The Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe

June 26, 2022  •  The Third Sunday after Pentecost

The Mission Church of Saint Nino, Tbilisi

Text: John 17:22: “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters;
only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence,
but through love become slaves to one another.” 

[A note from the preacher: This sermon was preached in the Roman Catholic co-catehdral of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin Mary in Tbilisi, Georgia, by the kind invitation of The Right Reverend Giuseppe Pasotto, the bishop of Tbilisi. Bishop Pasotto, as well as a number of other religious leaders from the city, attended the service in a show of welcome and support to this new ministry. In the recording accompanying this sermon, you can hear the translator rendering the sermon in Georgian. ]

My friends, I am so pleased finally to have made it here to visit you this weekend, and to bring you the greetings and the love of all your sisters and brothers in the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe and throughout the Episcopal Church. We are so proud of you, and of all you have accomplished in creating this community of faith in Tbilisi, a community that offers a vision of Christ’s love and of God’s purpose that welcomes all people and includes all people in the full ministry of the church. I am proud to be your bishop, and wherever I go I tell your story.

I am not that smart, but I know at least one thing you don’t know, and that is how much more of this liturgy there is yet to come; and so this sermon will be short, and if you don’t want to miss it you had better pay attention.

Last week, and again this afternoon,  we have been hearing from the middle of Saint Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia. Paul’s letter to the Galatians is always worthy of our attention, but the reading from last week and this week set before us ideas that are especially important at this moment in our history­—because in those readings the core idea at the very center of what Paul is talking about is freedom. 

A year ago, none of us could have imagined that we would be gathering for worship today here in Tbilisi while a war was raging just across the Black Sea from us. Perhaps those of you who call this nation your home could see all this coming better than the rest of us did, because you already know what it is like to have an aggressive neighbor living in your front yard, and in your back yard, too.

There are many explanations for what is happening in Ukraine. But from a Christian perspective it comes down to this: The people of Ukraine are fighting to protect their freedom, which is nothing less than a gift from God. They are fighting for the freedom to be their own nation, their own people, and to order their culture and their lives as they decide.

Saint Paul says this to the Galatians: “You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters.” The idea of freedom is not an ideology of the West or of the East; it is not something invented by the powers of this world. Freedom is a spiritual fact with political consequences. As Christians, our interest is in the spiritual fact. What shall we make of this?

For us, the ground and source of our freedom has nothing to do with the decisions of governments. It comes about as the result of the work of Christ on the cross. Through his life, death, and resurrection, Christ has forever freed all of humanity from the prisons we had made for ourselves.

Those prisons were made from the ways we have always tried to associate the differences among people with some estimate of their worth as human beings. This is something humans do instinctively—and it leads us into trouble. We make prisons for ourselves out of ideas like: White people are more worthy than Black people. Straight people are more worthy than gay or lesbian people. Men are more worthy than women. Rich people are more worthy than poor people. My nation, my language, my people are more worthy than my neighbors’.

Those prisons are something we make for ourselves to tell ourselves that we are important. They are enforced by the cultures we create, and to which we are expected to conform. 

Paul is teaching us about how the resurrection has freed us from those prisons. Remember, right before the words we heard today—right before Paul tells us we are made for freedom—he teaches us this: “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” 

We have been freed from the prison of forgetting that God has created us as equals, and regards us as equals—all of us.

The only problem is, we are not so sure we want that freedom. Because if you think of it, it means the end of whatever we thought made us special.

Our freedom is something no one—no government, no army, no police power, no criminal—no one can take away from us. Our freedom means that we are the equal of the prime minister, and we are the equal of the beggar in the street. God sees all of us as equal. And God expects those of us who are baptized to treat all other people with the dignity and respect that they deserve—because they are just as deserving as we are.

That is what Paul means when he tells us this disturbing thing—that what we are supposed to do with our freedom is to become slaves to each other. No one wants to be a slave. 

And yet—and yet—there is a higher dignity that comes from serving others when we do it out of an awareness of how much Christ has done for us. 

One of my favorite theologians has written that the sure sign Jesus did not intend for his followers to have power is that he taught us to wash each other’s feet. At the deepest level, our baptism has freed us from the prison of thinking that the purpose of this human life we are given is to have power over each other. 

We have been given the freedom of realizing that the purpose of this life is to love each other. We have been given the freedom of knowing that we are becoming more the people God hopes we will be when we affirm each other, uphold each other, accept each other, admonish each other—all in love.

That is a freedom from other things—freedom from gossip, freedom from easy hatred, freedom from cynicism, even freedom from what our cyncism is usually trying to hide—despair. 

To live in that freedom is a difficult and dangerous thing. It means knowing that you may be taken advantage of. It means feeling vulnerable, all the time. But it also means remembering that we are saved not by a God who acts through power, but by a God who suffers for love, and makes himself utterly vulnerable—on a cross.

That is the kind of community of freedom these sixteen people come before us today asking to join. That is the kind of freedom they have found in this community. And I testify that I have seen in you that kind of freedom. I have seen you treat each other with that kind of freedom, that kind of love, that kind of service to each other. 

And my dear friends, I tell you this: if I have seen that in you, then there is no question that others, other people here in Tbilisi, have seen it, too.

So make sure they see more of it. Make use of your freedom to serve them, too—to serve Christ in them. By God’s grace, we have been given the freedom to live not by the rules of our cultures, but by the law of love. I dare you—I challenge you—to keep doing it. Amen.