How It Would Feel to Be Free

June 26, 2022, Community of Hope UCC

Galatians 5:1, 13-26, Luke 9:51-55

 

During the past week, the nation – that means you and me – has had to confront two of the most polarizing issues facing us – reproductive rights and gun rights. I suspect for many of us here, the outcome on both of those from our U.S. Supreme Court has been distressing. 

 

Maybe our two scripture readings today might offer us bits of wisdom as we try to navigate the days to come. Let me at least try to draw some connections in the hope that the ideas from our sacred writings will offer touchstones as we lament what is happening around us and prepare us for ways to respond.

 

Let’s start with the first words we heard today Paul’s letter to the people of Galatia: “For freedom Christ has set us free.” 

 

And then let’s reflect on the words of a song written in the early 1950s by Billy Taylor and Richard Carroll Lamb and made popular in the late-1960s by the amazing Nina Simone.

 

I wish I knew how it would feel to be free
I wish I could break all the chains holding me
I wish I could say all the things that I should say
Say 'em loud, say 'em clear
For the whole round world to hear

 

That was one of the anthems of the Civil Rights Movement, but it also has so much relevance for us this weekend. Christ has set us free, as Paul wrote, but we need to continually proclaim that freedom from the chains that restrict our human dignity, from the chains of violence that threaten us.

 

Paul went on to cite the most basic ethical principal not only of Christianity but of so many religious traditions - "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." That can be a guiding light in the days ahead.

 

Yes, I know that the issue of abortion is complicated. For people who believe that human life begins at conception, loving your neighbor can include loving that life that has yet to emerge into the world. But when human life begins is both a biological question and a theological question and there are divergent views on both dimensions. When the life of a potential being threatens the life of an actual living woman in many different ways – physically, emotionally, economically - the woman needs to have the freedom to decide her own course of action.

 

Within the United Church of Christ – as with so many other Christian faith traditions - we have long affirmed the right of every individual to follow their personal religious and moral convictions regarding their reproductive healthcare. Our General Synods were taking that position two years before the Roe vs Wade decision in 1973 and have reaffirmed it multiple times since. 

 

But, of course, not all Christian traditions are of the same mind. While political power drove much of the current Supreme Court’s decision on Friday, there has been a raging debate among Christians across half a century about where our faith tradition ought to stand on this issue.

 

Raging debates were not new to Paul. “If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another,” he wrote to the Galatians. “Live by the Spirit, I say.”

 

With issues like abortion and guns – I’ll get to the guns in a moment – that’s easier said than done.

We know the stories of women whose lives were saved – both physically and in many other ways - because they were able to have an abortion. We know the stories from the times before Roe vs. Wade when women lost their lives seeking abortions that were not safe. We know the people at greatest risk after Friday’s decision are people without the means – economic means, social supports, and more - to travel to a place where abortion is legal. 

 

We know the passion that those experiences engender as we care about the lives of women and justice in our society.

 

And we know that in 1973, when the Supreme Court issued the Roe decision, the abortion rate was at about 16 abortions per 1,000 women of childbearing age. Starting in the early 1980s, it underwent a slow but steady decline to an all-time low of 13.5 abortions per 1,000 women of child-bearing age in 2017. 

 

There are multiple reasons for that, but remember, abortion was legal during that time as the rate of abortions declined. In fact, as the states began tightening restrictions in the years since 2017, the number of abortions per 1,000 women has been creeping up. It’s still below what it was in the early 1970s. 

 

Now, however, we are heading into unknown territory, with the nation divided geographically and the political and religious divisions sharper than ever. And not just over reproductive rights and justice.

The Supreme Court last week pulled the rug out from under a New York law that limited the concealed carry of guns. Even as the Congress passed the first strengthening of gun laws in three decades, the court took us ever closer to a free-for-all for guns. 

 

Author Arianna Huffington had a poignant tweet about all this: “So, to sum up the Supreme Court’s week: life begins at conception and ends in a mass shooting.”

 

Last week, Peter Manseau, an author of 10 books on religion and history, posed this question in an essay in The New York Times: “Is our gun problem a God problem?”

 

He noted that Daniel Defense - the Georgia company that made the AR-15 style rifle used at the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas as well as one of the guns used in the mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017 -  uses explicitly religious terminology in its advertising, including a picture at Easter of a gun and a cross lying on scriptural passages about the Resurrection. 

But they are not alone. A company called Spike’s Tactical makes a line of AR-15s known as the Crusader that has Psalm 144:1 on it. That verse says: “Blessed be the Lord, my Rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.” And their add assures us that this rifle will never be used by a Muslim terrorist to bring harm against another person because it includes that verse from the Hebrew Bible.

And Cornerstone Arms in Colorado says it is called Cornerstone because “Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of our business, our family and our lives.”

 

Speaking of Colorado, many of you probably know of Lauren Boebert, one of the members of Congress from that state. Here’s what she had say recently – in a joking manner, but still: “A lot of the little Twitter trolls, they like to say ‘Oh, Jesus didn’t need an AR-15. How many AR-15s do you think Jesus would have had?’ Well, he didn’t have enough to keep his government from killing him.” 

That takes us to today’s Gospel reading. Jesus sends out some of his followers as a kind of advance team but they are rejected by some of the Samaritans, who were not particularly fond of the Jews in the First Century.

 

James and John knew their Hebrew scripture, so they had a ready solution. They remembered in the Second book of Kings, Elijah called down God’s fire on representatives of a king who had issues with Elijah and the fire from heaven they called down killed the captain and his 50 men.

 

So James and John knew just what to do about those rude Samaritans. "Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?"

 

And Luke writes of Jesus: He turned and rebuked them.

 

Jesus rejected violence over and over. 

 

He healed the ear of the Temple guard after Peter cut it off in the Garden of Gethsemane. 

 

From the cross, he asked forgiveness for those who were executing him. He did not regret the lack of AR-15s.

 

I suspect that in our polarized times, some of us think calling down heaven’s fire on those we disagree with, even those we find threatening to our core beliefs, seems like a nice option. And with the proliferation of guns and the tensions around issues like abortion, we are living in a powder keg. 

 

On Friday evening at the pro-choice demonstration at the state Capitol, a woman who was part of a Madison anti-racist community group showed up with an off-brand AK-47 and a pistol with the intent of deterring right-wing groups who might try to disrupt the protest.

 

Ah, but Paul.

 

“If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. Live by the Spirit.”

 

Paul lists some of the things that cause trouble and often we focus on things like fornication, impurity, licentiousness. You know, the ways we can judge the sex lives of others. But Paul’s list goes on to include idolatry –like making guns our idols – or quarrels, dissensions, factions – the kinds of things that have become toxic in our society.

He offers some alternative ways of being, ways that we now call the Fruits of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

And he adds: “There is no law against such things.”

 

As we try to figure out what to do after a week like the last one – or after so many disruptive and distressing weeks before the last one – maybe we can take some cues from Jesus and from Paul.

 

It’s not Jesus’ way to call down fire on his enemies. He even once said something about loving our enemies, which may the most challenging thing he ever said. That would include people with whom we fundamentally disagree, but still recognize as people created in God’s image and likeness.

 

And we can nurture within ourselves those Fruits of the Spirit that Paul wrote about. They are not only for our own benefit, our own peace of mind in the midst of turmoil, for the communities of which we are a part.

 

That does not mean abandoning advocacy for our deeply held convictions. It does mean we do that in ways that reflect our commitments to be followers of Jesus, to walk in his way.

 

Mary Ellen Giess, who the vice president for strategic initiatives of  a group called Interfaith America, offered some useful suggestions this weekend.  She began by saying that “My rage is not far from the surface, these days…My rage comes near to boiling over when I consider the fact that my three daughters will grow up with less autonomy over their bodies than I have now.”

And yet she cautions against getting caught in the binary thinking around abortion – or, I would add, gun rights.

 

She starts by noting “the ambiguity that the beliefs of my fellow Americans are complicated.” She adds that she wants “to listen and seek to understand perspectives that differ from my own, because working with those perspectives is now essential.” She does say that she is not seeking out voices who are arguing in bad faith but those who have sincerely held beliefs.

 

And finally, she cautions against humiliating those we disagree with. She quoted South African leader Nelson Mandela, who said, “There is nobody more dangerous than one who has been humiliated, even when you humiliate him rightly.” 

 

In the end, wrote Giess, “My rage motivates me to continue the fight for bodily autonomy.  My curiosity compels me to listen carefully, with attention to nuance, and treat others with dignity.  I choose to carry them both in the days and weeks to come.”

 

In that spirit, I’d invite us to join in together in a hymn. It’s number 582 in your hymnals. It’s called “O God of Earth and Altar.” The title belies the power of the words – words written by G.K. Chesterton and then modernized by Jane Parker Huber – words that I think very much speak to our moment.

So please join with me on all three verses of this hymn.