“Are you free? Are you really free? How do you know?” It was a helluva way to start a college class. And when my professor opened the PoliSci seminar by basically asking us to define the concept of freedom, at first I braced myself for a heady lecture divorced from reality. But while the question may have been framed in big, sweeping terms, the discussion that followed actually revealed pretty quickly that freedom is far from some vague abstraction without any tangible meaning for our lives.
Freedom is something we all deal with on a daily basis. I think especially here in the US, we’re so surrounded by talk of ‘liberty’ and ‘rights’ that we can take freedom for granted and miss just how deeply it shapes not just our politics, but our relationships and even our faith. We tell our children that they’re free to be anything they want. We hold independence and agency up as guiding ideals for our lives. Even the tagline we’ve used at this church emphasizes that we’re “free to question.” Freedom is very present in our everyday lives. We value it. We fight for it—cling to it. We just don’t often step back and ask ourselves what freedom actually means, like my professor did that day.
We may not be in a college classroom today (Thank God). But if we listen to today’s opening collect and readings, we might actually hear God posing that same question to us here today. “Are you free? How do you know?”
Earlier we prayed for God to “set us free” and give us “the liberty of abundant life.” Liberty. Freedom. There they are. Great! We love freedom! But then Paul chimes in and starts talking about giving up freedom and making himself a slave. He talks about giving up his right to compensation, his liberty from the law, and strength that would let him defend himself. And he holds that up as something to be admired. But… didn’t we just pray for freedom and liberty? Why is he talking about becoming a slave to all as though it’s a good thing? Is the Bible telling us that we shouldn’t be free—that we shouldn’t want the liberty and rights that we value?
No! …and yes.
I think Paul’s making the same subtle move today that we’ve seen him make a few times over the past several weeks. He’s urging us to look beyond what we think is good, to see something better—a deeper kind of liberty at the heart of the Gospel.
Embracing and celebrating freedom is not a bad thing. Freedom, empowerment, and God-given dignity are central motifs in the Gospel as a message of liberation! Again and again and again in Scripture, God defends the rights of the lowly and empowers the weak and sets prisoners free. We’re right to ask God to set us free and to value our liberty to question and act freely in our lives and communities. But, as with everything good thing, there’s a pitfall to look out for. And when it comes to freedom, the danger emerges when we celebrate and cling to our freedom, without holding it up to the light of the Good News made known in Jesus Christ.
Cherishing freedom is good. But when we start to see that freedom as our freedom—when we clutch it close to our chests in the shadow of our self-absorption, we can start to see freedom as something that’s about us and for us. Isolated from the radical gift of God’s very self in the person of Jesus, freedom becomes a matter of casting off anything and everything that binds or constrains us. We start to see freedom as the right and ability to choose whatever we want, whenever we want. And this kind of freedom can quickly become a free-for-all. When we start to see the gift of liberty as simply the right to freely choose whatever possessions or paths or persuasions we see fit, then the unity and wholeness at the heart of God’s mission is put at risk.
We see this manifest in the vicious forces of polarization that plague our politics—as groups and individuals on every side start to see life as a zero-sum game. When our liberty is fundamentally something for us—about our choices—our concern for others erodes, and the freedom so dear to our society becomes a free-for-all. We see it in our relationships too. As our vision narrows to see only our right to do what we want, the stable bonds of commitment that tie us together start to dissolve. We opt in and out of relationships at will, and the freedom found in community collapses into a free-for-all. And in our faith lives, when we understand freedom just as blazing our own trail, without being beholden in any way to the wisdom of others (past and present), then “free to question” becomes a free-for-all, and we cease to live as a Body—the Body of Christ—walking the pilgrimage of faith and asking questions together.
Freedom is a good thing. Liberation runs like a thread through the whole Bible for a reason. But when we cling to the gift of freedom apart from God’s central gift to us in Jesus, then it becomes a snare that our feet get caught in, and rather than ceasing, divisions end up growing deeper.
You might recognize these dynamics from our world today (especially as the tide of the election season sweeps back in). But the problems caused by distorted visions of freedom aren’t new. The Corinthian Christians that Paul was writing to were facing the same issues. The Corinthians valued strength, autonomy, and rights. And when they heard the proclamation of freedom in the Gospel, they rightly embraced that freedom—but they clung to it as something for them. They felt free to choose factions based on who they liked and agreed with, and to throw off the commitments that come with community. They felt free to live their faith by their own set of rules and blaze their own trail without regard for the love and mutual care that is meant to characterize the Body of Christ. They cherished Christ’s gift—the liberty of abundant life—but they clung to it like a possession that existed for their own good alone, turning their freedom into a free-for-all.
But Paul doesn’t devalue their freedom or deny that they have it! In fact, he affirms Christian’s freedom and actually kind of one-ups the Corinthians, pointing out that, if anything, he has more rights and liberties as someone who has dedicated his entire being to the service of the Church. But even as Paul says, “Yeah, you’re right; we are free in Christ,” he points us and the Corinthians beyond freedom for freedom’s sake. Paul asks us to look deeper—to see that the liberty you and I prayed for a minute ago wasn’t just the freedom of abundant life in general, for us to enjoy on our own as we please. Freedom from constraints—freedom to choose—is all well and good. But Paul reminds us that true freedom is the liberty of that abundant life as it is made known to us in Jesus.
Paul is inviting us to embrace this deeper freedom, made known to us in the cosmic drama of the Eternal Word, who did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped at, but instead took the form of a slave in order to free us from slavery. It’s the freedom modeled for us in the daily life of Jesus the Incarnate Word, as he sets aside the peace and quiet of his prayer retreat in today’s reading and rejoins the clamoring crowds to bring healing to the sick. It’s the freedom modeled for us in the ministry of Paul the Apostle, as he sets aside his strength, security, rights, and autonomy, to stand alongside those who haven’t tasted that liberty, becoming beholden to them in order to help them find freedom.
This is the freedom we participate in each day as Christians, when we become willing to be less “free” than we could be—to accept constraints of relationship and the bonds of shared belief for the sake of finding freedom together. The liberty of that abundant life we just prayed for is a liberty that is willing to set aside the free-for-all in order to become more truly free—for the sake of all.
This isn’t freedom as the world understands it. This isn’t the first answer most of us would give to a college professor asking us to describe freedom. It certainly isn’t the answer I would’ve given my professor that day. But it is the answer Paul invites us to give. Because it’s the kind of liberty that Jesus makes known to us.
Our whole pattern of life as the Church—walking and praying and questioning together, bound together as the Body of Christ—is practice to help us embrace this deeper freedom. It’s practice; so that we don’t cling to being free by ourselves and for ourselves, but rather, like Jesus and Paul, bind ourselves to others for the greater good of finding freedom together. It’s practice; so that when we’re asked if we’re free we can answer, “Yes, we are free. But it’s not a free-for-all. Like Jesus our Savior, we are free for the sake of all.”