Praise the Lord! Freedom. What does freedom mean to you? I say freedom, you think... (fill in the blank) When I think of freedom, I think of my childhood. I grew up in Sturgeon Bay, twenty minutes south of here. My experience of childhood was perhaps very different than yours and now I am the one who is old. Freedom is summer in Door County. Freedom is being in the water down by Otomba Park making drip castles on the beach. Freedom is being set loose all day long on a hot July day floating on an innertube playing rock with friends, fishing for crayfish and fishing for perch. Freedom is sailing and putting together an old catamaran with a friend to float far away from all the noise. It is riding my Chip’s big wheel and Huffy dirt bike and my Trek road bike everywhere all the time. Freedom was being on the water with friends in high school and skiing all day long and camping in our backyard with the next door neighbors, the Robertsons making smores. The end of the freedom itself was freedom, my mother calling us in for dinner from the back porch of our house. My mom had the wisdom and wherewithal to set us loose and trust that the adventures of uncontrolled environment would set us free to be imaginative, creative and dangerous. Hate to really admit this, but I remember really enjoying a song on the radio in middle school that was being played a lot from Enya called Sail Away. Freedom was the ability to follow fancies and wims in the large backyard of Sturgeon Bay.
Listen to what the Catachism of says of the threats to freedom:
Threats to freedom. The exercise of freedom does not imply a right to say or do everything. It is false to maintain that man, “the subject of this freedom,” is “an individual who is fully self-sufficient and whose finality is the satisfaction of his own interests in the enjoyment of earthly goods.”33 Moreover, the economic, social, political, and cultural conditions that are needed for a just exercise of freedom are too often disregarded or violated. Such situations of blindness and injustice injure the moral life and involve the strong as well as the weak in the temptation to sin against charity. By deviating from the moral law man violates his own freedom, becomes imprisoned within himself, disrupts neighborly fellowship, and rebels against divine truth. (2108, 1887)
The freedom of being on the run and set loose at home was followed up by the parameters set by neighbors, friends, a parish community and of course mom. There were controls to that freedom. For instance, I once paddled across the bay on a small air mattress to see a friend. His mom was so shocked and alarmed by the “dangerous feat” that she sent me home on the sidewalk carrying the small air mattress under my arm. The Church in many ways is this neighbor, this mother guiding us at times in a direction that guards freedom’s ideal law.
Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem and he was floating aimlessly in his mission. He was resolute in the destination to calvary and his surrendering his freedom to the mission at hand. Door were closed constantly being closed on Jesus journey. Remember, door may open in life but more often than not they close and this is the way God works. He may may close ten for us to become open to the one that leads to life. The Samaritan village would not welcome Jesus. Why wouldn’t they welcome him? The scriptures say because his destination was Jerusalem. Jesus’ mission was not in step with the Samaritans. There were sharply divided and did not associate with one another because a break in the kingdom. Jerusalem was the city of the Israelites, not the Samaritans. Instead of getting all in a huff about it, Jesus rebukes his disciples for their desire to smit the rude Samaritan village. James and John ask Jesus, “Lord do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?” Jesus simply decides to move on to another village.
When a door closes on us in life, we can very easy keep rapping on it over and over again. We become like the disciples and want to retaliate on the infringement of freedom. Instead of embracing the situation for what it is, we dig our heels in and can even become vindictive. This is bad spiritual place to be and when it comes to recognizing the authority of the Church’s discernment in the matter we will have nothing to do with it. Our response must be more like Jesus in this regard. He accepts the will of God and submits personal freedom to do what he may want and does rather what he ought. Remember, Jesus has an affinity to the Samaritans. He probably wanted to hang out with them for a while. He really enjoyed that woman at the well and she seemed pretty nice and all so why not now? Jesus knew his mission. Jesus was focused. He was resolute. Our use of freedom is so often tainted by personal ambitions and agendas that we fail to access freedoms ultimate purpose to link us to the Cross, to Christ to Calvery.
Now two more times in scripture, the use of personal freedom is put to the test. Someone says, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Maybe Jesus is put off from the previous rejection and is in a bad mood, but I’m willing to bet that’s not it. He doesn’t say, great come on along with me to Jerusalem. Instead he says, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” He is saying to us directly that we may have an inkling of what it means to journey to Jerusalem, but it is far too tainted with our own agendas. Recognizing this Jesus challenges us to not be grounded in a nest of our own comfortable surroundings for burrow ourselves in a den of stagnant self-will, but to have the freedom of a fox traversing the forest or a bird flying in freedom in the air. Locked into the will of God and the resolute determination of his mission, Jesus teaches us that attachment to the world is the greatest distortion of freedom’s ideal law. The paradox of course, is the strapping down the nailing down of his will to that of the Father’s in the seemingly dead end of the cross. Remember, Jesus’ hands were open on the cross, not a closed fist of a self-imposed will scared of what God’s will may be in life.
Lastly, Jesus challenges someone to, “Follow me.” And they reply that they can’t because they have to bury their father. Jesus rebukes a third time, “Let the dead bury the dead.” For the family-centered culture of the time, this is a seemingly impossible responsibility to tear away from, but Jesus’ resolute determination of the passion, death and resurrection overshadows even the most seemingly ‘important’ objection we throw his way. This is where we get tripped up the most. Jesus is asking us to follow him continually but we have a myriad of excuses centered around our own worldly pursuits and pleasures.
Our notion of freedom is challenged three times by Jesus. His resolute determination to follow the Father’s will to the Cross is what keeps him clear on the objective of human freedom. Recently, the folly of the worlds freedom was on display for us at the Supreme Court whereby they deemed marriage to be defined by their own limited focus of freedom. However, this grose distortion could not be further from the truth of freedom’s ideal law--LOVE. Justice Kennedy stated this in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey in 1992:
“At the heart of liberty, is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
Nothing could be further from the truth of freedom. It is ultimate hubris for us to begin to believe that we define our own concept of existence. There are other names for this and they are called anarchy, culture of death, and totalitarianism. Ruses and guises of freedom are abundant in the world and we know of them all to well, but what we must first recognize is the chaos of our own soul’s inability to submit ourselves to the authority of Christ through the Church. She as bride of Christ is the means by which freedom will be preserved for eternity because she respects the free will of men and knows of its powerful contingency on our very relationship to God.
Like Jesus, we are called to submit to the guiding authority of God’s paradox of freedom. To relinquish the control of our life and place our lives at the disposal of the missions mandate to journey with Christ to the cross. We won’t stop in the village of secularism, we won’t make nests and dens of our own musings, we won’t consider worldly tasks to trump divine will. We, like Christ will be “sub-missio,” submissive instruments of grace cooperators with the Church and confidently trusting in her lead as bride to the grooms heroic salvific act of love.
Bishop Ricken shares a prayer with us. “Lord, help me to do your will nothing more and nothing less. Help me to do your will not a moment sooner or a moment later than you will it.” Freedom then becomes a grand adventure for us in the spiritual life. It becomes the memories of a child-like faith and a mother-like trust in the free-will of a rambunctious child clammering for adventure. Authentic freedom is Christ’s journey to Jerusalem and our encounters with him along the way. You Lord are my inheritance. Only you. We will serve one another through love, not serve ourselves through the negation of freedom’s ideal law of love. We will allow Elijah to throw his cloak over us as well burning our history of past mistakes and blunders. We are confident of God’s will and his purpose. We will float across that water not on the fears of failure, but on the feelings and inspirations of faith. We will remain resolutely determined to journey with our Lord to Jerusalem. God alone has given us our freedom, we in turn must use it responsibly and this is gaged only by one test--are with with Jesus and His Church or are we not.
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