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“For freedom Christ has set us free.” That’s the opening line in the Epistle today. There’s many ways to think about this.
Bob Dylan gives us one of them in his song, You Gotta Serve Somebody. It goes like this: You may be an ambassador to England or France. You may like to gamble, you might like to dance. You may be the heavyweight champion of the world. You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls… But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.
It’s a true statement, and yet Dylan weaves within it a tone that suggests service is not a great thing. That service is an obligation that inhibits us from doing what we want, when we want, the way we want to. Even the heavyweight champion of the world has to serve somebody, heck, maybe even more than most of us. (Which is why I decline to take corporate sponsorships.)
So, a minute of thought reminds us that, of course, everyone serves somebody because we live in a world that is completely, and fundamentally, interconnected.
Science backs this up. No system, no structure, nobody survives in a vacuum. Remove one part, just one molecule, and the whole thing can collapse. Remove the sun, and the planets drift apart. Remove the bees, and crops begin to fail. Remove the bacteria in your gut, and your body starts to shut down.
In science, interdependence is an objective fact. There is no judgment attached to this reality. What is is. Objectively. Water, for example, is just H2O. It is just wetness. Not so for Christians… wet water is a moral affront. No. It’s also just wet for Christians as well.
But where we are different is we believe we have a duty and responsibility within this interconnected world. The theology is that God made creation and made it good, and that’s a value judgment. We believe that, as we look out at the world, we see a good world; and furthermore this interconnected creation reflects the interconnectedness within our good God.
Our God is not solitary or distant, but inherently relational; ours is a Trinitarian God who, within God’s own nature, serves God’s self. The Father serves the Son, the Son serves the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit serves the Son, the Father serves the Holy Spirit… you get the point. There is deep mutuality and that interconnected mutuality has the moral value judgment of being good.
Which is why Paul is furious as he writes this letter to the Galatians. By the time we get to this line we hear today, “for freedom Christ has set us free,” we’ve reached a kind of crescendo in an argument that Paul is making which started with these words: “You foolish Galatians, who bewitched you?”
Here’s why he’s mad: because he first came to them with the good news of Jesus Christ, the core message being that we are free to be deeply connected to God. Jesus came to set us free, Paul claims, from the limitations, from the confines of our self-centered perspective bracketed by what we can see, taste, touch, hear, yell at.
Paul came with a better way, and the Galatians loved it. They jumped on board. Paul taught the Spirit of Truth. The spirit that there is a mystical binding agent that holds all things together. It is light, love, life that comes from God and is God, and most clearly known through the person of Jesus, the eternal Christ.
We are interconnected not by the limitations of flesh, but by the eternal Spirit… connected to the breath of God, connected to the soul of God, connected soul to soul to soul to one another. That is the design and it is good.
This was taught by Paul. This was owned by the Galatians. And then, so it seems, this was forgotten by them as well, which is why Paul screeches: How foolish are you! I gave you the Spirit, and you are choosing the flesh. I introduced you to life and you choose death.
You chose to act as if the world in which you live is fixed, and you got to get as much as you can get before you die. There are two problems with this way of thinking: first of all it’s not a fixed pie, and secondly we never die. How foolish to live into the myth of mortality in a world that is imbued with eternity? That is the foolishness that has bewitched the Galatians, and infuriated Paul.
How different are we?
“For freedom Christ has set us free.” In Christ, we are set free not from service, but for service. Because we are connected, because that connection is good, because that connection is spiritual, service is not a trap, it’s our calling. It’s our freedom, rightly employed.
Real freedom isn’t about autonomy. It’s about mutuality, because, in truth, we all serve somebody, and that somebody is always connected to someone else…
Let me give you a couple of examples that connect to us here at Epiphany. I spoke with Obed Kabanda the other day. You may remember Obed and his wife Louise and their children Elton, Lyn, Praise and Ruth. They were here for five years or so, as Obed got his PhD at Seattle University. They have since returned to Kampala, Uganda, where Obed had a job with an international development organization — had being the operative word.
He told me about how the recent USAID cuts have had a very significant impact on employment in Uganda especially among professionals like him who trained to serve, but now have no place to do it. He said there’s a feeling of despair, and he asked for our prayers.
Obed’s story is far from unique. Our Director of Communications Jad Baaklini’s sister worked in community development in Lebanon, until she too was recently laid off.
My son Desmond, this summer, is working as an intern with World Relief down in Renton. Since he arrived their annual budget was cut from $11M to $2M. Last week, in my role on the Board of Directors of the Diocese of Olympia, I visited our Refugee Resettlement Office in Auburn, that has been there for over 40 years. They are up against layoffs as well.
It’s all connected. It’s all connected by our good God. It is all connected within the goodness of creation that God has given to us. Our God is not silly, nor is our God short-sighted.
Our God has great confidence in all of us which is why Jesus came to set us free, free within the Spirit to reveal the freedom of a good, interconnected world.
But this idea gets befuddled because of our foolish view of freedom, or maybe I’ll just say my foolish view of freedom. It is so easy to confuse freedom with autonomy — the ability to do what I want, when I want, the way I want to. I’m free because I have enough money. I’m free because my kids are grown and out of the house. I’m free because I’m the heavyweight champion of the world, or because of my string of pearls.
I’m free to do what I want, when I want, the way I want to. That’s the illusion: freedom as control. To which Paul responds: “You foolish Galatians! Who bewitched you?” Freedom isn’t about autonomy. It’s about mutuality, because, in truth, we all serve somebody, and that somebody is always connected to someone else… from Renton to Kampala.
So here’s what I’d like to invite you to do: Take an inventory, not of whom you serve, but who serves you. Not who you choose to help, because that’s often about the power of flesh — Our power. Our resources. Our preferences. Instead ask: “Who makes your life work”? And I wonder: “What would life be like if they stopped their service”?
What if the dry cleaner disappeared? What if the garbage collector went on strike? What if waiters stopped waiting, firefighters stopped fighting fires, or caretakers stopped taking care of us?
Most of these are transactional relationships, but only on the surface. Money maps connection in the world of the flesh, but if we were to live in a world where we no longer needed to trade time for money, we would still have dirty clothes, and garbage and fires.
When the need is fundamental, it doesn’t go anyway. Which is why church cares for one another, because the need is real, and it’s human, and it is morally the right thing to do.
The good is not economic; it’s human; it’s intrinsic to how life works in a connected world. And when we forget that we depend on others as much as they may depend on us, the system starts to wobble.
In her book Field of Compassion, Judy Cannato writes: “Freedom is the floor upon which all the virtues dance: Love, service, community, justice, and peace cannot exist if they are not rooted in freedom.”
Paul would agree. He writes that the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, depend on freedom. But not the freedom of control, the freedom of connection.
We are set free by Christ not from service, but for it. We are all part of the same web of grace. When we live into that reality, we move the world toward wholeness, toward goodness, toward God.
Because the truth remains: You’re gonna have to serve somebody.
So choose the goodness of God.