Free at last

“FREE at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last!”

So said Martin Luther King Jr ending his extraordinary “I have a dream” speech. His speech has often been echoed in the thoughts of students finishing school or university, people leaving jobs or retiring from work, and by those who find themselves freed from a threatening illness. His inspiring words have rung across the decades, quoted over and over, and yet we remember that the freedom he spoke of was still a future hope. It was a dream of a better tomorrow, and very far from the reality of his time or indeed of ours. That freedom was on the horizon, but not yet fully won. However, there is no freedom so valued, no freedom so cherished, as that which comes to those who have formerly been enslaved. For Joseph, his time as a slave and his false imprisonment must have made his freedom all the sweeter, although the writer of Genesis doesn’t let us into much of Joseph’s internal life.

For the people of Israel, it was the memory of their slavery in Egypt which made their freedom something to cherish, so they retold the story year after year at Passover. It was at Passover time that Jesus shared his last supper with his friends, a meal redolent with the reminders of the possibility of freedom from slavery which he was about to achieve for us through his suff ering.

Sometimes those first joyful thoughts can turn sour. Joseph refused to give in to ideas of revenge [Genesis 42-45], however tempting. Sometimes memories can fade and there is even a hankering for the old days, now seen through rose-tinted spectacles. When they first crossed the Red Sea, the people asked themselves if it would have been better to continue as slaves in Egypt rather than to die in the desert [Exodus 13:10-12]. But before long they had transformed their memory of their oppression in Egypt to remember sitting down to eat as much meat and other food as they wanted [Exodus 16:2-3].

The key is to take freedom and use it wisely. Nelson Mandela became such an internationally respected figure largely because of his refusal to use his freedom to open the door to revenge, and his country was the better for it. Yet in contrast some use their new freedom as the excuse to oppress another, and that way sorrow and bitterness lie.

For Christians, our old slavery has been turned into a new freedom. However, what we do with that freedom matters. We are called to enjoy it, to cherish it and to share it. It is not for us to jealously deny that freedom to others, but to joyfully tell them of the freedom Christ off ers for them too. It is for us to work to free the captives, whatever the form of their captivity might be, in the name of the one who gave himself to free each one of us.

Not simply because it refiects the writer’s thoughts at the end of this series of refiections on slavery and freedom, but because it celebrates our shared hope in Christ and the message we off er to the world, the words we began with are fitting for the end as a celebration and a hope. “Free at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last!” 

The Rev Richard Baxter is minister at Fort William: Duncansburgh MacIntosh linked with Kilmonivaig