The Sea of Tiberius

1990 (Year A), 22 April /
Easter 1     

St Peter de Beauvoir Town

Nobody, I guess, can fail to have been moved by the pictures of Kurdish people trapped on mountain sides or walking in slow moving convoys in the hope of gaining their freedom and security. The same kind of scenes will be repeated with increasing frequency as the starving in Africa begin their trek to find food and freedom from starvation.

Mass movements of people are nothing new – they are part of our social history – African slaves taken to America, Irish people facing starvation going to the same place. They are part of our religious history too – Moses leading the Israelites to freedom in the Promised Land has become the inspiration of countless freedom marches ever since. Whole nations and cultures on the move – their aim freedom, their goal life, in a land which would provide life rather than offer them death.

Freedom and life are aims, not restricted to the starving, to politicians and social activists. They are the aims of anyone concerned with the health of others. Doctors work to free people from disease and ultimately death. Psychiatrists work to free people from crippling neurosis and obsessive behaviour.

Freedom and life are fundamental themes in the experience of every person here today. We are all concerned with them in one way or another. Not many of us are called to lead people on long marches out of slavery. But most certainly when we teach and encourage our children. When we participate in pressure groups and in the care we are all called to extend to those around us, then we are involved in proclaiming freedom and bringing life.

Both are important themes in the Bible. And it’s hardly surprising, since both are close to the heart of God. They aren’t rarefied words concerned with notions existing in the minds of a few. God desires life and freedom for the whole of creation. And so it is his will to allow the glory and splendour of nature to blossom freely – without the chains of pollution. It is his will that every one of our relationships should be free and life giving. It is his will that all political and economic systems should bring freedom and give life to their members. He longs for us to take the steps necessary to free ourselves from all that enslaves us and to let the life of the resurrection permeate every part of our being.

When the risen Christ came and stood amongst his disciples it wasn’t some heady notion he spoke of – he came to give them the very real things of life – he gave them food to eat, and so their lives were sustained. He was himself the example that death no longer held us captive.

All this may be well and good, but our ideas of freedom and life change. They are affected by the people and the society in which we live and so what would’ve been perfectly acceptable to my parents is no longer so for me – our children will find some of the things which we accept enslaving. ‘Did you really put up with that’, they’ll say. The Kurds left on the mountain tops on the borders of Turkey will settle for a good deal less freedom than any of us would find tolerable. How then are we to discover the freedom and the life which God longs for us to possess?

We must be constantly discovering what God wills for us for; God speaks to each generation afresh beckoning them along the road that leads to freedom in him. God encourages us to look again at our lives and those who we live with, together with those who depend on us for their freedom.

And the basis of all our reflection must be love. Freedom and life, for those who profess belief in God are grounded in love. It is clear to me that if we say we love our fellow human beings then we must also desire their freedom and life. We lie if we say we love people and then deny them freedom and life. What is more we are prevented from loving ourselves or anybody else if there are things inside us which enslave us. We are denied the fullness of life which God proclaims in the resurrection.

May God who in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus freed us from the fear of death and called us into the glorious liberty of the children of God, fill us with his desire for life, and so inspire us in his service to find there, perfect freedom. AMEN