June 25, 2004
A Place
Pent 4/8C (Gal 5.1,13-25; Lk 9.51-62)
Angus Dun, onetime bishop of the Diocese of Washington, was often invited together with other prominent prelates to attend high-level state dinners in the capital city. As he sipped a glass of wine at one of these gatherings, a colleague of a more conservative persuasion observed, “I’d sooner commit adultery than drink that wine.” Politely, the bishop responded, “And indeed, who wouldn’t?”
If you’re not shocked or even startled by Paul’s catalogue of fleshly malfeasance and warnings thereabout to the Galatians, you’ve been making the rounds too much. If you are, perhaps you need to get out and circulate. Nevertheless, it is well to take note that Paul puts all these options — both the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit — under the umbrella of freedom with the gospel’s characteristic redundancy, “For freedom Christ has set us free… ”
It has been said that the only person who is truly free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse. Such freedom is what grace is all about. Indeed, without freedom, we could hardly even entertain taking on any of Paul’s list of errancies, let alone practicing them. Without such freedom we cannot finally accept grace in all its nourishing grandeur.
If we are not free to choose between wine and adultery or none of the above, we are not free at all. But with such freedom, a wise person once said, the possibility of making complete fools of ourselves appears to be limitless.
The old prayer speaks of God “in whose service is perfect freedom,” a paradox that is not so hard to understand as it sounds. For it is Love incarnate who calls us into service. To obey such a master who above all else wishes us well, is an obedience that leaves us the freedom to be the best and the brightest that we have it in us to become, to be fulfilled as the human being whom God imagines us to be. For the only freedom totally contrary to such Love is the freedom not to love and thus quite possibly to destroy ourselves, as well as others. A dear mentor of mine once said that if I love my neighbor and hate myself, God help my neighbor.
The gospel for this Sunday tells of this very thing. When the Samaritans rejected the disciples’ plea for hospitality, they chose not to love, they rejected wholeness in favor of boundaries. They rejected God’s freedom in favor of indenture. This is how religiosity always stifles faith.
The Samaritans disapproved of where Jesus was heading, so they spurned his need for shelter. They put their dogma ahead of another’s humanity, a practice that continues, that has apparently never been out of vogue, and remains quite firmly planted there today. The Samaritans were not alone in forcing Jesus to say that even though all else has its place, “the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
Saint Theresa of Lysieux surely meant something like this when she wrote with such great spiritual insight that, “If you are willing to serenely bear the trial of being displeasing to yourself, then you will be for Jesus a pleasant place of shelter.”
For when those times come that we cannot accept ourselves for some self-imposed reason that rejects God’s forgiving grace and prevents our own wholeness, then we have turned against this “freedom (for which) Christ has set us free.”
But if we can love ourselves in spite of all we know to be unlovable about us, if we can will to bear serenely that trial of being displeasing to ourselves, then we will be for Jesus a pleasant place of shelter where the Son of Man can lay his head, indeed.
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