Freedom

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

July 5, 2020

9 Proper A

When my sister Sarah and I were little girls, our aunt lived in a house with a small apartment in the back.  Every summer, we would go visit our aunt and our grandmother in Headland, Alabama, and if no one was living in the apartment at the time, which was usually the case, my sister and I had a full scale play house. We would spend hours imagining everything we could do if we actually lived there, on our own, at the tender young ages of 8 and 9. We could come and go as we pleased, do what we wanted, when we wanted, and in general live what we considered, at that age, to be a life of perfect freedom.  Never mind that, in Headland, Alabama in the 1960's, everyone knew everyone else and their business, so there was really no such thing as perfect freedom. Never mind that we had no visible means of support or that, short of making the bed, we had no domestic skills beyond opening a package of Oreos.  We just wanted the freedom we thought grown ups had and we were utterly oblivious to any cost or obligation that came with independence.

Independence and freedom are the theme song of the 4th of July.  In the secular world, freedom and independence tend to be primarily individual values, whether those of an individual person or an individual nation.  We value individual freedom to make choices and to live with consequences.  We think of an independent person as someone who has to rely on no one, an independent nation as one that is neither dependent on any other nation nor subject to any foreign power.  We think of freedom as the right to do what we want, when we want, to worship when and where we want, to spend our hard earned money however we want.  We admire the person who has pulled him or herself up by the bootstraps, so to speak, and lived the American dream, rising from poverty to great success.  And rightly so.  These are all admirable qualities.  On the 4th of July, we celebrate our freedom and independence as a nation.  We give thanks for the men and women who have given their lives on behalf of that freedom and independence, and we are called to work on behalf of those for whom the American dream has not yet come true: those on the margins of society in need of nutritious food, safe shelter, meaningful employment, quality education, and guaranteed access to medical care, those who cannot pull themselves us by their bootstraps because they have no boots, metaphorical or real.

Given the emphasis of this holiday weekend on freedom and independence, I find it evidence of God's great sense of humor that our gospel lesson is about a yoke.  A yoke, no matter how easy or light, gentle or humble, is still a yoke that, by definition, binds someone or something to someone or something else.  The most common definition of a yoke is "A crossbar with two U-shaped pieces that encircle the necks of a pair of oxen or other draft animals working together."  According to that definition, a yoke is clearly a symbol of bondage, not freedom, and we recoil from that image when applied in any way to any human being.  So, what kind of yoke could Jesus be talking about?

          When Rebekah left her family and her home to marry Isaac, without ever having met the man, this hardly looks like freedom to our 21st century eyes, even though Rebekah agreed to the marriage.  She is binding herself to an unknown person in an unknown land for an unknown life.  Yet in an odd sort of way, her marriage to Isaac frees her to be a part of God's ancient promise to Abraham that he will be the ancestor of a great nation and his descendants will number the stars in the sky.  In the upside down, inside out world of the gospel, where the outsiders are insiders and the insiders are outsiders, where the last shall be first and the first shall be last, and where the poor shall be rich and the rich will be poor, the binding yoke Jesus offers is actually the yoke of radical freedom.  Jesus' yoke frees us from having to make our way in the world, or into heaven for that matter, all by ourselves.  Jesus' yoke frees us from having to right all the injustices of society single handedly.  Jesus' yoke frees us from having to figure out how to faithfully follow him all by ourselves.   Jesus' yoke is a double yoke, so that we never carry our burdens alone.  Jesus and the whole body of Christ carry those burdens with us.  In Paul's letter to the Galatians, from which we unfortunately do not hear this morning, the apostle tells us to "Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ" and the first letter to the Corinthians tells us that when one member of the body suffers, all suffer with it.  Likewise when one member of the body is honored, all rejoice.  The paradox of the gospel is that Jesus' yoke offers radical freedom as it binds us both to Jesus and to one another, freeing us from having to save ourselves and freeing us to both bear one another's burdens and to work together for the good of the whole human family.

In this time of pandemic, we are more aware than ever that what we do affects other people as the number of Covid-19 cases soars largely uncontained.  This is a burden we must bear together in order to survive, putting aside some of our own wishes and dreams to help keep others safe.  As we celebrate both the independence of our country and our freedom in Christ, Jesus reminds us that true freedom joins us together rather than separates us.  In this time of civil unrest as we face the ugly truth of systemic racism, we are called to come together as one human family, to listen deeply to our brothers and sisters of color, and to work for justice and peace, respecting the dignity of every human being as we promise to do at every baptism.  True freedom is not just the freedom to come and go as we please and do what we want when we want to as my sister and I longed to do all those years ago.  True freedom is the freedom to be the people God created us to be, to live as people connected to each other and the whole human family, and to do the work God has given us to do ensuring that  no human being is denied a life of justice and peace.  The message of the gospel is that the yoke of Jesus gives us true freedom as there is no burden anyone must carry alone.

                                                                                       Amen.