Sunday of the Prodigal Son; The Holy Martyrs Pamphilus the Priest and Porphyrius and those with them.
1 Corinthians 6:12-20; Luke 15:11-32.
Read 1 Corinthians 6:12-20
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains,” wrote Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He was searching for a way for people to associate with each other while maintaining their individual freedom. As soon as we enter personal, professional, political, and economic relationships with each other, we must address whether and how we are going to exercise or limit our freedom. Freedom is always exercised within a context, in relation to other people and things, but also in relation to ourselves.
Today’s epistle reading points out that we can ironically have an enslaving relationship with freedom. Some Corinthians were saying that they were absolutely free in Christ – “All things are lawful for me.” – to which Paul replied that it is possible, in the name of freedom, to enslave ourselves with what we do and desire. They claimed that the physical correspondence of things with each other, like stomachs and food, is a sufficient basis for morality and ethics. Paul reminded them that temporal things are, by definition, temporary and are governed by God’s eternal purposes.
Much discourse about freedom erroneously preoccupies itself with what we want to get “free from”; Paul refocuses us on the purpose of freedom – being “free to”. Our bodies, these vessels in which we exercise freedom, have a meaning and purpose. They are “meant…for the Lord.” The purpose of our embodied expression of freedom is found within relationship with Jesus Christ. That narrows the scope of our freedom. But, “the Lord (is meant) for the body,” beautifully opens up the scope of our freedom in ways that we discover only if we first choose the narrowing. Our freedom to move within a structure that makes true freedom possible is only fully realized when we inhabit our bodies as also being inhabited by God.