For Freedom Christ Set Us Free

For Freedom, Christ Set Us Free.

A Sermon Preached by the Rev’d Peter De Franco at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Clifton, New Jersey on July 1, 2007

On this Sunday closest to July 4th, many of us are probably planning something to do on Independence Day. Perhaps it will be a barbeque. Perhaps some of you will attend the Clifton City Picnic this afternoon and then attend the fireworks display in the stadium. I am sure that there is at least one or two among us who will venture into New York City to watch the Macy’s fireworks display.
For most of us, thoughts of July 4th spell out the words party, celebration, fireworks, and fun. Perhaps a few among us might recall the reason for this celebration is that on a hot and humid July 4th in 1776, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the declaration of independence was signed this day declaring that the thirteen colonies were free from the rule of the British monarch. Perhaps some of us might recall the words of some of our founding fathers. Among them stand out Patrick Henry’s famous words: Give me liberty or give me death. Perhaps some of us might know that those words, while they were delivered to the Second Virginia Convention urging them to commit the Virginia Troops to the cause of the Revolution, that those words come from a speech delivered in St. John’s Anglican Church in Richmond Virginia.
So on this weekend, it comes as a sort of blessing that our second reading from the letter to the Galatians lays out a theme close to the heart of many of us: Freedom.
Strange as it may seem, the word freedom does not occur once in the Declaration of Independence. Four times is the word free used but not once is the word freedom written.
Yet in today’s reading from Galatians, Paul proclaims: For Freedom Christ has set us free. In that word Freedom we find a link between the celebration of our nation and the celebration of our faith. When we recall the declaration of independence, we recall that the colonial leaders were declaring their freedom from the King. For all the wrongs committed by King George, the colonists declared “That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved.”
Many of us consider freedom as a release from some form of oppression. Just remember when you were a teenager, and for some of us that comes as a real effort of our imagination, but you can recall how you longed to be free from…. Free from the demands of your parents. Free from the rules of your teachers. Free from the restrictions that hemmed in your time, your friends, your activities.
Yet notice how Paul defines freedom in a radically different manner. The freedom that Paul presents for us is a freedom, not from others, but from self. Listen to what Paul says: do not gratify the desires of the flesh. And if we have any question as to what the desires of the flesh include Paul lets us know: Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, 20idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, 21envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.
If you carefully examine this list of vices, you will see that at the root of them all lays an intense need to gratify our self. These are the needs of a superficial level of our ego so that if we live our lives gratifying these superficial needs, we will find ourselves living superficial lives. Lives trapped in the endless satisfaction of the needs of our superficial ego.
In contrast to this shallow life, Paul assures us that Christ came to set us free.
Free from the demands of a phony life. Free from an endless gratification of our infantile demands. Let us acknowledge that all of us are somehow trapped in gratification of these needs. Eating when we are looking for emotional comfort rather than satisfying our hunger. Making ourselves a doormat so that others can take advantage of us. Allowing ourselves to be caught in endless cycles of enabling others in their superficial needs. Trapped in the various forms of addictive behaviors be they patterns of anger, disorganization, pettiness, sexual addictions, the need to control. If we take a look at ourselves in these sad cycles in which we occasionally live, if we look at ourselves with the compassionate eyes of Christ Jesus, we can open ourselves to the grace of Christ which comes to us to set our hearts free. To set our hearts free, from the patterns that oppress us. To set our hearts free, from the behaviors the restrict us. To set our hearts free, from the smallness that limits us.
As we continue with the Eucharist, let us confess to Christ those patterns that keep us living life on the surface. Let us ask Christ for the liberty to live life in the depths. Once day in 1775, Patrick Henry said, Give me liberty or give me death.
Let us ask our great and loving Christ Jesus to give us freedom, to give us liberty, for without the freedom that comes from Christ, we are already dead.
Let us pray.
O Gracious Lord Christ, open our eyes to look with courage at those places where our lives are limited, where our patterns are addicted, where our freedom is restricted.
Open our eyes to hear your word and our hearts to feel your love, for your word convicts us of our sinfulness and your love assures us of our loveableness. Set us free this day. As we receive your Body and Blood this day in the Eucharist, may we taste not only your love, may we taste our own freedom. And freed from a shallow life, open our hearts to love and serve others. We make our prayer for your love’s sake. Amen.