In a sermon broadcast live on BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Worship, Archbishop Rowan Williams preached on the theme of freedom – what it means to be free and how we can achieve the true freedom ‘to be what we most deeply are’.
Speaking on the first Sunday in Lent at King’s School Canterbury, Dr Williams drew on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, describing the letters which Bonhoeffer wrote to his family and close friends while in prison in Nazi Germany as ‘one of the greatest treasures of modern Christianity’ and focusing on his thoughts on freedom which are so prevalent in his writings:
“But freedom was one of the things he most often wrote about. In a famous poem [Bonhoeffer] wrote in July 1944, he sketched out what he thought was involved in real freedom – discipline, action, suffering and death. Not quite what we associate with the word – but with these reflections, he takes us into the heart of what it is for someone to be lastingly free”.
The Archbishop went on to speak about Bonhoeffer’s exploration of the freedom of doing ‘what you know you have to do’ in the face of numerous distractions, and his belief in dedicating some time each day to silent meditation on the Bible as a way to find the space to consider this freedom:
“It takes time. Bonhoeffer wrote a little guide for students when he ran his college for pastors in which he explains why they need to give time each day to silent meditation on the Bible. ‘God claims our time for this service’, he wrote; ‘God needed time before he came to us in Christ. He needs time to come into my heart for my salvation.’ Each day we try to open ourselves up to being transformed by this meditation: ‘we want to rise from meditation different from what we were when we sat down to it.’
Rather than a means of escapism, the Archbishop argued that silent reflection allows us to be more receptive to God’s activity:
“Some religious people talk about letting the surface of our minds settle so that it can truly reflect God, like a still pool. As Bonhoeffer’s life and death make clear, this is not some sort of refusal of the world; it is rather the only way we can ever act in the world so as to change it effectively because we open the way to God’s own activity – through us, but not just through us.”
And in conclusion, Dr Williams illustrated how quiet observation can facilitate freedom by providing an opportunity to be more truthful:
“Looking quietly at all the clutter that prevents us from seeing ourselves honestly, looking quietly at the ways in which the world we live in muffles the truth and so frustrates the search for justice and love – this isn’t a luxury. This is how the truth makes us free. Not free to do what we fancy at any given moment, but free to be real, to be truthful, to be ‘in the truth’, as the New Testament puts it. After all, what other sort of freedom is finally worth having?”
The full text of the Archbishop’s sermon follows, and an audio file is available here.
http://www.aco.org/acns/digest/index.cfm/2012/2/27/Archbishop-Williams-on-Bonhoeffer–what-it-means-to-be-free