 | The New England Church PulpitNew England Congregational Church UCC |
"THE PARADOX OF FREEDOM" | Exodus 20.1-17 | March 23, 2003 |
I will also admit to being directionally challenged, and at the same time reluctant to stop and ask for directions. Thank God for MapQuest where at the privacy of my computer I can get detailed directions to memorize before getting in the car, giving the appearance to those riding with me that I know what I’m doing.
Words are important, not just for getting me through the process, but for the freedom they create by integrating me with the project I’m assembling or the location I’m trying to reach. When I have those directions in my head, and know where I’m going, I’m a free man!
The Words that come down from God through Moses are words of freedom. To name them commandments is to misunderstand their purpose. The words on the direction sheet are not commandments; they don’t make you obey anything. They guide and direct in order to make sense of things and connect you. These Words in Exodus are words to connect us, words from a God whose own freedom is the liberator of ours.
These Words are not so much to pattern outer behavior as to bond interdependence. Freedom is known in the relationships we enjoy with other human beings and with the universe so that our own lacking is complemented by the gift another brings to our lives. Laws and social obligations promote freedom by creating an environment that regulates opportunity for freedom, but laws in and of themselves do not motivate people to their best selves. It is in relationship that we know the truth of freedom. No one is an island; no person can be fully herself or himself alone.
So God speaks a word that we should have no other gods along side her. In other words, anything that might undermine one’s full worth and freedom of response to love is to thwart God’s gift of freedom. To be free we must be in relationship with God. To be free we must not let anyone else claim our worth by controlling us or caging us behind iron bars; that is not God’s intention for life. To be free we must not let anyone manipulate or oppress us; that is tantamount to giving up God’s freedom for us. To let anything addict you to itself is to relinquish the freedom that the divine intends. To not realize your full potential, to not enjoy life, even in the midst of all its cares and trials and wars and evil, is to undermine God’s purpose for life, and effectively cut freedom off at the knees. ‘I am a freeing God; walk with me.’
God speaks another word that there should be no likeness of any kind of the divine. It isn’t about idols, or images in stone or wood, but the more dangerous notions we get in our mind that we know who God is. It is arrogant and blasphemous to say we know who God condemns and who God accepts; it attempts to put finite boundaries on an infinite God so that we might be in control. It’s nice to think that God loves who we love and hates who we hate, but it is blasphemous to do so, and enslaves us to our own devices. It is dangerously enslaving to think we have a knowledge of God’s purposes or activity in the universe; by so doing, we effectively close the door of the cage God has opened with Words of freedom and locked it with our own obsessions.
The paradox of freedom is it’s need to be anchored, of necessity to be connected to someone or something. Independence is found in interdependence. This past week my friend Ramsey Miller drew me a picture. She is standing along side me at the bottom of the page, and flying high above us is a kite. But the kite isn’t drifting aimlessly in space; even a child of five knows that a kite must be tied to a string and the string must be connected to a hand that can guide it and keep the string taut or loose as the situation demands. Without the strong, the kite is a slave to the wind, blowing willy-nilly and falling to the ground if it isn’t connected to someone’s hand. There is a deliciously divine tension between the string and the wind that helps the kite achieve its purpose. There is an equally delicious and divine interdependence between wind, string, and person for the kite to freely be all it can be.
God speaks yet another word of freedom: remember the sabbath to keep it holy, to find rest and renewal. We’ve too-narrowly enslaved the sabbath to Sunday when in reality it is a concept not a day. The sabbath is a freeing word, a Word that offers us time away, time to reflect, time to play hard, time to explore what we can’t explore when we’re making money or fulfilling other obligations. It is a mindset that allows us rest amid our daily work, a way of calming our spirits amid busyness, a framework of joy that permeates all that we do and are. Without sabbath, we are slaves to even our free time when our free time isn’t rejuvenating.
As we ponder freedom in these days of war, we must ask ourselves if we’re really free? We are free to do a lot of things and be wholly ourselves, but have we become slaves to other gods of work and money, education and self-image, slaves to obsessions and information and the media? As a nation we are less free than we think, slaves in many ways to a rugged individualism that holds us hostage, preventing us from the freeing interdependence with all nations around the world and the God of that universe.
The paradox of freedom is that the freer we are, the easier it is to be enslaved to more insidious gods of ego, power, popularity and even life itself. Nationally we are free, but free from what and for what purpose? We are captives of the media, captives of the post-modern sensationalism of war, captives of the technology that brings the war right into our living rooms and computers with a blow-by-blow accounting of all that goes on. It mesmerizes us with a false sense of power and the potential to become slaves to being in control, at all costs. The mission to free captive people is an honorable one, but when we are captive to the power that frees them, we ourselves are not free.
The paradox of freedom is that to be free we must be connected...to God, to one another, to all the people of the world, and to the Universe. For some to be free, all must be free. To be free to live, we must be free to die; to be free we must be able to embrace life as a gift more than demand it as a guarantee. The paradox of true freedom is found in being tethered to the Word that draws us into community living in the presence of the One who is Freedom.
The Bhagavad Gita reminds us:
Freedom is union with the deathless;
the Self is the essence of all things;
its creative power, called action,
causes the whole world to be.
Any offering–a leaf,
a flower or fruit, a cup
of water–I will accept it
if given with a loving heart.
Whatever you do,
do it as an offering to me–
whatever you say or eat
or pray or enjoy or suffer
In this way you will be freed
from all the results of your actions,
good or harmful; unfettered,
untroubled, you will come to me.
I am the same to all beings:
I favor none and reject none.
But those who worship me live
within me and I live in them.
Amen.
–Gary L. McCann
| Copyright © 2003 by Gary L. McCann. All rights reserved. |