Some forty years ago, Martin Luther King stood before thousands of people on the mall in our nation’s capitol.  Surrounded by monuments to figures such as Washington, Lincoln, and others, King proclaimed his abiding hope that one day, each and every person would be able to “join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last!  Free at last!

Thank God almighty, we are free at last!”[1] 

It seems to me that today is a good day to reflect on this word ‘freedom’, and what it means to us.  Much of the current political rhetoric wields the language of freedom like a bully club, but I suspect that the nature of freedom is more subtle, and perhaps more elusive, than the folks in Washington sometimes let on.  

Last October, I attended a conference on Freedom at the Claremont School of Theology in southern California.  One young woman from South Korea suggested that most Americans haven’t really experienced much in the way of violent, oppressive regimes, so we tend to take freedom for granted.  She found evidence of this in the ways that we talk; we use phrases like “caffeine-free” – “sugar-free” – “toll-free” – or we drive on a “freeway” (where we often aren’t free to do much but sit in traffic).  She found it strange that we used such a meaningful word to talk about such trivial things.  I think she’s making an important point: of course, we can make the argument that we mean different things when we use the word in different ways, but it does seem strange that the same word could describe things that are so important and so unimportant.

As we remember MLK this weekend, I think it’s a good time to ask ourselves some tough questions about what freedom is.  Are we ‘free at last?’  More importantly, are our neighbors in this country and around the world ‘free at last?’  What does it mean to be free in the first place?  What is freedom, and what does it mean to you? 

Those of us who were born and bred in Western, industrialized democracies tend to think of freedom in terms of political freedom, and we define political freedom in terms of entitlements; that is, what we’re allowed to do, what we have the right to do.  We’re free because we’re allowed to say what we want, to amass as much money as we want, to spend that money how we want.  We’re entitled to our own opinions and faith, we have the right to make decisions concerning our education, our jobs, our family life.  That’s not to say there aren’t limits to our freedom; of course, there are… but we do think of freedom in terms of what we’re allowed to do. 

Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad way of viewing freedom.  I want to be very clear in affirming that political freedom is important.  It helps us to order our lives together in a way that helps us to ensure justice and equality among us.  But I also want to be very clear in saying that political freedom is not the only freedom that we have.  As Christians, there is another vision of freedom that is available to us, and it’s this other vision of freedom that I’d like to consider now. 

Hear these words from Paul’s letter to the church in Rome:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death.  For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit (Romans 8:1-4).

Before delving into this text, I would like to note that Paul has a certain bias about flesh and Spirit.  He’s not alone; the Greek world he lived in had this idea that everything physical was bad, and only spirit could be true or good… and Paul reflects this way of thinking.  I don’t want to get into this too much, that’s a different sermon.  But I do want to say that I think that this split between body and spirit is not necessarily helpful, and Paul can have great meaning for us even without this split.

In looking at Paul’s text, there are a few things that I would like to say.  First, Paul affirms that the law is good.  What did Paul mean by law?  Well, that’s something that the best biblical scholars debate.  But for now, it’s enough to say that, as a Jew, Paul recognized the law as laid out in what we call the Old Testament.  As Christians, we aren’t so familiar with all those commandments.  However, when Jesus was asked what was most important in the law, he very clearly answered that there the first greatest commandment was to love God, and the second greatest was to love your neighbor.  If a person obeyed those two commandments, the rest of the law would be fulfilled within those two things.  So, when we talk about the Paul and the law this morning, I want you to think about those two commandments:  love God, love your neighbor. 

And Paul does say that the law is good!  But Paul is insightful, and he knows how people work.  He knows that we have a certain longing to do things right, and that if we’re always trying to follow those commandments, then we’ll always be aware of the ways in which we’re coming up short.  So instead of joyfully obeying those commandments, we become concerned with whether or not we measure up to God’s standards… It’s ironic, because the law that tells us to be centered around God and others, but in the end we’re so worried about whether or not we measure up that we become centered around ourselves.  It’s in this sense that we become slaves to the law, even though the law itself is good.

But, as Paul says, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  In the person and work of Christ, God’s grace frees us from slavery to the law.  We know that we are loved and forgiven in God’s grace; we need not merit that love, nor need we earn that forgiveness.  This is what Paul means when he says that we have been set free.  This is one of the most central tenets of the Christian faith. 

The problem is that we often tend to leave it at that – we are loved by God, and so we are freed from slavery to the law.  But this isn’t the whole picture.  After all, Paul does say that we have been freed so that “the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.”  Here’s the thing – God’s love doesn’t free us from the law, it frees us for the law.  God’s love and forgiveness frees us so that we will be able to love God and neighbor without worrying about ourselves, without worrying about whether or not we’re fulfilling the law perfectly.   If we think that God’s love frees us from the law, so that we don’t have to obey it, then we’ve missed the point.

I’d like to share with you some words from one of my favorite poets, Wendell Berry.  This is an excerpt from his poem, “The Law that Marries All Things.”

1.

The cloud is free only

to go with the wind.

The rain is free

only in falling.

The water is free only

in its gathering together,

in its downward courses,

in its rising into the air.

2.

In law is rest

if you love the law,

if you enter, singing, into it

as water in its descent…

As Christians, we find our truest and our deepest sense of freedom not in doing what we want, but in loving, trusting, following God’s command that we love God and neighbor.  Just as the rain is free only in falling, we are truly free only in doing and being what God intends for us.

We’ve spent some time this morning reflecting on the differences between political and religious ideas of freedom.  As a people of faith, it’s very important that we be able to distinguish between the two.  However, it is also very important that we be able to understand the connections between them; that is, how religious understandings of freedom relate to political freedom.

Of course, there are many ways to answer that question, and you should wrestle with that on your own.  But this morning I will suggest one answer:  it is the freedom that we know as Christians that leads us to work for the political freedom of others.  It is because God has freed us to love our neighbors that we long for their freedom, including their political freedom.  For when people are free into society, they are able to do so much more to share the gifts that God has given them. 

MLK stands before us today as one person who knew God’s freedom in his own spirit, and that sense of freedom allowed him to transcend the political oppression he experienced, and to work for freedom for all of God’s children.  When you read his words, or hear him speak, you know that he believes he is free in God’s eyes… and he wanted to know that freedom in his political life, too, and he wanted to share that freedom with all people. 

I’d like to close my sermon this morning by playing a song by Nina Simone: I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free.   As you listen to her sing, you sense that she, too, knows that her soul is free, and she longs for the freedom to share her gifts with others.

1. “I Have a Dream,” Martin Luther King, Jr.
For the full text of King’s speech, see http://www.holidays.net/mlk/speech.htm