On Eagles' Wings

The Christian "good news" answers the perennial question, "How can I live?", "How can I be free?". How to understand that answer and live it, is a challenge always before us.

The "Judeo-Christian" idea to consider is that freedom is not "doing what I want" but to do what I am called to, or elected to, do. Responsibility precedes freedom. I find my freedom and my identity in being responsible. Not in the "leisure" of being free from commitment, but in responding to a call and in responding discovering that I am a unique "someone." Christ says, I come to do the will of my Father. I am my Father's will. Christ walks to Golgotha freely, responding to his Father's will.

Levinas and Rieff, two Jews, help us understand the Jewish Christ's (and our) authentic calling.

Levinas says that "who I am" and "who God is" are answered in our experience of others. "In the innocence of our daily lives, the face of the other signifies above all a demand. The face requires you, calls you outside. And already there resounds the word from Sinai, 'thou shalt not kill,' which signifies 'you shall defend the life of the other.' An order of God, or an echo, or the mystery of that order, 'you will answer for the other!' It is the very articulation of the love of the other. You are indebted to someone from whom you have not borrowed a thing: a debt that precedes all borrowing. And you are responsible, the only one who could answer, the non-interchangeable, and the unique one. Within responsibility there is election, the original constitution of the I, and the revelation of its ethical meaning. I am chosen.

"Ricour would say to me, 'Your 'I' has no esteem for itself.' One thus reproaches one's freedom for losing itself in the burden of responsibility for oneself and others; and concern for others can, of course, appear as a form of subjection, as an infinite subjection. But is freedom -- which asserts itself against natural finalities, against what is natural in nature -- measured against its leisure? Is freedom not that which is most remarkable in the mortal, finite, and interchageable being who then raises himself to his unique identity as a unique being? This is the meaning of election. To be aware of it, to be able to say 'I,' is to be born to a new autonomy." Is it Righteous to Be? at pp. 192-93.

Philip Rieff also talks about Jewish election. "Because a credal vanguard [the Jews] is chosen, it cannot avoid being carried away, tward ends it would not choose. This is the point of the great 'upon the eagles' wings' speech in Exodus 19:4: 'You yourselves have seen what I did in Egypt. I bore you upon eagles' wings and brought you unto me.' 'Here we have,' concludes Martin Buber, 'election, deliverance and education, all in one.' The Jews were far from eagles. Moreover, having been so carried up out of slavery [into freedom], Israel had a debt to discharge, the debt incurred by its election to credal nationhood. This is a very special debt-ridden superiority. The only way to discharge this debt was to confirm their election as 'a kingdom of priests and a holy people' [Exodus 19:6]. This is more a sign of their debt than of any innate superiority. A credal vanguard can only work to become what it is appointed to be; the terms of its appointment give it a partial and particular character from which is can escape only by suffering the supreme punishment of that escape: the loss of its identity, the achievement of being nothing." Charisma, p. 14-15.

Our freedom, then, is found in answering the call or demand, from God, the divine, the transcendent other. In our free response to the call we are constituted, find our "I" and freedom. Else we achieve only "being nothing."

Listen to "On Eagles' Wings."

Listen to "Here am I, Lord."

Listen to "Make Me a Servant."