So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. (John 8:36)

​As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of this nation I am thinking about what it means to be free. I often ask myself: is it freedom from or freedom for? That is kind of the chicken or the egg question. One will not work without the other. Freedom from is freedom from someone or something imposing their will on you that is contrary to your own desire. Freedom for is agency. That is the ability to...

---

...make your own decisions. At our nation’s founding we wanted freedom from the king imposing taxes without 
representation. We wanted freedom for determining what was to become of this great continent.

On a more local level freedom from can be freedom from debt, freedom from oppressive working conditions, or freedom from hunger. Freedom for is freedom to choose how to spend or not to spend money, freedom to choose how to spend time, and freedom to decide what to eat or not to eat. I had a conversation the other day about survivors of domestic violence. We can think of freedom from as being freedom from abuse, or we can think of it as freedom for, that is agency, to choose to leave an abusive situation or to stay in it. Emotionally it is hard to stand by and watch someone stay in a toxic relationship, but when so many other choices have been taken away from them, sometimes the best support you can give is to respect their right to what seems to everyone on the outside a bad choice. 

All this wraps me back to: what does Jesus mean when he says if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed? Especially in the Gospel of John, freedom is from sin, and freedom is for eternal life. Then we get to spend time considering what is sin, and what is eternal life?

Again, in John’s Gospel, sin is primarily unbelief. It is looking at what God is offering in Christ and saying to yourself-- that cannot be right. It is rejecting hope that God’s purpose is for abundant life. Eternal life offered by Christ is hope and confidence that the power of death is broken in the cross and resurrection of Jesus, and we 
have hope that we will be with Jesus after we pass through death. But more than that, it is faith and hope that we are with Christ in the here and now. The freedom the Son gives is freedom from lack of hope and freedom for living like what little good you are able to do in this life makes a difference. You are free to be who you were meant to be, and that is someone with meaning and purpose. 

This week’s text ends one of Jesus’ discourses with the statement “whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones…none of these will lose their reward.” You are free to give a cup of water, and if you have ever handed someone cold water on a hot day, you know how life giving that is for both of you. 
​
Blessings as you celebrate freedom,
Pastor Jessie