Enslaved or Free?

A sermon by Rev. Nancy Piorkowski

Readings: Galatians 5:1, 13-25, The New Jerusalem and it's Heavenly Doctrines 142 (see below)
Photo credit: J. Plenio

Enslaved or Free? 
  
The word SLAVERY stood out for me in the reading from Galatians. 
  
The recent developments in our country are causing deeper and deeper angst for the marginalized who are being victimized by laws and ideologies that seek to separate and restrict our freedom to live and make choices. Today I am honoring the work and the legacy of Harriet Tubman and her calling to be a conductor of the Underground Railroad. We just celebrated Juneteenth, the date that commemorates the day in 1865, when Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas and announced the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation which had been declared by Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. 
  
Today is not meant to be a history lesson about Harriet Tubman or Juneteenth, but instead it is an opportunity for a deeper understanding of how the life of Harriet Tubman and the observance of Juneteenth shape our world today. You may or may not be aware that the Underground Railroad was part of our heritage in Wilmington. I live close to the Wilmington Riverfront and remember even as a child of six or seven the talk that a couple of farmhouses in the area were Stations in the Underground Railroad. I knew that they were hiding places, but in my childish confusion, I wondered how a Railroad could be underground, and inside of a house! As I grew up, I came to understand better that the Underground Railroad was a term used to describe the way that slaves escaped from the South. It was a series of safe “stations,” which were often abolitionist’s homes were slaves could be safe as they journeyed North with the hope of obtaining their freedom. 
  
What does all this have to do with me? 
  
I grew up in a segregated white world. My limited experience with growing up in the 1960’s. Those were very turbulent times with the assassination of JFK and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the unrest and rioting that followed. I remember the curfews and the tensions in our household. I observed racism from my parents and neighbors and really had no real opportunity to get to know a Black person. 
  
I remember being puzzled and confused by what I was seeing. As my world experiences grew outside the home, I fortunately had opportunities o to interact with people of color, throughout my life. In my naivete, I could not understand why Black people and white people were separated and my wish was that people could just exist together as people, regardless of race. 
  
I first met Ianus, a middle aged Black woman, when she was hired to be my paraprofessional for my class that had physically challenged wheelchair bound students. Three students were for the first time in their “home” schools, needed assistance with their day to day navigating through the building, including personal care. Well, I can truthfully say that we hit it off from the very beginning of our working together. We had students who had complicated needs who were dependent upon us for them to have a full and complete school life experience, and it often took the two of us working together, to meet the needs of these students when they needed to be transported out of their chairs for various reasons during the day, and taken on and off the school bus.   Our love and caring work with our students created a lasting bond between us that has grown and blossomed to this very day. It did not stop there. We became best friends. That friendship has lasted for decades, and we are still “best buddies,” as she like to refer to us. I remember the time that she invited me to a weekend retreat at Drayton Manor. She checked with her pastor first to make sure I would be welcomed at the retreat. I was with a bunch of Methodist women who just happened to have a different skin color. I was the only white woman in attendance. It was a wonderful retreat and a wonderful experience of just being women together. I do not remember any awkwardness from them or me. Except at one point the minister was doing some kind of trivia game with the group and she paused and said that a white person would not know the answer! We all laughed! 
  
Ianus and I were a tandem team! Our partnership of caring and educating these students created a bond of love for our students, and a deep and lasting friendship which has continued and deepened over the years. 
  
I have over the years been truly blessed to have become close friends with Ianus Gordy who has shared with me, through her life experiences, the realities of segregation and discrimination that she experiences growing up and living life as an African American. She in a way became a Harriet Tubman for me. Our frank discussions about race, bigotry, and life (both the tragic and the joyful parts), helped me understand and have compassion for her life experiences. Knowing and hearing her personal struggles relayed without anger or rancor, helped me grow. Ianus passionately believed that if our fragmented world would just take time to get to know each other, take the time as we did, people would come together and embrace one other’s common and shared humanity. 
  
We all have our prejudices. Unfortunately, this is part of our make-up as a society, but it does not mean we have to live and act with those feelings or ideas that rear their ugly heads. According to Swedenborg, we are spiritually enslaved or free according to the choices we make in our lives. If we do evil in “freedom” it is slavery because it is love of self not the neighbor or the Lord. This freedom becomes slavery after death. 
  
We can become enslaved to a thing, a want, or an idea, or we can become free; the choice is ours. It is really about the choices we make in our own heart and minds and the actions we take to support our choices. I began to wonder to myself: what idea or things enslave me? Is it my fear of retribution, of not fitting in or agreeing who those who have that expectation for me? Is it my desire to not create a tension between my friends and relatives? Am I just afraid of what people will think? 
  
We do not come by love and compassion for our neighbor automatically, but by education and understanding, and desire can overcome hatred and bigotry. This is especially challenging when the neighbor has a different race, culture, religion, or orientation. It takes a commitment to see and look for what is true and good in all people. A person must be open to loving the neighbor as ourselves and loving God. Let’s all become instruments of the Lord who hear freedom calling! Amen.


Readings:

Galatians 5:1, 13-25

1 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh ; rather, serve one another humbly in love.
14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
15 If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.
18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery;
20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions
21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrines 142

Doing evil freely seems to be a kind of freedom but it is actually slavery, since this freedom comes from our love for ourselves and our love for this world, and these loves come from hell. This kind of freedom actually turns into slavery after we die, since anyone who had this kind of freedom becomes a lowly slave in hell afterward. 
In contrast, freely doing what is good is freedom itself because it comes from a love for the Lord and from a love for our neighbor, and these loves come from heaven. This freedom too stays with us after death and then becomes true freedom because anyone who has this kind of freedom is like one of the family in heaven. This is how the Lord expresses it: "Anyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. A slave does not abide in the house forever, but the Son does abide forever. If the Son makes you free, you will be truly free" (John 8:34, 35, 36). 
Since everything good comes from the Lord and everything evil from hell, it follows that it is freedom to be led by the Lord and it is slavery to be led by hell.