LET FREEDOM RING

July 2, 1989
8:30 and 11:00 a.m. Worship Services
John M. Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
Luke 9:51-56
+ Galatians 5:1-14

“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand..fast therefore, and do not
submit again to a yoke of slavery." --Galatians 5:1 (RSV)

An open Bible in one hand and an open newspaper in the other is the
appropriate stance for a contemporary Christian, said Kar] Barth.

The Bible is open this morning to St. Paul's letter to the Christian
churches in the region of Galatia. The year is 56 A.D. Paul writes:

"For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not
submit again to a yoke of slavery. Now I, Paul, say to you that if you
receive circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify
again to every man who receives circumcision that he is bound to keep the
whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the
law; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we
wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither
circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through
love. You were running well: who hindered you from obeying the truth?

This persuasion is not from him who called you. A little leaven leavens the
whole lump. I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view
than mine; and he who is troubling you will bear his judgment, whoever he
is... For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not

use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be
servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, 'You
shall love your neighbor as yourself."

The newspaper is the Chicago Tribune, May 31, 1989, page i, dateline
Beijing, "Torch of China's Lady Liberty rekindles fervor."

"In Tiananmen Square...a 30-foot-tall Chinese version of the Statue
of Liberty revitalized a flagging movement for Democracy Tuesday night.

"Nearly a quarter of a million people defied a government warning...to
file past this Chinese lady with the troubled eyes and raised torch...

“The crowds came in silence, without slogans or banners. They came
on foot, both old and young. They arrived in chartered buses, pedicabs, on

“The crowds came in silence, without slogans or banners. They came
on foot, both old and young. They arrived in chartered buses, pedicabs, on
the flatbeds of tricycles, but most came pedaling down the eight-lane
avenues in an endless stream of bicycles...

“For three days and three nights art students at eight Beijing
universities labored to sculpt the huge styrofoam and plaster-of-paris
figure... they dragged her into the square piece by piece, assembled her
overnight.

"It was a feat that electrified the city. For Marxist conservatives
it desecrated a square considered until recently the heart and showcase of
Chinese Communism.

“Two young men wore T-shirts emblazoned with likenesses of the
statue. A girl wore a 'Goddess of Democracy paper hat!

"A group of young factory workers studied the statue across a sea of
bobbing heads.

"What does it mean?
“One finally answered: ‘I guess it means the people are no longer
afraid of the government. /

‘Doesn't it?!"

As the terrible but magnificent drama of Tiananmen Square was playing
out I was in Philadelphia to visit the Bicentennial General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church. The first Presbyterian General Assembly convened in
1789 just a few blocks from the Pennsylvania State House, where delegates
from the states were writing a new Constitution; and where 13 years before,
213 years ago this week, delegates from the Crown Colonies stepped up to
sign a Declaration written by the delegate from Virginia, Thomas
Jefferson...which said:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights Governments are instituted among men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the government...”

We were held in the grip of the terrible drama in Beijing which, by
then, was beginning to evolve into tragedy. We read every word of the news
accounts and then, one morning, visited again the old part of Philadelphia
where the monumentous events occurred more than two centuries apo...the
neat row houses, narrow cobble stone streets, shops, churches where freedom
was discussed. And the building, the very room where they debated and
voted and signed the Declaration and the place where it was first read.
Ordinary people lived there, talked about freedom, argued about it, made
solemn vows to die for it if need be. We were deeply affected by the
reminder that much the same thing was happening at that moment, on the
other side of the world.

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Why, one wants to ask, all the fuss over freedon...? Why are people
still willing to sacrifice for it, die, if need be, for it?

About those people in Philadelphia in 1776, historian Bruce Catton
has written:

"They wanted no more of King George, of course, but they also wanted
the kind of freedom that came into the front yard and the parlors and the
kitchen of the ordinary human being. Men and women did not propose to be
bossed around any longer, and at the same time they did not propose to go
hungry or live in want or feel the restraints of a tightly ordered society
whose classes and customs were beyond change. They saw liberty, not as a
glorious abstraction, but as something that began with what the citizen had
for breakfast and went on to effect all of the homely concerns of every day
life." [American Heritage, 6/74, p.4]

“Not a glorious abstraction...but something which began with what the
citizen had for breakfast"... In a book on the meaning of being human, Yale
professor, Letty Russell, tells about interviewing people in East Harlem to
determine their views on religion. “What do you think salvation means?"
she asked. After a few conversion stories, a single woman with several
children, unemployed, struggling with the systemic structure of poverty
blurted out "It means that I'm more free!" Dr. Russell argues that freedom
is at the center of our humanness... "freedom as a quality of human
life...the human capacity for choice, and for struggle against internal and
external forms of bondage.” [Becoming Human, p. 92]

Freedom is one of the ways the Judeo/Christian tradition defines
human beings. God, we believe, is interested in freedom, intends freedom,
creates freedom. Now a delicate topic - religious chauvinism. Every
culture that ever existed has manufactured a theology to undergird its
political and military aspirations. Even Marxism, which is officially
atheistic, refers to an economic determinism which is simply divine
providence without the divine, and then goes on to establish sacred texts,
a holy people, hymns and saints... The deities of Babyion, Persia, Egypt,
Greece and Rome approved and blessed the comings and goings of their people
and their armies. Hitler invoked the cultural and religious traditions of
the Germanic people as he sent the Panzers into the Low Countries. Abraham
Lincoln, who Elton Truebloocd calls the "Theologian of American Anguish,"
mused about the irony of God's will being claimed so confidently and
piously on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. History should teach us
that it is very precarious business to claim the special approval and
blessing of God for any culture, any nation, any system of government -
including our own. God is not an Aryan or Oriental. God is not a
capitalist or a socialist... There was a time when my father's
characterization of the Presbyterian Church as the Republican party at
prayer, (a characterization he both enjoyed and endorsed) was probably
true, but I think it reasonable to propose that in 1989 God is not a
Republican or a Democrat.

However, I do propose that God is very much interested in human
freedom, and insofar as the subject is alive in our midst, and the cencept
still central to our experience, I further propose that God does keep an
attentive eye on us, as well as on all who struggle with, argue about and

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die for it. "Where the spirit of the Lord is...there is freedom" (II
Corinthians 3:17)

The subject of freedom is the dominant motif in current religious
thought. It is sometimes called Liberation Theology, a term used
pejoratively usually by these who have an economic stake in the status quo.
The handful of families that still own and run most of El Salvador regard
the Liberation Theology of some of the Catholic bishops as a threat...and
it is a threat to their economic monopoly and wealth. Archbishop Oscar
Romero was gunned down in his cathedral, essentially for proclaiming that
God is for economic freedom.

This theology is based on the premise that God is a liberator: that
God's relationship with human beings from the very beginning may be
understood as a process of enabling them to be free, autonomous,
independent of anything that inhibits them from being whole people. God,
in the Bible, is the agitator for freedom; “Author of Liberty," the hymn
puts it, and the enemy of oppression... God is the one who hears the cries
of the people who are in bondage and does something about it. Who is God?
God, the Old Testament proclaims is the one who leads us from slavery to
freedom, from hondage to liberation.

"For freedom Christ has set us free," St. Paul wrote. The time is
the First Century. The situation is the church in Galatia. Paul was
addressing new Christians who had been persuaded that the way to be
faithful was first to adhere to the old religious law. In Jesus Christ
Paul had discovered a whole new way of being religious, a way of freedom,
not dependent on rules, regulations, rituals, customs. The whole law is
Summarized in one sentence, he said, paraphrasing Jesus - “Love your
neighbor as yourself." You are faithful, not on the basis of how Many
rules you keep, but by obediently following Jesus whose single commandment
is to love the neighbor. "Don't Slip back into the old ways" - Paul
warned. The religious law is a kind of unfreedom — slavery, in fact.

That's heady stuff. Freedom is always hard to handle. Threats to
freedom are not all external. In the Old Testament freedom saga, Moses
leads the children of Israel out of Egypt with the army of Pharaoh in hot
pursuit. Ahead of them they see the Red Sea and on the other side the
threatening barren wastes of Sinai, And they say to Moses, "What have you
done to us? It would have been better to serve the Egyptians than to die
in the wilderness." (Exodus 14:11, 12)

The basic human desire for security is often, if not always, in
conflict with the possibility of freedon. Egypt didn't seem so bad after
all... at least there was enough to eat and a place to sleep.

That's essentially the position those new Galatian Christians were
in. The old way included a rule, a regulation, a prescribed way to respond
to every conceivable life situation. One knew what to eat, when and how to
eat it; when and how much to work, what to wear, the proper prayers to
Say... Suddenly, here comes Paul saying "You're free from that. You are
free to make moral decisions on the basis of God's love in Jesus Christ,"
And so they became anxious. Furthermore, some representatives of the old
way had traveled from Jerusalem to Galatia to correct Paul's liberal

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morality; a kind of "truth squad" apparently, “law and order" types who saw
in the new freedom Paul proclaimed a distinct threat to the values they
held dear. The old way wasn't so bad. At least you know how te live. It
provided a minimum of risk and lots of security.

That issue is always before us. There is enormous appeal ina
religion which provides answers to all of life's questions and thereby
eliminates the need to think for oneself. It would be comfortable to know
what is right and wrong in every situation, so comfortable in fact that we
are occasionally willing to sacrifice our autonomy in order to feel
ethically secure. The security of certainty looks very good to people who
are assaulted by tough moral questions. There has never been a time when
somecne was not trying to limit freedom of expression somewhere — for very
sincere reasons. Freedom of expression in Iran does not include the
right to insult and desecrate sacred symbols, as Salman Rushdie
discovered. In the People's Republic of China freedom of expression does
not include desecrating sacred space in Tiananmen Square with a statue. In
fact, the dynamic is so universal and powerful that the House of
Representatives stayed in Session all night last week so that members of
the House could register their hostility toward the first Amendment to the
Constitution.

We are, St. Paul knew, willing to lay freedom aside, to restrict it,
deny it, hem it in with conditions in the name of morality and security.
But there is another threat to freedom. Paul describes it this way: "You
were called to freedom...only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for
the flesh, but through love be servants of one another.'

Legalism is a threat to freedom. But so is moral laziness,
selfishness, or what the New Testament calis sin. Freedom is not the
right to do whatever one pleases. In fact it is a gross distortion of
freedom when the actions of one are hurtful to another.

In political terms freedom of speech includes your right to express
views that are not popular with anyone else...views that the Majority of
people deplore. That is very rare - and very precious. On the topic of
the Supreme Court flag decision about which everyone is so exercised, the
New York Times quotes Congressman Ted Weiss, a native of Hungary who as a
child fled the Nazis - to the effect that the Supreme Court flag decision
is not a threat to anyone but rather the “affirmation of a wondrous
freedom.” And conservative columnist, George Will, said with
characteristic bluntness, "Keep your hands off Mr. Madison's document."
Freedom to express views that are unpopular, deplorable to everyone else is
very, very precious. But, your freedom does not include the right to yell
"Fire" in a crowded theatre.

if freedom is simply the opportunity to indulge your whims and
appetites you realiy aren't free, Paul said, just selfish. As a matter
of fact you are in a new kind of slavery - slavery to self.

Freedom demands discipline — self-control, Paul called it. The
two are complimentary and interdependent, not contradictory. A musician
who is self-disciplined in rehearsal may be free to sit at the keyboard and
play a Bach Fugue. The would-be musician, who chooses not to practice, in

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-))

the name of freedom, will be confined by his or her own laziness. My guess
is that nearly the majority of us know about it personally.

The final enemy of freedom is selfishness - or sin. The founders of
the nation understood this Biblical insight perhaps better than anyone in
history. When selfishness becomes corporate, when individual egoism is
multiplied in the body politic, freedom is gravely threatened.

John Adams once wrote to Thomas Jefferson: "Power always thinks it
has a great soul...and that it is doing God's service when it is violating
all our laws."

Political scientists note that one of the secrets of the founders of
the republic was their realism about the nature of humankind. As a matter
of fact, they didn't trust anybody. They had, in theological terms, a
healthy sense of human sin and its Pauline corollary, namely that freedom's
greatest foe is simple human selfishness.

And so Paul, in the same breath with which he is calling for human
freedom says, “through love be servants of one another."

Love apparently is the price of liberty...or justice which is simply
love in action. Without justice, freedom is simply a luxury for those in
power. Liberty, Paul knew, means freedom to bind oneself in love to one's
Lord and one's fellow human beings.

Freedom is best protected when it reaches out in compassion to
others... We are, in Christian terms, never more human, never more free
than when we give ourselves in humble service to the welfare of someone
elise.

Charles Peguy's haunting images capture the idea -—

“,..All the prostrations in the world

Are not worth the beautiful upright

attitude of a free man — or woman kneeling.

All the submissions, all the dejections...

Are not equal in value to the soaring up point,

The beautiful straight soaring up of one single invocation
From a love that is free.”

God created human beings to be free. God wants people to be free.
The image of God in us is our God-given freedom. "For freedom Christ has
set us free," said St. Paul. “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is
freedom."

And so it is no surprise that even in the most repressive, rigidly
authoritarian situations men and women remember freedom, and talk about it
and argue over it and are willing to die for it...

That tradition is by no means ours alone. In fact, the brave
students in Beijing have graced and honored it as eloquently as anyone ever
has. But it is our tradition too. And we honor it in memory and song, and
in the exercise of love and justice and compassion, all of which have been

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given to us by the past, and which we in our day are privileged to hand
down to another generation...

So - Let Freedom Ring...

Let music swell the breeze
And ring from all the trees.
Sweet freedom's song...

O God, you are creator of human life and author of human liberty. We
thank you this day for our nation, and for those who have established and
defended freedom. We thank you for those throughout the world who sing
freedom's sweet song, who stand firmly and courageously in the face of
tyranny. Bless them. Give thes cowfort and strength.

And we thank you, 0 God, for Jesus Christ, in whom we have seen your

gift of freedom lived. Give us courage to live in him, and to exhibit in
our lives, that glorious freedom you promise to all your children. Amen.

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