Freely Entangled

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

June 30, 2013

Freely Entangled

Galatians 5:1, 13-14

“For freedom Christ has set us free. 

Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. 

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; 

only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, 

but through love become slaves to one another. 

For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, 

"You shall love your neighbor as yourself”

It would usually start around 8 o’clock on Friday evening.

Slowly at first:

thump, thump, thump.

But by 8:15 or so, it was pounding,

booming,

pulsing:

music coming from the apartment upstairs,

the apartment on the 8^th floor,

down into my seventh-floor apartment,

through the ceiling, down the walls,

into the living room, the kitchen,

the bedrooms, the bathrooms, everywhere.

It wasn’t the occasional party;

it was every Friday,

the music pounding out,

usually till well past 11:00.

Two young men, probably around 30 years old,

a few years older than I was at the time,

were the party boys upstairs.

They said they were bankers,

working in high stress jobs,

so when Friday night rolled around

it was time to kick back,

relax, and party!

When I told them the music was

so loud in my apartment

I couldn’t even watch television,

their response was short, to the point:

“It’s our apartment;

we’re free to do anything we want.”

A complaint to the building manager went nowhere;

the music blared on,

week in, week out.

When my lease expired, I moved.

“Free to do whatever we want.”

“It’s a free country.”

“It’s my right.”

These are phrases we hear regularly.

This time of year we celebrate those phrases

as we celebrate our nation’s birthday,

celebrate the freedom we have in this country,

the freedom we are grateful to have,

the freedom we are blessed to have.

But what does it mean, really mean,

to live freely,

to say we are free?

Does it mean we can do anything we like?

Live just as we each want to?

To hear some in this country, the answer is “yes”.

We are nation of rugged individualists, they say,

and we can do as we like,

live as we like;

It is our right.

“Live Free or Die,” as one state’s motto tells us;

“Don’t Tread on Me”,

as some license plates proclaim.

What did our Founding Fathers have in mind

when they created our nation as “the land of the free”?

Surely they didn’t create our country

so that someday young businessmen

could pay no heed to their neighbors

and play their stereo as loud as they wanted?

To find an answer, it’s helpful to look at

the works of writers and thinkers who influenced

Jefferson, Madison, Adams, and

our other Founding Fathers.

Among the most influential was a political philosopher

named John Locke.

Writing 100 years before the birth of our nation,

Locke wrote words that should sound familiar

in light of our lessons from the past two weeks:

“God, having made man such a creature that,

in His own judgment,

it was not good for him to be alone,

put him under strong obligation of necessity,

convenience, and inclination,

to drive him into society,

as well as fitted him with understanding and language

to continue and enjoy it.”

(Two Treatises of Government, 166)

Do you remember the lesson,

what God said in the second chapter of Genesis,

that it isn’t good for us to live alone?

God didn’t just create us to live in partnership in marriage,

God also created us to live together in community,

all of us bound together,

in one society,

living freely,

yet also living with responsibility,

living cooperatively, peacefully,

in harmony with the rest of the community.

What this means, then, is that we may be free

to play our music as loudly as we want,

the volume cranked all the way up,

but with the understanding that our responsibility

as part of a larger community may mean

we’ve got to turn down the volume

in consideration of others,

out of concern for others,

for the greater good.

This is just what Paul was arguing to the new Christians

in the churches throughout the Galatian region,

the lesson Paul was trying to teach them,

and the lesson Paul wants us to learn:

that to live in freedom – true freedom –

as our Lord Jesus Christ calls us to live,

is to live not just with concern for others,

but in service to others.

To make his point, Paul uses a word

we find opposed to everything we celebrate

on Independence Day: “slaves”,

that we are called to become slaves to one another.

Now, we don’t want to overreact to that word,

so listen again to the whole passage:

“For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters;

only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence,

but through love become slaves to one another.

For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment,

‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

This is the life we are called to live –

not just here in this church,

but everywhere: in our family life,

in the community,

out in the world,

everywhere we go,

in everything we do.

To live in freedom – real freedom –

is to live for love,

and to live in the love we’ve been given

by God in Jesus Christ,

we are to live for others,

serving, not being served,

living selflessly,

not selfishly,

our focus outward,

on the needs and concerns of others,

family, friend, and stranger alike.

We are free, yes,

but bound to all,

our lives freely entangled with others,

living a social contract,

to use the term from Locke’s contemporary

John Jacques Rousseau,

another writer who deeply influenced our Founding Fathers.

This social contract, this bound life,

leads us, in Locke’s words,

“to join and unite into a community for our comfortable,

safe, and peaceable living,

one amongst another…”

(Treatise, 176)

What this means is that even as we live freely,

we willingly accept limits and constraints on our freedom

for the greater good of the community,

for the greater good of others.

We accept limits even on our treasured Constitutional rights.

It was Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

who wrote so famously almost 100 years ago,

of one of our most precious rights:

“The most stringent protection of free speech

would not protect a man in

falsely shouting fire in a theatre

and causing a panic.”

(Schenck v United States, 249 US 47, 1919)

We do not live alone

because that is God’s will for us.

We live in community,

with one another,

and for one another.

“Your life and my life flow into each other

as wave flows into wave;

and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you,

there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me.

To see reality--not as we expect it to be but as it is—

is to see that unless we live for each other

and in and through each other,

we do not really live very satisfactorily.”

(Frederick Buechner)

The Galatians did not know political freedom,

living as they did under the heavy yoke of the Roman Empire;

still, Paul wanted them to understand

that they were free men and women,

blessed with freedom that no man,

no government,

no law, no nation,

no empire could take from them,

for it was freedom that came from

God through Christ.

As one writer put it,

Paul’s words would not make a good

“Fourth of July oratory…

Paul is not speaking of rugged individualism

or an inner liberty of the conscience or the will. …

What Paul is speaking of is so much more important,

for he is speaking of the freedom we have

in Jesus Christ,

freedom that manifests itself through

the formation of communities;

freedom that manifests itself in mutual service in love.”

(Professor Richard Hayes, Duke Divinity School)

This is such extraordinary freedom:

for it gives us freedom to live generous lives,

giving lives,           

sharing lives,

lives marked by patience,

acceptance, compassion,

kindness,

lives free of worry,

lives grounded in joy,

lives manifesting all the fruits of the Spirit,

as Paul calls them.

(Galatians 5:22)

This freedom allows us to love so broadly

and so deeply that we can even love our enemies,

reaching out to them not with an iron fist,

or a vengeful hand,

but with the hand of reconciliation and love,

as we live the words God teaches us:

“If your enemies are hungry, feed them,

and if they are thirsty, give them something to drink”

(Romans 12:20, quoting Proverbs 25:21-22)

We will celebrate freedom on Thursday

with picnics and fireworks,

with singing,

with proud displays of red, white and blue,

with expressions of deep, profound gratitude

for this nation we all love.

             

But even as we celebrate the blessings we have

living as we do in the land of the free,

our real freedom,

our deepest freedom comes from God,

comes through Christ,

comes through love,

comes through living in service to others.

This is freedom that knows no geography,

freedom that is not weakened by chains or bars,

or dictators or force,

for it is freedom that is given us

by God in Jesus Christ:

the gift of God

for the people of God.

AMEN