Singing of Freedom
It was an exciting moment. I had landed a new job in a bigger city, and I was preparing to move from the west coast of Florida to the east coast of Florida for new adventures in life. As I began to find my new life and get my feet underneath me in this new city, I also had to contend with the fact that I was struggling to sell my condo in my former place of residence. The economy had crashed. Homes were sitting empty across the United States, and it was nearly impossible to even give away a condo on the west coast of Florida - much less to sell it.
For a few years, I did my best to keep paying the mortgage on the condo. But, of course, it finally reached a point that continuing to keep up with the payments on the condo was not possible. The debt of the condo was forcing me even deeper into debt as I used credit cards to simply get the basics for living: food, gas, rent, etc. It was time to make a deeper decision for myself in order that I could get back to living and no longer be weighed down by an anchor that was pulling me deeper and deeper underwater. The bindings of the mortgage had to be loosed if I was going to live the fullness of life that God holds open for each one of us.
In the Gospel lesson this past Sunday, the woman who was bound for 18 years was given reprieve by Jesus as he healed her (on a sabbath!). He recognized that the ailments carried by this woman had prevented her from living the fullness of life that God would hope each one of us would be able to experience. In my life, I had to make a decision about the debt attached to my condo if I were to live into the life that God was calling me into: to become a priest in the Church.
There are many things that are holding people captive today. It may be debt or illness, but it is also true that the very thing that is holding us captive is an allure of wealth or possessions or an inability to hear the stories of different experiences than our own. We might be held captive by an addiction of one stripe or another. We might be held captive by actual bars behind thick walls. In our society, we can look out at the world and see any number of things that are holding people captive.
Captivity does something to a person. It changes us from who God created us to be all the way back in the beginning to someone else struggling to survive from one day to the next. The poet Maya Angelou captures the pain of captivity in her poem The Caged Bird in a powerful way. She writes of the bird in captivity saying,
“But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.”
The song of the caged bird is a call to find the freedom for which God created each one of us. Cassandra invited us to consider the ways that we are held captive through sin in her wonderful sermon last Sunday. We can also wonder how it is that we are being held captive by the mantras of different forces in our time. We can take the time to reflect on our lives to find those things that are holding us captive and preventing us from seeing through the bars of rage that come quickly with being caged.
In my late 20s, I had to make a decision to quit the prison of mortgage debt. Though it carried with it certain consequences, I had to shift my perspective in order to see the debt as the cage that was holding me captive and preventing me from following the way of faith, hope, and love. I had to get to a point that I was willing to accept the consequences of letting go in order to discover new life.
What kind of cage has held you captive in your life? What is the song of freedom that you are singing?
In Christ,
Hunter+
