Today is the day we, as a nation, celebrate our independence, or achieving our liberty, from Great Britain. Although technically I agree with John Adams, that we should probably celebrate on July 2 because that was the day that the continental congress actually passed the resolution declaring independence. They then spent the next two days debating the wording of the declaration, which was then adopted on July 4, although it’s possible some signed it on July 4th, most didn’t start signing it until nearly a month later, and several never signed it at all. But as I was thinking of today and what I might talk about, I was thinking about the last line of the pledge of allegiance, “with liberty and justice for all.” And those are terms that have a particular meaning for us as Christians, that may be, and probably are different than those that we think of as a country and a culture, even though the writer of the pledge, Francis Belamy, was a Baptist minister. He was also a socialist and was removed from his church after denouncing the evils of capitalism. But what makes the story even more interesting is the fact that the first place that really published and pushed the pledge was a publication entitled The Youth’s Companion, but their motive was to encourage schools to buy flags for all of their classrooms, and of course who was selling those flags? The Youth’s Companion. I’m telling you you can’t make this up.
But anyways, we hear much in the Bible about justice, and in particular about God’s justice, which is part of that passage we heard from Deuteronomy, and the prophets have a lot more to say about it, because often the reason that Israel is being punished is because they are not upholding God’s justice. And what God also makes clear is that because Israel is God’s chosen nation and people, that they are held to a higher standard. That because they know of God’s justice that their acts of justice, or how they live out justice, must follow the same standard of that of the divine. And what is that? Well we don’t have time to go into that in detail, and one of the reasons I wanted to talk about it today was for me to begin thinking about it in greater detail for a possible worship series on God’s justice, and what that might look like and entail. And so Moses tells the people, sort of summarizing the law, or at least how it’s lived out, that God is impartial and takes no bribes, the sort of basics of what we might think of what justice in the world looks like, especially amongst judges, the police, prosecutors and politicians, those who carry out human justice, after all we say that justice is blind right? That she is blind so that everyone gets a fair shot, even if we might not actually live into that, that’s the ideal. Which is also being set out here.
But, then Moses says that God might not be so blind or
impartial, because God pays attention to and executes justice for the widow,
the orphan and the stranger. That’s not an exhaustive or exclusive list, but
God hears the cries and will respond to those who are excluded and rejected,
the outcast and the deprived, the disregarded and the overlooked, the ignored
and the dishonored. Those who suffer from injustice. That while they might not
hold a prominent place in society, and society treats them as such, they hold a
special place in God’s eyes, that God hears the voice of their complaints, and
God will respond and God will hold the people and the leaders and the nation
responsible for how they are treated, and whether they actually deliver justice
or not.
We see this concern continued into the gospels as well,
perhaps best seen in the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25, and
if you aren’t familiar or don’t remember that parable, I would encourage you to
write that down and go look at it. But just two chapters before that, there is
a long series of denunciations of the scribes and Pharisees about what they are
concerned about, but what they should be concerned about, and so in one of them
Jesus says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint,
dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice
and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting
the others.” (Matt 23:23) And so justice here is also about righteousness. And
it turns out that the Greek word can have both of those meanings. And so when
we hear Jesus say, “Seek first the Kingdom and God and God’s righteousness,”
that we can also hear that we should be seeking God’s justice, because those
two things are connected, and are also then tied up in what it means for us to
find freedom in Christ, with freedom also potentially being translated as
liberty, which means living in the light of Christ.
And that’s what Jesus tells his listeners. He’s just said
that he is the light of the world and whoever follows him will never walk in
darkness. That is they will turn to righteousness, and be freed in the truth of
Christ, which is today’s passage. And of course those who are listening don’t
understand and they say that as descendants of Abraham they have never been
slaves to anyone, which is simply not true. If you look at the history of
Israel it’s characterized by periods of slavery and captivity and freedom.
Indeed, at the time of Jesus they are seeking ways to free themselves from
Roman rule so they can be politically independent again, which is what they
hope the Messiah will do. And so they don’t understand the slavery that Jesus
is taking about, the slavery to sin and death, although his comments about the
son and the slave should make us think about Isaac and Ishmael, which plays a
key part of Paul’s argument in Galatians. But Jesus is talking about the slavery
we subject ourselves to when we are only concerned with self-desires, which
leads to self-deception and selfishness itself, which lead to lives of
brokenness because we are only thinking about ourselves and our desires and our
wants and having control over our lives. And that was largely what Greek and
Roman philosophy was about trying to achieve.
The Roman philosopher Epictetus, who was actually born a
slave and who was physically disabled, with one of the stories being that he
was deliberately maimed by his owner, but he said “He is free who lives as he
wills, who is subject neither to compulsion, nor hindrance, nor force, whose
choices are unhampered.” The goal of life was to have autonomous detachment
from everyone and everything else, of being independent in thought in action;
the more things change the more they stay the same. But that stands in complete
opposition to the freedom that is being offered to us in Christ, not through
what Jesus teaches, and more importantly demonstrates through his own life and
death, in giving himself for others, but also then as Paul explains it as well.
Because in many of his communities, Corinth and Galatia in particular, there
are lots of arguments about these things. The Corinthians had told Paul that
because of the freedom they had found in Christ, because of forgiveness, that
they could now do whatever they wanted. That all things were now permissible.
(1 Cor 6:12) and so Paul tells them, just as he does the Galatians, not to use
their freedom to submit themselves again to slavery, that is the slavery of the
self, of self-indulgence, which he defines as the flesh.
Typically when we talk about the flesh, we think about
sexual sins, and he has them there, but there are only potentially 3, versus 8
that deal with our interactions with others, that is how we live in
relationship and community. Which reinforces Paul saying that the entire law is
summed up the simply commandment “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Although perhaps a better translation, or at least to get the forcefulness of
what he is saying is, “You WILL love your neighbor as yourself.” That is what
freedom is about. Freedom is not the ability to do whatever we want, whenever
we want, to argue about “I have the right to do this” or “You can’t tell me
what to do” or anything of the other things we hear thrown around today, just
as they were in Paul’s time. Paul is saying that you are either controlled by
the desires of the flesh, by the self, and therefore you will work in
unrighteousness, and live in brokenness and be ultimately self-centered. Or you
can choose to be live in and be guided by the Spirit and live in the freedom
that Christ has offered us, to live in God’s righteousness, and we should
perhaps also then say to live in God’s justice, to be God centered rather than
self-centered.
And so this conversation about flesh and spirit is not a
dualism, but about the conflict between being centered in the self and being
centered in God; between living in brokenness and living in the redeeming power
of Christ. To claim that freedom then is not about separation from others, but
instead a complete claim of and binding into relationship with others. The word
religion literally means to bind together, and so perhaps it’s not just a fluke
that when people say they are spiritual but not religious that one of the
things they mean is that they are doing their own thing unencumbered by others
and relationship. And that’s exactly what Paul is talking about.
He is saying that to be free, to be truly free, is not about
the unrestrained permission to do whatever we want, to be separated from
relationship to others, because that actually only leads to slavery; being a
slave to one’s own self and one’s own desires. To be truly free means to be in
relationship. To be in a web of mutual responsibility. That the antidote to
self-centeredness is self-giving love. True freedom is only found in love. Loving
your neighbor as yourself, not as a feeling but a way of living. And so look at
the fruit of the Spirit, they are all things that happen in community, or for
the sake of community. They happen in relationship with others, or for the sake
of relationship with others.
And then Paul says to do this, to learn this love, to live
in this love we must become slaves to one another. Now some translations will
translate this as servant in order to lessen the severity of the claim of
slave, but that’s a mistake, I think. And another thing that will then be said
is that slavery in the ancient world was a kinder, gentler slavery than what we
think of in the west, especially in America. But, while it operated differently
and in much larger segments of life, it was just as brutal. When you do not
have personal control over your life, your actions and your body, when you
don’t have personal agency to say yes or no, that is a denial of humanity and a
brutal system regardless of how any particular individual may be treated. And
we should also note that slavery is not gone.
It is estimated that more than 40 million people live in
slavery around the world right now, including some 400,000 in the US alone. The
vast majority of them women who are involved in the sex industry. Think about
all the ridiculous arguments that are being had in the church right now and
compare it against that reality and what we could and should be doing, and I
don’t think we are choosing freedom. But notice that Paul does not say that we
are to become slaves to God, something we do hear in scripture, especially
amongst those who are prophets, or slaves to Christ, or even to the spirit or
righteousness, but that we are to become slaves to each other. And this is mutuality.
It’s not just that I pledge my life to you and then it’s done. It’s also that
you pledge your life to me, and we pledge our lives to others. That we learn to
submit to one another, to live peaceful, orderly and self-disciplined lives in
sacrificial giving in a multiplicity of ways, and all of those things are made
manifest in how we live together. Freedom in Christ makes radical and
self-giving love possible, because that love leads to service.
And so what does that freedom look like? How do we know when we see it? How do we live it out? How do we free ourselves through self-giving in service? It’s through the Spirit, which is the active presence of God in our lives and in our communities, it’s by living in love, joy, peace, patience, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. It’s about submitting ourselves to the betterment of others, and when others cry out in despair and anguish, especially those who are actually marginalized, not those who simply claim to be because their power and prestige are being challenged, listening to those cries and responding with righteousness, with justice, with love, so that we will not only be living in the Spirit, but that we will be guided by the Spirit, and in that we will truly seek to live with liberty, with freedom, and justice for all God’s people. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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