EASTER 2008
From the Editor...
Cry Freedom
How shall we understand freedom? Perhaps because I am in a
state, South Carolina, where candidates earlier this year were running
around saying “you are free so vote for me!” this has been much in mind.
There is a lot of sloppy thinking about freedom these days. For
too many it only means the ability to choose a candidate or a
product. Or it is understood to be the removal of external
constraints, as in I need the government out of my – then fill in the
blank: my business, my body, and on and on.
Christian thinking about freedom is a totally different animal.
For one thing, in the Scriptures, freedom has an interesting
relationship to time. Freedom is something which was present in
creation, and which will be fully present again at the end of history
when God brings it to its conclusion. But what about the
present? The people Jesus spends time with–say, for example, the
woman at the well (John 4), or Zaccheus (Luke 19) are not free but
constrained, imprisoned, and encased. When Jesus rescues them,
freedom begins, but even then it is lived out in the tension between
the already of new life in Christ and the not yet of the fullness of
the eschaton.
So apart from Christ, people who think they are free need to hear the
bad news that their perceived freedom is an illusion. One would
like to hear more from preachers these days on this score, since they
are addressing parishioners who are workaholics or poweraholics or
sexaholics and/or addicts to heaven knows what else. Why is it
that a group like AA seems to know more about real freedom than so many
churches? Because they begin with the premise which says their
members are enslaved – that is the first of the twelve steps.
And there is so much more to freedom then even this. In the
Bible, real freedom moves in not one or two but three directions.
Freedom from is one piece of the puzzle – freedom from sin, from the
demands of the law, from the tyranny of the urgent, from whatever
constricts us from being the people God intended us to be.
Equally important, however, is freedom for, freedom for Christ, for
service, for God’s justice, for ministry. Paul wonderfully
describes himself as a bondservant of Christ Jesus, and the Prayer Book
has it right when it says God’s service is “perfect freedom.”
Freedom with should not be missed, however. For Paul in Galatians
Christian freedom is not the Christian by herself changed by the
gospel. This has too much in common with the individual shopper
in Wal-Mart deciding exactly what kind of popcorn or yogurt she wants.
No, real freedom is to be liberated to live for Christ with the new
pilgrim people of God who reflect back a little of heaven’s light on
earth. A real church is one where people enjoy koinonia,
fellowship, the richness of God’s life shared into them which they then
share out in Christ’s name by the power of the Holy Spirit to the world.
Paul says it wonderfully in Galatians: “For freedom Christ has set us
free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of
slavery.” Do not settle for anything less than this real freedom,
freedom from bondage, freedom with our fellow pilgrims, and freedom for
the God who made the heavens and the earth.
-- The
Rev. Canon Dr.
Kendall S. Harmon
Contact Dr
Harmon by
e-mail at ksharmon@mindspring.com
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