The great theologian and mentor to Martin Luther King Jr., Howard Thurman, used to tell a story about his grandmother, Nancy Ambrose. Nancy was born a slave and lived on a plantation in Madison, FL until the Civil War. Howard and his family cared for her as she aged, and it was always Howard’s chore to read the Bible to her. Even though she couldn’t read or write, she knew her Bible well and requested specific readings from young Howard: sometimes the psalms, sometimes Isaiah, oftentimes the Gos...
The great theologian and mentor to Martin Luther King Jr., Howard Thurman, used to tell a story about his grandmother, Nancy Ambrose. Nancy was born a slave and lived on a plantation in Madison, FL until the Civil War. Howard and his family cared for her as she aged, and it was always Howard’s chore to read the Bible to her. Even though she couldn’t read or write, she knew her Bible well and requested specific readings from young Howard: sometimes the psalms, sometimes Isaiah, oftentimes the Gospels. However, with the exception of the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians, she never requested the Pauline epistles. When Howard came back to visit her on summer break during college, he finally asked her: “Grandma, why do you never ask me to read to you from Paul’s letters?” Her answer had a lasting impact on him. She said: “In the days of slavery, our master Old man McGhee would bring in a white minister occasionally to hold services for the slaves. McGhee would never allow a Black minister to preach to the slaves. But the white minister always picked something from Paul’s letters as his text. Three or four times a year he preached on “Slaves be obedient to them that are your masters…as unto Christ.” He would go on to explain how it was God’s will that we were slaves, and that if we were good and happy, God would bless us. I promised my Maker that if freedom ever came, I would never read that part of the Bible again.”
It is for good reason that people with their backs against the wall have often rejected dominant interpretations of the writings of Paul. As we have been talking about the last three weeks, Christians have misused and abused Paul’s words in Romans and elsewhere to support toxic theologies of every variety. Evangelicalism has used Paul to forward a surface-level and individualistic type of faith that isolates and shames certain people, and shifts attention away from systemic problems. Nationalist religion has used Paul to suggest that all governments, no matter how unjust, are God-ordained and that civil disobedience against unjust laws and systems is outside of God’s will. Patriarchal religion has used Paul to suppress the God-given gifts of women in life and ministry. Homophobic religion has used its misreadings of Paul to exclude and harm LGBTQ people. Slaveholder religion has used Paul to justify and undergird the great evils of chattel slavery and white supremacy in this country. But here we are today, listening to words from Paul that seem to spit in the face of all those who would appropriate him in order to maintain bondage and oppression. This Paul is caught up in the liberation that God intends, not just for people, but for the whole of creation. This Paul is a freedom-fighter who, in solidarity with nature itself, longs as a woman in labor for God’s justice and love to pervade our world.
Americans love to talk about “freedom” and this is the weekend when our freedom fetish is on full display. You probably heard or saw the word hundreds of times over the past few days, from advertisements, to clothing, to political speeches, to music. It seems to have unmatched rhetorical power for people in this country—simply shout the word freedom on the street or in a crowded room and people are liable to begin cheering spontaneously. Freedom has become such a cliché in America that there are parody songs and internet memes that satirize our freedom fetish, but many Americans don’t understand these things as satire (how do you satirize a satire?). My favorite example of Americans taking the freedom thing too far happened WAY back in 2003 (which factoring in the length of 2020 was 50 years ago). When France refused to support the proposed invasion of Iraq, the illustrious US House of Representatives changed french fries and french toast to “freedom fries” and “freedom toast” on all three House cafeteria menus. Riding the post-9/11 wave of patriotic fervor, restaurants all across America followed suit, scrapping all references to French fries in the name of freedom. The name “freedom fries” began to fall out of favor as support for the war in Iraq plummeted but the House menus kept freedom fries and freedom toast until 2006, when leadership changed. This is an admittedly ridiculous example but it raises a serious question: what do these Americans mean when they cheer for “freedom?” Is it the same kind of freedom that Paul is talking about when he exuberantly proclaims that “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God?”
The meaning of freedom has always been deeply contested in this country. From the very beginning there was an irreconcilable contradiction between the high-minded rhetoric of the founding fathers regarding the God-given right to “liberty” and their refusal to extend that liberty to all God’s children. BBIPOC have long raised their voices to alert America to its great contradictions, and to bear witness to an alternative freedom that is possible. Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce said “If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian he can live in peace. There need be no trouble. Treat all people equally. Give them the same laws. Give them all an even chance to live and grow.” When called upon to speak at an Independence Day celebration in 1852, Frederick Douglass said,
"Why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?
Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions!...But, such is not the state of the case. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. — The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn."
In 1935, Langton Hughes likewise wrote,
“O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free…
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
One of the powerful voices of the Black Freedom Movement, Fannie Lou Hamer, bore witness to the contradiction of American freedom at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. After recounting how she was arrested for organizing voter registration drives in Mississippi and then beaten and sexually abused in jail by the police, she said “I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hook, because our lives are threatened daily, in America?”
The unresolved contradictions of America’s past are on full display in our current moment as well. In the first week of May, as several states were discussing plans to re-open their economies, Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be An Antiracist wrote a gripping piece for the Atlantic called “We Are Still Living and Dying in the Slaveholders’ Republic.”[1] In the piece, Kendi describes the two fundamental understandings of freedom that have always been in tension in American social and political life, and shows how these different understandings of freedom, which led to secession and the Civil War, are also on display in the COVID-19 pandemic. Kendi says “Slaveholders desired a state that wholly secured their individual freedom to enslave, not to mention their freedom to disenfranchise, to exploit, to impoverish, to demean, and to silence and kill the demeaned. The freedom to. The freedom to harm. Which is to say, in coronavirus terms, the freedom to infect. Slaveholders disavowed a state that secured any form of communal freedom—the freedom of the community from slavery, from disenfranchisement, from exploitation, from poverty, from all the demeaning and silencing and killing. The freedom from. The freedom from harm. Which is to say, in coronavirus terms, the freedom from infection. The slaveholder’s freedom to seceded from Lincoln’s “house divided against itself”—divided between the freedom to and from. Americans went to war. Americans are still waging this same war, now over COVID-19. There is a war between those fighting to open America back up for the sake of individual freedom, and those fighting to keep America closed for the sake of community freedom. A civil war over the very meaning, the very utility of freedom.”
So what kind of freedom does Paul mean when he says “the freedom of the glory of the children of God?” There is a clue in verse 12. Paul says “So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh to live according to the flesh—for if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live.” The freedom that characterizes the glory of those who have been adopted into God’s family is life in the Spirit, as opposed to life according to the “flesh.” The meaning of the word “flesh” is key. Western Christians often hear that word and think that it references particularly carnal sins, or think that Paul has something against bodies. But that’s not what “flesh” means. Flesh and body are actually different words in Greek so Paul says body when he means body. No, what Paul means by living according to the flesh is living according to one’s own desires, serving one’s own belly as Paul says in Romans 16:18, or what St. Augustine called living incurvatus in se—living curved in on oneself. The concept is more akin to a posture of selfishness than some kind of licentious sin. The Common English Bible translation makes this very clear by translating the Greek word as selfishness instead of flesh, knowing that the latter is often misunderstood. Listen to the first half of Chapter 8 up through the beginning of our passage for today from the CEB translation: “The law of the Spirit in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death…People whose lives are based on selfishness think about selfish things, but people whose lives are based on the Spirit think about things that are related to the Spirit. The attitude that comes from selfishness leads to death, but the attitude that comes from the Spirit leads to life and peace…People who are self-centered aren’t able to please God. But you aren’t self-centered. Instead you are in the Spirit, if in fact God’s Spirit lives in you…So then, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation (we are debtors), but it isn’t an obligation to ourselves to live our lives on the basis of selfishness. If you live on the basis of selfishness you are going to die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the actions of the body, you will live.” The freedom that Paul says is the glory of the children of God, the freedom for which all creation groans, is life beyond selfishness. We will truly be free, we will truly live, when we embrace our obligation to God and to each other.
Here in the “land of the free,” many who think they are free are actually enslaved by their own selfishness. Many have made idols of their own bellies, caring more about their personal desires and autonomy than about God’s command to love one’s neighbor. As we have seen in recent weeks, plenty of our neighbors can’t bring themselves to suffer even the slightest inconvenience in order to ensure the health and wellbeing of the community, all in the name of their individual “freedom.” But this is not freedom. This is enslavement to sin and death all the while thinking you are free. Biblical freedom on the other hand, is the opposite of the unfettered autonomy and individualism that Americans seem to prize so dearly. It is the freedom to be bound to each other in Christ. The freedom that brother Paul is describing is freedom from sin and hatred and death that comes by Spirit-filled obligation to the beloved community made possible by Christ.
Our communities are in labor pains right now. With all of creation, they are groaning for freedom from infection, freedom from lack of affordable healthcare, freedom from lack of affordable housing, freedom from food insecurity, freedom from poverty, freedom from patriarchy, freedom from homophobia, freedom from white supremacy, freedom from violence and brutality. Our world is longing for the freedom that only comes when we recognize that God has adopted us all as children. At this moment, in this already-but-not-yet, in-between time, there is much pain and suffering as we groan for freedom. Paul speaks a word to those who are suffering in the struggle for liberation: the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that is about to be revealed to us. The new birth of freedom is coming. God’s will is liberation for all God’s children—and God gets what God wants in the end. There are people led by the Spirit of God all around us who are acting as midwives for liberation and justice and love. We can be midwives of God’s freedom and justice and love too. [One year ago today, 40 of us were in Alabama on the Freedom Ride, learning from the saints of the Civil Rights Movement what it means to be midwives of God’s liberation. We have been on the road since then and 50 people are now continuing their midwife training in our antiracist reading groups which will inform our antiracist action in the world. But we must not stop—the journey to liberation is not about any one experience or choice but about the daily, the hourly, striving to be led by the Spirit into more of the life God wants for you and the world.]
So today, as every day, we face a choice: are we children of God or are we children of Washington and Jefferson? Do we call out to God as “Abba! Father!” or do we trace our lineage to the so-called founding fathers? Are we led by the Spirit or are we led by the “Commander in Chief?” Do we place our hope in our adoption into God’s family, or do we place our hope in our citizenship as Americans? Is the Lord our God or are our own bellies our God? This Independence Day weekend, I pray that we will develop a new imagination for the world as it should be. I pray that we will learn to hope in a world that is not rooted in what has been possible in the past, in what we can see right now, but in what we have not yet seen but know is possible with God—that world for which all of creation groans, the world where the first fruits of solidarity and liberation and justice and love become a plentiful harvest for all. I pray that we will embrace a new (but very old) conception of freedom—a freedom that is not about the flesh’s desire for toxic individuality but which frees us so that we might be bound to each other in mutual affirmation and just relationship. That’s the freedom that I long for, that I hope for. It is just around the corner if we are ready to receive it. But we must make our stand with the Spirit of God on the side of the liberation for which all creation groans. As the freedom songs say “Which side are you on, friend, which side are you on?” cause “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom’s coming and it won’t be long!”
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/what-freedom-means-trump/611083/
