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Freedom: A Post-July 4 Conversation with Paul (4th Sunday after Pentecost, 7/6/2025)

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Readings (Track 1)

Last week we heard Paul’s ringing “For freedom Christ has set us free!” and his Flesh/Spirit contrast. The flesh (our humanity curved in on itself) undercuts that freedom; God’s Spirit boosts it. This week he’s still working that Flesh/Spirit contrast. Two days ago we celebrated the 4th of July. So this sermon is mostly a conversation with Paul—in our early 21st century context.

“You reap whatever you sow.” It sounds like it’s already a proverb, which Paul wants to use to keep talking about Flesh and Spirit. Flesh vs. Spirit isn’t the material/immaterial contrast, as though the latter were intrinsically better. It’s not about escaping from the body. Recall the list of the works of the flesh we heard last week: many of the items have nothing to do with the body: “enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy.” Luther often talked about sin as being curved in on oneself, and I find that a helpful way of talking about Paul’s ‘flesh.’ Nothing wrong with flesh per se; the problems start when we treat it as the only reality. And Spirit: not any spirit, but the Spirit that brooded over the waters at creation, the Spirit that enlivened Ezekiel’s valley of bones, the Spirit that arrived at Pentecost.

“You reap whatever you sow.” Why does Paul think he needs to say that? If we think about our own experience, the upside to sowing to the flesh is that the reward is usually immediate. And that can deceive us into forgetting the downside. So, a warning. On the other hand, the downside of sowing to the Spirit is that the reward is often not immediate. It’s easy to “grow weary in doing what is right.” So, encouragement: “we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.”

And notice what follows: “So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.” As with Paul’s lists of the works of the Flesh and the fruit of the Spirit, the focus is communal, the sowing and reaping that happens in our common life. Paul’s particularly concerned about what happens in the “family of faith”—we might say “the parish.” But the same logic applies outside, and as there’s opportunity, Paul wants us to pay attention to that.

“The good of all.” Back in 2020 the sociologist Robert Putnam published The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again. Looking at economic, political, social, and cultural indicators, Putnam thinks we were getting “more equal, less contentious, more connected, and more conscious of shared values” in the period 1900-1960, and since then “less equal, more polarized, more fragmented, and more individualistic” (pp.285-86). The “How We Can Do It Again” part is necessarily short on detail: it’s a bottom-up process. Our attention to “the good of all” in and past parish boundaries can contribute to that badly-needed upswing.

“Let us work for the good of all.” Well, how? “I’m doing this for your good” is usually not reassuring. And here today’s Gospel provides one clue. Jesus gives the seventy impressive power, and pairs it with self-imposed weakness: “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals… Whatever house you enter… Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide… Do not move about from house to house.” The work demands not lording it over these towns, but entering into community with them.

Which brings us—recalling July 4th—to Paul’s “For freedom Christ has set us free.” What do we think freedom is about? The German theologian Moltmann observes that we tend to think of freedom in terms of what we can do or have, which is, he argues, to see freedom as a sort of lordship. “Everyone should be his or her own ruler, his or her own lord, his or her own slaveholder.… Each one sees the other as a competitor in the battle for power and ownership.” This sounds like what Paul was confronting among the Galatians: freedom as license to continue to compete with each other. The alternative? Freedom as community. “I am free and feel myself to be free when I am recognized and accepted by others and when I, for my part, recognize and accept others.…Then the other person is no longer a limitation of my freedom but the completion of it.”[1]

In case freedom as lordship vs community sounds like apples and oranges, the following might help. If I’m thinking of freedom to consume (“What can I get this week?”) lordship works. But if I ask: am I free to play the flute? To gain that freedom I’d need teachers, fellow students for encouragement, folk giving honest feedback… a community. Am I free to speak Japanese? Am I free to live as a human being?

Freedom as lordship or community: the alternatives align pretty closely with Paul’s lists of the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. They align pretty closely with Jesus’ instructions to the seventy.

Freedom as community invites us to recognize freedom across the status totem pole, as in, for example, our first reading. Consider the folk at the bottom of the totem pole.

First, the little maid, captured in a Syrian raid, and now serving Naaman’s wife. She could easily have kept the information about Elisha to herself, and taken a sort of joy in watching the commander waste away. She could have seen it as a sort of justice, or even as punishment from her God. She’s near the bottom of the totem pole, but she has choices, and she chooses to give Naaman the information that saves him.

Then, Naaman’s servants. Naaman’s response to Elisha’s non-appearance suggests that he had a short fuse, and his servants would have been the first to suffer from that. Never mind whether they thought Elisha’s instructions had any merit: they could have enjoyed watching their master stymied. They’re not much up the totem pole from the little maid, but they have choices, and they chose to deal gently and honorably with their master, to give his indignation an offramp, and he is saved.

Let’s try to pull this together. “For freedom Christ has set us free!” That Paul found it necessary to talk about the Flesh and the Spirit tells us that ‘freedom’ can be ambiguous, and I’ve used Moltmann’s freedom as lordship or community as a way of unpacking that. “Let us work for the good of all.” A necessary exhortation, whether in our parish life or two days out from July 4th. The examples of that servant girl and Naaman’s servants together with Jesus’ instructions remind us that this work isn’t about amassing as much power as possible to impose our solutions.

And, simply for the joy of it, let’s watch all this play out in the verses just after today’s first reading:

“Then [Naaman] returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, ‘Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel; please accept a present from your servant.’ But he said, ‘As the LORD lives, whom I serve, I will accept nothing!’ He urged him to accept, but he refused. Then Naaman said, ‘If not, please let two mule-loads of earth be given to your servant; for your servant will no longer offer burnt offering or sacrifice to any god except the LORD. But may the LORD pardon your servant on one count: when my master goes into the house of Rimmon to worship there, leaning on my arm, and I bow down in the house of Rimmon, when I do bow down in the house of Rimmon, may the LORD pardon your servant on this one count.’”

There are—one might argue—all sorts of things wrong in this request. Elijah and Elisha have spent pretty much their entire careers fighting against idolatry. But this is a foreigner, and Elisha lives in that freedom Paul celebrated. So Elisha says to Naaman: “Go in peace.”

[1] Humanity in God pp. 63-64.

Trust that makes a difference (3rd Sunday after Pentecost, 6/29/2025)

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Readings (Track 2)

Today’s psalm is a gift, and the focus of this sermon. “Protect me, O God, for I take refuge in you.” That sounds like our world. The danger isn’t specified, but the psalmist’s language shows that it’s serious: “For you will not abandon me to the grave, / nor let your holy one see the Pit.” Nevertheless, to say “You are my Lord, / my good above all other” is to choose trust and hope, not simply for survival, but for flourishing: “You will show me the path of life; / in your presence there is fullness of joy, / and in your right hand are pleasures for evermore.” Does this come easily? Of course not. If it came easily the psalm wouldn’t be necessary. But it’s where the psalmist wants to end up.

As you may recall, Peter cites this psalm in his Pentecost sermon, using it to interpret Jesus’ resurrection. And we often hear it as celebrating our hope for resurrection. That’s not wrong, but it’s not what the psalmist was talking about in their context: “For you will not abandon me to the grave, / nor let your holy one see the Pit. / You will show me the path of life” in this life. This psalm is like Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my shepherd / I shall not be in want”), but with the danger more clearly in the foreground.

If we wonder how to make the psalmist’s trust and hope our own, our New Testament readings offer two different perspectives. Let’s look at them briefly.

Paul focuses on freedom, an important word in his time and ours. In our time, as the German theologian Moltmann argues, freedom tends to mean lordship. “Everyone should be his or her own ruler, his or her own lord, his or her own slaveowner.…Each one sees the other as a competitor in the battle for power and ownership.” The alternative, Moltmann argues, is to see freedom as community. “I am free and feel myself to be free when I am recognized and accepted by others and when I, for my part, recognize and accept others.…Then the other person is no longer a limitation of my freedom but the completion of it.”[1] I’m still chewing on this, but I think he’s on to something, and it aligns with Paul’s argument.

The Galatians to whom Paul writes affirm trust and hope, but are still in competition with each other. And that, Paul argues, is to opt for the flesh, not the Spirit. So Paul gives us those well-known lists, the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit, both lists about how we live together. Put in the psalmist’s terms, “O Lord, you are my portion and my cup; / it is you who uphold my lot” should be freeing me for more patience, kindness, generosity, etc. Notice again the movement in the first two verses: “I have said to the Lord, ‘You are my Lord, / my good above all other.’ / All my delight is upon the godly that are in the land.” Freedom as community, centered and grounded in the Holy Trinity, the original community.

“Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.” Paul is, of course, speaking to the churches in Galatia. But the Spirit/Flesh alternatives are equally present in our cities, our nation, our world. So Paul’s words give us another way of praying for these: may the Spirit that brooded over the chaotic waters at creation breath Jesus’ life into ours at every level.

In short, after hearing Paul’s words, we can hear the psalmist’s words (“I have said to the Lord, “You are my Lord, / my good above all other.”) also as rippling out to the psalmist’s neighbors: flesh or Spirit, freedom as lordship or community.

Luke places today’s text shortly after the Transfiguration, Jesus transfigured, talking with Moses and Elijah, and the voice from the cloud “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” And today’s text is about putting that into practice. It’s not that Moses, Elijah, and Jesus are equal authorities, so that we decide in any given situation which to hear, but listening to Jesus we hear Moses and Elijah properly. When that Samaritan village refuses to receive them, Elijah’s fire is not an option. When it comes to Jesus’ call to discipleship the obligations to parents mandated by Moses take second place. (That’s what’s in play in Jesus’ response to “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”)

In terms of today’s psalm, “You are my Lord, / my good above all other” plays out differently before and after Jesus taking on our flesh. This is not because we’re in any way better than the original hearers, the Gentiles more virtuous than the Jews, but that Jesus changes the landscape. There are new possibilities. “I will bless the Lord who gives me counsel; / my heart teaches me, night after night” goes on steroids. For too many cultures, past and present, Paul’s first list (“enmities, strife, jealousy, anger,” etc.) is as good as it gets. But with Jesus’ Spirit counseling, teaching, oh, the possibilities: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” It is still a dangerous world; the danger does not have to define who we are.

Jesus said to the disciples “You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world” (Matt 5:13, 14). Today’s readings give that some focus, send us back to Psalm 16 with fresh eyes, and set us up to respond in trust, hope, and joy to the sending at the end of the Mass: “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”

[1] Humanity in God pp. 63-64.

Jesus’ Freedom–and Ours (Palm Sunday, 4/13/2025)

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Readings

In today’s collect we prayed “Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection.” Wondering what that might look like, I’m drawn to what Harold Kushner says in his Forward to Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning, the book based on Frankl’s experience in the Nazi concentration camps: “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.” And I’m struck by how Jesus uses that freedom in today’s Gospel.

Our Gospel reading starts with Jesus’ celebration of the Passover, and his reinterpretation of its symbols: “This is my body, which is given for you.… This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” And Luke follows this immediately with “A dispute also arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest.” How tempting it might have been for Jesus to use his freedom to say “Enough. I’m going back to Galilee. You all sort it out on your own.” Instead, again, he tries to help them understand that God’s kingdom works differently than those to which they’re accustomed.

(Oddly, given the often discouraging state of the Church, I find Luke’s portrayal of the disciples encouraging. They argue about who’s the greatest. They fall asleep while Jesus prays in the garden. One of them betrays him. One of them lops off the high priest’s slave’s ear. Peter denies him not one, not two, but three times. Jesus knows the material he has to work with in this Church project, and somehow thinks it’s worth the effort.)

Praying in the garden: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.” There’s such a painful distance between the Father’s perspective and Jesus’ perspective. Nevertheless, let’s notice how Jesus uses his freedom: to forego second-guessing the Father. It dovetails with that line from our Isaiah reading: “I have set my face like flint.” There’s a time for considering multiple options; once the decision has been made it rarely helps to revisit it: being double-minded usually doesn’t end well.

During the arrest: “Then one of [the disciples] struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear.” “I have set my face like flint” could easily translate into tunnel vision; Jesus uses his freedom even to attend to that wounded slave. Jesus uses his freedom—a freedom we all have—so that even on a bad day other people matter.

Those same alternatives, tunnel-vision vs responsiveness to the context, show up at the crucifixion. I am so grateful that I can’t imagine what it would have been like, but there it is: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Harold Kushner again: “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.” Jesus’ use of that freedom is, frankly, breathtaking. May it nurture our imagination and courage when we find ourselves in situations where we have less control than we’d prefer. So, yes, with the Collect: “Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection.”

Love complicates things (3rd Sunday after Pentecost)

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Readings (Track 1)

In the middle of Jesus’ argument with the scribes he tells this short parable: “But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.” Plunder: that’s an intriguing image for what Jesus is about. For what God’s about, for that matter. The Exodus: plunder on a national scale. The mob stirred up by Paul and Silas’ presence in Thessalonica didn’t get it entirely wrong: “These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also” (Acts 17:6). No wonder Paul’s regularly in trouble—as we heard in our second reading.

But it’s not plunder for the sake of plunder (“My pile of loot’s bigger than yours!”), but, whether at the Exodus or in Galilee, for human freedom, restoring it so that it can be used well. Pulling back the camera to take in all of Mark’s Gospel, whether in the exorcisms, the healings, the conversations or the proclamation, that plundering is about restoring human freedom and encouraging us humans to use it well. The first thing out of Jesus’ mouth in that Gospel: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (1:15).

The kingdom/reign of God, with two divine desires in play: that we be free, that we choose well. Either one of these would be easy to fulfill; both—that quickly gets complicated. Consider our first reading from Samuel’s time, a few centuries after the Exodus. The people have repeatedly used their freedom badly, and now they want a human king. A king: they’d celebrated the Lord as their king back at the Exodus (Exodus 15:18). But now, no, a human king “so that we also may be like other nations.” If God’s desire were simply that the people choose well, well, so much for freedom: no human king. But God desires both that they be free and that they choose well. So God tells Samuel to give the people what they want; we’ll do it the hard way.

That’s a pretty good illustration of God’s love. God loves us too much either to compromise our freedom or to stop caring about our choices. Love—as any parent knows—complicates things. God can bring good out of our bad choices (the king is the template for the Messiah), but the price is high (“King of the Jews” was the sign on Jesus’ cross).

Does God always get what God wants? Since what God wants is that we be free and that we choose well, the answer is pretty clearly no. (That’s one of the main reasons why the Bible is a lengthy book!) And one of the recurrent challenges in worshipping this God is to respect both of these divine desires. If we think the people are choosing badly is their freedom really all that important?

Bad choices bring death. Adam and Eve choose badly in Genesis chapter 3; only one of their sons (Cain and Abel) is alive by the end of chapter 4. Death ends the story; death ends all stories. In the psalms one of the most frequent arguments the psalmists make for deliverance: rescue me, because in Hades no one praises you; that’s the lose-lose option. Shakespeare nails it in MacBeth:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

So if there were ever a game-changer, it’s Jesus’ resurrection (the motor for Paul’s reflections in our second reading). Death isn’t the end. Jesus’ transformed body grounds our hope for a similarly transformed body, “an eternal weight of glory,” as Paul put it.

How to tie this together? At least three ways come to mind. “God desires our freedom and that we use it well.” That, of course, is only one of many ways we might summarize what God’s up to. But play with it; wonder how it might serve to guide our outreach budget and activities.

Second. God desires our freedom and that we use it well. Because neither desire is negotiable God’s history with us is as messy as it is (recall, again, Holy Week) and Mick Jagger’s “You can’t always get what you want” turns out to apply to God as well. So we don’t know how all this will play out in the end. Will all be saved? We do know that it comes down to a fairly simple question: is my character such that I’d enjoy spending eternity with this God who keeps making hard choices and who loves my enemies as much as me?

In this respect heaven and hell reflect who we are. Recall that old analogy: a large banquet hall, the tables loaded. The complication is that our arms no longer bend at the elbows. At some tables, despair: despite increasingly acrobatic strategies no one can feed themselves. At other tables, delight: everyone feeding their neighbor.

A third way of tying this together: C. S. Lewis’ luminous sermon “The Weight of Glory” that draws on our second reading. After imagining what this weight of glory might mean, he pivots:

…it may be asked what practical use there is in the speculations which I have been indulging. I can think of at least one such use. It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour.… It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.…There are no ordinary people.

God, in love, desires our freedom and that we use it well, for our choices really matter. That doesn’t make it easy for God or for us. Easy, apparently, is not the point.

Extracting Israel from Egypt and Egypt from Israel (Maundy Thursday, 3/28/2024)

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Readings (With the 1 Corinthians reading extended to this)

Getting Israel out of Egypt is half the battle; the other half is getting Egypt out of Israel. The Maundy Thursday readings, with their Passover setting, invite us to think about that.

Getting Israel out of Egypt: The first reading tells of the institution of the Passover, a feast the Jews have celebrated every year since that night in Egypt.

Each family was to select an unblemished lamb, the Passover lamb, and to kill it at twilight. Some of the blood went on the doorposts and the lintel of the house and the lamb was eaten, with the family prepared to leave at any moment. That very night God would pass through the land, and Pharaoh would finally let the people go.

Until Jesus’ arrival, no other night was of such importance in the world’s history, for it was one of the defining actions of the true God, announcing that God desires not the obedience of slaves, but rather of free sons and daughters. In our country, African American slaves heard in this story God’s passion for their own freedom.

And every year since the Exodus the Jews have continued to celebrate the Passover to remember their liberation and —often— to reaffirm their confidence in God’s power to deliver them again from new enemies.

As the Gospels tell us, Jesus. the night before his death, celebrated the Passover with his disciples and reinterpreted its meaning. The meal had used bread and wine to celebrate the liberation from Egypt; Jesus reinterpreted the bread and wine in terms of his coming self-offering: this is my body; this is my blood.

Every Sunday when we celebrate the Eucharist, when we say “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us” we are remembering this definitive reinterpretation. And to say “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us” reminds us of how deeply God desires our liberty, and what God was willing to pay to achieve it. God desires that we be free from both our exterior and interior oppressors, free—in the language of our Gospel reading—to love.

Getting Egypt, that is, getting the enslaving seeking and maintenance of status, out of Israel turns out to be at least as hard. It’s the focus of our New Testament readings. In Luke’s account of the Last Supper even that night the disciples were arguing about who was the greatest. So Jesus tries to get at it by washing the disciples’ feet. It horrifies Peter, not so much (I think) that Jesus is washing his feet, as that Peter has already figured out where Jesus is going to take this: “if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”

Our Prayer Book encourages—but does not demand—a reenactment of the foot washing. These days it’s problematic. But the reenactment is less important than its point: a love that is oriented not by my comfort level or preferences, but by the needs of my brother or sister. Love oriented by my comfort level or preferences: that lets Egypt in through the back door. Love oriented by the needs of my brother or sister: that’s the liberty for which Moses struggled and Jesus died.

This business of washing each other’s feet—metaphorically speaking—shows up in that paragraph from Paul’s letter from which our reading was taken. The Lectionary assigns vv.23-26, in which Paul recounts Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist. But why does Paul recount it? For that we need the surrounding context. In those days—also at Corinth—we often celebrated the Eucharist as part of a dinner.

But what happened, what scandalized Paul, was that each family ate and drank from their own basket. The rich, baskets to go from one of the upscale restaurants; the poor, whatever they could find at a local food pantry. Egypt has not only entered through the back door; Egypt is running the place! So Paul recounts the institution to remind them that the Eucharist is about a life given for others, so that celebrating the Eucharist selfishly and as though it’s “business as usual” badly misses the point.

Notice how Paul unpacks this. “For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves.” Notice: “the body” isn’t the Eucharistic bread; it’s the living Body of Christ composed of the brothers and sisters gathered around a common table but not —alas— around a common basket. “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner…” “In an unworthy manner” is not about whether I’ve properly confessed before Mass, or whether I have the right sacramental theology, but about whether I’m showing love to my Christian brothers and sisters.

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Washing each others’ feet, celebrating the Eucharist in a way that takes Jesus’ Body seriously: two first Century examples of where Jesus’ new commandment needs to kick in, given to us to get us wondering where that new commandment needs to kick in here and now.

Getting Israel out of Egypt: that’s God’s “yes” to our freedom, celebrated in the Passover and transposed—put on steroids—for all people in Jesus’ death as celebrated in the Holy Eucharist. Getting Egypt out of Israel, living freely: that turns out to be an ongoing project. “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.” May some of Jesus’ passion for our freedom rub off on us.

“Set us free” (5th Sunday after the Epiphany)

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Readings

A few minutes ago we prayed “Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ.” It turns out that asking how God answers this prayer is a useful entry into our readings.

Our first reading comes from that part of the Book of Isaiah that assumes the people exiled in Babylon. The glad good news: God is about to set the people free to return to their land. But, as today’s text makes clear, the people after decades of Babylonian captivity doubt both God’s power and God’s will to save them.

God’s power: Isaiah seeks to rekindled their imaginations. The scale and splendor of the heavens: that’s all the work of our God, putting on a show every night that would have left Cecil B. DeMille bright green with envy. This God will have no trouble bringing Israel home. Well, today too much light pollution to see what Isaiah’s audience was able to see every night. But we have the work of the physicists, whose attention to the fine tuning of our universe so that there is—Isaiah’s words—”a tent to live in,” leads some to conclude that the only way to avoid acknowledging the Creator is to posit an infinite number of universes, we being in the happy position of living in the one in which life is possible.

God’s will to save: Isaiah will focus on that in the following chapters.

Meanwhile, toward the end:

He gives power to the faint,
and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted;
but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.

How does Isaiah describe those who respond appropriately? “Those who wait for the Lord.” That’s interesting: after celebrating God’s power at work now, what is there to wait for? To extend Isaiah’s language, we could contrast God as Creator and God as Savior, the God whose blessing sustains this fertile world, the God whose saving puts things right. And there’s waiting in both: the farmer waits for the rain; the people (here) wait for release.

“Wait for the Lord” here is pretty much hope in the Lord. And it’s that hope as much as anything that gives the power the text celebrates. In the pony rides in my childhood, the ponies always picked up the pace once the stables were in sight. And hope plays no small part in the NFL games we’ve been watching through the season.

Today’s psalm: it overlaps to a fair degree with Isaiah. Noteworthy here is the last full verse we read:

But the Lord has pleasure in those who fear him, *
in those who await his gracious favor.

Here the psalmist pairs fearing the Lord (“fear” often shorthand for our proper stance vis à vis God) and waiting for God’s action.

Returning to our collect, in Isaiah and the psalm, God setting us free, giving us liberty, may be first about awakening our hope. That’s not all it is, but for Isaiah’s audience that’s where it had to start.

Today’s Gospel: it’s part three of Mark’s portrait of that long day in Capernaum: calling the disciples, teaching and exorcising in the synagogue, healing Peter’s mother-in-law, caring for the crowd that assembled around the house at Sabbath’s end, snatching time for prayer before heading off. After our earlier readings—and in the text itself—there’s joy: all that waiting has not been in vain.

At the same time, notice the disconnect Mark’s pointing of the camera represents. Isaiah pointed us to the heavens, but here we’re in a corner of Roman-infested Galilee. The psalm’s focus was on Jerusalem, and here we’re very far from Jerusalem. (The Jerusalemites had about the same opinion of Galilee as New Yorkers have of the Midwest.) It would have been so easy to write off anything happening in Galilee. And that’s the tricky part about hope. Hope can go bad if it clutches its idea of how fulfillment should happen too tightly.

God setting us free, giving us liberty: it’s also about allowing for surprise, the fulfillment of our hopes in ways we didn’t expect. That was the tragedy of many of the Pharisees: they had hope in spades. But when it was fulfilled: “Give us Barabbas.”

Our reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians looks like the odd man out. He’s still working that meat offered to idols question, now using his own conduct as an example. There were many ways of being what we might call an influencer. You could charge high prices for your services and hang with the beautiful people like the sophists. You could drool down your beard and leave no social convention unbroken like the cynics. What are Paul the Pharisee’s choices?

There’s no direct line from any of the other readings to Paul. But if we pull back the camera a little…

The same Isaiah who pictured God in majesty above the celestial court gave us this:

24 You have not bought me sweet cane with money,
or satisfied me with the fat of your sacrifices.
But you have burdened me with your sins;
you have wearied me with your iniquities. (Isa. 43:24)

3 Listen to me, O house of Jacob,
all the remnant of the house of Israel,
who have been borne by me from your birth,
carried from the womb;
4 even to your old age I am he,
even when you turn gray I will carry you.
I have made, and I will bear;
I will carry and will save. (Isa. 46:3-4)

And of that same Jesus, the sovereign protagonist in today’s reading, Paul will write in Philippians:

6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness. (Phil. 2:6-7a)

God does power and authority not by insisting on privilege, but by—in our language—moving way outside God’s comfort zone. And that’s Paul’s model: “For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them.”

God setting us free, giving us liberty: for Paul, it’s about freedom to act divinely, moving outside his comfort zone for the sake of others. And that’s, of course, the conduct he’s encouraging his hearers to adopt. That’s how Paul’s hope expresses itself, not in the anxious defense of his privileges (immaculate Hebrew pedigree, Roman citizen, advanced studies), but moving outside his comfort zone to stand in solidarity with all for whom Christ died.

“Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life…” What’s the answer to that prayer look like? From today’s lessons: that journey from Babylon to Jerusalem, or, in the words of our Eucharistic Prayer, “bring us to that heavenly country.” That’s the endgame. Meanwhile, as with Isaiah’s audience, it’s about awakening hope, so that when freedom comes we won’t be too busy distracting ourselves to notice. Set us free with a hope that doesn’t betray us by locking God into a script so narrow that no surprise is possible (the temptation of the Pharisees). Set us free to express our hope not in clinging to privilege, but, with Paul, in moving outside our comfort zone.

The Third Sunday after Pentecost: A Sermon

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Readings (Track 1; the citations from Galatians are from the New International Version)

Our second reading from Galatians is a gem. With its probable allusion to baptism (“those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh”) and all its references to the Spirit it inspires a sermon that we might entitle “Baptism: P.S.”

As you may recall, the letter to the Galatian churches was prompted by the arrival of folk who argued that to properly follow Jesus the (Jewish) Messiah, the gentiles had to be circumcised and observe all the law of Moses. Paul writes to convince the Galatians that this is a dead end. That said, let’s walk through our text.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” The yoke of slavery: all the commandments in the law of Moses, particularly those which served to separate Jews and gentiles: circumcision, the Sabbath, the food and other purity laws.

We Americans really like this verse, whether in relation to last week’s Juneteenth, or next week’s Independence Day. Freedom! But what Paul does with it: “But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.” Slavery no, but becoming “slaves to one another” as the NRSV puts it, yes. Say what???

Our culture likes the stoic philosopher Epictetus’ definition of freedom: “He is free who lives as he wills, who is subject neither to compulsion, nor hindrance, nor force, whose choices are unhampered…”[1]

“Who lives as he wills:” for Paul that can’t be what freedom’s about, first, because it ignores Jesus’ model, serving us humbly in love. In love: enact “Love your neighbor as yourself” and you’ve nailed the entire law.

“Who lives as he wills:” for Paul that can’t be what freedom’s about, second, because it’s impossible in light of the following verses (vv.16-17). The Spirit and the flesh in combat: in the middle of that battlefield anyone who thinks he “lives as he wills” is a bit naïve.

The Spirit and the flesh. The Spirit: the Holy Spirit. The flesh: that’s a bit more complicated. Sometimes it’s a morally neutral term, us in our vulnerable humanity. Sometimes—as here—it captures our “autonomous fallen humanity…standing in opposition to God” (Hays). And in this text we might hear it as personified, an exterior force like Sin and Death ranged against us. So Paul’s Spirit vs. Flesh isn’t about two parts of the human person, but about two powers locked in combat. And, again, in that context simply living as one wills is not on the menu. This seems to be the point of the last part of v.17: “so that you are not to do whatever you want,” or, as the KJV translated it, “so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.”

We can get a better handle on ‘flesh’ and ‘Spirit’ by looking at Paul’s two lists. The “acts of the flesh” list starts and ends where we might expect: “sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; … drunkenness, orgies.” But having named these, Paul gives them no further attention. His focus is on the center: “hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy.” This is what he highlighted in v.15 (“If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.”). ‘Bite’ and ‘devour’: in the Greek text that’s characteristically what animals do, so we’re back to last week’s theme that our baptism gives us the possibility of living humanly. And these acts are what Paul returns to in the final verse (“Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.”). It’s pretty clear that if Paul wanted to organize a tour of the sins of the flesh he’d head not to Las Vegas but to Washington D.C. Paul’s list might encourage us to revisit where we see “the flesh” at work, to not get behind on the weeding.

The fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” This is fruit tailored for very imperfect communities (love, peace, forbearance, kindness, gentleness), and that’s encouraging. It’s fruit that strengthens relationships, that enables us to encourage each other’s flourishing.

The fruit: notice that the list isn’t an implicit to-do list: cultivate these virtues! It’s saying that this is what walking in the Spirit, keeping in step with the Spirit, produces over time.

Spirit and flesh locked in combat. Yet Paul says “Live by the Spirit.” Why does he think we have a choice? Here’s where v.24 comes in: “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Earlier in the letter Paul said:

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (2:19b-20).

“Crucified with Christ:” when did that happen? Judging by the common testimony of the early Church and what Paul writes in Romans, at baptism. Here’s that Romans text:

“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin” (6:3-7).

“Freed from sin.” But Paul, we might say, why then is sin such an issue in the church, why so many admonitions and warnings in your letters? I think Paul would say that while our baptism gives us wonderful new possibilities, it isn’t a lobotomy. God still treasures our freedom. And the freedom to live humanly, to love, is more like the freedom of a ballerina or a pianist than the freedom to choose this or that dessert at the buffet. It takes focus, practice, openness to accept correction. It’s a skill, something we acquire over time.

OK Paul, we might say, what would a dummy’s guide to this text look like? After Paul stopped laughing here are three things he might include: (1) Freedom. Remember that it’s freedom to serve. Remember that exercising it is a skill.

(2) Walking by the Spirit, keeping in step with the Spirit: that demands focusing on the neighbor. If we’re to serve one another, what does that “other” need, how does that “other” experience the world? Focus, practice, and openness to correction come into play if we think about listening. It’s remarkably easy to assume that we can love or even serve the neighbor without listening to the neighbor, although a moment’s reflection on our own experience at the receiving end will remind us of how well this works. And listening is not easy. Stephen Covey got it right in his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People:

“’Seek first to understand’ involves a very deep shift in paradigm. We typically seek first to be understood. Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. They’re either speaking or preparing to speak. They’re filtering everything through their own paradigms, reading their autobiography into other people’s lives.”

Listening, one example of a human activity that demands a surprising amount of focus, practice, and openness to correction.

(3) Focus, practice, openness to accept correction: these all assume some awareness, some remembering what story I’m in. So how do I help myself stay aware, remember I’m in a story centered in Jesus (who’s usually already standing next to my neighbor)? Here I have many options including making the sign of the cross before beginning an activity (balancing my checkbook, responding to a problematic letter, etc.), sending up very short prayers throughout the day, cutting a bit out of one of today’s readings and taping it to the bathroom mirror or the door on the fridge—and reviewing these options when they begin to get stale. How to stay aware, to remember, is a non-trivial question.

So let us end where our reading began: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Amen.

[1] Diss 4.1.1 as cited in Hays “The Letter to the Galatians” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary.

Re the Daily Office Readings 4/30/2020

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The Readings: Exodus 20:1-21; Colossians 1:24—2:7; Matthew 4:1-11

Five Takes on the Ten

Moses thinks the special effects are to instill fear to prevent Israel sinning (v.20). Perhaps he is right; God is not above using fear. But training wheels are designed to be temporary.

Commands. Better, perhaps, than a fickle deity with constantly changing priorities, or a coy deity demanding that we guess.

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Perhaps the most important part of the text: this is who God is, this is what this God has already done.

January 6, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt gave the “Four Freedoms” speech. We could as easily call today’s text the “Ten Freedoms” speech. Examples: #1: free not to worry about keeping Anubis, Anum, Atum, Bastet, Geb, Horus, Nephthys, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Ra, Seth, Shu, and Tefnut happy. #4: free to rest every seventh day. #6ff: free not to have to murder, commit adultery, steal, etc. to maintain one’s standing or satisfaction.

Matthew lets us watch the spirit of the Exodus text in action. Because the LORD is Jesus’ God, Jesus is free to send the tempter packing, free not to diminish his own humanity, free to devote his attention to restoring ours.

O God, the author of peace and lover of concord,
to know you is eternal life and to serve you is perfect freedom:
Defend us, your humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies;
that we, surely trusting in your defense,
may not fear the power of any adversaries;
through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord. (BCP 99)