You Were Called to Freedom
Psalm 72 • Psalm 119:73-96
Eccles. 9:11-18 • Gal. 5:1-15 • Matt. 16:1-12
The poet Adrienne Rich writes in an essay that “we have become a pyramidic society of the omnivorously acquisitive few… and a multiplying number of ill-served, throwaway citizens and workers… We dangle over an enormous gap between national propaganda and the ways most people are actually living: a cognitive and emotional dissonance, a kind of public breakdown, with symptoms along a spectrum from acute self-involvement to extreme anxiety to individual and group violence.”
With recent events, these words have been proven true over and over again. With the exploitation or carelessness of others during the pandemic, and sheer and unabated racism and murder that has occurred in recent weeks, we see how the core of self-centeredness manifests itself into varying hierarchies of violence against the marginalized under the guise of liberty and freedom. In Galatians, Paul writes that “for freedom Christ has set us free” (5:1). Paul is writing for a specific context to the people in Galatia, who were divided about the purpose of the Law in following Jesus, but its application can be broadened. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI says in a talk about Galatians that “Christ is our justice and all things that conform to him are ‘just’… Christian freedom is never identified with libertinage or with the will to do as one pleases; it is actuated in conformity to Christ and hence in authentic service to the brethren and above all to the neediest.” We have not been given freedom by and in Christ to create disparity and subjugation, or to ignore those evils, but rather to conform everything into the image of justice and love in Christ.
Rich aptly notes that “in the vocabulary kidnapped from liberatory politics, no word has been so pimped as freedom.” True freedom is actualized in dismantling the works of oppression for those that are exploited and disregarded. Anthony the Great, a desert monk said it this way: “Our life and our death is with our neighbor.” Or, to end with the words of Paul in Galatians, “you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become servants to one another” (5:13).
Written by Nathan John Haydon
Nathan earned his PhD studying medieval literature, especially Old English literature and theology. He’s a Benedictine oblate, and he loves coffee, beer, and cats, and sometimes enjoys drinking coffee and beer at the same time while playing with a cat.