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“Americans Balance Patriotism and Reflection,” the headline read on July 4, 2002, the first Independence Day after September 11, 2001, as if patriotism were fireworks and flags and bratwurst and beer and reflection just something unexpectedly and unhappily thrust upon us by September 11, which shows just how far down the slippery slope we’ve slid, just how close to the bread and circuses of ancient Rome we’ve moved, because if patriotism is fireworks and flags and agreeing with the government, and not reflection, then we might as well throw in the towel, because, as our Founding Fathers remind us, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Both Sundays and the Fourth of July, both religion and patriotism, were made for reflection, for remembering and for prayer, because the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. We just forget. We just forget what freedom is. One way to define freedom is to say that freedom is “being free to do what I want to do.” That’s what children think of as freedom, and I suppose it’s the way most of us would define it off the tops of our heads, before we really think about it. It sounds nice. It’s so simple, so appealing. And it’s so seductive. But freedom as “being free to do what I want to do” is an illusion, an illusion a little reflection will always expose. So when we think about it a bit, we realize the illusion for what it is. Human history makes it clear that freedom cannot mean that “I am free to do what I want to do.” John Locke, whose writings about government greatly influenced our own Declaration of Independence and Constitution, pointed out that if I were free to do whatever I want to do, if I were free to steal or murder or otherwise cause mayhem among my fellow men and women, then I alone would be free to do what I want to do, because everyone else would not be free. Everyone else would be bound, bound to spend all his time trying to keep me from stealing his chickens or busting his head, and he would therefore not be free to go about the ordinary affairs of everyday life, such as making a living or building a house or playing with his children. The truth of this has been brought close to home since September 11. For the past three and a half years, we have all experienced the captivity created by the fear that someone will once again decide to exercise his freedom to do what he wants to do and fly more airplanes into our buildings, or poison our water, or fill our air with toxins. And so, instead of being free to live our lives the way we would really like to live them, we have become captive to the perceived need to spend billions of dollars on war, with no end in sight, and many are afraid even to exercise their freedom to travel. If we were really free to do what we want to do, we would use our money to see the world, and we would use our time to read or go fishing or make music or make love rather than war. Instead, we are spending it looking for monsters under every bed and for terrorists in every airport and every nation, all at the cost of our own liberties. So just what is freedom? And what kind of freedom do we want? And how free do we want to be? St. Paul suggests that human freedom lies only in being free to choose what, or whom, we will serve. Will I choose, within the limits that money and health and the fact of death impose on me, to serve myself, or will I choose to serve something, or someone, beyond myself? Will I choose to serve myself or my neighbor, my boat or God? “I have found,” Paul says, “that there is no freedom for those who live according to the flesh. I have found that, in my unspiritual nature, I am not free to do what I truly want to do, because what I do is not what I truly want to do, but what I detest.... It is sin that dwells in me that causes me to act as I do, for although the will to do good is there, the ability to do it is not. The good which I want to do, I fail to do. And what I do is the wrong which is against my will.... Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this state of death? Who but God? Thanks be to him through Jesus Christ our Lord!” “To sum it up, then,” says Paul, “left to myself as an unspiritual human being, I serve God’s law with my mind, but with my sinful nature I serve the law of sin.” In other words, the only freedom I have is to choose what, or whom, to serve: myself or my neighbor, my boat or God? And even the freedom to choose to serve God, the freedom to serve what is good, is a gift of God himself, the Author of liberty. Freedom is not a right; it is the gift and work of grace. But even with the help of the grace of God, perhaps the greatest human freedom is sometimes found, maybe even most often found, not in what we choose to do, but in what we choose not to do. Do you remember that wonderful freedom that Paul chose to exercise when he decided not to eat meat sacrificed to idols? In Corinth, those who worshiped other gods often made sacrifices of food to their gods, and after the sacrifice this food could be eaten by the priests or the family. It was even sold in the marketplace, and some Christians liked to buy it and eat it. They reasoned like this: they said that, because of Christ, they knew that “a false god has no real existence, because there is no God but the one God. Therefore,” they said, “since a false god is not really a god at all, because false gods do not exist, then because Christ had made them free, they were free to eat meat that had been sacrificed on pagan altars.” “That is true,” responded Paul, “and you and I know that. But there is a freedom greater than that, which is the freedom to serve our brothers and sisters by not eating meat sacrificed to idols, because, you see, some of our brothers and sisters in Christ do not yet understand the freedom that Christ has granted. So I will not use my freedom to eat meat sacrificed to idols, to do what I want to do and have right to do in this matter, because it might scandalize our weaker brothers and sisters and cause them to do something they believe is wrong.” “Knowledge can puff us up,” Paul adds. “If we are not careful, knowledge can lead us to think that we are better or more important than our brothers and sisters. But love builds up. So even though we know that we are free to eat meat sacrificed to false gods without compromising our own consciences, wouldn’t it be better to use the freedom of the love God has graced us with to choose not to eat it out of regard for our brothers and sisters?” In other words, the freedom that love brings sometimes points us not toward “doing what I want to do,” but toward building up the Body of Christ, or the community or our nation or the world, by choosing not to do what we are free to do and have the power to do, rather than toward our puffing ourselves up to do what we want to do because we know we can do it and are free to do it. Isn’t such restraint, the freedom to say “no,” sometimes the greater freedom, the freedom that builds up rather than puffs up? It is one of the ironies of life that the greatest power lies in restraint, in having power and choosing not to use it. This is surely a timely word of freedom to us as we celebrate the independence of our nation, as we reflect on the condition of our own liberty. When I was in seminary, a classmate came home for lunch with me one day, and I suggested that we fry some potatoes to go with our hamburgers. And he said, ”You’re not going to feed us all that fat, are you?” “Well,” I said, ”I eat fried potatoes all the time, and I’m pretty healthy.” And he said, “It’s not a question of whether you are healthy, it’s a question of how healthy you want to be.” It’s the same for Independence Day, and for today, the Day of Resurrection: the question for both days is, ”How free do we want to be?” Do we want to be free enough, as persons and as a nation, that we can choose not to respond to every threat with force? Do we want to be free enough that we can afford open borders as well as open markets? Do we want to be free enough that we can choose the freedom Jesus himself will commend to us at tomorrow’s mass on Independence Day – the freedom to give to those who ask of us, the freedom to love not only our neighbors, but our enemies as well? Do we want to be free enough to use our strength not to dominate, but to offer succor and support, free enough to value the lives of others as much as we value our own, free enough to move beyond conspicuous consumption to conspicuous compassion? Do we want to be free enough – that is, do we want to be honest enough, as Madeleine Albright suggested to the Yale Divinity School last year – to recognize that, while we are as good a people as any, we in the United States do not have a unique claim to God’s love or a direct line to God’s will for his world? Such honesty, such restraint, is much more powerful than to suggest that we do have it, because even if it were true, it will not work, just in practical terms, to insist upon it, because Albright is correct when she goes on to say that while she believes that “we can unite the world in opposition to the murder of innocent people,...we will never unite the world in support of the idea that Americans have a unique relationship with God or a better understanding of God’s will” than everyone else in the world. The greater power lies in restraint. So how free do we want to be. Do we want to be free enough that we can acknowledge, in Albright’s words, that we ourselves “fall far short of what God has asked and [of] what our consciences instruct.” Do we want to be free enough that we can pray, with the confidence of Jesus, that God will forgive us our trespasses in the same measure as we forgive those who trespass against us? What Independence Day and today, the Day of Resurrection, have in common is that both are days for reflection and prayer, reflection upon both the nature of freedom and the extent of our commitment to that service to God which is perfect freedom. As someone recently observed, Patrick Henry did not say, ”Give me absolute security, or give me death.” He said, “Give me liberty, or give me death.” So what kind of liberty do we want, for ourselves and for our nation? And how free do we want to be? These are the questions behind our prayers both today and tomorrow, because in church, you’ll notice, we pray for a freedom that is greater than the freedom to “do what I want to do.” We pray for God’s grace, as Paul prayed for God’s grace. We pray for a greater freedom, for a freedom that only God’s grace can grant, that we might be truly free, free enough to choose not what we want, but that which is good. “My country, ‘tis of thee,” we will sing tomorrow. “Sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing; land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.” “My native country, thee, land of the noble free, thy name I love.... Let music swell the breeze, and ring from all the trees sweet freedom’s song. Let mortal tongues awake, let all that breathe partake.... Our father’s God, to thee, Author of liberty, to thee we sing. Long may our land be bright with freedom’s holy light; protect us by thy might, great God our king.” I hope you noticed the word “noble.” The noble free! How easy it would be to slide over this important word. It’s only by grace that we notice it. “Noble” is a powerful word. It comes from the same root as the word “to know.” To be noble means to have discernment, to understand the real importance or value of something. “Noble” implies superiority of character and judgment. When “noble” modifies the word “freedom,” it means freedom, but not freedom to do just anything. To be the noble free means to be the discerning free, to be free from all that is petty or base or mean or self-serving or self-indulgent or vulgar or common or cheap. To be the noble free means to have, for the sake of what is good, the freedom to choose not to do what one might want to do , or have the power to do, or have the right to do. It is to have that perfect freedom that is found in the service of God, the Author of liberty, the One who created liberty and who knows what it is for and who gave it to us for that purpose. Noble freedom is the freedom St. Paul gives thanks for in his Letter to the Romans: “In my sinful nature, I find that I am unfree to do what is good, because I am a slave to the law of sin. But thanks be to God! For because of Jesus Christ, the Spirit of life has now set me free from the law of sin and death, that I might live for the life of the Spirit.” Freedom , in other words, is not its own end; freedom is a means to an end. The end and purpose of freedom is not just to be free, but to be the noble free. Freedom is not a right, but a gift, an endowment granted by our Creator not for its own sake, but for a purpose and an end beyond itself. The purpose of freedom is nobility, the freedom to do what is good and just and merciful. This purpose, this end, Paul reminds us, we are now free, through Christ, to choose. In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. |