In her memories, a famous writer tells the story about how, as a young girl, she decided she couldn’t believe in God anymore. Before she completely made up her mind though, she says that she went in her room, told God about her intentions and summoned Him to manifest Himself in case He wanted her to believe otherwise. Nothing happened, she says. No loud sound of thunder, no lightening that would hit her. At this point, she says, since God didn’t bother to respond to her, she decided for good that it wasn’t worth holding on to any kind of religious faith, and she never went back to church.
Obviously, she hadn’t heard of today’s Gospel. She hadn’t heard of today’s Gospel where we see that Jesus declines to use the fire of heaven to punish those who wouldn’t receive him, in spite of John and James’ insistence, after a whole village in Samaria close their doors to the Master and those who traveled with him.
We may smile at the disciples’ excessive reaction, as we may smile at the little girl’s foolish request. And yet, we have to acknowledge that it is a well shared representation of God’s power that God can send the fire from heaven on his enemies. In the Old Testament, Elijah strikes with fire the priests of Baal. We also probably all have in mind the image of Zeus, the god of gods in Greek mythology, holding a thunderbolt in his hand as a sign of his divine might.
But today Luke shows us that, well, this is not the way Jesus does things, being all revengeful and punishing like many before him. Today we see that, as for Jesus, if people wouldn’t receive him, then fine, he’ll just move on to another city and he asks his followers to do the same, advising them, a few verses earlier, that: “If people do not welcome you, leave their town and shake the dust off your feet” (Luke 9:5). Obviously, as the little girl who hadn’t read today’s Gospel, James and John hadn’t been listening to Jesus. Maybe you know that Jesus nicknamed James and John “The sons of thunder” in other passages of the Gospel? I bet he did that so they wouldn’t forget the lesson he gave them on that day.
So what’s the lesson? The lesson it seems is that receiving Jesus or rejecting him, following Jesus or closing our door, staying at home and minding our own business – it’s up to everyone you see. We have to decide for ourselves what we need to do. Jesus won’t send fire from heaven so we would open ourselves to him and acknowledge him as our Lord and Savior. With Jesus, we move from a traditional understanding of God where God makes decisions for the people, telling them what to do, to a new understanding where we see people making decisions about God – deciding if it’s worth their while following the way Christ has opened for us – or not.
For these reasons, I believe the fundamental message of the Gospel today is about freedom, which is good news indeed. Because we love our freedom, don’t we? And certainly most of us don’t believe anymore that it’s a swell idea to force beliefs on people: Jesus himself won’t punish anybody for not believing.
And yet. And yet, if we accept to go a little further, we may realize that there is a little more to this freedom than just having the option to choose God or not, as you check a box on an online menu. The freedom Christ has given us is not the cheerful but cheap freedom to take half the day off and go to the beach, if you will. Deciding to follow Christ is an essential freedom, the decision of our lives and Jesus does not downplay it: it’s often scary and burdensome.
Jesus does not act in forceful or revengeful ways, but he warns us, and he actually has tough and urging words when it comes to make our decision about him. To the enthusiastic who wants to follow Jesus to the ends of the earth and more likely to the cross, Jesus reminds them that the Son of man is essentially homeless and that wild animals are better off than him: birds and foxes have nests and holes. To the lukewarm who want to follow yes, but maybe not right away, not right now, Jesus asks them to leave everything behind on the spot, fields, families and even dying parents, because there is something even more important than what they hold the most dear.(The passage is actually another reference to Elijah, when Elijah asks Elisha to follow him. Elisha at least had the option to say goodbye to his family but not Jesus’ followers, because Jesus is more important than Elijah).
To receive Jesus, to follow him, this is the most important decision we will ever make as Christians and it may be the hardest one, because it’s not about coming to worship on Sunday, it’s about choosing Jesus over everything, and everyone. There is no punishment for our choices – otherwise there wouldn’t be real freedom (punishing people is not different from forcing them) but there will certainly be consequences, because when we choose Jesus we literally choose our lives, choosing who we want to be and to whom we want to belong to.
I think this is where Paul picks up when he reminds the Galatians in the Epistle we have heard today that: “For freedom, Christ has set us free”. We’re free from the Law, free from punishment, free to say yes or no, and yet Paul wonders: How are we to handle such a fantastic freedom no man or woman has ever experienced before God until the moment Christ has set us free? What is our freedom for? Is it the freedom to live a life of “self-indulgence”, as he calls it, putting ourselves first, or is it the freedom to choose Christ and to build a loving community?
This is to me such an insightful question, to wonder what, in the end, is our freedom for. We live in a country where we always speak about our freedoms – I won’t elaborate on that because you just have to turn on the news or participate in conversations with family and friends. We have debates, and sadly often fights, about our freedom all the time! We believe that freedom is the foundation of our society and that each one of us has fundamental rights. And this is true, and important, and we should keep on striving to make sure everyone has access to the freedom we claim. And yet, if we want things to work out, we also need to wonder what our freedom is for, being aware that our desire for freedom can also entrap us when freedom becomes an end in itself, the freedom to do whatever we decide, whatever seems right for us in the now or whatever pleases us – no matter the consequences, no matter if our freedom hurts others, the environment and sometimes our own selves.
Freedom is given to us but we have to be aware that we don’t always know how to handle such freedom. This is not new. This is what happened in the garden of Eden and this is what happens still each time we make wrong choices. To the Galatians, and to us today, Paul’s message stays the same: “You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity (…) [to] bite and to devour one another”. On the other way around, we are called to use our freedom to love one another, as Paul says: to “become slaves to one another”. This expression might be a bit shocking to us but being “slaves to one another” essentially means: to choose to serve one another, to choose to belong to one another. Love can only flow from a place of freedom, we cannot be compelled to love. Maybe we can be compelled to act as if we loved but there is no power in the world that can force us to genuinely love someone – even God’s power cannot do that. And that’s where we come back to today’s Gospel, that’s why Jesus left the people free to make up their minds about him: Jesus could not, would not force people to love him and he couldn’t, wouldn’t put in their hearts the desire to give away what they had to follow him. That’s why freedom is given to men and women: so we can make the choice to love, to follow and to belong – but as Paul notices, we can also use our freedom to choose to live only for ourselves and do whatever it is we want to do.
The paradox for Paul is that this freedom ends up not being freedom at all, it’s a new “yoke of slavery”, a freedom that, instead of building relationships, leads to isolation and death. This is the line Paul draws between “the flesh” and “the Spirit”. Living according to the flesh does not mean giving way to all our carnal appetites, sex and greed, – it can be – but in Paul’s words it’s mostly living for oneself, separated from God and from community. The “sins of the flesh” are all the choices we make that come out of our selfishness. These are the “passions and desires” we need to “crucify” with Christ, a painful and difficult choice and yet a choice that leads to fullness of life according to the Spirit, in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. But of course it’s all up to us.