Christina Cernansky
I speak to you in the name of Source, God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, mother of us all.
We start our journey this Sunday with a series of 19 stories from Luke as they travel to Jerusalem. We are called to walk alongside Jesus, towards new freedom, as He encounters God and shows us, as well as His original disciples, how to treat others and live out His message of faith, love. Of love, compassion, and how to fight for justice, thereby living a righteous life.
These traveling stories remind me of our journey through life, walking in faith, and learning and gaining wisdom. Some of us have it all figured out in our younger years; we know exactly what we are meant to be, we pursue our passions in school, and we have a long career that we can retire from, comfortably.
Some of us wade through the waters of high school, unsure about the meaning of life, and eventually find something that feeds our soul, despite trials and tribulations. Perhaps with multiple majors or technical school certificates under our belt.
Some of us may still be searching for that calling that fulfills us, and reveals exactly where God is leading us to serve. In this day and age, where society places so much emphasis on having it all figured out by the time you are 16, it takes the beauty, the wonder, and the awe of walking a faith-filled life with God to learn and grow on this journey we call life.
In Paul’s letters to the Galatians, he reminds us that we are to be free if we follow the way of love that Jesus taught us as our teacher. We have a newfound freedom when we walk with Christ. During that time, Rome was very much focused on the so-called marketplace. How one can generate revenue, to pay taxes to Rome.
But Jesus, he was trying to teach his followers that through the love of God, and for one another, we need not have to exchange financial means. Paul reminds us when he shared, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. 24And those who belong to Christ, he showed us we do not have to live out acts that take away those freedoms, so therefore we live by the Spirit; let us also be guided by the Spirit.”
Naturally, I did some digging on the concept of freedom during that time that is also applicable to us today. Freedom is twofold-We have freedom from something, or freedom towards something. Therefore, freedom is a constant struggle, as I have heard before.
I also find it fascinating that this reading is one we get to read before Independence Day, July 4th in America, where we celebrate and honor our desire to walk a journey without the over-burdensome yoke of the Church of England managed by the King of England. The new residents in this new land, wanted to stop collecting money to send to the Church of England. Their solution was to declare a new freedom, from sending money across the pond. They wanted to create their own faith institution, one where they could have the freedom to worship God as they saw fit, to celebrate Jesus’ life, and financially support this new endeavor in this new land.
Early Episcopalians sought freedom and might have been comforted by this passage, which suggests that by following the way of love, justice, mercy, and righteousness, we will continue to experience freedom.
Our 12-step brothers and sisters have a saying, freedom from the bondage of self, and if we are to take action, “we are to know a new freedom”. How beautiful is that? I think this is what Paul is trying to get at: if we live on the right side, with Jesus, in his thoughts, words, and deeds, we are free from the yoke of life. I bet some of our Founding Fathers knew this and found solace and hope in these words as well. And yes, I do acknowledge there were some loyalists in the group that were not very Christ-like, but thats for another sermon.
Our nation is still in its infancy; we are only 248 years old. We had a Civil War about 100 years after we established this democracy, and we are still in our teenage years, perhaps in our early 20s. I think back to where I was in my early 20s, I was still trying to recover from my teenage years, really not knowing what my gifts were, or what job I wanted to retire in. I was living a very fast-paced life in Washington, D.C., feeling like I lived in the center of the world…as one does in our Nation’s Capital.
One thing I did know was that I wanted to follow the way of love, the way of Christ. Loving & caring for my neighbor was essential to me. I dabbled with various ministries and worked with numerous faith leaders on topics that ranged from nuclear non-proliferation to creation care.
I didn’t have it all figured out, but I had the North Star, the inner compass of God’s grace, and Jesus’ roadmap of love. This gave me the freedom to feel secure in knowing that I would be okay, as long as I followed the guiding light of love. That gave me hope and the freedom to share that goodness. As we continue on our faith journey with Christ, we come to understand the freedom from the sometimes burdensome yoke of life, including its obligations, trials, and tribulations. So I invite you to be curious, on how can we have the freedom from the bondage of the darkness that Paul wrote about to Galatians? How can we connect to our higher self towards a new freedom, for the life that God wishes us to have, to live abundantly, in community? How can we know a new freedom, to be as one-ment, with God, with one another, in Christ’s love?