Freedom is No Piece of Cake

July 4th was on Fr. Daron Vroon's mind Sunday when he set aside his prepared sermon to riff on some questions that arose in the adult Sunday school class.

What is "freedom?" Is it being able to get what we want? I think Fr. Daron's short answer would turn that around: It's being able to want what God wants us to want.. He was taking off from Galatians 5.1, 13-25, a text that tells us to be slaves to one another, not slaves to our passions.


So far, this wasn't so different from my own reading of this epistle. But then Fr. Daron offered a modern spin on an ancient way of looking at ourselves. Ancients thought of a human being comprised of spirit, mind, and body. In proper relationship, "Spirit" is the CEO who sets the goals, "Mind" is the COO who figures out how to achieve them, and the Body carries out the plan.

But, Fr. Daron continued, when we reverse that order, the Body sets the goals. He imagined coming home with a luscious chocolate cake. "I want it," says the Body, "I want it all." The Mind figures out how to conceal the cake until the kids are in bed so that the Body can eat the whole thing. The Spirit? "It's homeless," Fr. Daron concluded.

What would this scenario look like with the Spirit in charge? The Spirit says, "Glory be to God, for the gift of this beautiful cake. Let's allot portions to share with others."


Fr. Daron used the day's reading in Hebrew Scriptures to illustrate. He helped us to understand the story of Elijah's placing the mantle of prophet on the shoulders of Elisha (1 Kings 19.15 ff.), who asks Elijah permission to go kiss his father goodbye. Elijah walks away saying, "Go back again. What have I done for you?" Fr. Daron translated that as, "Never mind. I guess you're not willing to be chosen." In response, Elisha, choosing his own course, sacrifices all his twelve oxen, freely giving up his entire livelihood to God, and runs to catch up with Elijah. [Image: Elijah and Elisha, by Bloemart, 17th century]


Of course, Jesus is the perfect model of free obedience. I'm reminded of something we read in EFM, theologian Diogenes Allen's emphasis on freedom at the Creation, when the Creator, for love's sake, made us free, opening Himself to the rejection that the Cross represents.


The clergy help to choose the hymns, and this one, 706 for communion, encapsulated the sermon:

In your mercy, Lord you called me,
taught my sin - filled heart and mind,
else this world had still enthralled me,
and to glory kept me blind.

Lord, I did not freely choose you
till by grace you set me free;
for my heart would still refuse you
had your love not chosen me.

Now my heart sets none above you
for your grace alone I thirst,
knowing well, that, if I love you,
you, O Lord, have loved me first.

Words by Josiah Conder 1789 - 1855, alt. Charles Price, b. 1929