Love and Freedom
Year Delivered or Published: 2007
Author: Richard Hyde
Author's Faith: Christianity
Date Submitted to Inspiration and Issues: October 19, 2007
Topic: Religion and Politics
Citation: Galatians 5:1-18
June 17, 2007 Sermon
Cleveland Park Church, 34th and Lowell. Washington, DC
Luke 10:25-28
25: And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?"
26: He said to him, "What is written in the law? How do you read?"
27: And he answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."
28: And he said to him, "You have answered right; do this, and you will live."
Galatians 5:1; 13-18
1: For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
13: For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another.
14: For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
Let me thank you the congregation and Ken our pastor for welcoming me into this pulpit again.
Freedom and love is the theme of this sermon and the readings I have chosen, especially freedom, as Jesus embodied it, as Paul and Luther understood it and as our ancestors on this continent have lived it out and given it to us. It is also about how Abraham Lincoln articulated the concept of freedom and made it part of our national creed.
I say this now because the sermon covers a lot of time and territory and I want to give you a map before we set off and notice, as we do, that this is a wonderful time of year. Many many important events have taken place this time of year and a staggering number of important people were born.
On June 18th, 1815 Napoleon fought his last battle, outside the town of Waterloo in Belgium. The battle raged all day and it was a long day. The Imperial Guard’s desperate attack finally failed to gain the low rise of land which the British Army controlled and shortly before dusk the Duke of Wellington rode out before his troops and commanded “The line will now advance.” They had held the line all day long, outnumbered, against everything Napoleon could throw at them; they arose and swept the field.
Almost exactly 125 years later, France lost again, and the German Army swept into Paris, on June 16th , 1940.
June 16th is an important day in this century in the world literature, perhaps more important than any other, for June 16th, 1904, is the date in the eternal imagination when Joyce’s Ulysses takes place, when Leopold Bloom and Stephen Daedulus wander around Dublin as 3,000 years earlier Ulysses and Telemachus wandered around the Mediterranean Sea. Of course, Molly Bloom steals the show at the end with a meditation that is profane, bawdy, profound and ultimately breathtaking.
June 12 was the birthday of Anne Frank, in 1929. On that day in 1942, her 13th birthday, she was given a diary as a birthday present. June 13 was the birthday of William Butler Yeats; the 14th Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s cabin, a book that changed the world. The 16th - yesterday, the birthday in 1703 of John Wesley founder of Methodism and composer of dozens of beautiful singable hymns. I might add that Tuesday, the 19th is my birthday and also the day in 1865 that the Union Army arrived in Galveston, Texas to announce that the Civil War was over and that the slaves had been freed.
It’s a great time of year to be born. And of course it is Father’s Day, a good day to remember our fathers and all our ancestors for that matter. People come, people go; some armies win and some lose; nations rise and fall, people live and love.
And, exactly 428 years ago today, on the other side of this continent, accompanied by his sailors and witnessed perhaps by a few members of the Ohlone or Miwok tribes, Sir Francis Drake dropped anchor somewhere north of San Francisco Bay, June 17th, 1579.
How can one help being awestruck at history? History in general and American history in particular. People from Europe arrived here over 400 years ago in wooden ships about the size of double-decker subway cars and now we live in the world that they built. How can one help being awestruck by the whole sweep of history from Jesus and the early disciples to this small congregation, this small part of the body of Christ here today in the nation’s capital, a city full of buildings modeled on those of Rome and the Mediterranean of the time of Jesus and Paul, where we gather of a Sunday morning to hear a word from the Lord; at least a few words from the Bible and the preacher of the day.
I have juxtaposed two brief lessons this morning, one from Paul and one from Jesus, with my focus being on Paul, on this famous passage that inspired Luther and has rippled powerfully through our history. The teaching of Jesus on love (Luke 10:25-28) of course is famous, a much-beloved passage. If we add what Paul says, that freedom is the necessary foundation of love, we really have something; something world-changing if not world-shattering.
Freedom and Love, in brief, are what transformed the medieval world and more than any other ideas, or forces, led to this congregation being here and now on June 17, 2007. Let me trace this trajectory by means of a picture and a story.
Thanks to Don Norland (a beloved member of this congregation, recently deceased) and his daughter Kit, I was asked to lecture at the State Department School of Foreign Service on the history of religion in America because our press and cultural affairs officers were getting a lot of questions on this topic. I could think of no better way to begin than by showing the cover of the paperback edition of Perry Miller’s Errand into the Wilderness. The cover shows a parting of the clouds and a pilgrim in classic garb in the palm of God’s hand. It is a simple, crude, even childlike, yet almost breathtaking drawing for it well conveys some sense of America as God’s chosen land and Americans as God’s chosen people.
In the introduction to the book, Miller tells how he got interested in the New England Mind and its continuing influence on America and the world: “To bring into conjunction a minute event in the history of historiography with a great one: it was given to Edward Gibbon to sit disconsolate amid the ruins of the Capitol at Rome, and to have thrust upon him the ‘laborious work ‘of The Decline and Fall while listening to barefooted friars chanting responses in the former temple of Jupiter.”
Now Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) served in the British Army and was in Rome around 1760, during what the Europeans call the Seven Years and Americans call the French and Indian War. After this experience he wrote the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, in which, in short, he blamed Christianity for the fall of the Rome. As Christianity became the official religion of the Empire, the best and the brightest became leaders of the church rather than going into the military or into the government and the ancient Roman virtues and martial spirit fell away, or so he argued.
“It was given to me,” continues Miller, “equally disconsolate on the edge of a jungle of central Africa, to have thrust upon me the mission of expounding what I took to be the innermost propulsion of the United States, while supervising, in that barbaric tropic, the unloading of drums of case oil flowing out of the inexhaustible wilderness of America. . . .
What I believe caught my imagination, among the fuel drums, was a realization of the uniqueness of the American experience; even then I could dimly make out the portent for the future of the world, looking upon these tangible symbols of the republic’s appalling power. I could see no way of coping with the problem except by going to the beginning. . . . The beginning I sought was inevitably – being located in the 17th century – theological.” Now he wrote this in 1956 of an experience that had taken place thirty years earlier, in 1956.
There is much irony, of which Miller was certainly aware, in this juxtaposition of Gibbon blaming Christianity for the fall of Rome and Miller, a self-avowed atheist, crediting Christianity for the rise of America, for providing the innermost propulsion for the Republic’s appalling power.
Now what was the result of Perry Miller’s quest? What did provide the innermost propulsion? I believe the answer in brief is these two words, much meditated upon by Paul, Luther, Calvin and the Reformers, and ultimately Abraham Lincoln and every living American: freedom and love, especially freedom. The quest for freedom is what America has been about from the very beginning and it is what Christianity was about from the very beginning. I know this sounds rather audacious, but try it on for size.
Admittedly, Jesus did not mention freedom very much, just two passages, one in Matthew and one in John, for five uses of the Greek word ‘eleutheros’ altogether. Eleutheros has become a botanical term which reveals the meaning of this word: It means, simply, ‘wild, ' as in eleuthero ginseng, wild ginseng, which grows all over the northeastern United States. It’s the best ginseng root in the world, I might add.
But it is no exaggeration to say that freedom was of utmost import for Paul. In Paul’s understanding Jesus sets us free from sin, free from the fear of death, free from death itself. If Paul were here to be questioned on the matter he might say that Jesus did not talk about freedom much, but He WAS freedom, and love, and a lot of other qualities besides. He embodied freedom and love and made it possible for us to exercise both. Paul uses the word Freedom in his writings over twenty times and it is a key concept in his letters to the Romans, Corinthians and Galatians. There is some speculation that his preaching about freedom is what landed Paul in jail and eventually got him executed. For freedom has not always and everywhere been viewed as positively as we Americans do. Freedom is often confused with license and this confusion can lead to dangerous consequences.
Listen again to what Paul said to the Galatians:
Galatians 5: 1: For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
13: For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another.
14: For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
This talk of freedom, and love, did not languish in the Bible unnoticed, but it really achieved salience when a young German monk named Martin Luther studied the letters of Paul intensively and extensively and based his rebellion against the papacy upon it. Quite early in his tumultuous life as a reformer, in the tumultuous year of 1520, Luther penned a letter to Pope entitled
On the Freedom of a Christian "Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen”
In this letter, Luther claimed that as fully forgiven children of God, Christians are no longer compelled to keep God's law, the Old Testament law, or any law; however, they freely and willingly serve God and their neighbors. The core meaning of the Gospel, according to Luther is that Christians are free to love.
The exact two sentences from the German are:
A Christian is a free lord over all things, subject to none.
A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all things, subject to all.
Luther reveled in this and many other paradoxes.
This work is very forcefully written in paragraphs beginning
Firstly. Secondly. Thirdly. And so, paragraph after paragraph until, finally, on to ‘Thirtiethly.’ No introduction, no conclusion. It ends with ‘Amen.
You can easily imagine Luther’s fist banging on the lectern as he makes his points, one after the other. He did attach to this letter to a clever, cheeky, outrageous introduction and printed thousands of copies in both Latin and German. It sold like hotcakes. Then, basically, he had to run for his life. We could dwell on this fascinating, powerful world-changing work, but we have 500 more years to go and some key points in American history to cover, so we must leave Martin Luther and perhaps come back another time.
This act – Luther defining Christians as free persons bound to each other by love, not by fear of a sovereign - was the beginning of the modern understanding of human beings as citizens and not subjects. It was rightly considered revolutionary in its time and of course it was and is, still revolutionary, audacious.
Freedom and love, love of freedom, being free to love, are what have provided the innermost propulsion to these United States and the American people. This spirit of reformation transmitted itself through Calvin to the New England Puritans and it soaked into the American soil and it has born a rich harvest with astounding consequences, from our great Civil War to barrels of American oil being unloaded in the Congo in 1926, to Americans landing on beaches from Normandy to Guadalcanal, to American culture recognized for good or ill, as friend or foe throughout the world we live in.
This spirit of reformation has been articulated by many Americans, but by no one so well as America’s answer to Martin Luther, Abraham Lincoln. It is a commonplace of religious studies that America has produced a lot of religion but not many great theologians, that religion has thrived in America but theology has gone bankrupt. This statement, while clever, is seen as less true when you understand that America’s greatest theologian is disguised as America’s greatest president.
Now I do not claim that Lincoln read Luther – he probably didn’t. But he did read the Bible assiduously, especially as the Civil War dragged on. And while he never joined a church, he did attend one throughout the war, quite regularly, the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church downtown. I do claim that this Reformation understanding of freedom and love had simply soaked into American culture at the time and emerged in Lincoln’s speeches with astounding clarity and power.
At Gettysburg in November of 1863 Lincoln concluded his two minute address with a one-paragraph peroration:
“It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us – through love be servants of one another - - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom . . .
After a terrible civil war, he promised us a new birth of freedom.
In so doing he reiterated what he had already said in his Second Message to Congress in December of 1862:
In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free
and what he already said in an extemporaneous speech he gave on February 21, 1861 to a crowd gathered at Independence Hall, Philadelphia:
I have often inquired of myself, what great principle or idea it was kept this confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the mother land; but something in that Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance . . . .
Liberty or freedom for Lincoln and I believe for Americans in general, is somewhat akin to the Hebrew notion of Shalom. Shalom is not just the absence of war or conflict, but the presence of something precious and essential for human life. Likewise freedom is not just the absence of constraints, but the presence of human dignity, a quality that we treasure for ourselves and recommend to all people. Freedom is the prerequisite virtue for all other virtues. Lincoln and so may other Americans essentially secularized the concept of Christian freedom and made it the law of the land and the cornerstone of the American way.
The short story of American history is that America fights for freedom. Our war memorials all over Washington demonstrate this. Let me just mention one to get us up to date, the most recent one, the World War II Memorial on 17th St. at the heart of the National Mall.
In my opinion the World War II Memorial makes too many statements, yet it is starting to blend into the site and the fountains are quite beautiful. Amidst a number of statements engraved on the walls, we find one that is almost spine-chilling in its resonance:
“We are determined that before the sun sets on this terrible struggle, our flag will be recognized throughout the world as a symbol of freedom on the one hand and of overwhelming force on the other.”
The author of this terse and tough-minded quotation is none other than George C. Marshall. If we remember that this General Marshall was also the author of the Marshall Plan, we get a sense of what freedom means in America. Freedom is not just absence of conflict or absence of foreign control, but the presence of well-being. Marshall recognized that if we did not help Europe economically, Europe would not remain free.
We cannot read this statement now without being stunned into philosophy, especially if we walk along the reflecting pool to ponder the memorials to Korean and Vietnam War veterans, or read the newspaper. American power is not overwhelming. The wilderness of America is not inexhaustible.
We do not know how the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan will turn out. However they turn out, I think it important to remember at the beginning of this summer that America, and the Idea of America and the ideals of America will remain strong. We will remain a free people, and a free people working together may not always be overwhelming but are certainly unconquerable;
and the love of God will remain inexhaustible.
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore in freedom; for we are free citizens, free to give ourselves to one another in love, free to recognize and practice the love that God through Christ has given us.
Copyright, 2007
Richard Allen Hyde
