Readings: Genesis 2:15-17, Acts 7:48-54  

Each one of us was born as a necessary being, a thought of God, known before we were born into a world of changes and chances. The blueprint for our being is written at the moment of conception, and from that very moment our journey towards becoming the fullest expression of who we are is a complex interplay of our nature, our nurture, the environment – the circumstances within and beyond our control, and finally our free will.  

The limits of our nature bind us, and experience teaches that though our imagination soars beyond the clouds, elephants do not fly, and objects fall. There are some boundaries that just do not move. And God teaches this limit in the Garden of Eden, He says, everything is yours, you are free to eat from any tree – but one. In the whole world that He has created and laid before the first humans, there is just one tree they cannot have for if they eat of it they will die.  

Without this choice, without this one thing we have no freedom to turn towards or away from God. If we could have everything, then would right and wrong even exist? All things would be permitted, but not everything necessarily beneficial. Without choice, without a boundary, without limits, in a self-determined morality there would be chaos and anarchy for we, being lower than the angels, being of matter and spirit, we have actual and potential being – the potential concealed within so that we must seek and discover not just others, but also ourselves – yet always both for the good in relationship.  

In simpler terms, our potential being is sustained by the fundamental physical and psychological needs of food, water, shelter, family and so on. Freedom comes in being able to self-direct at will a meeting of these needs. The soul requires our self-actualization which counterintuitively is not for ourselves but directed toward others. The spirit is our breath which comes out from the heart, a breathing out of our actual being that speaks, acts, shapes, works with and in the world around us.  

Hearts of flesh are tender, open-minded, flexible, and humble. Sensitive, yet like a house built on a rock, they are secure in the knowledge of Christ. They are the place where we find the gentle whisper of the Holy Spirit, the sound of silence that echoes within. The little voice that speaks for us to hear if we are willing.  

Nature so often draws us to inhabit the stillness within when we turn our attention to the work of God’s hands, for its beauty, the patterns the rhythms which flow outside us are also within. The sense of beauty is the unconscious recognition of the continuity of all things, the belonging to the language of love in spirals, fractals, movement and change – to our experience of time in the seasons within every beat of our hearts. The rules of nature that make the flowers bloom and the trees grow tall, built our bodies too. That beauty is not derived from things and given to us, but by our participation with them. God created all things to be beautiful and we were never meant to think we could measure it.  

Yet, if we are lost at sea or at rest in the doldrums, are we free? If we happen across a breeze, or a storm comes and it moves us without asking – are we free? If we pick up a paddle and work towards the shore, have we become masters of the waves? Perhaps freedom comes when we speak with the wind and the waves and we move together, all things in cooperation working together by participation with and for each other.  

This is the essence of love and the heart of the natural law. Yet laws or rules, the lines drawn in the sand fix our senses on this outward world of what is done in or upon it. What sets us apart from the animals is our consciousness, and with it a freedom to choose our way, a way that fixes our attention toward or away from what is God and of God. It is what we choose to have in our hearts that aligns us with and for God, self and other. To see others through the pureness of God’s heart so we do not let categories and stereotypes keep us from being open to the newness of another day. Love and life go to great lengths in order that all may survive. Jesus came to bring us life and have this life to the full. Jesus set us free so that we may have the perfect freedom to choose, for the heart is not changed by what it ‘has’ to do but by its desire to do.  

In choosing to love we choose our boundedness to each other for love establishes relationship and cooperation and as Saint Peter writes, ‘love covers over a multitude of sins,’ (1 Peter 4:8). Life was designed to thrive as a whole, and as that whole we reflect the image of the Trinity in the relation between God, self and other. 

In these days of strife and war our greatest need is for humans to love humanity. Democracy is the heart of our collective body as nations, that allows a sharing of power through means such as freedom of speech, and ideas that inspire us to dream of futures yet unknown.  

As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another (Proverbs 27:17). Dialogue is a necessary part of any relationship, and what is left in the shadows can undermine our shared futures for you can do nothing about what you do not see or know. Yet, truth set solely as an expression of passing things, is like taking a moment of seeing and making it into all possible moments of being. It is rigid and inflexible. It removes the unique complexity of personhood, the richness of diversity and the possibility for change. Words are powerful, yet they are like snapshots which we make into a movie over the course of time. The gaps in our knowing made into the assumptions that fit and judge.  

The darkness in the world challenges us to find the light beyond the visibility of what is already known. God tells us to look always for the new, if we hear His voice in the Word, and recognise Him at the altar – let us not leave Him there in the one place of our experience, for His voice, His imprint is everywhere in all places, we need to seek it and listen to it. Our freedom is not in our location or position but in our ability to move whilst retaining the core values of love and life.  

Honesty, and integrity these are a source of life in our souls. Saint Stephen holding fast to the truth opened heaven. Therefore, let us remember now his witness in the face of adversity and use it to give us hope in these modern times.  

Amen.