Happy Fourth of July!

The highlight of July for most folks is celebrating Independence Day with all the parades, picnics, and fireworks. Unlike in 2020, this year, we will be able to enjoy at least some of these traditions again as COVID restrictions have loosened a little. All the celebrations of the 4th of July are of course about celebrating freedom. We usually think of freedom in terms of freedom from something…freedom from foreign rule, freedom from oppression for example. But freedom has another side as well, a forward looking side. I think of Jonathon Groff in the role of King George in the musical Hamilton asking the victorious colonists, “What comes next? You’ve been freed…Do you have a clue what happens now?”
Years before the American Revolution, both Saint Paul and Martin Luther noticed these two sides of freedom. In 1 Cor 9:10, Paul writes, “Because I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a servant of all.” Martin Luther reflecting on this verse wrote On the Freedom of a Christian ; one of his most well-known treatises which contains the paradoxical statement, “A Christian is a free lord over all things and is subject to no one. A Christian is a ready servant of all things and is subject to everyone.” In his life, death and resurrection, Jesus frees us from the power of sin and death, the need to justify ourselves and earn God’s favor, the constant concern for ourselves. With this freedom from, we also receive the freedom to: to live outside of ourselves, to live in God and to live for others.
Blessings, Pastor Sue