The
opening words of today’s lesson from Galatians are a battle cry: “For
freedom Christ freed us.” Paul
rejoices that Christ won our freedom, our victory, our independence. Some call the letter to the Galatians the
Magna Carta of Christianity. “For
freedom Christ freed us” is Paul’s battle cry in his raging confrontation
with the “teachers and influencers” that try to seduce the Galatians into
believing that once they have been circumcised and become members of the Israel
of God, they will have the law to guide and protect them in their moral
lives. But Paul warns, “Never again put
on the yoke of slavery.” This is not a sermon
or a testimony, but the flashing steel of Paul’s terrible swift sword. Paul continues,
“Do not use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.” The
Greek
word for opportunity literally means a staging area for battle. When it comes
to freedom, the staging area of battle is the home of the brave and the land of
the free. Remember the movie
“Braveheart”? There is a scene in which farmers and peasants more accustomed to
wielding plows than swords stand in an endless line upon the staging area for
battle. The atmosphere is tense with fear
and then William Wallace gives a pre-battle speech that becomes the defining
moment of the film:
Yes. Fight and you may
die. Run and you will live, at least awhile. And dying in your bed many years
from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that, for
one chance to come back here as young men, and tell our enemies that they may
take our lives, but they will never take our freedom?"
In
Galatians the battle lines are drawn.
Paul proclaims “For freedom
Christ freed us”… words that mark the defining moment of Paul’s career as
he urges us to do battle for our freedom.
How will we respond? Will we
stand and fight or will we run? Our response will define who we are and what we
will become. Will we be remembered as foolish
Galatians who caved in, sold out, and traded cheaply our precious freedom for
easy grace? Or will we fight the good fight?
Paul
continues with something quite shocking. There are really two kinds of freedom: There
is a bad freedom and a good freedom. As
Americans who are about to celebrate our freedom, we should think carefully
which freedom we hold dear. Bad freedom has a dark side. Those who surrender to the dark side of
freedom, give in to the flesh, but, of course, Paul does not mean sex. We do
Paul a grave disservice if we take the word flesh in either its capitalized or
uncapitalized form to refer only to the sexual sins. Paul points to a reality more sinister:
flesh is the whole world turned against God.
Flesh is the dark side of humanity turned in upon itself and away from
God.
And
then there is a good freedom. Paul
explains that the good freedom does not come from the old law written on stone
tablets, but rather a new, spiritual Law.
One thinks of Jeremiah the prophet:
“This is the Covenant I will make with
the House of
Those
days have arrived. The day of new
creation, the day of a new heaven and a new earth prophesied by Jeremiah has
dawned and Jesus, the new Moses, has given us a new law deep within us. Because the risen Christ has trampled down
death, the Galatians know, we know,
what God wants. Jesus has written on our flesh and deep in our hearts: God
is our God and we are his Beloved.
Our souls live by the new
commandment, not by a rule book.
Paul
continues, “The whole law is fulfilled in one statement, namely, ‘You shall
love your neighbor as yourself.’” It all comes down to this. Love
is the first gift of the Spirit, and through love, which is the first gift of
the Spirit we are set free. Free from the law, we go a different route to the
best which the law could provide.
Paul
continues with a more chilling paradox:
Jesus sets us free, gives us the precious give of freedom won by his own
blood but we can only possess that freedom if we give it up and become slaves to
one another through love. Paul turns the
slave/free dichotomy on its head by saying in effect, “sure you are free, free
to be in bondage of love to one another.
This is what it means to be a family, a Christian family. The first fruit of the spirit is love.
Today
is a special day. We celebrate the anniversary
of Tom and Roberta Stephenson. The Spirit has given them the gift of love for
each other and they have chosen freely
to be in the bondage of that love to one
another for, I believe, 47 years…that alone is one the greatest examples of
the love that is the fruit of the Spirit.
In the quiet of this special moment we pause to give thanks for all the
rich experiences of life that have bound together Roberta and Tom and brought
them to this point in their lives. We
are especially grateful for the values that have flowed into them from the Holy
Spirit and from those who have loved them and nurtured them and pointed them
along life’s way. We are grateful for
the blessing and the gift that Roberta and Tom are for us and for this
community. All their lives, Roberta and
Tom have been good teachers and good influencers. Today, they teach us that freedom given up
and offered for each other is joy. We are grateful for the values which they
have found in their own search and testing because they share that with
us. I especially learn from them
fidelity and hope. Let us remember from
this day to the ending of the world, that we are God’s small but faithful
family, a band of God’s beloved children that lives in hope. We may give up our
lives, but never the freedom for which Christ freed us.