Today, so many of us are honoring those who served in the US Armed Forces, and died in war with the words, “Freedom isn’t free.” There is another perspective. Freedom is free and the thing we call freedom in the USA is not true freedom. Yes, I went there on a national holiday. Not in disrespect or to dishonor the memory of those brave souls who signed up (willingly or otherwise) to offer military service and do their duty while bearing the flag. May they rest in true peace and freedom.
I simply invite you to imagine a world without war. A world with peace and prosperity. A world not built and guarded and protected at the point of a gun or shadow of a bomb. To imagine in order to honor their death with a commitment to end war and violence, to see and further a world where no one must die in war again. I invite you to be peacemakers.
Imagine a world built on the value of life, a truly pro-life world. One in which age and skin color and gender and citizenship and bank balances do not determine the worth of an individual. Imagine a world where every living person matters and is beloved.
That world of peace exists.
It is not pie in the sky or some lofty, by which I mean, heavenly, life after this life. It exists every time a firefighter rushes into a fire to make sure others get out.
It exists every time a housekeeper puts on a mask and cleans up the now empty ICU room and bed for another ill person. It exists every time a teacher returns to the classroom full of children who slept in hotel rooms and whose stomachs are growling from hunger and who hide the bruises their parent left on them the night before.
It exists every time a batch of fried chicken is delivered to a widow. And every time a yard is cut for a neighbor just because. And every time a white person decides to hear, really hear, the cries and shouts of the black victims of white privilege and racism and a black person decides not to judge a white person by the color of their skin. It exists every time a Jewish and Muslim kid play a game together even though their parents feud.
The world of freedom exists
in thousands of human kindnesses
every second of every day.
It exists.
You have seen it. You’ve been part of it, this world of peace and freedom. You know in your heart that love of neighbor is not a freedom that comes from millions of battlefield deaths.
Indeed, for those of us who are Christians, we know that freedom comes as a gift from our Creator, and again as a gift from our Redeemer. One Life. One death. One gift of grace.
“For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery…. 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. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.” Gal 5: 1, 13-15
We must stop paying the cost of our hatred. We must instead fund the treasury of love. The sacrifice to be made is one of service, but not one of killing, of biting and devouring each other. The freedom to serve, with love, takes courage and requires no less than a heaven-sent power. Freedom to disown the world of war craft is a great sacrifice. There are no holidays to celebrate those who choose not to kill. There are no medals to honor those believe none are free unless all are free from the violence of this world. There are no memorials to those willing to die rather than become the killers their adversaries desire to face.
The greatest memorial we could offer to those who died in battles under imprisonment, gunfire, explosion, soul-snatching horror, and wartime hunger, ills, even dysentery, is to become living sacrifices of love and peacemaking. Yes, freedom has a cost. We’ve mistaken that cost as a killing field.
The real cost of freedom is living for others in non-violent love and bringing an end to the evil we empower with our self-indulgences. Self-indulgence, hubris, is the root of the evil that empowers humanity’s endless fighting. Eve ate the apple. Cain killed his brother. The nations battled for trade routes, spices, gold, even the right to own other human beings as if owning a horse. Whether it is greed for money, or the hoarding of necessities that starve whole nations, our self-indulgence, small and large, and often rationalized as preparing for the future, or taking care of our own, or self-care, lays the mines upon the plains and valleys where our militaries sacrifice our young to the gods of wealth we think will preserve our lives. Jesus, too, was sacrificed from the halls of power and might for the perceived safety and wealth of his religious peers, his national heritage, and the empire that claimed “pax,” at the point of a sword.
But death had no power over the God of heaven and earth. Christ loved us with an unkillable, unshakable, unbreakable love. That love freed us from the misery of mortality and fear of death. Freed us for each other. Freed us to be children of the living God, peacemakers.
The life of peace exists. The life of other-indulgence is at hand. If only we would use the free gift of freedom to claim it. May you be clothed in the armor of the Holy Spirit like a flag wrapped around you– a mental assurance of everlasting life, good news wherever you go, righteousness in your heart, words of life flowing from your hands, and the hope of love surrounding you. May you see in yourself the kindom of God. As a beloved child may you be a peacemaker.
And so, too, may I. Deo valenti. For God’s “banner over me is love.” (Song of Solomon 2: 4)
bevfriedlander 