Pastors who lead worship in your typical church Sunday after Sunday are given a huge amount of freedom. Generally, they write their own sermons, no one chooses their words for them, and only rarely has anyone heard what they will say before they say it. They typically have microphones, often clipped right to them. Most others in the congregation have no microphones at all. Pastors have a remarkable amount of freedom.
That freedom doesn’t only extend to what they say; however. Pastors also have a great amount of freedom in what they do on Sunday mornings. For example, I know a pastor who one Sunday morning, at the beginning of his sermon walked over to the baptismal font and picked up the bowl containing the water of baptism. He then took that baptismal water and poured it into an old, dirty five gallon bucket. He picked up the bucket and held it over the heads of those in the front rows of church saying, "I have a remarkable level of freedom." He continued saying, "I am standing up on the pulpit; you are sitting down in the pews. I have a bucket of water in my hands; you are empty—handed and bone dry. I am free to take this bucket of water and throw it on you; you will not be able to stop me until several of you are soaking wet. I am completely free to do this." Not your typical introduction.
Now you may be disappointed (but probably not surprised) to hear that the pastor never did throw that bucket of water. Instead, he put the bucket down and made this observation: "Yes, I am free, but if I want to keep my job—if I have any sense of pastoral calling, decorum, and appropriateness—I will put the bucket down. I am free but necessity dictates that I behave with proper decorum befitting my calling as a Minister of the Word." "In other words," he said, "freedom and necessity always go together."
Isn’t that the way it is? Freedom and necessity always go together. As a citizen of the United States I have the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." These are rights guaranteed to me under the Constitution. But, to live in that freedom it is necessary for me to follow the laws of the country. If I violate those laws and am imprisoned as a result, many or even all of these freedoms can be stripped away from me. Freedom and necessity. They always go together.
The question that we need to wrestle with, however, is why people like me——and I suspect like many of you—so often want to push the freedom a little too far. So often I want to do something that is a little edgy or maybe even over the edge. Why is that?
Well let’s look at the scriptures together. Freedom and necessity are both clearly in the text we heard earlier. But freedom, it seems to me, is primary. After God creates the man, who we come to know as Adam, he puts him in a garden. Adam isn’t just put in God’s good creation; he is put in the very best spot of creation: The Garden of Eden. How good to be placed in a garden! What freedom of luxurious living! And notice what God’s very first words to humanity are. The first words that scripture records God speaking to man begin this way, "You are free." Adam lives in the original land of the free! How great is that?!
Freedom is everywhere in the text. Before the man even recognizes that he has any needs, God is attentive to what he needs. Did you notice that it the text? Before the man says anything about being lonely—about having no suitable partner for himself—God addresses the need. God says, "I will make a helper suitable for him," before the man even notices his need. Now that’s freedom. The man is kept free from even needing to ask for what he needs.
I remember when I worked for the Mama Grisanti restaurant of Louisville, Kentucky. When I was trained as an assistant waiter our manager said, "Your job is to make sure that before a customer even knows that they want something, they have it. The water should be filled, the coffee kept hot, the creamer supplied, the salad should be served even before they are aware that they want it." To keep the customer free from any need was our goal. This is precisely what God does for Adam. Adam is free from any need, want or desire.
Everywhere there is freedom in our scripture passage. Man lives in a garden. God has said, "You are free." And what is Adam free to do? He is free "to eat." My, oh my, life is good! He is free to eat of any tree in the garden. He lives in a garden. God says that he is free—free to eat—free to eat from any tree in the garden. But there is even more freedom than that. The first man is free to use all of his creative energy and imagination in the naming of the animals. God gives freedom to the first human being to join him in the creative process of naming the animals. God throws Adam a parade—a parade of animals. Whatever the man calls an animal, that becomes the animal’s name. Imagine the fun and freedom that gives to Adam. Yes, indeed, everywhere there is freedom in our text!
But something odd, at least for those of us who are great believers in freedom, happens in this text. God restricts freedom. The reason that it is odd is that it happens even before sin. Even before sin, while the world is still perfect and man is completely free of corruption, there are some things in the text that seem to hinder, limit, restrict and put boundaries on freedom. What’s up with that?
In the text we read that the man is not just placed in the garden to live a life of leisure; instead, he is told to work it and care for it. That word "work" can also mean "to serve." Man is to serve the garden. He is told to work it. Now, I know many of you are gardeners and some of you are farmers. I myself work a small vegetable garden and flower garden around my house. This is good and I often find it enjoyable. It frees me from my other cares. But let me ask a question, "Would it be good if I was mandated to work my garden?" Would you like it if the state or some other high authority told you that you had to be a farmer?
Well, let me tell you, my parents both grew up on farms. So we always had a garden when I was a kid. While living in the Philippines, Dad was always trying to get sweet corn and potatoes to grow. It doesn’t grow there, but that didn’t stop Dad. He would plant the garden and guess who he wanted to work in the garden? That’s right—Dad planted the garden but he wanted us kids to work it. I was not amused. I wanted to be free to do what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to work in the garden. Yet, today I voluntarily work in my own garden. You figure it out. Being compelled to work robs us of freedom and we don’t like it. Yet, this is what the text tells us Adam had to do. Adam is free but nevertheless, God’s direction necessitates that he must work the earth. Freedom and necessity.
But it gets even worse from strict freedom perspective. The first words of God to humanity turn out to be a command. Now if you are totally free, can you be commanded? The two words, freedom and command, don’t seem to go together. Now, let’s be honest, the command, as we have seen, starts out very positively, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden. . ." But when we notice what comes next, our sense of freedom may be disturbed. God’s first words to humanity have a "but" in them—a contrastive word that changes the entire meaning of the sentence. "But," God says, "you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."
It seems to me that there should be no "but" in freedom—no limitations. I want to be completely free. Then I read in the text that this tree is a tree of knowledge. Yet, God says Adam can’t eat from it. That doesn’t seem fair—that doesn’t sound like freedom. Isn’t knowledge the pathway to freedom? God is restricting the first man’s access to knowledge, thereby, he is restricting man’s access to freedom. But the limitations just keep coming in the text. Next we read that there is something in God’s creation that is not good. God says, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone." Loneliness is apparently limiting the first human being. There is something "not good" here.
Do you see now what has happened in our text? Suddenly all the freedom that we talked about earlier has been compromised. Now there are commands and restrictions; knowledge is suppressed and God says "Do this, and don’t do that." Freedom and necessity have been pushed together in our text so that we can clearly see that even in God’s very good creation freedom and necessity always go together. But to many of us, certainly to me, it doesn’t seem right.
If you are free you ought to be completely free, and if you’re not free, then, by definition, you’re not free. Yes, I like to acknowledge that freedom is a gift of God, but necessity I am a little less sure about.
Well, let me remind you again of that preacher and his bucket filled with baptismal water. After he decided not to throw the water on the congregation, he said, "I am free, and if I want to I can preach the rest of my sermon with my head stuck down in the bucket." With those words he proceeded to stick his head into the bucket and continued to speak the next few lines of the message with his head in the bucket. Then he pointed out that although he was free to behave in this way, it made it awful hard to hear him and it made it impossible for him to see his notes. In short, necessity dictates that we preachers keep our heads out of buckets while preaching.
This pastor with the bucket also said, "I am free to stick my head all the way down into the water at the bottom of the bucket and hold my head under the water as long as I want. But since I am not Harry Potter, and I have no Gilliweed at my disposal, I do not have gills and therefore can’t breathe underwater. I can not extract the oxygen that I know is in that water because I have not been created to do so. I am a man not a fish." Now, this preacher was not just being odd; instead, he was trying to make the simple point that our freedom is always limited by the necessity of our creation.
We are creatures, and as creatures created by Almighty God, there are certain boundaries and limits within which we must live whether we like it or not. If this is true physically (as every reasonable person acknowledges it is), then it is also true spiritually. You follow the logic? The Lord our God is our creator—including the creator of our freedom. And as Almighty Creator he sets the limits and the boundaries for all of us who are creatures. It is in understanding that we are creatures and not the Creator that we begin to understand why freedom and necessity always must go together. If I am foolish enough to drown myself by holding my head under water, I can not complain against the physical laws of nature—well, I suppose I could, but no one would much care or listen to me. God is the creator and we are creatures. To live in the gift of his freedom we must also embrace the gift of his necessity.
So notice the command that God gives Adam. Freedom and necessity in creation isn’t only about the creator telling the creatures how to live. When God gives the command notice that the command is all about boundaries. Essentially God says, "Don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for I am your creator God. It is my job to define good and evil. It is your job to obey. I will tell you what is right and wrong."
But there is more. God’s own words in the text reveal his grace to us. Not only does he give clear instructions to Adam about what to do and what not to do, but he also notices that Adam needs human help to do so. God sees that it is not good for Adam to be alone. This line from the text reminds us that we need each other. It is not good for us to be alone. We are reminded not only that it is necessary for us to listen to our creator, being obedient to him, but that to do so will require the help of other human beings. It is necessary for us to be together.
The great gift of God in this passage is that he gives Adam freedom and he also provides him with the direction about how to maintain that freedom. Additionally, through his creation of a fellow human being (which we will consider further next week) he also provides him with a suitable helper in his life of freedom and necessity. As long as Adam lives in the necessity of God’s commands he will experience freedom. And God’s gift gets even greater when we see that God is going to provide him with a partner so that he is not alone in his freedom; he has help in his obedience.
Let me take you back one more time to that preacher with the bucket of baptismal water. At the very end of his message the pastor returned to the baptismal font and picked up the actual baptismal bowl and said, "I did not pour all of the baptismal water into the bucket. There is still some water here because this is where it belongs by necessity. For this water of baptism signifies the washing away of our sins by the blood of Jesus Christ and the renewal of our lives through the Holy Spirit." The water of baptism confirms the great truth that God meets us with the freedom of Jesus Christ. "In other words," the pastor said, "This water gives us freedom and necessity—the freedom from sin and the necessity of obedience."
The preacher then took the baptismal bowl and walked into the midst of his congregation and began to dip his fingers into the bowl and then flick the baptismal water off his fingers unto those sitting in the church. He said, "For all of you who have been baptized. I want you to feel the baptismal water once again. I want you to see the drops on your flesh. I want you to be reminded of your freedom in Jesus Christ. I want you to know the necessity of living in his truth. I want you to know the freedom and necessity of Christ that gives you life." With that the pastor concluded his message.
Let me now conclude in a similar fashion. After all, the preacher to whom I have been referring is me. How I wish you could have seen the shocked looks on the faces of my congregation when they saw me threatening to throw water on them. How I wish you could see how foolish it looked and how odd it sounded to have a preacher speak with his head in a bucket. How I wish I could reach through the radio waves and sprinkle you with the waters of baptism. And how I wish you could have seen the looks of comfort, peace and joy on the faces of God’s people as they felt the drops of water from the baptismal bowl sprinkled upon them. For in God, through Jesus Christ we have freedom—freedom to live eternally with Him—and in God, through Jesus Christ, we have necessity—the necessity of living in obedience to him.
May we live in freedom and necessity together. Amen.
Prayer
Dear Heavenly Father,
We thank you for the freedom you give us in Jesus Christ. And we thank you for the boundaries to our freedom that you give us, the necessity in which you call us to live in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Empower us now through your grace in Jesus, to help us to live with freedom and necessity. In Jesus name we pray, amen.
Paul DeVries
Rev. Paul DeVries, most commonly referred to as “Pastor Paul”, is the Sr. Pastor of Brookside Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is married to Diane (nee Vanden Akker) and the father of four children. He graduated from Calvin Theological Seminary in 1989 and served for 12 years as the pastor of Unity Christian Reformed Church in Prospect Park, New Jersey. As a pastor his first love and greatest joy comes in the honor of bringing God’‘s Word to his congregation on a weekly basis through his preaching. He enjoys reading, camping with his family, watching his children’‘s sporting events, and working on home improvement projects - inside and outside his home.
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