This Wednesday is Independence Day—the day we celebrate our nation’s independence.  Independence is something to celebrate.  Once we have a taste of it we never want to lose it, whether we are talking about our nation’s independence or our personal independence.  There is a story about a couple discussing their living wills.  The husband says to his wife, "Just so you know, I value my independence and do not ever want to get to the place where I am living in a vegetative state, dependent upon some machine and fluids from a bottle.  If I ever get to that stage I just want you to pull the plug."  His wife thought about it for a moment, got up, unplugged the television set and poured out all of his beer.

There is something weird about using our independence to make ourselves dependent, but people do it all the time.  Some people make themselves dependent upon drugs or alcohol.  Whatever their substance of choice is, they have got to have it or things turn desperate.  The love of money controls just about every waking moment of some people’s lives.  Virtually everything they do is conditioned by the singular pursuit of worldly wealth.  At the opposite extreme are certain lifestyles we cannot afford that send us into a spiral of debt that places us in bondage to our creditors.

There are many ways to find people living in bondage right here in the Land of Freedom, which is why many people feel that freedom is overrated.  There is a clash of civilizations taking place right now between what has been called "the West and the rest."  We in the West enjoy a marked degree of individual freedom compared with the rest of the world.  Here, freedom is an undiluted virtue.  Indeed, we often see ourselves as a light to the nations in terms of exporting freedom’s holy light.  This, we are finding, is easier said than done, in part because of a certain cultural resistance.

Not everybody in the world takes it for granted that our marked degree of personal freedom is the way to go.  They see freedom as the underlying cause of the decadence, excess and weakness they associate with America, and who can blame them if all they know of America is what they get from our TV, movies and other media.  They see pornography, they see drugs and alcohol, and in many other ways they see the underside of freedom.

As a result these people have a very low opinion of freedom, and they have a very low opinion of humanity in general.  First of all, human life is cheap to them.  They have absolutely no compunction about steering wayward souls into the role of suicide bomber.  Indeed, to them human life is inherently self-destructive without certain firm restrictions put in place.  Women must be covered head-to-toe so as not to arouse any prurient interest.  Social interactions between men and women are so restricted as to make such things as gainful employment virtually impossible for the latter.

There is no freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly or freedom of the press.  For example, choosing to become a Christian convert (or any kind of convert) might mean a death sentence.  What would be a relatively small infraction here might lead to a hand being cut off there.  There, a victim of rape might be killed by her own family members to preserve the family’s honor.  In short, human beings cannot be trusted with too much freedom.  A little freedom is a dangerous thing and must be aggressively constrained.

Which view of freedom will prevail in this great clash of civilizations?  The jury is still out.  In the meanwhile, it behooves us in the Land of Freedom to make the best possible case for it.  In the quote at the top of our bulletin a visitor to our shores presumes to tell us what true freedom is.  Pope John Paul II says, "Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought."

What gives this foreigner the right to tell us about freedom?  It is a common spiritual foundation that we share.  In our Declaration of Independence we read: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."  This faith in a Creator who has created us with certain inalienable Rights is the theological foundation of our right to liberty, and it is to our faith that we must return to inform our understanding of what real liberty is.

Real liberty is not the liberty to do whatever we want, as the former pope reminds us.  Doing whatever we want is more properly called license.  Nobody ever intended for America to be the Land of License.  That is why we do not have unrestricted freedom in this land.  That is why we have laws in this land.  In this land we do not have the right to shout "fire" in a public assembly such as this.  We do not have the right to carry a gun into a house of worship such as this.  We do not have the right to drive drunk.  We do not have the unbridled right to do a lot of things.  Those laws and thousands of others like them may be debated, changed or dropped, but there will always be myriad laws on the books to restrict our freedom to do whatever we want.  That is because freedom is not doing whatever we want.

Why?  For the simple reason that my unbridled freedom may easily impinge upon yours.  I may claim the freedom to dump my used crankcase oil on my property.  It’s my property after all.  I should be able to do whatever I want.  But it is my neighbor’s ground water that I am rendering unsafe to drink.  People who use the line, "It’s a free country," to justify doing whatever they please have no sense about what true freedom is.  They certainly would be the first to squawk when someone else’s unbridled freedom impinged upon their own.

If freedom is not doing whatever we want, what is it?  Pope John Paul II tells us that as well.  Freedom, properly understood, is "having the right to do what we ought."  That begs the further question, what ought we to do?  There are a lot of things we ought to do, but our text for this morning sums them all up very nicely in a statement that distinguishes liberty from license.  You, my brothers, were called to be free.  But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.  The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Verses 13-14).

I think most of us can live with laws on the books that restrict our freedom from doing what we ought not to do, but can you imagine living in a land where there are laws against doing what we ought?  I feel that I ought to help care for my mother in her advancing years.  I figure I owe her that much, and I happen to find meaning, purpose and joy in doing it.  I do not think I could deal with a law on the books that prohibited me from doing what I ought to do.

There was actually a law on the books in Jesus’ day that prohibited people from caring for their aging parents.  It was kind of a self-serving law as far as organized religion goes.  It stipulated that a person’s offering to a local house of worship (an offering referred to as "Corban" in those days) took priority over other expenses, including charitable ones toward one’s parents.  If after offering your obligatory Corban you did not have enough left over to do what you ought for your parents, well, too bad for them.  This kind of nonsense really bugged Jesus.

To the teachers of the law he said, "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!  For Moses said, `Honor your father and your mother,' and, `Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.  But you say that if a man says to his father or mother: `Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is Corban' (that is, a gift devoted to God), then you no longer let him do anything for his father or mother.  Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down.  And you do many things like that" (Mark 7:9-13.

Ought we not develop our God-given abilities for the common good, beginning with the marvelous minds with which he has endowed us?  As one slogan has put it, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste."  Yet there are mind-wasting laws on the books of many strict Islamist societies that prohibit women from receiving any education beyond the most rudimentary level?  Can you imagine living in a land where it was against the law to learn, or to marry the person God has inspired you to love, or to follow the Word of God according to the dictates of your conscience instead of the dictates of some religious extremist?

Can you imagine your children being force-fed hateful and violent ideas that you are not free to oppose?  Can you imagine being forced to take your family to a local sports arena to watch some poor soul getting shot in the back of the head for some extremist’s idea of a religious infraction?  I don’t think we have any idea how bad it would be to live in a land where we are not free to do what we ought.  There are places where such happens because it is the law of the land.  America may be a land where people are free not to do what they ought, but at least they are just as free to do what they ought.

I think it is time for American patriots to strike a blow for freedom.  Not the false freedom to do whatever we want, but the true freedom to do what we ought.  For too long the current clash of civilizations has mobilized only a small fraction of our population who are serving so valiantly in our Armed Forces.  It is time for the sacrifice to be shared by all Americans, indeed all freedom-loving people of the world.  As the saying goes, "Freedom isn’t free."  Freedom exacts a cost if it is to be preserved for our succeeding generations.  What can we do?

There are many things we, as a people, can do to share the sacrifice required to further such needful causes as energy independence; homeland security; proper support for our military including equipment and personnel to do the job and care for those who have borne the brunt of the battle; and a modern-day version of the Marshall plan that offers hope for a better day to liberated lands.  Those are some costly proposals that cannot be accomplished without the sacrifice being shared by all Americans.

And they are just some of the needful things that we can do as a people if we put our mind to it.  But there is something even more fundamental and foundational that we can do as individuals, and we can begin today.  The two most patriotic things we can do is 1) rid our lives of self-centered license and, 2) use our hard-won liberty for its intended purpose: not to serve ourselves but to serve one another in love and thus fulfill the greatest commandment of them all.  I can think of no better way to honor our sacred dead than to do and be and live as we ought.

The world has seen enough of our license for excess and self-indulgence to give it a distaste for freedom.  We need to give them another look.  Where is the spiritual laziness and laxity in our lives that needs a wake-up call?  What are the compulsions and bad habits that we need to get serious about kicking?  What are the carnal appetites that we need to quit feeding in our lives?  Mind-numbing pharmaceuticals, illegal drugs, uncontrolled alcohol use?  Uncontrolled gambling, escalating sexual perversity?  More things, stuff and junk we don’t need and can ill-afford?  In what ways are we taking more than our share, more than we need, more than we ought?  In what ways are we neglecting to share as we ought?

The world needs to see more of what true freedom has the potential to achieve.  As our graduating seniors begin to consider what they are to do with the rest of their lives, they have been counseled at church not to ask themselves what they want to be as they grow up.  How do they know what they want to be?  Perhaps what the want to be today they will not want to be tomorrow.  The proper question is not what they want to be, but what has God created them to be.  What spiritual gifts, innate talents and natural abilities have they been given to develop and use for the common good.  There is where their sense of purpose will ultimately be found.  Being good at what comes naturally is where their fulfillment and satisfaction will be.