On Freedom and Farewell

 

 

I want to break free. 

I want to break free. 

So sings Freddie Mercury in Queen's 1984 hit by the same name. 

You are on the verge of what you perceive to be your long-awaited freedom. You cannot wait to have your diploma in hand, a piece of paper that will, you believe, release you from the metaphorical shackles that have encumbered you for years. I am happy we have all arrived at this moment, and I want to take a few minutes to give you one more lecture for old time's sake. I want to talk to you about freedom. 

You seek freedom from rules, from a schedule, from the worry of a tardy, from a dress code. You will soon discover there are various constraints placed on you regardless of where you attend school or where you work. The government will take a keen interest in you the moment you enter the workforce. One day you will probably better understand Winston Smith's frustrations as he scribbles in his diary, "DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER!" 

Understand that we, your parents and all of the adults who've seemingly dominated your life all these years, the people who've told you to work harder, shave your face, do your Membean, buy longer shorts, and get to school on time, also desire your freedom, but our definition of freedom is perhaps different from yours. 

We want you to be free from guilt. Free from addiction. Free from diseases that sometimes accompany addiction and promiscuity. Free from anxiety. Free from sin. 

I am going to borrow from the hymn "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing."

Jesus sought me when a stranger

Wandering from the fold of God

He to rescue me from danger

Interposed His precious blood

Oh, to grace how great a debtor

Daily I'm constrained to be

Let Thy goodness like a fetter

Bind my wandering heart to Thee

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it

Prone to leave the God I love

Here's my heart, oh take and seal it

Seal it for Thy courts above

This is one of my favorite hymns. It is a linguistic masterpiece. Jesus, seeing His most precious creation in danger of Hell, a permanent separation from Creator God, interposed His blood (He to rescue me from danger interposed His precious blood). Interpose means to place or insert between one thing and another. He interposed His blood, because His blood was and remains the only shield that can stand between us and the eternal damnation we deserve as punishment for our sin. 

God is love, and God is righteous. This is His nature, and He cannot change His nature. There must be a sacrifice for sin because God is righteous, and He allowed His perfect Son to be that sacrifice because He loves us. 

Payment for sin must be rendered if we are to be reunited with the perfect, loving, righteous God who created us, and Jesus willingly offered Himself; He interposed His blood and offers us His righteousness so that we might one day stand before God in all His glory, cleansed and perfect because we are covered in the blood of Jesus that continually cleanses those who have given themselves to Him and walk with Him.

Despite our intent to give ourselves to Christ, how do we navigate this world with its many temptations? The song beautifully explains this too:

Let Thy goodness like a fetter

Bind my wandering heart to Thee

A fetter is a chain used to restrain a prisoner. 

Consider the fuller version:

Oh, to grace how great a debtor

Daily I'm constrained to be

Let thy goodness like a fetter

Bind my wandering heart to Thee

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it

Prone to leave the God I love

Here's my heart, oh take and seal it

Seal it for Thy courts above

The imagery in these lines is phenomenal. The words paint a picture of a willing captive, an individual who is free to walk away but knows he needs to voluntarily submit to the chains, chains that actually set him free. Look at the word choice: constrained, fetter, bind, seal, courts. It's the language of bondage. The paradox is that the writer is begging his captor to keep him close because it is in his bondage he will find true freedom, freedom from sin and, ultimately, freedom from the mortal body that will eventually betray him prior to the day he steps into eternity and comes face to face with His Lord. 

Translated, I would rephrase this stanza this way: I should daily be cognizant of the immense debt I owe the Father for extending grace to me. Despite His goodness, my nature is to wander away, to allow myself to be led astray by all manner of distractions. He will not forcibly compel me to stay near Him, and so my daily task is to continually shackle myself to Him willingly, to plead with Him to seal my heart, protecting and preserving it for Him and all the riches He has promised me.

My prayer for you, the Class of 2024, as you leave this place is that you understand that true freedom comes when you submit yourself to Christ. I pray your hearts are soft and open to this truth. God wants you. He wants you so much He watched His Son writhe in agony on the cross so there would be a sacrifice for your sins, sins that would otherwise separate you from your Creator eternally. But you must come willingly. Remember when we discussed why God gives us free will? 

God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can't. If a thing is free to be good it's also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.

This, above, is C.S. Lewis in The Case for Christ. 

God gives us the choice because He wants children who come to Him freely. You have the freedom to reject Him, and you have the freedom to bind your wandering heart to Him. The choice is yours. It is a choice the Christian makes daily, rising every morning determined to again shackle himself to Christ knowing true and lasting freedom is found in the chains. 

It has been a privilege to spend this final year of high school with you. I pray you will forget the low moments, both yours and my own, and remember the better days, the laughter, the relationships, the inevitable bonds formed when people spend as much time together as we have. 

Always remember there are people at OCS who love you and are willing to pray with and for you. I count myself among them. What follows is a little trip down Memory Lane; it'll be here for you whenever you feel like taking it again, whenever you find yourself in a new city, maybe in a lonely dorm, and you want to wrap yourself in the familiar. 

The American writer John Steinbeck, in his novel The Winter of Our Discontent, says this:

Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future.

Tomorrow is your last Monday, our last Monday. We have reached the point at which your time at OCS will soon slip into your past. Among a group so large there are certainly mixed emotions about this, and I have mixed emotions about this, but the moment has arrived nonetheless. I do not wish to encourage the severance of ties connecting your past with your future, and so I will say I am grateful for your past, for our shared past, and I am praying for your future. If, as Steinbeck argues, Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance, then Farewell is the word for which I am searching on this occasion. 

All my love, Mrs. Z