Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time: cycle C

Readings: 1 Kings 19. 16b, 19-21;  Galatians: 5.1, 13-18;  Luke 9. 51-62

We have a wonderful group of texts today, and, in particular, this passage from the letter to the Galatians, which has been called the Magna Carta of Christian freedom.    This was certainly Paul’s major concern in writing the letter.  But, I would also like to use this passage to illuminate the Gospel reading as well.  

But first, I would like to comment on Paul’s claim that the flesh wars against the spirit. because we have, in the history of the Church, a mistaken understanding of the “flesh,”  thinking that it refers to sexuality.  This, in turn has produced a badly skewed understanding of sexuality as well.  When Paul speaks of “flesh” and “spirit,” he is certainly not referring to body and soul.  Rather, “flesh” refers to  everything we are as human beings insofar as we resist God.  “Spirit” refers to the “breath of God,” that is, God’s animating enlivening action on us, bring us to the humanity God intends.    So, to live “in the spirit,” simply means living as a human being, totally open to God.   

It’s very important to emphasize this, because I, and many generations of Catholics, have grown up being told, either directly or indirectly, that the body was even, or at least, dangerous.  The “spiritual” life, therefore, necessitated a rejection, or severe disciplining of the body, and most especially, of one’s sexuality.  Good Jew that he was, Paul would never countenance such a view, which he would see as a rejection of God’s creation.

Now to the main point of this passage:  Every time I read or hear these words from Galatians, I think that they ought to be accompanied by fanfares, trumpets and drums exultantly announcing them, because in these words, Paul is summarizing his entire experience of what it was to be a follower of  Christ:  for freedom Christ has made us free.  Freedom is at the heart of what it is to be Christian. 

Clearly, freedom can be understood in many different ways.  So I want to try to say what Christian freedom is.  We can begin with the passage from Luke’s Gospel, in which we see a number of ways in which Jesus was free.  For example, Jesus is free from the compulsion to condemn people who disagreed with Him.  The Samaritans were regarded by other Jews as heretics.  So it’s not surprising that two of Jesus’ friends want to destroy them.  Jesus, however, rejects this response.  Now, it is a normal impulse to want to destroy what is foreign, and seemingly opposed to me: differing from the way I see things.  Jesus was free of that impulse.

Jesus was also free of the need that I have, to collect all kinds of “stuff” with which I secure my existence and determine who I think I am: with money, or degrees, or wardrobe, or connections.  To all these forms of property, which own me,  Jesus says no.  He was not bound by, contained or, defined by any of those things.

Even more radical is Jesus’ understanding of human relationships, even those, which are the most intimate and formative.  Jesus was free of the pressure that these, or any relationships have, to conform.  He was not constrained by these influences, bound by the opinions and expectations that others have, of what he should be, or how.   Instead, He was free to seek the Kingdom of God, and to build it.

This kind of freedom is as radical today as it was in Jesus’ time.  Before that freedom, I was moved to ask myself: where am I “unfree”?

To begin to answer this question, I would like to point out something within the Church, which plays so large a part in my life.  The Second Vatican Council, for the first time in the Roman Church’s history, admitted that the Church is never what it is supposed to be.  It is always deficient, always in need of reform.  To put is baldly, the Church is always a sinful Church, and this, in all its members, and in its organization as well.  And when people in the Church, whatever their position, claim or even imply, that they are not sinful, deficient, incomplete, they are being hypocritical.  And, I think, this is clearest, in the case of freedom in the Church. 

Now, this needs some explanation.  I’ve lived in the Church most of my life, and for forty-four years, lived there as a priest.   On surveying that long career, I see that the greatest inhibition of freedom, that greatest obstacle in growing to the freedom Jesus is to bring, is the large and pervasive pressure within the Church, to infantilize me: to treat me as a kid, incapable of freedom, requiring constant surveillance, who should be seen but not heard.  The word “infant” has a Latin root, which means to be unable to speak, to have no voice.  Being voiceless, therefore, no one needs to expect me to speak.  Someone else will therefore, always speak for me, and even more speak to me.  This is so, because I have nothing to say,

Paul, in this passage addresses this directly.  He did not think that he was talking to little kids.  He did not write this letter to infants, but to adults, with minds and voices.  He took seriously their capacity to listen and respond: their capacity for freedom.  You don’t say to a little kid, “be free.”  

We can assess the sin of infantilization from yet another Pauline usage.  Again and again, throughout his letters, Paul uses a Greek word derived from the political arrangement of the Roman empire.  The word is “parrhesia.”  It means the freedom of a person (only male in this patriarchally organized world) to speak openly to anyone, and above all, to the people in power, including the Emperor or members of the Roman Senate.  (It’s vital to remember here that, in the same letter to the Galatians, Paul had insisted that the superior-inferior relationship between men and women, was also dissolved in Christ.)  Paul says that, because of Christ, we all have “parrhesia,” not just with the Emperor, et al, but with God.  We can say to God whatever is on our minds in complete trust and with total honesty.  And this, no matter how shocking, or unpleasant, or unhappy, or confuse, or angry it may be.  We are thus able to say to God who we really are, and that God will take us seriously. 

Now, if we can have that kind of freedom with God, then, a fortiori, we should have it, as a matter of course, with every body else in the Church, and beyond.  This raises large questions.  First, what in me inhibits such freedom?  What is the great enemy of freedom?   It is fear.  To give it its more proper name, it’s cowardice.  And here, I recognize myself fully.  So Paul is enjoining me to move beyond my cowardice, to move beyond my fear of those “on top,” the bosses. But there is another, allied, question.  What is there in the structure of the Church, which also inhibits this freedom?  This entails a further, very large matter: that of power.  Jesus clearly was very concerned about power, both how it was understood and how it was exercised.  Whenever he talked about “power,” He warned against it.  That is, He knew that He was redefining power, turning it on its head, so that the real and authentic form of power, was that of the servant: one who empowers, but He also knows that power, understood and exercised in its non-Jesus form, was a constant temptation for those who would follow Him.  The heart of this abusive form of power, seems to me, to be distrust, which doesn’t allow for the freedom of the other, and which precludes real honesty and above all, the capacity to really listen to the other.    This looks like the full-blown process of infantilization, the denial of the possibility of freedom.

So Paul is saying to us that, if we take the following of Christ, seriously, we can speak, and indeed, we must speak.  Because speaking is the very expression of our freedom, and not speaking it to walk away from, avoid the cost of, our freedom.  Implicitly, Paul is warning us to be aware of what it is that is slowing us down, keeping us constricted, misshaping our lives by inducing fear of one sort or another.

It is the Church that is to be the real home, of genuine freedom.  But the Church is also to be constantly aware of its equally constant sinfulness.  That sinfulness, if we really listen to Paul, is most acute in its tendency to infaltilize, for all the reasons I’ve been talking about.

Imagine the message we could give to the world if, precisely as a self-consciously repentant Church,  we offered to that world, the promise and vision of a totally different way of life, in which we really would be free with each other, and thereby liberate each other to the ultimate form and purpose of freedom, which is love.