Freedom and Constraint

Let’s say you possess a perspective you think is critical for all to hear. And let’s say you are in a conversation with someone, and you want to share. How do you handle it? You are free to take any approach at all. Remember, the message is invaluable, and the person is intrinsically valuable. You proceed with care. You are free, to choose any angle, yet you are constrained to be as effective as you can be.

Not everyone would realize the flexibility Paul had in communicating and spreading the Gospel. People might have the notion that he was very rigid. He was stubbornly faithful to the message of Christ but flexible and creative with his mode of giving the message. He felt obligated to the call of Jesus and the need of people, yet, he like a willow branch he could bend concerning how to deliver the word.

Paul thought deeply about freedom and obligation in his calling. His thinking is something like: “I am slave, not to the law for the sake of my personal righteousness, rather, I am a slave to all, because of the great need of all for the good news.” Paul has traded out the obligation and servitude that he had for the law, as a Pharisee, for a new one. Now he is obliged to Christ’s commission to make the good news known. Accepting this commission further indentures him to shape his approach to the cultural context of the group to which he reaches out.

Although he is free to mold the outline of the Gospel any way he wants, he enslaves himself to the context of the target group, hoping to be more effective. Paul knows that he is neither under the law of Moses nor is he absolutely free from God’s law. He is under what he calls Christ’s law: a law in which forgiveness and favor are freely received and must be freely offered to others. He is obliged to reach people but is free to tailor the style and wording of his communication for the sake of effectiveness. Look at the passage which is our Epistle at the liturgy tomorrow:

Woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel! For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission. What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel.

For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.  —1 Corinthians 9:17-23

Translating this to our task today, we would speak differently, would we not, to the English professor than we would to the engineer. We would converse differently with the social worker than we would with the information technologist, differently with the physicist than with the fashion designer. This is an approach loaded with listening, curiosity and respect. A person may have their sense of things spiritually very defined and solid in their understanding. Still, as a biblical scholar, William Barkley puts it, the intolerant person, who lacks entirely the gift of sympathy and “never makes any attempt to understand the mind and heart of others, will never make a pastor or an evangelist, or even a friend.” We can bend our approach as a way of throwing ourselves into the interests of other people. So long as we do not attempt to find some point of contact, we can never get anywhere with them.

Paul is absolutely motivated to give away Good News, and so should we be. Remember that Paul made an important turn in his life. With this turn, he found a new kind of servanthood, not to the ritual law but to the person of Christ, and to the people, Christ loves, which is everyone. He went from a kind of oppressive allegiance to one who was a slave to the Good News of Jesus. This slavery, he experienced not as oppression but as freedom and joy, even though it placed him in danger and endured suffering because of it. He is free! He is free to serve God, “in whose service is perfect freedom.”

We too make the turn. Everyone’s conversion is different: Some imperceptible, slow and quiet, some dramatic and all at once. But God gets us to turn. The struggles of life place us in the position of realizing the need to choose joy and freedom.

Who’d say life is easy, with all its twists and bends,
when we take stock of all the pains with which each soul contends?
The struggles undeniably are there in every life
so every story is a mix of blessings and of strife.
Many forces come at us, their powers can oppress.
Like gravity, they drag us down, like harsh winds bringing stress.
But gravity lends traction, so we can fleetly run.
And wings can harness wind for lift, to soar up toward the sun.
Shall we turn contentious forces, then, to work in our favor?
So, taste the wonder of life’s flight, and all its marvels savor.

—DWP +, October 2008