“For freedom Christ has set us free…” (Proper 8C; Galatians 5:1, 13-25; July 1, 2007)

“For freedom Christ has set us free…”

Proper 8C

Galatians 5:1, 13-25

July 1, 2007

Rev. John M. Caldwell, Ph.D.
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA

The commercial touts what it calls a “freedom credit card.”  Freedom here seems to mean that the bank is willing to “give” cash back or points that can be used to buy stuff and that the user can switch back and forth at will between cash back or points.   Never mind, of course, that this is a credit card and that every use of this line of credit comes with a stiff price.  Buy a Big Mac, fries , and a soft drink today with this “freedom” card.  Pay it back at the rate that the bank suggests on its monthly statement and that $4.92 meal will cost just a little over $10.00.  Ain’t freedom great?

All the while in the background, Mick Jagger is singing “I’m Free.”  “I’m free to do what I want, any old time.”

Freedom, according to the Rolling Stones (and Chase Bank seems to agree) is what allows “what I want” to result in “what we are able to do, have or be.”  If I want something, but am unable to do it,  have it, or be it, then I am unfree.  If I want to do something, or have something, or be something and nothing restrains me from doing it, then, Jagger sings, “I’m free.”

When we think of freedom or its lack, we focus on external restraints, on the things outside of ourselves that prevent our wishes from becoming realities and our whims from becoming actions.  We are suspicious of any power that might prevent us from having or doing what we want.

But, said the French philosopher Michel Foucault, that’s not the way power operates, not any more.  Power doesn’t operate on us from “out there” somewhere.  It is no longer concentrated in a few places or institutions.  Power has, in a sense, disappeared, or at least cloaked itself.  Power no longer thwarts desires; it creates them.

The talk show guest was a young woman of seventeen who had had her breasts enlarged.  The host affected deep shock as she implied that this was a widespread phenomenon.  The young woman’s mother and her plastic surgeon were there.  The young woman said that this was what she “wanted,” as if that were an argument.  Her mother and doctor were focused on whether she was old enough to know what she wanted.  Having concluded that she was, they could see no reason why she shouldn’t be free to do it.

The young woman, self-described as under-endowed, imagines that her desire for breast augmentation is her own, that it is the product of her freedom, that she is free to want it.  This is not the case, according to Foucault.  No, her desire has been constructed.  She grew up in a culture that bombarded her with images of buxom, high-status women, beginning with the grotesquely proportioned Barbie doll she was given as a child and running through the worlds of music, fashion and cinema that fill her day dreams and her chatter with her friends.  Her wish might have seemed “natural” enough, but it is a construct.

She had been focused on whether or not she would face constraints on getting what she wanted.  That’s where usually look when we want to know if we are free.  Of what use, though, is unrestrained freedom to get or do what we want, if what we want is the product of someone else’s use of power?  In that case we will imagine ourselves to be perfectly free; we will never see our unfreedom.  At the point at which we imagine ourselves to be most free, we will be the most constrained

The Apostle Paul was not a post-Structuralist philosopher, but I think he, too, understood that we are not as much in control of our desires as our desires are in control of us.  He would agree that, if we think freedom is the freedom to “do whatever I want, any old time,” then we will never be free in any meaningful sense of the word.

For Paul, there are only two ways to go: one way is to live according to what he calls “flesh.”  Flesh normally refers to the soft tissue that covers our bones, but that is not what Paul means here.

There is a part of us that rejects a relationship with God.  We are God’s creatures; we live in a world that God fashioned; we are sustained moment to moment by God’s love.  And, yet, there is a part of us that wants nothing to do with God.  That part of us is what Paul means by “flesh.”

The other way to go is to live according to what Paul calls “spirit.”  Spirit embraces our relationship with God and the life that God gives us.  It revels in God’s love.  It animates our lives with the same life and the same power that raised Jesus from the dead.

Each of these ways has its own destination.  Paul describes flesh’s destination in this way: “The actions that are produced by selfish motives are obvious, since they include sexual immorality, moral corruption, doing whatever feels good, idolatry, drug use and casting spells, hate, fighting, obsession, losing your temper...” and so forth.  The more we follow the path of flesh, the less attractive our lives become, the less Godlike, the less holy, the less human.

As you can imagine, Paul describes the way of the spirit’s destination a little differently: “…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”  This is freedom, says Paul.  The more we follow the path of spirit, the more we become what God had in mind when God made us in the first place.  The further we move down that path, the freer we get.  Not the freer in the sense Mick Jagger sings about, but the freer in the same way that an eagle is free when it flies or a dolphin when it swims.

The other freedom we have is the freedom to choose between the two paths.  At the intersection Rt 9 and Rt 52, I have four choices: I can keep west toward Cresco. I can go north toward Burr Oak.  I can go east past Decorah and toward Waukon.  I can go south to Calmar.  I can decide where I’m going and then chose the road that will get me there.

What I can’t do is to turn south and drive to Rochester.  That way doesn’t go where I want to go.

If you had given me directions to Rochester and I turned south instead because someone else told me that going south was a shortcut, you would be angry.  Angry with my badly-informed informant.  And angry with me for taking their advice.  That’s why this is an angry letter.

Paul can barely contain his indignation.  Listen to how he begins the letter:

Paul an apostle who is not sent from human authority or commissioned through human agency…

And already we know that there has been a challenge to Paul’s credentials.

…but sent through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from dead; and from all the brothers and sisters with me.  To the churches in Galatia.  Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  He gave himself for our sins, so he could deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.  To God be the glory forever and always!  Amen.

Now, what normally happens at this point in one of Paul’s letters is a prayer of thanksgiving.  Even the Corinthian church, Paul’s problem child, got a nice long prayer thanking God for the faith and spiritual gifts in their community.  But see what comes next in the letter to the Galatian churches:

I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ to follow another gospel.

Instead of embracing the freedom of the path of spirit and instead of using their grace-given freedom to choose the path of spirit, they have chosen a different way.  They have embraced the Law of Moses.

This doesn’t sound so bad.  I think they must be good people or at least people who want to be good people.  That isn’t how Paul sees them.  Paul sees them as rejecting a relationship with God and embracing God’s rules instead.  Paul sees them as giving away the freedom that is a part of way of spirit in exchange for the slavery that is a part of the way of flesh.  Yes, flesh, oddly enough.  In Paul’s mind there are only two choices; if it is not spirit it is flesh.  Period.

I admit to struggling with this.  I’ve known Jews whom I can only describe as holy.  I’ve know at least one former Presbyterian who has become a Jew of considerable holiness.  I have a hard time believing that Jews are following the principle of flesh, if that’s what Paul means.

But I also see his point.  Rules may be good things.  The rules that Moses gave—especially—may be good things.  Following the set of rules that Moses gave, or the set of rules that Muhammed gave, or the Rule of Benedict, for that matter, may be a good thing to do.  But if we embrace the rules instead of God, if we prefer keeping the rules to being in relationship with God, then we aren’t following the way of the spirit, whether we’re Christians or Jews or Muslims.  We aren’t enjoying the freedom that comes from becoming who we were made to be.  Instead we are driving south on 52— and it doesn’t matter if we think we are going toward Rochester—we are headed for Calmar.

Freedom does not come from doing “what I want, any old time.” Nor does it come from seeking my humanity in any list of rules.  Freedom comes from reveling in God’s love.  Freedom comes from being transformed into the image of God we have glimpsed in Christ.  “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control:” that’s freedom.  That’s the freedom for which Christ has set us free.

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