It’s never really crossed my mind before this, but there are certain portions of St. Paul’s writings that do make him sound as if he were a lot like Woody Allen. Just imagine Woody Allen with a beard, the kind of clothes they wore back 2,000 years ago, and no glasses. It’s a striking difference from the way Paul is pictured in the stained glass window over the altar in the main church, but perhaps closer to the mark. After all, many think that St. Paul was a short, scrawny guy and, in passages like this one, he certainly seemed to reveal his more neurotic side. But that’s all right. We’re all a bit neurotic. As I said during the toasts at the rehearsal dinner on the eve of my son’s wedding, “It’s only a matter of how neurotic we are, and in what ways.

Like Woody Allen, St. Paul seems to have been a man at odds within himself -- deeply conflicted. And yet, who among us isn’t to a certain extent? Most of us can relate to Paul’s sentiments, at some time or other, when he writes, “I find that when I want to do what’s good, evil lies close at hand.” Like Woody Allen he seems to have spent plenty of times arguing with himself. He wasn’t the only one who did, though. Martin Luther, for example, was also famous for it.

Often when people are deeply and persistently at odds within them selves they’ll do what Paul did. They’ll try to figure it out and make sense of it. Sometimes, as in this passage from Romans, Paul called it a war within – between two laws – God’s Law and his own driven impulses. “I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind.” And the way he made sense of it was to see it as most Greeks did, back then, a battle between the Spirit, which was on God’s side, and the flesh – matter, which worked against God and trapped the soul in its clutches. Other times Paul saw it as a wrestling match between two men inside him – a good man and a bad man. A few weeks ago I said that Freud would have been proud of the prophet Jeremiah, but compared to Paul Jeremiah was a piker. Paul would have been a star psychologist. 1900 years before them, in different terms, Paul describes conflicts that call to mind Freud’s battle between the superego and the id or Jung’s battle between the persona and the shadow side. Struggling to comprehend it, Paul suggested that it’s a battle between laws, or maybe a battle between flesh and spirit, or maybe sin has a life of its own, or maybe it’s more cosmic than all that – a war between God and the devil. Whichever way he finally understood his interior conflicts, like Woody Allen, he knew that he was trapped in it. And like Luther, he knew that he simply couldn’t overcome it on his own -- that he desperately needed help.

Therapy sure wasn’t enough for Paul. Of course, they didn’t have it back in his time. But, beyond that, his crisis was just too essential – too existential – for therapy to resolve. He was stuck. He had too much integrity to do what many do – abandon the ideals of God simply because they couldn’t live up to them. He was too realistic to do what many others do – deny their persistent propensity to sin. And he was too honest to distract himself from his own failures by emphasizing other people’s instead. And so St. Paul, like Luther after him, held onto the tension between the ideal and the real and looked for help beyond him self. Where they both found it was in one, simple and foundational Christian concept – that grace, alone, unmerited favor, love, and forgiveness from God – accessed by faith in Christ – is the only force that could make the difference and resolve the conflict.

In fact, that’s the cornerstone of Christian faith and spirituality. Another psychologist – Fritz Pearls – wrote a so-called prayer, once. It went something like this: “I am I, and you are you. If by chance we meet, it’s beautiful, but if we don’t, it can’t be helped.” That’s different from the Christian faith, in which God and we meet in Jesus Christ and when we don’t He can be relied to make up the differences. God is who God is – perfect and unrelenting in His expectations of us. And we are who we are – unable to be perfect. And so, prays Paul, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” God sent Christ to make up the difference.

Most fitting on this Independence Day weekend, St. Paul uses the language of independence, here. He writes, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ has set you free from sin and death.” This is Paul’s own Declaration of Independence.

Very shortly, we’ll be shooting off firecrackers, watching fireworks, waiving flags, feasting outdoors with family and friends – with our usual great enthusiasm – as we do every 4th of July. What we celebrate in all these festivities is a Declaration of Independence from bondage to a foreign government, which was most tangibly felt in paying taxes without representation in that government.

That’s a wonderful thing in its own right, and yet frankly, it pales by comparison with the independence that Paul declares, here. The independence Paul thanks God for is far more existential than that. The freedom – the liberation – that Paul celebrates in this passage applies to everyone, everywhere, whether they live in their own country or another, whether they have a voice in their government or not, whether they are free or suffer under a tyrant’s oppression, whether they have the freedom that wealth confers or suffer the severe limits of poverty, whether they are free to go where they wish or are imprisoned. This independence is freedom of spirit. God sent Jesus to liberate us from the guilt and shame and fear that Woody Allen often epitomized in the characters he played in film. God sent Jesus to liberate us by forgiveness from feelings of guilt and shame. God sent Jesus to liberate us from the real guilt that people have – responsibility for our failures and sins. God sent Jesus to liberate us from fear of punishment and death – the fear of facing God. God sent Jesus to liberate us from failure by making up the difference, Himself. God sent Jesus to put to death the power of sin within us. God sent Jesus to win the wrestling match with our baser selves. God sent Jesus to replace the tyranny of the Law with the liberty of the Spirit. God sent Jesus to overcome evil with good. And so, like Paul, we can afford to be heartily grateful and joy-filled with the freedom that we’re given in Christ.

We’re all neurotic; and likely will be to some extent for the rest of our lives, but Christ liberates us from the ultimate spiritual reasons for it. So rejoice, celebrate, and be thankful. At least we can be joyful neurotic, as Christians, because Christ sets us free by the power of the Spirit. So Happy Independence Day and let the fireworks of Christ’s Spirit within you begin!