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America, “the land of the free”—our national anthem proclaims. Communities of Christians, “called to freedom,” set free by Christ—Paul’s letter to the Galatians declares (5:13, 5:1).

On this Sunday, when we’re celebrating both Independence Day and the baptism of three-month-old John Michael, I want to share with you some of my thoughts on freedom and on what it means to be “born free.”

John Adams of Massachusetts was one of America’s most influential founders. In 1778, Adams helped to create the constitution for his own state, a document that proclaims, in the style of language of its time: “All men [that is, all people] are born free …” Here the Massachusetts Constitution echoes, whether consciously or unconsciously, the great poet and essayist John Milton, who, some 130 years earlier, in defense of Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan Revolution in England, had written: “…all men naturally were born free.” (Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, 1649) Perhaps the Massachusetts Constitution also echoes Jean Jacques Rousseau, the Swiss-French thinker, who in 1762, just 16 years earlier than the Massachusetts Constitution, had written (Du contrat social [1762], I, ch. 1): “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

There are many kinds of chains that bind those who are born free. Milton, Rousseau, and Adams were, for example, aware of political chains, the political chains of tyranny that must be overcome if being born free is to flower into a life of liberty under the sovereignty both of the people and of the common good. On Independence Day we celebrate political liberty, the sovereignty of the people that is such an important circumstance for human well-being.

But at the heart of many theories of political liberty—albeit not those of Milton, Rousseau, or Adams themselves—is the concept that personal autonomy should afford each individual full freedom to pursue his or her own dreams, his or her own bliss, unfettered. According to such political theories, well-being is best actualized in a context of complete personal independence.

For example, North American culture tends to teach us, I believe, that we are most free and best off when we are fully self-grounded, fully self–directed—when each individual is fully autonomous, fully sovereign over his or her own destiny. “I am the captain of my soul.” (William Ernest Henley, “Invictus”)

But such a view of liberty subjects us, I believe, to a different set of chains, a set of spiritual chains, the chains of sin and of alienation from God, for God created us not to live in dissociation from one another as self-absorbed individuals, but rather to live in community with one another as persons devoted to each others’ well-being.

For this reason, Paul contends in this morning’s Second Lesson that authentic spiritual freedom lies not in independence of self, but rather, quite ironically, in dependence upon God. For spiritual freedom must be rooted and grounded in Spirit. Apart from God, freedom leads too easily to license, to a license that re-enslaves. But in God, freedom leads to love for neighbor, to a love that bears witness to an authentic liberty.

Perhaps it was these thoughts of Paul, expressed in Galatians 5, that led John Milton to observe so long ago: “None can love freedom heartily, but good [persons]; the rest love not freedom, but license.” (Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, 1649)

You see, here in Galatians 5 Paul wrestles with how one can live not in license but in love for others. And his answer to that question is this: it is Christ who frees us from the spiritual chains of sin, from the spiritual chains of alienation from God; it is Christ who frees us to live out, by the power of the Spirit, love for neighbor. And when our liberty is used for the well-being of others, it is then, and only then, that we are authentically free!

And what is the way Christ has chosen for bestowing on us this gift of authentic spiritual freedom, this gift of rebirth not into a state of self-centered indulgence and license but into a state of discipleship, a state in which we may bear the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control? What is the way Christ has chosen for bestowing on us the incomparable gift of spiritual freedom?

Well, the way Christ has chosen is the sacrament of baptism. It is through baptism that Christ sets us free from sin and from alienation from God. It is through baptism that Christ sets us free for the service of God and neighbor in life’s ongoing struggle against tyrannies of every kind. It is through baptism, in which we are born of water and the Spirit, that we are born free.

It is through baptism that Christ chooses to grant us the Holy Spirit, who is both the mode of the life of freedom and the power behind that life. In baptism, it is the Spirit who comes to dwell within us, and after baptism, it is the Spirit who, when we allow it,produces in us acts of love.

So, as Paul understood it, spiritual freedom is freedom “in Christ.” And the result of spiritual freedom is our uncoerced decision to devote ourselves, heart and soul, to the well-being of one another.

Spiritual freedom is born in baptism, grounded in Christ, lived in dependence upon God’s Holy Spirit, and expressed in love for one another. To be born free is to be born of water and the Spirit.

Some of you may recall that way back in 1966 movie-director James Hill gave us a film by the title Born Free—a film that made it onto many “Ten Best” lists for that year. The story that Hill’s movie tells us is, for the most part, true. It’s the story of Elsa, a lion cub who was born in her natural habitat, orphaned at an early age, and then raised in a wildlife sanctuary by a British couple, Joy Adamson and her husband George, game wardens in Kenya.

Many viewers have described Born Free as a love story, a story of the love between a woman and a young lioness. Joy finds and saves Elsa, and then, out of love for Elsa, Joy prepares her to return to a life of freedom in her own world. And Elsa is set free by Joy, yet we cannot fail to recognize that Elsa’s freedom is a gift that’s rooted and grounded both in Joy’s love for Elsa and in Elsa’s dependence on Joy.

Now, I may be the only one who’s ever interpreted this movie as a religious allegory. But then, why not? After all, in this morning’s First Lesson the psalmist dares to use a deer’s need for water as a metaphor for our human dependence on God. And Christians have long seen in this metaphor of a deer’s need for water an allegorical image of our need for baptism.

So I’m made bold by these interpretations to see Joy as a Christ- figure, and to see Elsa as a representation of you and me, and to see Joy’s welcoming of Elsa into her home as baptism, and to see Joy’s nurturing of Elsa for freedom as Christ’s work of empowering us by the Spirit for life in the world.

You see, I’m reading this movie as just a variation on the Bible’s own image of Christ as the good shepherd, with his sheep, a variation in which Christ is a loving game warden who finds and rescues a lion cub—you or me—welcomes us to her home—baptism—and then nurtures us—through the power of the Holy Spirit—into the wholeness we need if we’re to live freely and well in the world. For me, Joy’s actions of adopting Elsa and then setting her free aptly symbolize exactly what it is that Paul means when he declares: “For freedom Christ has set us free.” (Gal. 5:1)

The title song of Hill’s movie, “Born Free,” won the Oscar in 1966 for Best Song, and it also rose on that year’s Top-40 charts to #7. Set to music composed by John Barry, the lyrics written by Don Black can be heard as pretty good Pauline theology, especially if you’ll allow me the liberty of making one significant word-change in verse 1 and if you’ll also join me in interpreting verses 1 and 3 against the background of several important and powerful biblical images: first, for verse 1, the image of the free-blowing wind—which, in the New Testament, symbolizes the Holy Spirit; and then, for verse 3, two images found in the stories of creation that open the Bible—the image of roiling waters stirred by the wind of God’s breath, and the image of the first humans’ hiding from God in shame because of their primordial disobedience.

Listen, then, to the first three verses of “Born Free,” verses that can be heard, I believe, as richly theological:

Born free, as free as the wind blows
As free as the grass grows
Born free to follow [Christ’s] heart

Live free and beauty surrounds you
The world still astounds you
Each time you look at a star

Stay free, where no walls divide you
You’re free as the roaring tide
So there’s no need to hide

Today, another cub was born free, for John Michael was baptized. Most of the rest of us here today have also been baptized. In our baptism, we were born of water and the Spirit. In our baptism, we were welcomed by Christ: so that we might be set free by the power of the Spirit, set free by the free-blowing wind that roils the tides, set free to love our neighbors as ourselves, so that we need no longer hide from our Creator, but may lead lives of public discipleship.

In your baptism, you were born of water and the Spirit. In your baptism, you were:

Born free, as free as the [Spirit] blows
As free as the grass grows
Born free to follow [Christ’s] heart

And in Christ, you are called to:

Stay free, where no walls divide you
You’re free as the roaring tide
So there’s no need to hide

Born of water and the Spirit; born free!

Let us pray: