Freedom
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2[1]
We as a people are proud of our “freedoms.” Most of us are
familiar with Lee Greenwood’s song, “God Bless the USA.” [2] The first line of the refrain says, “I’m proud
to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.” We’ve been raised on the
ideal of American freedom. It’s as ingrained in our culture as Norman
Rockwell’s depictions of the “four freedoms”: freedom of speech, freedom of
religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. [3] His inspiration for these iconic portraits was
President Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union speech, in which he articulated
these freedoms as basic human rights for all nations. Many believe he did so to
awaken this country to enter World War II.
Freedom has a long tradition in this country. But I'm not sure we've ever been as free as we'd like to think we are. Especially not from fear and want! There
is an equally iconic image from Life
magazine in 1937 of a mural boasting of the “American Way” as having the
“highest standard of living” with people in front of it standing in line for
assistance in Louisville, KY after the Ohio River flooded. [4] To be fair, it was taken during the Great
Depression. But these were people who were not free from want and fear. I think
true freedom is much more complicated than the sentiments expressed in Mr.
Greenwood’s song.
I would say that St. Paul knew that freedom is complicated. In our
lesson for today, he deals with one of the central problems regarding freedom
in his day: how does a Gospel message that offers freedom to Gentiles apply to
Jewish people who are bound by the Torah
of Moses? This problem plagued most of the Christian communities Paul served in
the First Century. To Jewish people, even Christians, a Gospel that offers
salvation to Gentiles represented a casting aside of all their most cherished
traditions. It simply did not compute to them, and this caused tension in the
churches, most of which combined Jewish and Gentile members.
Paul’s response to this issue was to argue that God in Jesus
Christ has set all people free through the Spirit. His logic in this chapter of
2 Corinthians is difficult to follow because he’s interpreting a portion of
Exodus chapter 34. One of the central points Paul seems to be trying to make
here is to say that the same Lord who set the people of Israel free from
slavery in Egypt is the one who in Jesus has set them free from sin and death,
from guilt and fear. And this same Lord is the one who in the Spirit makes
freedom in Christ a reality in their lives: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and
where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17). [5]
The foundation for this line of thinking is found in Paul’s
understanding of the resurrection of Jesus and what that means in our lives. As
the Apostle makes clear elsewhere, the effect of Jesus’ resurrection is that
while “in Adam all die,” “in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians
15:22). Jesus’ resurrection imparts new life to all of us. And so St.
Paul can say that through the resurrection, the gift of freedom and new life in
Christ come to us through the “Spirit of the Lord.” In other words, “freedom is
present where Christ is experienced through the Spirit.” [6]
This way of approaching freedom as a gift from the Lord God of all
creation, extended to us by the risen Lord Jesus, and made real in our lives by
the Spirit of the Lord is very different from our understanding of freedom. In
the first place, we seem to think of freedom as a “right” that we deserve, not
as gift. But perhaps more importantly, in this culture we insist that freedom
is something that belongs to us by virtue of the fact that we exist. In our
world, every person is by definition free. We don’t need anyone, not even Jesus
Christ, to give us something that we already have.
By contrast, I would say that many of the people I meet don’t seem
to be free. Some are bound by fear—fear of dying, fear of illness, fear of
becoming financially destitute, fear of being alone. Some are bound by pain—the
pain of some disease, or the pain of trauma. Some are bound by addictions—to
alcohol, drugs, pornography, and even electronic games, among many others. Some
are bound to a past that they simply cannot seem to shake. Others are bound by
the ever-increasing cost of living and by debts that may be more than they can
handle. And if you asked them were freedom is to be found, I’m afraid not many
people have a very good answer.
But the Gospel insists that freedom is found in Christ through the
Spirit who is constantly working in our lives. The assurance that Christ can
truly give us this promised freedom is that God raised him from the dead. In
raising Jesus from death to new life, God demonstrated for all time that it was
his purpose for the human family to give them that new life by the Spirit. [7] As we respond to this amazing gift in faith,
hope, and love, we find the truth and the reality of this promise becoming real
in our growing experience of the freedom to truly live.
[1]
©2019 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 3/3/2019 at
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2]
Lee Greenwood, “God Bless the U.S.A,” You’ve
Got a Good Love Comin’, MCA Records, May 17, 1984.
[3]
Published as covers of The Saturday
Evening Post, February 20, February 27, March 6, and March 13, 1943. See https://www.nrm.org/2012/10/collections-four-freedoms/
.
[4]
Margaret Bourke-White, “World's Highest Standard of Living,” Life, February 1937. https://www.artic.edu/articles/467/worlds-highest-standard-of-living
.
[5]
Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life:
A Universal Affirmation, 120-22.
[6]
Ibid., 121.
[7]
Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics,
4.1:308-9.
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