Sunday, June 8, 10:30 am

Freed to Serve:
What We Get Wrong About "Freedom"

Our Christian neighbors are celebrating the festival of Pentecost this Sunday, when the Holy Spirit lit the disciples' hair on fire, loosed their tongues in baffling ways, and made everyone around them think they were drunk. The LGBTQIA+ community is celebrating the first weeks of Pride Month. Our kids are excited about the beginning of summer. It's a good time to think about what it means to be "free" as people of faith in a country and culture that too often mistakes "freedom" for "license to do what I want." That may be what the Proud Boys think of as "freedom," but those who find their true freedom not in country or identity but rather in a Holy Belovedness are called to something completely different. Those who are rooted in religious community know that liberation, not liberty, is the Holy Goal--that we are freed from shame and self-centeredness in order to be bound to our neighbors in service and in the service of justice. The Pentecost story is a classic example of what the Holy One is up to in the world--and how it differs so wildly from our own impoverished and empty ideas about "freedom." 

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Jay McDivitt is a former Lutheran pastor and theologian informed by intersectional, Queer, liberation, and embodied Lutheran sacramental theologies as he lives out his primary vocation as a spouse and parent who works as an attorney in order to serve his neighbors and pay the bills. He credits the Unitarian Universalist Association for feeding his passion for justice and keeping the flame of faith alive.