Seventh Pentecost
Romans 7:15-25a, Mtt. 11:16-19, 25-30
This is a weekend when Americans celebrate our national independence. Tomorrow will be a day when we revel in, and give thanks to God for our freedom. We live in the land of liberty. We are free. We can speak, think, travel, believe, and do as we please. This is freedom.
And yet, how ironic it is that here, at the beginning of the 21st century, lots of folks I know don't seem to be all that free. Our age shall be known not as the age of freedom, but as the age of anxiety. We are anxious about many things: having enough money, having good health and health care, being secure and safe.
When it comes to freedom most of us define freedom as "being free to do what I want." Here's my Independence Day question: Are you? Are you free to do what you want?
In today's reading from Paul's letter to the Romans, Paul confesses that he feels anything but free. "I can decide what I want to do," says Paul, "but I am powerless to do it."
I know what he means. Do you? When we are deciding what we ought to do with our lives, how we ought to act in a given situation, there seems to be a great gulf between what we decide in our head to do and what we actually do. "Who can deliver me from this slavery?" Paul asks...
Between what we want to do and what we do, there lives a great gulf. So if we define "freedom as being free to do what we want to do", how free are we?
Furthermore there's the troubling truth that when I say, "I want to do this," I may not be speaking truthfully. Why do I want to do this? Sometimes I want to do some action, think that the action is right, simply because I have already excluded other possibilities.
As a pastor people come to me with a problem. "What can I do about my problem?" they ask. Then I start thinking of possible courses of action. I suggest some action to them.
"Couldn't do that," they say, "that might lead to great difficulty."
I suggest something else.
I can't do that either," they say, "I could lose my job if I did that."
The conversation ends in great frustration for both of us. I realize that they are hoping that they can "do what is right," but only within the parameters of what is easy, and what is risk and cost free.
What I want is limited by my experience, by my notions of what is possible and permissible. To say with pride "I did it my way" is to beg the question of whether or not I really considered alternative ways of acting and living.
Freedom is a big problem. How do we know that our loud claims for freedom are not simply the rattling of our chains? We are free to do what we want, but sometimes that seems like the problem. We have nothing interesting to do with our freedom other than be self indulgent, to breathlessly fulfill our every desire, chasing after this and that, consuming, indulging, and accumulating. Perhaps the problem is that our democracy has given us the freedom to get what we want, but has given us so little guidance in wanting what is worth having!
Paul asks, "Who can deliver me from this slavery?"
I wonder if the answer lies in today's gospel. There after Jesus asks people to follow him, he asks people to take upon themselves his burden, his yoke. This has always seemed to me a most paradoxical statement. While Jesus burdens may be light, and his yoke easy, still a burden is still a burden and a yoke still a yoke. Isn't the purpose of freedom to avoid all yokes, all burdens so we can be free to do what we want?
I think at the heart of the Christian gospel there is a paradoxical claim that only as our lives are linked to Christ, only as our lives are bent toward his will, that we are free. St. Augustine first noted this when he was a young man. He had lived a rather carefree, sometimes profligate existence, had even fathered a child out of wedlock. Then his life got caught up in Christ. He was converted. After his conversion Augustine noted that freedom means to be free, not to do what we want to do, but rather to be free to be who God intends us to be. Before that happens, our lives are jerked around by other intentions, external and alien forces, distractions that hinder us from being all that we ought to be.
It can be great freedom to find our lives caught up in the plans and purposes of God. In bearing a burden other than our own selfish desires, we become free to be who God created us to be. That is true freedom.
Example
I believe that by taking up the burdens of Jesus, by placing the yoke of Christ around his neck, this young man was free. It is a great freedom to know who owns you and to whom you are accountable.
Therein is true freedom.
Amen