The freedom of slavery - 1 Corinthians 9:16-23 - Column

Christian Century, Jan 19, 1994 by Patrick J. Willson

AT THE CONCLUSION of a Wednesday evening meeting, a pastor stares into space with the fatigued vacancy of one who has already put in 40 hours since Monday morning. An elder, ever the voice of moderation and reason, gently admonishes, "Remember, you can't be all things to all people." Another sagely chimes in, "You have to understand that you can't please everyone." Surely they must be right, we would agree. How surprising it is, then, to read 1 Corinthians and discover that Paul did, indeed, try to please everyone.

"I have become all things to all people," Paul proudly declares, with not the slightest trace of irony. Lest we think that we have misunderstood or that this was a slip of the pen, he reiterates his strategy: "I try to please everyone in everything I do." If we do not dismiss Paul's words as pompous crackpottery, we may be aware of a certain sliding sensation as we contemplate dissolving in the warm liquid of everyone else's expectations.

Paul speaks as if inconstancy and inconsistency were the most praise-worthy of virtues: "To the Jews I became as a Jew .... To those under the law I became as one under the law .... To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak." One cannot help thinking about Woody Allen's movie about Leonard Zelig. Filmed in documentary style, Zelig purportedly recounts the life and times of a "chameleon man" who was so completely compliant that even his physical appearance changed to accommodate his companions. Thrust between a pair of Orthodox rabbis, Zelig immediately sprouts a beard and side curls. In a Chinese laundry his features become Asian. Faced with a bevy of psychiatrists, he speaks fluent psychobabble. As "witnesses" are summoned to offer their reminiscences of Zelig, the protagonist's name undergoes a slight change. The witnesses drop the hard "tz" pronunciation for a soft "s": selig--that is, "blessed."

The Apostle Paul would indeed count it so. When, in earlier verses of the ninth chapter, Paul establishes his freedom and authority, it is only so that he may surrender both for the higher purpose of becoming a slave. Although the immediate context has to do with the question of whether Christians ma), eat "food sacrificed to idols," so disarming is Paul's gesture of making himself a slave to all that it cannot be limited to a single issue or contained within a particular moment. Paul's renunciation is so complete that Duke University's Dale Martin titles his book on the apostle Slavery as Salvation.

Paul's renunciation of freedom for the sake of others' well-being not only cuts across the grain of our society, it slices painfully into our understanding of the gospel itself. For many of us who came to faith or theological awareness during the 1960s, the pursuit of freedom is not merely a part of the gospel, it is the gospel. "For freedom Christ has set us free," we announced at sit-ins, pray-ins, peace marches and rock concerts. Across the facade of my university's administration building is written: "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Imagine my amazement in 1968 to discover that those words belonged to Jesus. No utterance could have been more needed or more timely.

By no means has that agenda been completed. Alan Boesak writes from South Africa, Cornel West from Princeton, Chris Glaser from West Hollywood, Letty Russell from New Haven, reminding us of the unfinished struggle for freedom. If much has been accomplished in the past 25 years, so also much remains to be done, and not only in our world but within the fellowship of Christ's church.

Paul, however, reminds us of something even more crucial than completing the agenda of establishing freedom. When he lays aside his liberty in order to enslave himself to others, he does not do so in order to win sympathy from people, nor do Paul's letters suggest he ever succeeded in pleasing everyone. His renunciation enacts his theology of the cross. Paul concludes his long argument with the exhortation, "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ." Paul's imitatio Christi is an imitatio crucis. He self consciously dramatizes the myth of one "who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave." Forgoing the freedoms, rights and privileges of an apostle, Paul casts his life in the form of a servant so that all may see the contours of the cross and the unlikely salvation it brings.

Though we receive the freedom of the children of God, surely that freedom consists of more than accumulating the rights and privileges by which we may fulfill ourselves. To Jews and gentiles, to strong and weak, to those who anxiously cling to their rights and to those who must unceasingly struggle for them, Paul offers the emancipation of slavery: looking to the good of others for their sake. St. Augustine understood. In Christ's slavery there is freedom indeed.

The author is Patrick J. Willson, pastor of St. Stephen Presbyterian Church in Fort Worth, Texas.