27 June 2010

1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21
Psalm 16
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Luke 9:51-62

“For freedom Christ has set us free,” St. Paul tells us in this morning’s second reading. And Janice Joplin’s been singing Kris Kristofferson’s lyric in my head all week: “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose/Nothin’ honey, nothin’ if it ain’t free.” Freedom. A sticky word if there ever was one. At least three times a year, on Memorial Day, Veterans’ Day, and Independence Day we hear talk of those who have died or otherwise made sacrifices in defense of this something called “freedom.” And defenders of what is now the longest war in history, in Afghanistan, and of that deadly mess in Iraq like to fog things over with chatter about how our troops are fighting for our freedom. But what is freedom? And whose freedom are we talking about? Is it the sort of freedom that brown-skinned, Latino looking people will now have in Arizona? Is it the sort of freedom young black males growing up in poverty have? Or is it the sort of freedom that those in the financial sector have – the freedom to create nothing, absolutely nothing for the common good while getting richer and richer – while those at the bottom of the economic scale get poorer and poorer. When we talk of freedom are we talking about the notion of free-will? “We’re all free to become millionaires,” I remember one of my grammar-school teachers saying – that and, “in this country anyone can grow up to be president.” Does that sort of free will extend to people with developmental issues? And just what sort of free will, what sort of freedom, do people have right now whose livelihoods depend upon the fishing industry of the Gulf coast?

The words “freedom” and “free” are indeed slippery and polysemous, but oh so nice-sounding – so nice-sounding that when they drip unctuously from the flannel mouths of demagogues, an uncomfortably large number of folks pick up and wave the banner-of-the-moment without giving much of any sort of thought to what those words mean. And it has been ever thus. When Paul writes to the people of the Galatian church about freedom and being set free those words were no less difficult. So Paul goes about nailing those words down in the context of life in Christ.

First, Paul juxtaposes freedom and slavery. Those who are in Christ are set free from slavery to religious rules – in other words – we don’t have to follow any rules in order to be in communion with God. That’s been taken care of. Great – now we’re “free,” we have “freedom.” Wow!! Now that we’re freed from having to fear an angry and vengeful deity, we can at last actualize our self-potential. I can do what I want as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else, right? But Paul says, “no, that’s not what freedom means. No, I am not free to screw my neighbor.” Freedom does not mean the survival of the fittest, and the devil take the hindmost. And so to clarify things, Paul introduces two more slippery words: flesh and spirit.

Now, when Paul talks about flesh and spirit, he’s not doing that neo-Platonic thing that separates us into body and soul – with the body being bad and the soul being good. That sort of thing won’t do; we say that we look for the resurrection of the body, a glorified body, not of some disembodied soul. No, when Paul talks about flesh, he’s talking about what Luther calls, “the turned-in-on-self self.” Flesh for Paul, and for Luther, is all about self-absorption, about our will to power, our “strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these” – things that are all about the self, that are all about defending our egos, that are all about me being right and somebody else being wrong. Flesh may even be what is at work when we talk about being spiritual – it’s all about me and my interior state – my meditation, my prayer life, my feeling good about myself – self, turned in on self. Flesh is worrying about how much money I have to spend on myself, worrying about having the right address, the right clothes, the right body, the right shoes; worrying about whether I’m enough self-actualized, worrying about having the right body, worrying about whether I have enough letters after my name. I can put four sets after my name: B.A., M.A., M.Div. Ph.D. And you know, it’s much more difficult to get the sort of “D” after my name than it is to get other sorts of  “Ds,” and my “D” is from an internationally prestigious private research university, doncha know. All that stuff, says Paul – that’s just another sort of slavery – there’s no freedom in being captive to building myself up – concern about the self is just another law – another something that accuses, that tells us we’ll never measure up, never have enough money, never be all that we can be, never able to do what we want to do – if only, if only, if only.

Then there’s Paul’s talk of spirit – which for Paul, and Luther, is not some effervescent, disembodied green gas. The Spirit and the fruits of the Spirit are made manifest in bodies – our bodies. The Holy Spirit is the breath of God breathed into a body. God’s breath creates things physical, and without bodies, there is no need for breath, for spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, gentleness, and self-control happen in these, our own bodies – it is physically, in the body, that we do acts of love, joy, peace, and all the rest.

These fruits of the Spirit do not happen in just any old body, however. The old body that is concerned and consumed with itself, the body chained to our turned-in-on-self selves – it’s dead – already – already in the reality of God – though not quite yet in the reality of human time. We hear in today’s Gospel that Jesus turned his face toward Jerusalem. It is in Jerusalem that the god of anger, jealousy, strife, and neat parlor tricks, the god we self-servingly invented to use against the neighbor, is nailed to the cross and dies. And Jesus takes us with him to the cross, that there we too die. This dead body on this crucifix is our dead body – the flesh, that is to say, the old self and its will to power died with Christ – already, though in this wrinkle in time not yet. In baptism, we were baptized into this death – God, in the breathed words of a priest, declares that in the reality of God that is beyond human notions of time, the old self is dead, drowned, nailed to the cross, finished –and a new, forgiven self has already with Christ been raised from the dead, and is already in God’s reality, a glorified body filled with Holy Breath – to live for the sake of others – to do in the body the deeds of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and all the rest.

And so, at the command of Christ, and in his stead I once more declare to you: you are with favor in the sight of God who sees you to be one with Christ. You are free, and there are no works you can or need do to please God. Your old, turned-in-on-self self has been crucified with Christ. And new you has been raised with Christ, free to live for the other, to do deeds of love, joy, and peace. So now, hear the first and last commands of God in Scripture: “Take, eat!” and “Come, all is ready.” And in these two commands is all the freedom we need.