 
 

1 quoted in Charles Cousar, in his commentary, Galatians, p. 125.

2 Ken Kolsbun with Michael S. Sweeney, Peace: The Biography Of A Symbol, pp, 41-44. 
 
 

July 6, 2008

Rev. Paul Heins

First Presbyterian Church

Logan, Utah