Freedom: The First Fruit of the Spirit
Based on a Sermon for a Harvest Sunday Worship Service
by Rev. Elizabeth Mitchell Clement
Texts: Ruth 1:3-16; Galatians 5:1; Matthew 15:21-28

Two Free and Selfless Women We Can Thank for Bringing Us Here
The night before our Harvest Sunday Worship, some of the women were talking about what they would bring to worship the next day as expressions of thanksgiving. And I began to think about what I should bring. I decided that my offerings would be two women to whom we all are indebted.

Of the two women, only one has a name we know. That's Ruth of the Old Testament. The other woman we find in the Gospel of Matthew. She is given no name, and we know her only by the region from which she comes. She is called "the Canaanite woman."

I am thankful for both of these women because they share something. Both forgot their place--and, because they did, we have come to know the gospel of the good news of Jesus Christ. Let me explain.

In the story of Ruth, there is a pivotal moment when this young widow must decide whether to stay with her widowed mother-in-law--who, as a widow, is in the most at-risk position in the Old Testament world--or go back to her own people. Even Naomi, the older woman, knows this should be a no-brainer. Ruth is young. She can hope to marry again and provide children to secure her own old age.

But Ruth does not do this. She does not go back to her blood relatives. She stays with Naomi. It is Ruth who says the words we often hear at weddings: "Whither thou goest, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God."

Ruth makes a very risky choice when she casts her lot with her mother-in-law--and with her God. She does not obey societal norms, and she does not act in her own best interest. Ruth loves Naomi very much.

Most of us remember Ruth, of course. But how many recall that Ruth is King David's great-grandmother? Each Christmas, we are reminded that Jesus was a descendent of David, which means he is a descendent of Ruth. What if Ruth had not gone to Bethlehem with Naomi?

In Matthew's gospel we are introduced to another woman who breaks from social norms. The Canaanite Woman cannot be bothered with what she is allowed to do because the health of a child is at stake. Here is a woman who has heard of the healing powers of a holy man, Jesus, and she flags him down in the street to beg his mercy on behalf of her daughter.

Jesus doesn't dignify her outburst with a response the first time. But she does it again, and the disciples advise him to say something so the woman will shut up. If words could kill, what Jesus says to her would have wounded her gravely. He tells her that--because she is not a Jew--she and her daughter are not part of the promise that he has come to fulfill. Ouch!

The woman does not go away, but throws herself at his feet--like the dog he has called her--and begs even for crumbs. Finally, Jesus sees her need, his heart is softened, and the child is healed.

The significance of this story, I believe, is in this Gentile woman's crisis and the response that she pulled out of Jesus on behalf of her child. Through her action, the good news of Jesus Christ was opened to everyone, to all of humankind.

I am thankful for these two women because of their respective contributions, which we have just discussed, but also because they show us a certain kind of freedom.

Freedom is Not Self-Indulgence
Our nation is at war. As a result of the terrorist attacks of September 11, we have taken up arms in defense of freedom. President Bush--for whom we must pray every day--says that America's enemies are the enemies of freedom.

When we look at Ruth and the Canaanite Woman, however, we want to be clear that we may not be talking about the same kind of freedom.

I am not talking about the freedom that allows Americans to consume a disproportionate share of the world's natural resources to satisfy our selfish dependency on fossil fuel--without regard for the needs of others.

I am not talking about the freedom that puts the needs of the American free market economy over every human need in our own country and in any far-away place.

I am also not talking about the freedom in which we Americans have come to devote our lives to acquisition and ambition such that every social unit that binds us to one another is dangerously frayed--the family, the church, our neighborhoods and schools. Even African Americans--for whom freedom continues to be an issue--have come dangerously close to abandoning the "villages" that raised us, that sponsored hope and vision of the future in us.

I am not talking about that kind of freedom.

We live in a culture that is obsessed with freedom as a license for the indulgence of individual desires and interests. When I read about the police and firemen in New York fighting over who would be allowed to work at ground zero--the same men and women whose heroic deeds inspired America in that horrible moment of September 11--my heart broke. Cannot American know-how, ingenuity and raw riches imagine a way to see and meet the needs of both those groups of people?

I am not talking about the freedom that allows us to see our own need--and to fight for it! And, at the same time, to be totally disinterested in any needs beyond ours. I'm not talking about that kind of freedom.

The freedom that the daughter-in-law and the Canaanite mother remind us of is the freedom to serve one another in love. The freedom they represent for us is the freedom to act not in self-interest--for us to be no longer constrained, enslaved by our own needs, or separated from the needs of others.

For these two women, business as usual--looking out for Number One--just would not work anymore. Ruth could not turn away from the old woman, and the mother could not ignore her desperate child.

These two women remind us of the radical freedom of grace, of love undeserved, of unmerited suffering. They remind us of the dangerous freedom of the cross of Jesus Christ, of the disruptive moment when death no longer meant the end of life.

The Harvest of the Cross is Freedom to Live in Service to Others
In Paul's letter to the churches in Galatia, he begins to discuss the fruits of the Spirit. He reminds his readers that, "For freedom, Christ has set us free." The problem was that, after Paul left them, there were "Jewish Christians" among them telling them that they had to be faithful first to the Torah, the holy law of Israel.

Paul writes to remind them of the church's Pentecostal roots. These were Gentiles--pagans who had no religion before that fateful day when a Spirit blew across Jerusalem, out of control! These were new churches, about five years old, and they were already struggling to remember the power of that Spirit--the power to make people speak, hear and understand people they had never communicated with before.

So, when the agents of "business as usual" showed up, you can almost hear Paul shouting, "No! No! People, you're missing the whole point. This isn't about ritual assurance of your own salvation. If it were, there would have been no need for Jesus! You can't do enough works to gain the gift of abundant life in Jesus Christ."

"Remember the cross," Paul writes, "that liberating, horrifying event that has broken the power of forces that hold humanity captive, in thrall--and brought in the new creation." He tells the good church folk in Galatia, "No, the law can't make this happen. No book and no recipe can create in you a disposition to freely give yourselves to one another."

So, freedom is the first fruit of the Spirit. Freedom is the first fruit of the Spirit, and Paul talks about it as an opportunity to bless and enrich God's creation. He lists "the fruits of the Spirit" in Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These are the patterns for living in community that bring wholeness and healing, refreshment, worth, dignity, shelter, release, humanity, goodness to our world. Are these the identifying marks of the church?

Now, the interesting thing about the harvest is that you only gather in what has been sown and tended in the growing season. What comes out of the fields at harvest will tell the truth about what has been cultivated. This is very important in Galatians, and very important for us to know, too.

Free to Imitate God and Heaven
Paul is determined that we remember that we are the church and, therefore, that we are born of a radically self-donating spirit. It is in the church--the church gathered in the freedom of the cross--that we practice God's own freedom to love and claim all of creation.

We are the church, Eric Law says, "the grace margin in a graceless world." There may never have been a time when the world needed that grace margin more.

In the church, we learn to practice the liberating power of God's love, known to us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Is it too much to suggest that we should make choices like Ruth and the Canaanite woman--decisions to live beyond our own selves, to take on risks that benefit others, and to set in motion a story which has powerful implications for generations?

Is it too much to say that, in the church, we get to cultivate God's way of calling people out of bondage and into a land where every child of God is loved and cared for?

Isn't it here, in the community gathered in the Holy Spirit, that we give thanks for one who was dead but is now powerfully alive in us?

Who marvels more than we, the church, when--to paraphrase Psalm 8--we "look at the heavens, the work of [God's] hands, the moon and the stars that [God has] established; what are human beings that [God] is mindful of [us, that God cares for us]?"

Who is more in awe than we, the church, that in God's own radical freedom, God has risked partnering with the likes of us to bring Shalom to this world?

Freedom is the first fruit of the Spirit--God's freedom to make a world and to love it--to keep loving it and to keep calling us to bring peace in the name of God.

In this season of thanksgiving and in this time of anxiety and enmity, can we hope for a harvest of love for one another, freely given? The answer is, yes. We can hope for such a harvest of love freely given, but only if we plant those seeds and tend that soil. The church is called to be that harvest. God is counting on it.

Rev. Clement is an ordained elder in the United Congregational Church, a member of First Congregational UCC in Atlanta, and program director for Faith And The City. This message is based on a sermon that she delivered November 11, 2001, at Community Congregational UCC, Montgomery, Alabama. Rev. Clement can be reached at emclement@faithandthecity.org.