“The Scandal of Liberty”

Second Sunday after Epiphany

Sunday, January 15, 2012

1 Samuel 3: 1-10

Psalm 139

1 Corinthians 6: 12-20

Now that our kids have left for Sunday School, I can tell you all something that we do not necessarily want them to fully realize, just yet.  

That is, that they are free human beings over whom we have no ultimate power or control.

For now, however, they are young, and a part of our responsibility is to protect them, insofar as we are able, from dangers and threats that they may not yet fully realize.  As a result, we give them rules by which we expect them to live.  When we tell them not to touch a hot stove, or not to run out onto the road without looking both ways, or to treat their siblings and their classmates with kindness, we do not do so out of a desire to impose harsh restrictions on their freedom.  And, if they disobey these rules, we do not love or care about them any less.  Rather, we offer them these rules to help them to have the healthy, safe, enjoyable lives that we long for them to have – and we do so in the knowledge that there will come a day when they will be ready to head out into the world by themselves, to truly embrace and to celebrate the fullness of the freedom that is already theirs, even now, but to be able to live in that liberty with the necessary moral and ethical understanding so that their lives can be full and enjoyable.     

To speak of a child’s ultimate freedom sometimes seem irresponsible, as if their parents are extending some form of license for their kids to do whatever they want, whenever they want to, without any restraint or discipline.  But, regardless of whether or not the link between rules and loves is always articulated sufficiently, the reality is that children are free human beings.  They are not robots or automatons.

There are parallels between a beloved child’s ultimate freedom, and the freedom that lives at the heart of Christian spirituality.  One of the most often overlooked – and most often misunderstood – dimensions of Christian spirituality and faith, in fact, is the radical freedom that it offers to the believer.

Consider.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ invites us to believe that we are loved, not for what we do, but simply because God loves us with an unconditional, unmerited, undeserved grace. 

The cross invites us to believe that we can be forgiven, even of the most horrendous and horrid failures and sins. 

The resurrection invites us to believe that life does not end in death, but that we are carried through death into God’s eternal embrace. 

And, woven through all of these remarkable proclamations is the note of radical freedom that invites us to believe that because of God forgiving, death-defying, eternal love, there is nothing that we can do that can ever eradicate that grace.

Nothing. 

There is no sin that we can commit, no act that we can perform, no thought that we can harbour, no idea that we can express – that is so powerful as to be able to override or separate us from God’s love.

Which means that we are radically – and even scandalously -- free of the consequences of our human brokenness and sin.    The wages of sin might be death, but we have been set free from those consequences.  And, as Paul wrote in Galatians, “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

The difficulty with this freedom, of course, is that we, as humans, are so uncomfortable with true liberty that we always want to defer to a clearly defined set of rules and regulations.  In fact, I am sure that many of you are slightly uncomfortable, right now – as I probably would be – to hear a minister suggesting, from a pulpit, that Christian faith permits complete liberty in act, word and thought.  Most of us far prefer the black and white articulations of what is right and what is wrong; what is permitted and what is prohibited; what is acceptable and what is objectionable; who is good, and who is bad – and perhaps most significantly, who is included, and who is excluded from the love and grace of God.  

Sadly, it is this preference for rules and regulations that usually gets the Church into the most trouble.  God, in Jesus Christ, calls us, forms us, intends for the Church to be the world’s ultimate community of grace, of forgiveness, of acceptance, of hospitality, of love – and yet, too often, we have given the world sufficient reason to caricature the church as a community which is primarily fixated on drawing lines, clarifying rules, judging sinners, and dictating rules both ourselves and for our wider society. 

As a result, if we were to ask most people, in our modern culture, what the church stands for, many would speak words about being anti-science, anti-homosexual, anti-intellectual, anti-abortion, anti-women, anti-Muslim – in other words, all of the things that we perceived to be opposed to -- before they would even consider suggesting that the church is a community, in this world, that stands for grace, love, compassion, forgiveness, justice, truth – and for complete and radical human freedom. 

Lest we beat ourselves up too much, it is good for us to realize that the complex relationship between spiritual freedom and Christian morality has been a contentious issue since the very first days of the Christian movement.

Our reading from 1 Corinthians delves into the issue in rather shocking terms.

The passage begins with a clear articulation of the point that Paul is seeking to address, perhaps in response to a situation or idea that was present in the Corinthian community itself.  We read, ‘“All things are lawful for me, but not all things are beneficial.”  All things are lawful for me but I will not be dominated by anything.’

Paul, without a doubt, had preached the radical freedom that was afforded by grace – and had emphasized that God’s love was not dependent upon people’s adherence to any set of rules, regulations, laws or constraints. 

As spiritually free, moral beings, then, the primary motivation for goodness was no longer to be related to the quest to earn or merit God’s love and grace.  It is a lesson that we must learn in every age.  We need to learn to accept that we are loved, and therefore set free from the quest to earn our own salvation or to prove that we are worthy of being loved.  Moreover, those who seek to be good primarily out of the fear of eternal punishment, or out of the hope of eternal blessing, have not yet fully comprehended the radical claim of the Gospel – that we are saved by grace. 

But did that grace, that freedom, mean that Christians were therefore ‘free’ to do whatever they wanted?   Could they, for example, sleep with whoever they wanted to, eat whatever they wanted to, and even sin without any particular limitation, restraint, or regret?

For Paul – in a certain sense -- the answer to such questions was, in fact, yes.  Yes, those who had been called, claimed and baptized into Christ were truly, radically and scandalously free of the need to justify their goodness on the basis of moral or legal obedience.

Yes, Paul was saying, you are free to do what you will. 

But (yes, finally, we get to the ‘but’). 

But this does not mean that anything and everything that we are free to do should be done; nor does it mean that everything that we can do is good for us to do; nor does it mean that the Christian Gospel frees us from any responsibility to strive towards the highest standards of moral, ethical, humanitarian, compassionate, holy behaviour.  Spiritual freedom was meant to inspire us to reach for the highest ideals, not scramble to the lowest forms of behaviour.

And the reason for such striving, in this passage, is because though we are set free, in Christ, we are set free so that we can freely choose to submit to the ways of the highest and the best in every part of our lives – and not just our spiritual lives. 

As a result – and as the passage makes clear – what we do with our physical bodies, in Paul’s conception, is not irrelevant.  Our physical bodies, after all, are not merely prisons for our spirits. 

Far, far from it.  These bodies are not to be viewed as prisons for our souls; they are, instead, to be viewed as temples for God’s Spirit.

Paul used the images of sexual behaviour and of eating to illustrate his point – two important dimensions of our humanity that seem to primarily concern our physical needs and desires. 

While the example that he uses – that of sleeping with prostitutes -- seems sensationalistic and potentially shocking, there is every reason to believe that Paul may have been addressi ng a very real issue in the Corinthian community.

Scholars and historians remind us that the city of Corinth may have included a number of temples to other deities, and that the practice of sacred prostitution may have been associated with some of those temples.  Paul’s condemnation of the use of prostitutes, therefore, may have been connected with his concerns about idolatrous religious practices as well as the moral implications of such actions.  However, what is interesting to notice about his comments, in this passage, is that he does not condemn the use of prostitutes by appealing to ethical or moral rules; nor does he seek to challenge such practices on an appeal to avoid such exploitative and degrading forms of behaviour in one’s dealings with another human being.  Rather, he challenges the practice by inviting his readers to see themselves, and their bodies, as temples to God’s Spirit and as part of the Body of Christ.  It was not an appeal to laws or rules, but rather an appeal to a new self-understanding, to a new identity, that lay at the heart of Paul’s comments to his Corinthian readers.

“Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?  Should I therefore take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute?  Never!”

The practice of sacred prostitution is no longer an issue in our culture – but this does not mean that Paul’s viewpoint is therefore irrelevant to our own lives.

To the contrary, his point stands. 

We are called to see ourselves, and our lives, in a radically new light – to see ourselves as part of the Body of Christ; to see our bodies as Temples of God’s indwelling Spirit; and to see every one of our actions – socially, morally, sexually, environmentally, politically – in light of this new identity.  

And we are free to embrace this identity.

And the good news is that this liberty is meant for us, and for all.  Each and every one of God’s beloved children, in this world, is called to realize that they have been liberated from all that seeks to rob them of the abundant life that God intends – and to realize that they have been liberated so that they can willingly respond to the call of Jesus Christ – and join him in the ongoing task of loving, redeeming and transforming this beautiful but broken world until that day when our ancient prayer will be answered, and the kingdom will come and the will of God be done on earth as it is in heaven.

As we journey through this life, in these wondrous Temples of God’s Spirit, may each one of us – freely and joyfully -- join in that great work, with every part of who we are.