Proclaim Liberty-Rev. Wendy McCormick- July 7,2024
Proclaim Liberty
Rev Wendy McCormick
July 7, 2024
Leviticus 25:8-12
Galatians 5:1, 13-26
It was a treat for me to chat with our own Kristin Ream this week as she registered for classes for her first semester of theological education. I experienced enormous vicarious pleasure hearing about her options as she selects the one and only elective she gets to take in the first year. There are five or six choices and they all sounded so interesting to me. We spent just a little time talking over the description of a course called “Christian Nationalism and Worship,” which is certainly not something seminaries offered 30 years ago. Kristin won’t be selecting that -- it’s not a class that feels relevant to Kristin with her long history in this church and other mainstream, moderate churches. The course is designed to help students identify and critique signs and trends of the very dangerous and rising Christian nationalism in worship traditions that are, shall we say, overly patriotic.
That doesn’t describe this church. In fact, without benefit of such a course, a lot of thought has gone into how and when we bring our patriotism and our citizenship into this space and into our worship. That discussion happened before my time, of course, but it is now pretty much settled that on three Sundays of the year we display these flags here in the chancel. Those of us who plan these services pay attention to these as days that are good to sing hymns associated with patriotism and citizenship and to reflect on patriotic themes from the perspective of our faith. When the flags are here we notice them and think about them. They’re not just part of the every-Sunday background.
I certainly don’t take this practice to mean that on the other 49 Sundays of the year we ignore our citizenship and the responsibilities of exercising our citizenship first and foremost as Christians. But it does mean we think carefully about these things. It does mean that we know that faith and patriotism are not one and the same. It does mean that here we are in little danger of worship that covertly or unawarely perpetuates Christian nationalism.
And perhaps the existence of that class at Duke University – if not a glance around us at the wider society -- tells us that as American Christians we are in a minority.
One of the things I’ve heard a lot about since I came here is an underlying worry in our church that we not be “political.” Of course, this is not a church that would ever officially endorse particular candidates or tell people from the pulpit how to vote. This church would be more likely to toss out a preacher who did that than to follow her orders! And that’s a good thing.
But I am concerned that thoughtful believers like us tend to take it too far. For fear of going to that extreme of endorsing candidates, we fear saying anything about anything lest we be “political.” We say it’s about separation of church and state. But for most Americans there’s some confusion about what that means. Separation of church and state, also known as the constitution’s establishment clause, was never intended to muzzle religious people or groups or to prevent or restrict us from exercising our faith in public spaces and in motivating our citizenship, our activism, our voting. Never meant to keep us from saying in here or out there that God and the Bible have a lot to say about poverty, the environment, oppression and discrimination, to name a few things that have “political” implications.
Pretty much the opposite. This important part of our constitution is all about freedom from state-sponsored or state-endorsed religion. All about preventing the government from endorsing or perpetuating one particular religion, thus restricting the rights of those who may not share that faith.
That important provision is in danger at the moment largely because too many citizens don’t have a basic understanding of this long-standing principle.
What it means for us is that we need to check our overly timid ways. It has never been more important for thoughtful people, informed by the gospel’s true principles of love and mercy, to speak up. And perhaps especially on one of these patriotic Sundays, to reflect on what our faith says about those core words of our nation – liberty and freedom.
The iconic Liberty Bell was surely among the bells that rang out across Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, at the reading of the Declaration of Independence. It is the most famous bell behind that wonderful phrase, ‘let freedom ring.’ We all know about the crack. Apparently, the bell cracked soon after it arrived in Philadelphia from the foundry in London in 1752. It was repaired and used heavily for about a hundred years until that major crack put it out of service and into the iconic status it enjoys to this day. Perhaps lesser known than its famous crack is its inscription, taken from the section of Leviticus we read today: "Proclaim LIBERTY Throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants Thereof”.
In translations of the Bible, the word liberty is translated interchangeably with freedom. Proclaim liberty. Proclaim freedom. And in the New Testament, in Galatians, we read, “For freedom Christ has set us free,” as Paul then goes on to talk about what freedom in Christ is and is not for the Christian.
So it behooves us especially on this holiday weekend to take stock of what our faith, biblical Christianity, says about these important and loaded words. Leviticus is definitely not the most widely read of Bible books, but our key Liberty Bell verse comes from one of the best-known sections of the book. In expanding on the concept of sabbath – one day of rest out of every seven – God’s people were taught to expand sabbath to things like rest for the land one year of every seven – in other words, letting fields go fallow. Agricultural wisdom. The liberty bell verse comes from the section on the year of Jubilee, seven times seven years – the 50th year was called the Jubilee Year. That was to be the time to proclaim liberty throughout the land to every inhabitant. We don’t know much about how it was actually practiced, but the principle has rung down through the years. In the 50th year people were to be liberated from crushing debts and other old burdens, especially those from which a person could not be freed in a lifetime, no matter what they did. It was the Bible’s way of keeping extreme poverty and extreme wealth from perpetuating indefinitely. Jubilee was to be a reset, a fresh start. The Levitical tradition also says a lot about strangers and aliens and sojourners --- people we might call immigrants. Over and over God’s people are reminded that once they were the strangers and aliens and sojourners, and they should remember that in how they treat those who now seem foreign to them. These are biblical principles of liberty for American Christians – or Christian Americans – to keep in mind as we exercise our own citizenship and speak up for a contemporary society that proclaims liberty throughout the land to every inhabitant. Of course I’m not suggesting we go out and try to enact jubilee as US law. That’s not what it means for us to exercise our biblical faith as we exercise our citizenship. But the principles of liberty for all and not just for me, the principles of setting boundaries on extreme generational poverty if not on extreme generational wealth, and the principles of welcoming the stranger because once we all were strangers should guide our living, our citizenship and all our participation in society.
And our voices from this biblical perspective need to be heard. Too many, ignorant of the biblical roots of these teachings and ill-informed about the principles of our nation’s founders have adopted a view that liberty is more about me than anyone else, much more concerned about me being able to do whatever I want than about every inhabitant in the land having the fresh start jubilee suggests.
Our faith in liberty throughout the land to every inhabitant will and should push us to ask questions and take stands about affairs of the day – regarding wealth and poverty in our time, regarding attitudes and policies toward immigrants that meet no basic standard of love of neighbor. May our faith propel us to proclaim this liberty throughout the land.
We also heard Paul’s more famous discussion of freedom. “For freedom Christ has set you free.” I remember many years ago teaching teenagers about being set free in Christ, that nothing we do or don’t do can separate us from God, that our salvation is not based on our behavior but on God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. Like many who have taught kids, I watched the wheels turned as they pushed this to its logical conclusion. Sooooooo, we can do anything? No matter what we do we can still be saved? Anything??
And so follows the conversation that is so important in faith and so desperately needed in American society right now. Freedom doesn’t mean do whatever you want. That’s not what freedom in Christ means, and it’s not what our founders meant by freedom. Too often these days, let freedom ring is taken to mean freedom to me and to heck with everyone else. As confirmation teachers and preachers and Bible students know, true freedom in Christ means that we want to be more like Christ, we want to exercise our free will for the good, we want to share with others the goodness that God has shared with us. We have the freedom to choose every day what we will do, how we will treat others, how we will navigate the challenges of other people’s hurtful actions, how we will advocate and vote. But when we are in Christ, we seek to choose the higher road, we seek to choose the path of love, we seek to cultivate those virtues Paul names. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things,” he says.
What better advice could be given to our nation and to individual citizens at this juncture than this: “You were called to freedom. Only don’t use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence.”
The faithful citizen, the Christian American, is ever guided by the rule of love and seeks to see that principle enacted in the public sphere – not by enforcing our religious beliefs, but by insisting on a government that practices kindness, generosity and love of neighbor, a government based on liberty in the Levitical sense, on freedom that is for everyone , freeing everyone of burdens and undue obstacles, not the all-too-prevalent everyone-for-themselves understanding of freedom and liberty.
We live in a time when we are biting and devouring one another, in Paul’s words, and it is high time that principled, biblically minded believers step up before we consume one another, as he warns. Those of us who are financially secure will suffer the least if our country continues down this path of consuming one another. But we who are called by Jesus to attend to the least of these, we who are called by Leviticus to pay special attention to the poor and the alien, we who have been blessed by liberty and freedom must heed the call to proclaim liberty throughout the land to every inhabitant and to remind our leaders that those are the principles on which our country was founded.
As we dedicate ourselves anew to be faithful Christians in our citizenship, we come to the Lord’s table. May we be fed again on love of God and neighbor, on liberty throughout the land for every inhabitant. And may we go forth renewed to share Christ-like freedom. Lest a religion we do not recognize becomes established in our laws. Lest those who use these scriptures for their own selfish motives turn true liberty and freedom into something unrecognizable. Proclaim liberty. For freedom Christ has set us free. Amen.
