Freedom
Discussion about the concept of freedom as presented in Galatians 5, emphasizing the importance of Christ's role in setting us free from sin and unforgiveness. The conversation highlighted the difference between freedom from restriction and freedom for love, and the need for Christ's grace to achieve true freedom. The customer encouraged the audience to reflect on their own lives, seek forgiveness, and strive to embody the fruit of the Spirit.
MC: Adam Hohn
Parochial Vicar: Tyler Arens
Presenter: Joseph Gruber
Deacon: Rick Freedberg
Brought to you By: The Knights of Columbus
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participantOne:(0-33340): Mind if we begin in prayer again? Great. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Direct, O Lord, our actions by thy holy inspiration, and carry them on by thy gracious assistance, that every word and work of ours may begin in thee, and by thee be happily ended. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Freedom. For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
participantOne:(33919-62540): This is the opening verse from the fifth chapter of St. Paul's letter to the Galatians. Earlier this year, I got to deliver a lecture on the letter to the Galatians. It's a fascinating letter. It's short, but it's packed with a whole lot of random weird things and interesting things, including this fifth chapter, which is saying that Christ set us free for freedom's sake, which raises a bunch of questions.
participantOne:(63360-93880): I mean, we can come up with a bunch right now. Do we believe that? And what does it even mean that he sets us free? How do we experience that? And what does it mean that we could submit again to the yoke of slavery? There are answers in Galatians, right? St. Paul is talking about a very particular situation in Galatia where people were submitting again to the yoke of circumcision and ritual purity laws and kosher laws.
participantOne:(94400-126480): So there's that. And then more universally, that it is actually possible for us to put on again a yoke of slavery. So if that's possible, surely we would want to avoid that. Alright, so what is freedom? There's two main competing ways to look at freedom. One is a freedom from. A freedom from constraint. A freedom from restriction. A freedom of motion because nothing is stopping us.
participantOne:(126980-158780): And then there's another one that is the freedom for. This is the freedom that comes from being able to do something. So there's a piano in that back corner, gentlemen. Am I free to play that piano? Yes. Yes, but it would sound horrible, right? Good answer. Very good answer. There is nothing stopping me from playing the piano. So I am not restricted. I have that freedom from restriction.
participantOne:(159620-184500): But am I free to play the piano? No. I have taken zero piano lessons in my life. I know how to play the clarinet, but I do not know how to play the piano. I could sit there and maybe painstakingly pick out Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I'm pretty sure I could do that. I am not free to play the piano as it's meant to be played.
participantOne:(185680-218359): So there's no restriction. I am free from restriction, but I am not actually experiencing the freedom that comes from being a trained pianist, to be able to sit down and to play Bach without a second thought, as if it just flowed from me. So the Catholic view of freedom, there is some element of being free from constraint, sure, but the Catholic view of freedom is actually much more leaning into freedom
participantOne:(218700-251260): What are we free to do? And it's not... Well, let's continue the piano analogy for a little bit. I can play the clarinet, but I'm not actually totally free to play the clarinet. I don't have any music memorized. It's not actually internalized. So if I wanted to play the clarinet, I would have to have sheet music in front of me. So my freedom even there is restricted. But I can grow in freedom.
participantOne:(251760-285620): in the clarinet, I could memorize music, I could grow in freedom in the piano, I could learn how to play, I could memorize pieces, and I would then therefore become free to play, and not just free from restriction. Christ came not so that I could be free to play the piano, he came so that I might be free to do the most important of things. So we have at your tables there's Galatians 5. I cut out a few verses,
participantOne:(285880-321719): One, so it would fit on a half page, and two, because it was talking more about circumcision, and I figured on a Saturday morning you guys didn't want to talk about circumcision that much. Great. Okay. What is the freedom for? Christ gives us freedom for love. The only thing that counts is faith working through love. That's in verse 6. Verse 6.
participantOne:(323660-348180): And why is that important? It is actually the most important thing. I like to joke in my home, I have an absurdist sense of humor. I like to joke, we have a fellow who lives with us, he's a math teacher, but also he's getting his masters in philosophy, and I always troll him by saying, well, philosophy is pretty easy because stuff makes us happy,
participantOne:(348680-378740): And so philosophy is pretty straightforward. And it was like, hold on though, hold on. The guy who lives with us is named Joe. And I'll say, Joe, I've had an epiphany about what makes us happy. It's not stuff, that's ridiculous. It's more stuff. And then I'll say, no, no, no, Joe, another epiphany. It's not stuff, it's new stuff. It's not stuff, it's the right stuff. It's hilarious. And my wife was talking to my eldest
participantOne:(379160-410540): a couple of weeks ago, sort of to check in to make sure that he knew that I was joking. Because apparently sometimes the things that we say in jest are taken seriously. And my son was like, well of course stuff doesn't make us happy. It's people that makes us happy. It's relationships. I was like, oh wow, that's actually, that's pretty darn good for a 12 year old. Friendship makes us happy.
participantOne:(411300-446219): True friendship makes us happy. Friendship with God makes us happy. And we are not free to do that without Christ. Without Christ, we are not free to be in friendship with God, and we are not free to be in friendship with neighbor. This is a very important piece. If we want to be happy, we actually need Christ. And we need Christ in, well, a multitude of ways. But maybe two ways to get at it.
participantOne:(447540-468280): would be to see how we might actually take on the yoke of slavery again. There's two ways that I'm going to talk about this morning that we might retake slavery. One is by our own sinfulness, and two is by having the wrong response to other people's sinfulness.
participantOne:(470380-499140): So two ways that we can take on a yoke of slavery that is beneath our dignity, that restricts our freedom, that prevents us from loving God and neighbor. One is our own sinfulness, and the other one is the wrong response to the sinfulness of others. And both of these, we actually need Christ. So one, when I sin, it's not if I sin, it's when I sin. I've started to notice a pattern in my life that I am a sinner. Okay.
participantOne:(499640-532160): Dang it. When I sin, I am restricting my freedom. I am actually being prevented. I am preventing myself from loving rightly. When someone sins against me and I harbor resentment, when I harbor unforgiveness, I also am prevented from loving God and neighbor rightly. I've heard unforgiveness described as drinking poison in the hopes that it will kill the other.
participantOne:(533560-568200): Another way to put it is, unforgiveness is crawling in a cage and hoping the other guy crawls in too. Unforgiveness prevents us from loving. Unrepentance prevents us from loving. If I'm not free to love God and neighbor, then I can't actually be happy. I can't be the man that I'm called to be. And yet, very often, more often than I like to admit, although I go to confession with some regularity,
participantOne:(568640-605740): I do harbor unforgiveness and I do commit sins. And perhaps you're in the same place, right? Perhaps you too struggle with either committing sins or harboring resentment about being sinned against, which is why it's really good that we have a Savior. I don't actually have the grace of repentance unless it's given to me. I don't have the grace to forgive unless it's given to me, which means that I am always in need of a Savior.
participantOne:(606560-649240): because with God all things are possible. Without him, the full Christian life, the full human life is impossible. Okay, it is probably a good idea at this point to also point out how beautiful the life of a free man is. I didn't do that yet, so that's good to mention it. If you go down to the end of the chapter, verse 22, by contrast,
participantOne:(649819-684080): The fruit, singular, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These are the qualities of a free man. These are the qualities of the man who is not restrained by sin and unforgiveness. These are the qualities of a man who has repented and forgiven. I have never met a man who was joyful,
participantOne:(685319-709660): who is harboring unforgiveness. Have you? I've never met a man who was kind, who was constantly sinning. And sometimes I ask the question, because it's sometimes hard for me to imagine my life
participantOne:(709959-738760): fully living out these qualities, I then imagine what would my wife be like if she had more of these qualities? And suddenly everything's like, this sounds like the most awesome arrangement possible. If my wife lived out these, this fruit of the Holy Spirit more, my life would be immeasurably better. And then I think, what about my friends? What if my friends were kind and gentle and patient and joyful and peaceful and faithful and generous? Like, what if my wife
participantOne:(739160-774360): my life would be even more incredible. Not anything against my friends, they're great, but if they had more of it, my life would be better. And then I can take this step and say, okay, that means that I too should desire these things. And so I too should look at this list and I should say, am I experiencing the fruit of the Holy Spirit? If I'm experiencing the fruit of the Holy Spirit, it means that I've repented of my sins and I have forgiven the sins of others. If I have not, odds are good
participantOne:(774880-807860): that I'm still harboring some secret sin, something that I don't want to acknowledge is bad for me and for others, or I'm harboring resentment and I'm harboring unforgiveness. And so the question then becomes, am I willing to talk to God about this? I remember when I was in college, a Catholic missionary asked me if I were joyful. This is the second of the fruit of the Holy Spirit. And I had no idea what he was talking about.
participantOne:(808260-841400): He's like, well, every day you should go to the chapel and ask Jesus, Jesus, why am I not joyful? And I did that for months. So I'm a stubborn fellow. If I don't understand a scripture passage, I'll sit with it for months. If I don't understand a question, I'll sit with it for months. And this was the first time I was sitting with a question, not for me, but for God. And so for months, I came to him and I said, Lord, why am I not joyful? Right.
participantOne:(843280-878800): And honest to goodness, I didn't realize that he loved me even though I was sinful. Honest to goodness, I didn't realize he was calling me to love other people even though they're sinful. And it took months of asking that question for it to click. Because Christ does have the answer. He not only is the best instructor in the Christian life, he actually wants to live the life with us. He's not out there.
participantOne:(879160-909240): telling us what to do. He's actually in us, in our hearts, desiring to live through us. And there is great freedom in that. The other way to put the kind of freedom that the Christian life affords is, who is the most free being ever? Well, the answer to that is God. God is the most free being. Everything he does, everything he sets out to do, he accomplishes. He, he,
participantOne:(909459-938680): If I sit down to play the piano, I do not accomplish the playing of the piano. If I attempt to love my wife the way that she deserves to be loved, I don't accomplish that. When Christ came to save us, he accomplished what he set out to do. He is the most free being. And so when St. Paul says, For freedom Christ has set us free, what he's saying is, in part, Christ came to make us like him.
participantOne:(938900-976820): to make us capable of loving as God loves. God loves untrammeled, unrestrained by sin, with a purity. And God loves even the sinner. And that's the kind of freedom that we are called to live out. There are all sorts of other wrinkles in Galatians 5. There's all sorts of interesting pieces here about what it looks like to live under the desires of the flesh.
participantOne:(977480-1011080): And so I was thinking it might be a good idea for everybody, when we go back to roundtables in a minute or two, to bring these with you. We'll give you a minute or so to read it right now in silence, because I think that's a good idea. And then to go back to the roundtables, there are discussion questions there, but you can also discuss anything else in Galatians 5. Yeah, ultimately, a lot of the Christian life comes down to understanding
participantOne:(1011340-1044020): that Christ does want to set us free to live the most beautiful life, the best life, the one that's most in accord with reality, with truth, and that it's truly possible for you, and it's truly possible for every single person we have ever met, that there is a next step forward into freedom. Learning the piano can take months, years. I had a friend who practiced eight hours a day for several years,
participantOne:(1044460-1075040): And he still said he wasn't very good. I was like, well, I guess it's a matter of comparison. Definitely better than me. But Christ actually wants to accomplish something even greater in us. And he wants that to be accomplished as soon as possible. You were meant to be capable of such love that there should be stories told of it. You are meant to be capable of such love.
participantOne:(1075600-1106280): that your wife your children your parents your brothers your sisters your friends your neighbors your co-workers that their lives are changed by the purity of your love and if you're not experiencing that freedom i really want to encourage you to talk to our lord about this what is holding you back is it sin is it your sin is it someone else's sin there are other things that you can hold you back this was not an exhaustive list this morning this is focusing on two things
participantOne:(1106500-1141653): that probably trip us up maybe the most. But they are two things well worth taking a look at, talking to our Lord about, asking for the grace to be forgiven and the grace to forgive. So, Galatians 5, I want to invite you to take a few minutes to read it, to sit with it. Then once you seem to have a bit of a grasp of what's going on in there, I would like to invite you to then move on to a small group discussion. Sound good? Great.
