Proper 8: Jeremiah
28: 5-9; Psalm
13; Romans 6: 12-23; Matthew 10:
40-42
A homily by Fr. Gene
Tucker, given at The
Cathedral Church of St. Paul, in Springfield, Illinois on Sunday, June 29, 2014.
“SLAVERY, FREEDOM, LICENSE”
(Homily text: Romans 6: 12-23)
We continue
reading from St. Paul’s wonderful letter to the early churches that were in
Rome this morning.
Last week,
we heard Paul’s wonderful explanation of the meaning of baptism, as he says
that, in the waters of baptism, we are “buried with Christ in a death like
his.” Paul adds that, if we have been
buried in this way, then we shall also be raised to a new life in a
resurrection like his.
We noted
last week that Paul’s illustration about the meaning of passing through the
waters is essentially a geographic one:
Paul is saying that the water of baptism forms a boundary which
separates our old life of sin from our new life in Christ. We reminded ourselves, last Sunday, of the
way in which the early Church conducted the rite of baptism, so that the person
being baptized entered the water from one direction, and then left the water in
another direction. We also noted the
ways in which the early Church’s practice is reflected in the rite of baptism
as it is found in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.
In this
morning’s reading, which continues immediately from the first part of chapter
six, heard last week, Paul continues his argument. So let’s consider our reading from St. Paul’s
letter to the Romans that is before us this morning from the perspective
of: Slavery, freedom and license.
As we think
about these three words, questions arise.
Questions
such as:
1. Slavery:
In what sort of slavery were the people who lived in the Greco-Roman
world of the first century?
2. Freedom:
What sort of liberation took place that resulted in these people’s
freedom?
3. License: What sort of freedom marked these people’s
lives before they came to Christ and became members of the Church, and what
sort of freedom marked their lives afterward?
Since Paul
mentions the word “slaves” so often in this part of the chapter six, let’s
begin with a consideration of this aspect of the members of the churches in
Rome’s lives.
The first
thing we might mention is that, most likely, many members of those early
churches were actual slaves. Slavery, in
the ancient world, was a commonplace reality.
Many people were enslaved, and they became slaves in many ways: Being captured as a result of war, being sold
into slavery (often to pay debts), or being captured by slave traders. Those were just some of the ways that people
lost their freedom and were enslaved.
But other
forms of slavery also existed. Many
people were slaves to their passions.
Today, we would call these sorts of slavery “addictions”. We must remember that life in the Roman
Empire was, for the vast majority of persons, filled with hardships,
challenges, and uncertainties. Large
numbers of people had been uprooted from the places where they had been born
and were crammed into crowded, dirty, dangerous cities. Life seemed to have little purpose, and hope
for the future was a scarce commodity.
For many, there seemed to be no one who cared about them, and no one to
care about what tomorrow would bring. So people turned to various diversions in
order to cope with the harsh reality of daily living: drunkenness, carousing, debauchery, and so
forth, were common place. We might
summarize the attitude of many in those ancient times by saying that they lived
by the motto “Eat, drink and be merry, for we have no idea what tomorrow will
bring.”
But St.
Paul says that we have been set “free from sin” in order to become “slaves of
God”.
Freedom!
Paul says
that God has freed us from our former life.
But then he turns the terms back on themselves, saying that we are now
“slaves of God”.
From what
were those early Christian believers freed?
First of
all, when people became Christians and became part of the Church, the body of
Christ, they were no longer regarded from the world’s point-of-view. When the Church met for worship to receive
the Sacrament of the Eucharist, persons of noble birth sat next to slaves, and
each one called the other “sister” and “brother”. To the stratified Roman world of the first
century, this was a scandal, and - in time
- would represent a serious challenge to the established social order.
So, perhaps
for the first time, a slave was in a place and was among people who regarded
him or her as an important, valuable person.
The distinctions of class simply evaporated as the Church came together.
However, a
second sort of freedom also emerged as people came to faith in Christ: They were called to live a new life (remember
that business about the rite of baptism’s graphic portrayal of the boundary
between the old life of sin and the new life of faith in Christ) which freed
them from their former behaviors and addictions. In Christ, Paul says, we are called to be
free in Christ, free from our old ways of behaving, and we have become slaves
to God. Put another way, Paul tells us
that our allegiance to God will eclipse all other claims on our wants and
desires. God will become the new,
governing reality.
Our
discussion now brings us to the matter of “license”.
Paul’s
description of our former life, which was governed by our addiction to sin, is
masterful. Essentially, he says that
what we were doing couldn’t be called “freedom” at all. Back then, in our former lives, when we
thought we were free to do anything and everything our desires and passions
dictated, we were engaging in excessive and undue freedom: Licentiousness, in other words. He says that, by doing those things, we were
slaves. We were in bondage to those
desires and those things.
But now, in
Christ, we have been freed from those old ways of being and those old ways of
behaving.
Now, in
Christ, we are free, completely and totally free.
But, Paul
adds, we are not free to engage in undue or excessive freedom. Nor are we free
to engage in licentiousness. God has
called us, though the waters of baptism, into a new way of living and into a
new relationship with God.
“Can we do
anything and everything that comes to mind?” the question arises. Paul’s answer is “No”.
Now, let’s
apply what we’ve considered from Paul’s writing to our own situation
today. Whenever we read and study Holy
Scripture, that’s an important part of our quest to understand God more fully,
and to ascertain what it is that God wants us to do as we live the Christian
life in our own day, time and situation.
We would be
wise, it seems to me, to apply what we’ve discussed thus far in the three
categories we’ve used: Slavery, freedom
and license.
As we did
earlier, we will begin with slavery.
Blessedly
fewer people in the world today are slaves in the formal sense of the word.
But many
people continue to be slaves because of economic realities, or because some
form of behavior (addictions, e.g.) has
taken control of their lives.
Given those
realities, the Church’s message is two fold:
1. God loves you, your life is
important to God, and to those of us who have already been called into a
relationship with God through Christ; and 2. God offers each one of us a new
way to live, a way that frees us from whatever might control us and might throw
us into some sort of slavery.
So, the
Church is called to offer a radical welcome to any and all persons, as we seek
to love God and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
Distinctions
that might be important from a human point-of-view disappear, just as they did
in the early Church. All are called by
God to enter the waters of baptism, and those who make that journey emerge with
a new, governing reality: Each one has
become a child of God, equal in God’s sight.
God’s call
is a call to freedom.
God calls
us to live a life of true freedom, as we shed anything and everything that
might try to exert control over our first allegiance, which is our allegiance
to God.
Here,
Paul’s words are particularly important. He asks, “Are we to sin, because we
are not under law but under grace?”
Put another
way, Paul is asking if we can do anything and everything we want. What he seems to be describing could be
called “license”.
“No”, the
answer seems clear. No, we can’t engage in
any and every sort of behavior that we might imagine. For we have been called into a new reality, a
new way of being. Things have changed
for us, for we have entered the waters of baptism and have put aside our old
life and our old ways of behaving.
This last
point is important, for some in the Church today seem to claim that we don’t
need to shed our old ways of living when we come to Christ. To adopt that point of view guts the Good
News of its power. For if no amendment
of life is expected, then there’s no need or reason to enter the waters of
baptism. Our new relationship with God
through Christ is expected to result in changes of thinking and changes in
behavior that show that we are truly free in Christ. We have found our true-est and fullest
selves, as we said in last week’s homily, for we have come to a new place, the
far side of the waters of baptism, out of slavery into freedom, a freedom which
makes us truly free.
Thanks be
to God!
AMEN.
