THE DEZZINESS OF FREEDOM John M. Buchanan
Galatians 5:1-10 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
March 6, 1983 Columbus, OH

“For freedom Christ has set us free." If you shut your eyes and
conjured up mental images associated with the word "freedom" what would
they be? The Emancipation of slaves, the Statue of Liberty, the poling
piace on election day, or perhaps an eagle soaring or a young child on a
swing? Can you imagine what it must have been Tike to be in a concentration
camp and then one day to learn that you were free, the locks knocked off,
gates open? William Stringfellow suggested one time that that experience
1S @ good metaphor for the experience of hearing the Gospel - a new and
radical freedom. The word freedom is full of power, perhaps more so than
any other. It is also full of difficulty and paradox.

Freedom is that delicious ambiance of the first day or two of vacation
when it seems Tike the time stretched out ahead is practically endless,
just before the burden of time slipping away begins again. Freedom is
a brief and fleeting experience that comes when one has completed a job,
fought a good fight, rum a good race, just before the imminence of the
next job, fight, or race becomes apparent. It is a powerful word: a
paradoxical word and almost everybody has had something to say about it.

“Let freedom ring" - Samuel Francis Smith wrote in a hymn in 1831.
At the heart of the American Revolution was an almost mystical commitment
to freedom. Liberty was seen in the 18th century as a mythic goddess,
doing battle with forces of autocracy and eppression. We love the Statue
of Liberty standing majestically in the harbor, even though the liberty
it represents is not the priority for us ft once was. We are not interested
in the "tired and poor" - when they are fleeing from governments we approve
and support.

It is a powerful word and it has inspired much eloquence. "We and
all others who believe as we do would rather die on our feet than live
on our knees." Franklin D. Roosevelt said during the Second World War
and for the ideal of freedom Americans have consistently showed an incredible
willingness to sacrifice and die.

But jt is also a paradoxical word. Freedom of expression is very
hear the essence of the American experience, but it is not an absolute
freedom. It does not include the right, a landmark case determined, to
“shout fire in a crowded theater". We are not free to drive down Broad
Street at 80 mph, nor are we free to park for more than 60 minutes downtown,
an abridgement of my personal freedom which has, upon occasion, become
expensive for me.

Some social scfence has always chaltenged the very notion of freedom.
Sigmund Freud taught that we are not as free as we thought we were. A
few years ago B. F, Skinner wrote Beyond Freedom and Dignity, which became
a very controversial book because it argued, academically, that freedom of
will fs an illusion: we are controlied by other factors, such as the
environment, or other people, and that's that. Skinner made few friends
in humanist or Christian circles with that kind of thinking, but his book
was widely read, and it stimulated vigorous debate.

“De

He goes on ta suggest that God could have warned us of danger through
ways other than pain. Ne suggests a doorbell to notify us, or neon tubes
in the middie of the forehead. But what of a God who creates pain?

Humor, while necessary for comic relief in Tife, can't hide the numan
misery which suffering can bring. Elie Wiesel, young boy in Auschwitz,
writes of his death camp experience in a memoir titled Night. With his
discovery of evil and suffering he questions the possibility of the existence
of God. He tells of one episede in horror:

"tT witnessed other hangings. I never saw a single one of the victims
weep, (But) toa-hang a young boy in front of thousands of spectators was
no Tight matter. The head of the camp read the verdict, All eyes were on
the child. He was lividly pale, almost calm, biting his lips.

“Three victims mounted together into the chaifts. The three necks were
placed at the same moment within the noeses. ‘Long tive liberty!’ cried
the two adults. But the child was silent. ‘Where is God?' someone behind
me asked. At a sign from the head of the camp. the three chairs tipped over.
Total stlence throughout the camp.

“Then the march past began. The two adults were ne Tonger alive. But
the third rope was still meving: being so light the child was still alive.
Behind me I heard the same man asking: ‘Where is God now?’ And I heard a
voice within me answer him: ‘Where is He? Here He is~-He is hanging here
an this gatiows...'"

Dorothy Soelle, a German theologian, asked whose side God was on in the
concentration camps, the murderers side or the victims side? Soelle, in her
book Suffering, suggests that “the most important question we can ask about
suffering is whom it serves. Does cur suffering serve good or evil, the
cause of becoming alive or being morally paralyzed? Soelle's emphasis is
not on “from where does suffering come," but on “where does it lead?"

The questions become more difficult. They move from identifying suffer-
ing as something “out there” - to our more personal response. If we ask,
where does suffarine jead, we must then ask ourselves, "why do we close our
eyes and pretend we do not Rear and see those who suffer? Can we even face
our own fs! feving? Mhen the aspiring writer in the movie Sophie's Choice
begins to yet to know the sain of Sophie and Nathan ne says for all of us,

"T longed to pack my bags and escape."

The disciples in the story of the epileptic responded rather typically
to the tragic situations. They didn't saen to be in touch with what the
fathar and son were experiencing. They hadn't made the hopeless rounds from
dactor to doctor and medication to medication. They didn't live with the
constant worry that the son would burn or drown himself. Instead they asked
Jesus "Why couldn't we heal him?" Their concern was for themselves and their
failing performance.

Je

And so Paul wrote them a Strong letter.,a sometimes angry letter.
Galatians has been called the Magna Charta of Christian freedom. "You
are free." Paul told them. "In Jesus Christ you are free from trying
to earn God's Tove by Foltéwing rules. God won't love you any more if
you fast, pray twenty times a day, or submit to any rite, If you elect
to do any of these things, do them out of gratitude for God's love.

The Christian concern with freedom of all types begins here, with
Paul's theological insight that God's love for his creation makes people
free from the responsibility of trying to earn that love. In fact, the
more Paul thought about it, the more those efforts ~ which are largely
religious, looked like a form of never-ending bondage. How can you ever
know that you have done enough good things to cause God ta lave you?

In fact, the more Paul thought about it, the more freedom seemed
to be at the center of our humanity - one of God's greatest gifts, part
of our essential humanity Jesus Christ came to restore. "For freedom
Christ has set you free" he said.

And so, at our best, we Christians have put a priority on freedom.
We have, at our best, lived very uncomfortably with totalitarianism of
the right or the left. Dictators - whether they speak Spanish or Polish -
cannot abide for long in institutions which values liberty.

Tt is so vsery fragile ~ this liberty which makes us human. And
no one ever treated the topic more eloquently than Dostoevsky in the
Legend of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov. It takes place
in 16th century Spain. Hundreds of heretics have been burned and Jesus
comes to town, mingles among the people, is recognized by them, and the
Grand Inquisitor arrests him. That night in prison they talk. The Inqui-
Sitor says:

“For fifteen centuries we have been wrestling with our freedom

but now it is ended and over for good..... Peopte don't want
freedom, they want security" the Inquisitor tells Jesus, "I tell]
thee that man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to Find some-
one quickly to whom he can hand over the gift of freedom with which
the ill-fated creature is born. "

Thus the great novelist anticipates the tremendous appeal of all
the totalitarian structures of human history from Fascism to Sect religton.
Their strength is precisely their denial of freedom; in the case of sects-
type religion, the virtual elimination of the freedom to think and reason.

The God of the bible is always on the side of freedom. The very
earliest images of God in the Bible are as liberator. Before Israel knew
Jahweh as the creator, he was known as the one whe brought us out of bondage.
God in the Bible is always on the side of freedom, always liberating people
from whatever inhibits, Oppresses, imprisons them.

whe

A modern historian, Robert McElvaine, says most history is written from
the top down, not from the bottom up. His special concern is for the “forgot-
ten people" of FDR's depression. McElvaine has set about to listen to these
people through letters they had written to President Roosevelt and his wife.
We can imagine hearing the same words from Cleveland or Detroit or Columbus.

One letter said rather eloquently, “Why does everything have exceptional
Value. Except the human being--why are we reduced to poverty and starving
and anxiety and sorrow?"

A 12 year old boy writes FDR: “My father he staying home. An all the
time crying because he can’t find work. I told him why are you crying daddy,
and daddy said why shouldn’t I cry when there is nothing in the house." In
contrast is the one who wrote Roosevelt saying, "Let each one paddle their
own canoe, or sink."

The story of the healing of the epileptic is more significant when one
considers the larger message. The incident is tald to help explain the
mystery of the passion story. Neither the disciples nor we can understand
the words, "The Son of man is to be delivered into the hands of men, and
they will kil] him and he will be raised on the third day."

The entire story of Jesus's passion, his journey to Jerusatem and the
cross is in a sense a narrative about suffering, It is a story of blood,
Sweat, tears, personal denial and abandonment by those he loved best. After
Jesus heals the boy he predicts his fateful end to his disciples. But we
must not miss the significance of the epileptic boy. The passion story is
also a story about love. To be compassionate--to be full of passion--is to
view a suffering or deficient person as a cherished fetlow human being. Ta
heal, to free, to give sight to each particular individual was the larger
task of Jesus. The story tells of a God who cares enough for each of us to
enter our suffering.

We can remain caught in the questions of how a loving God could allow
this suffering or why an all powerful God will allow evil in the world. But
to do so, leads nowhere,

The life uf Jesus Christ points to the answer. The discovery of Christ
implies the discavery of the redeeming presence of God within the anguish
of human experience. te tells of a God who cares passionately for each one
who crtes, "My heart 7s in anguish within me, the terrors of death have fallen
upon me," and each one who comes pleading, "Lord have mercy on my son, for
he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly."

Christian religion is not a turning from each other, but a turning toward
each other. It is not a freeing from suffering, but a willingness to care
for those who suffer. It is not enough for us to set back and smugly point
to the seeming indifference of government bureaucracies. It is to become
involved in the lives of those who line Long Street and Livingston Avenue.
It is to see the loss of hope in their eyes and their hunger for healing.
It is to take our faith which is as small as a mustard seed, and to become
passionately concerned for those who suffer. It is not enough for us to say
as did the disciples, "Why could we not cast it out?"