Friends In The Lord

Freedom North And South Of The Border

I am sitting watching the rain lashing my window on the 8^th floor of a university building in the Mid West of the USA. The sky is dark and occasionally brightens, the rain is heavy now but there are occasional lulls and I might almost imagine then it is like the soft rain of home. But I am many miles away from Scotland and sitting here on the 4^th of July I am pondering the nature of the freedom we celebrate this day and that Canada celebrated on the 1^st of July. A freedom that I do recall was proclaimed in Scotland in 1320.

We have the historical details. July 4^th commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence July 4^th 1776. The document was primarily written by Thomas Jefferson and served as a formal announcement that the 13 American colonies were no longer part of the British Empire and would henceforth be free and independent states. July 1^st in Canada commemorates July 1^st 1867 and the enactment of the British North America Act which united 2 British colonies and a province of the British Empire into a single country called Canada.

Yet centuries before, close to a small fishing village on the east coast of Scotland, a major claim for freedom was made by the people of Scotland against their long time enemy England. The Declaration of Arbroath was, and many Scots would still argue has been, unequalled in its eloquent plea for the liberty of man. From the darkness of medieval minds it shone a torch upon future struggles which its signatories could not have foreseen or understood. The author of this noble Latin address is unknown, though it is assumed to have been composed by Bernard de Linton, Abbot of Arbroath and Chancellor of Scotland. Above the seals of eight earls and forty-five barons, it asked for the Pope’s dispassionate intervention in the bloody quarrel between the Scots and the English. The importance of the document is two-fold. First, it sets the will and the wishes of the people above that of the king. Second, it affirmed the nation’s independence in a way no battle could and justified it with a truth that is beyond nation and race. Man has a right to freedom and a duty to defend it with his life.

Perhaps the most poignant sentences are the following:

For as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom — for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with his life.

And what of ourselves in 2010 as we enjoy the civic holidays available? It is our understanding as Christians that: for freedom Christ has set us free, as St Paul declares, and surely this is the most profound understanding of our freedom. It rests not on national identity, good though that may be, and certainly not on the disparagement of others. It has nothing to do with wealth or social status. At its heart it is a three-fold reality a freedom from all that can make us fearful, possessive and dependent upon anything other than God. It is a freedom for all the many good actions and services that may be undertaken in the world and it is a freedom to refer all things, absolutely everything, to the God who made us, sustains us and who will ultimately welcome us at the last.

And as I write these last lines the sky has brightened, the rain has stopped and the sun looks set to warm the celebrations!