My dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

St Paul and Freedom.
In this, the Year of St Paul, it is opportune to reflect on this great Apostle and the true nature of freedom.
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses longing to breathe free"
Is part of the inscription on the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbour; the monument is one of freedom's most familiar and inspiring symbols. Perhaps freedom has been the most pervasive human aspiration. Yet freedom has been a fleeting and troublesome reality. Some have died for freedom, while others have not known how to live with it or keep it.
Freedom is widely understood simply as the absence of restraints. This view finds expression in the current rage to believe that we have found the secret of freedom in general permissiveness. This is not only anti-biblical, it is also unsound psychologically. Any counsellor in practice can tell of people who have achieved "Freedom from…" without yet having achieved "Freedom to…."; freedom to be themselves, to be productive, to be confident in their own ability, to be fully alive. There is a general consensus about the value of freedom. Yet we so often pursue freedom in the wrong ways or misunderstand what constitutes genuine freedom. Many people escape from one prison only to land in another.
The Apostle Paul was ideally suited to be the Apostle to the Gentiles. He was a well educated Jewish rabbi and a respected Pharisee. He had a cosmopolitan background, being from Tarsis in Asia Minor, and he had Roman citizenship through his father. St Paul was an expert tentmaker, a useful skill that would keep him from being an economic burden to others during his missionary travels. He was a person of great courage and wisdom, and a diplomat. While all of this is true, it would count for little were it not for something more important. In the New Testament we encounter Paul as a person of exceptional spiritual maturity. He insisted that he was due no credit for this. St Paul was clear about the source of spiritual wisdom and power. We can admire him, however, for his openness to the Spirit and his eager willingness to be of service to Christ. God never coerces our cooperation.
Where is St Paul's freedom? - this man who spent so much of his life in prison. Freedom does not line up with privation, persecution, and death threats. Paul repeatedly calls himself a 'prisoner for Jesus Christ' and a 'slave of Christ'. Clearly St Paul did not understand freedom in physical terms alone. Freedom for him was not freedom from restraint, but freedom "for". St Paul's letter to the Galatians is a case in point.
In the region of Galatia the church of Christ was divided over an issue that might have brought it down. Some Jewish Christians there insisted that a convert must become a Jew in order to become a Christian, thus requiring circumcision. Gentile Christians felt this was contrary to the inclusive nature of the gospel. St Paul intervenes with a freedom that is remarkable for one who was a Pharisee. The Cross of Christ has settled everything, and has liberated Paul from narrow religious considerations. Circumcision and/ or uncircumcision mean nothing. What matters is that a person is "a new creation" in Jesus Christ.
The freedom we have in Christ certainly encompasses the freedoms we know in everyday life, but transcends them. Freedom in Christ is personal freedom: in Christ we are free from the burden of our sin through God's forgiveness. Freedom in Christ is relational freedom: in Christ we are free to be ourselves, free from the barriers we have placed between ourselves and God.
Freedom in Christ is spiritual freedom; in Christ we are free for communion with the Spirit of God and the community of God's People.
Because the Christian pilgrim is on a human journey, through time and space, there is always an unfinished aspect to it. The Kingdom of God involves both a present reality and a future fulfillment. Nothing we receive as a spiritual blessing in the human realm is complete in itself. The testament of faith has both a "now" and a "then" dimension. "Now we see through a mirror dimly; but then face to face." (1 Cor.13) Even the freedom in Christ we experience now awaits fulfillment in the ultimate freedom that is the gift of eternity.


+Gerard Hanna
BISHOP OF WAGGA WAGGA