Reflection: "Freedom and Fruits"Approximately 3,000 years before Sir William Wallace fought for Scottish freedom from the English oppressors and Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, which gave the American people freedom from their British overlords, the Hebrew people were suffering under bondage in Egypt.
Oh, how they yearned for their freedom. God sent them a shepherd named Moses, who demanded of the Pharaoh, "Let my people go!" Even though Pharaoh initially refused, God prevailed and delivered his people from captivity. But, heaven forbid, nearly 1,000 years after Moses, God’s people were again being oppressed - both by the tyranny of the Roman Empire and by the powers and principalities of the world. This time, God sent his son, Jesus, to live in the world and to show them how to be free again, but in a different way. In his inaugural sermon, Jesus announced that he had been anointed by the Holy Spirit "to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and to let the oppressed go free." This same liberating Jesus would later say to his followers, "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. . .so if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed." Therefore, we see that freedom is an idea that emanates from the very heart of God. In the beginning, when God created humankind, he could easily have made us like puppets, so that whenever he wanted us to do something, he could just pull a string and we’d have to do it. But what kind of relationship would that be? Instead, God created humans with the capacity and the responsibility to act as free moral agents. The desire for freedom isn’t simply a function of the human spirit, its source is the free will of the Living God. There are more than fifty references to freedom in the New Testament, each of them exploring a different dimension of what Paul calls, in his letter to the Romans, "the glorious liberty of the children of God." In his letter to the Galatians, there is a less-than-glorious atmosphere surrounding the subject of freedom. It seems as if the church in Galatia had divided into two opposing camps. There were those who believed that freedom meant license to do whatever they pleased - and those who were entrenched in the Jewish way of things. In the First Century, there was a small group of Jews who were known as the Gnostics, who believed that the human spirit was free from matter and flesh. Their belief was that whatever you did during the time you were alive, was of little consequence in the afterlife. Therefore, they reasoned, you may as well do whatever you please with your body while on earth, because your soul will still be pure and, consequently, you’ll be ok when you get to heaven. Responding to these words, Paul said "Don’t use your freedom for self-indulgence, but through love, become slaves of one another, for the whole law is summed up in this single commandment: Love your neighbour as yourself." The other camp in the Galatian church was made up of those who thought it imperative to adhere to all the requirements of Jewish religious rituals, including dietary restrictions and male circumcision. That crowd would have said that freedom in Christ was all well and good, but that they felt much more secure remaining inside the old prison of the hundreds of regulations that characterised the Mosaic (Jewish) law. Paul was passionately convinced that observing the rituals, or not observing them, really was actually of no consequence, because "The only thing that counts is faith, working through love." To be free really means to be liberated from the prison of "I, myself, and me". To be truly free, is to be able to move beyond the self and to move into the risk of love and to give yourself to the demands of service, free for responsibility, not from responsibility. Think of how Jesus, who could have had everything - power, status, safety – should he want it, instead chose to empty himself and take on the role of a servant – all for the sake of the world. Now that’s true freedom. Think of how God made us as one human family, irrevocably bound to one another in his heart and mind - from the very beginning - so that we are, by nature, inclined towards loving one another. By the will of God, and through the power of the Holy Spirit, freedom and responsibility belong together in our lives and in the life of our congregation. The same is true, I believe, for our nation. One of Australia's greatest gifts to its people, is the concept of religious freedom. Governments don’t impose religion on anyone, and all our citizens are free to practice religion, or not, according to their own wishes. But that doesn’t mean that people of faith don’t have a crucial role to play in the life of our nation. We ought to be working every day to create a society that’s marked by concern for the common good. We ought to be listening for the voices of those who aren’t being heard. We ought to be speaking out against excessive self-indulgences and greed. I believe that we’re called to be a servant people, bringing good news to the oppressed, modelling justice and proclaiming liberty to the captives. Can you even think of a time that calls out more for moral leadership, than in these troubled days? What an opportunity we have, what a responsibility we have - to repair, to raise up, to build up, to offer hope for all those who suffer in our midst and beyond our shores. Sisters and brothers in Christ, may our pledge today be to build that kingdom, here on earth, just as it is in heaven. And the Good News is that, through Christ, we’ve been set free to do all these things! And we’re free from having to work out how to achieve our own salvation! We’re free from what binds us! We’re free from the past - from our fears and our anxieties. Freedom is ours! And we’re saved and empowered! Paul reminded the Galatians that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. If we live by the Spirit, then we are also guided by the Spirit. We’re free and now we need to exercise our freedom to love and serve one another unconditionally. We’re liberated to love. So what’s stopping us from exercising the freedom we have? Maybe we feel that to love means to miss out ourselves, however it’s not a game of pluses and minuses. To love others doesn’t necessarily result in less love for ourselves. Maybe another reason that we recoil from our freedom, is that it comes with responsibilities. We have the freedom to choose, but are we afraid of the choices we’ll have to make? Is it easier to rely on rulebooks and authorities to tell us what to do, as the early Jews did? Obviously, at a material level, to love and to give of our time, money and possessions, results in us not keeping these things just for ourselves. However, at a spiritual, non-materialistic level (which is what ultimately matters), to share and to love, results in our lives becoming richer, more rewarding and more meaningful. I pray that you will all dwell richly in God, claim your freedom and live a life fully of love. Pastor Rick
1 Comment
Lena Beryl Blok
24/6/2022 06:08:02 pm
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