Outside the Chinese Buffet--October 30, 2024

Outside the Chinese Buffet--October 30, 2024

"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." [Galatians 5:13-15]

You know what the beauty of the Chinese buffet is?  You can try something new, serve up a helping of your favorite entree, and go back up for seconds if you are still hungry, all with a side of dumplings or egg rolls.  In other words, you are free to choose what you eat there, knowing that they will put out plenty for everyone and that you can have a little of many kinds of entrees rather than being stuck with just one.  That's lovely.

On the other hand, we all know what you are not supposed to do at the Chinese buffet.  You are not supposed to smear the sweet and sour sauce all over the wall (that's a waste!), and you are not supposed to take ALL the Szechuan Chicken to your table but then only eat a bite of it and then dump the rest on the floor.  You are not supposed to take food off of the plate of someone sitting at the next table over, and you are not supposed to fling lo mein noodles at the cashier.  In other words, there is a certain freedom to eating at the Chinese buffet, but that freedom is never separable from a certain basic decency toward the other customers at the restaurant and the serving staff.  You are free to choose which appetizers and entrees you want to eat, but you are misusing that freedom if you hoard, throw, smear, or steal the food.  

All of this restaurant protocol seems so obvious that it shouldn't need to be said, right?  And yet, we often have a problem understanding the same when it comes to conversations about "freedom" in the rest of our lives outside the Chinese buffet.  Inside the restaurant, we all know that being "free" to scoop your own servings of cashew chicken and egg drop soup does not mean that you are entitled to abuse the abundance, waste the food, or take from someone else.  If your understanding of "freedom" is expressed in the angry insistence that "You can't tell me what to do or not to do because I'm free!" you are missing something.  If your definition of "freedom" leads you to cover your ears when the server reminds you not to steal wontons from the strangers at another table, you have fundamentally misunderstood how "freedom" works.  And if you think that "freedom" allows you to weaponize the chopsticks and throw them like darts at other customers while you protest, "But they can't limit what I do--I have a right to do whatever I want with these!" well, then, you are likely to get yourself banned from the place before you can say, "Mu shu pork."

We know all this at the restaurant, and yet, so often we settle for a distorted and shriveled understanding of "freedom" that is emptied of concern for "love." And when the apostle Paul addresses a situation like that, he responds by saying, "Real freedom always leads us to love for others, not selfishness."  He says that from a Christian perspective, we are abusing the notion of freedom if we end up using it to justify self-indulgence.  And I suspect he would also say that we don't really understand freedom if we let it lead us to indifference or apathy toward others.  For Paul, true freedom is inseparable from loving neighbors and seeking the well-being of the people around us--anything else is a counterfeit attempt to baptize self-centeredness.

It's worth keeping that in mind, not only as we come into the homestretch of an election season, but for the way we face every day of our lives, year-round.  We live in a country that prides itself on its freedom, and yet all too often, we can only see that freedom in negative terms--in the language of "You can't tell me not to!" and "Nobody can stop me from doing what I want to do!"  What we are less used to is the kind of discourse that moves us beyond what we are "freed from" and frames the conversation in terms of what we are "freed for."  But that's exactly what the Christian way of life leads us into--a deeper understanding of freedom that is so much richer than saying, "Nobody can tell me I'm not allowed to dump the wontons or smash all the fortune cookies, because I'm FREE!" Followers of Jesus are people who find our freedom through serving others and discover our deepest satisfaction and fulfillment by caring for the needs of neighbors around us.  Rather than living our lives by constantly shrugging off our obligations to others, we find ourselves freed... to attend to their needs, to care about their stories, and to put their interests before our own.

I'm reminded of an insight of our older brother in the faith, Martin Luther, who began his famous treatise on Christian freedom with these two seemingly contradictory premises:

"A Christian is an utterly free person, lord of all, subject to none."

"A Christian is an utterly dutiful person, servant of all, subject to all."

Luther gets it:  our way of being free is also our calling to love and serve others.  The rest of the world will think it sounds like nonsense, but we know it is the God's-honest truth.  We know that freedom that isn't expressed through love is really just childish self-interest dressed in the garb of respectability. 

Today, the question to ask is, "How can I exercise my freedom through love for others?"  And then, just see where the answers you come up with lead you.  Your way of loving others might look different from the next person beside you, and you might end up with a whole sampler platter of different ways to express Christ-like love. That's just how it's supposed to be--that's what freedom really looks like.

Lord Jesus, remind us of our freedom as you remind us of our calling to love like you.