Good morning. Eighty years ago, Harvard Law School acquired a manuscript it thought was a copy of the Magna Carta for $27. It got a surprise this week when it turned out to be a genuine version from the thirteenth century worth untold millions.
There are two stories of the Magna Carta. The historical one is that in 1215 the Archbishop of Canterbury proposed an end to the king’s conflict with the barons, by protecting them from delayed justice, arbitrary imprisonment, and undue feudal payments.
The mythical story is that from medieval times English customs protected individual liberties, asserted the role of Parliament, and prohibited unlawful detention. This mystical account encouraged the early advocates of democracy and inspired the American Founding Fathers.
Much as we might wish to recall Magna Carta as the first step on the long walk to freedom, in truth the notion of these liberties being extended beyond a select few never entered the original signatories’ minds. Everyone likes the sound of individual freedoms: but guarding the freedom of others is another matter.
One challenge advocates of liberty have never satisfactorily solved, is what happens when my exercise of my freedom inhibits your exercise of yours. Freedom is only a virtue if I recognise I need voluntarily to limit the exercise of my liberty in order to give space to let you inhabit yours.
The Acts of the Apostles is an extended study in what freedom means. The early Christian disciples, empowered by the Holy Spirit, face a series of confrontations and opportunities that force them to explore and discover a world without exclusion. Gradually they open their imaginations to realise that the gift of life isn’t just for some, but for everyone. They’re constantly fighting an impulse to restrict, demand, limit, exclude. But they’re amazed and humbled as each time the Holy Spirit finds a place for everybody.
Like the early apostles, the modern world faces daily challenges to preserve personal security while advancing individual freedom. The librarians of Harvard Law School found they’d got rather more than they bargained for when their Magna Carta turned out to be more significant than they realised. Maybe today society faces a similar realisation. It transpires that long-cherished liberties are protections of the strong that disregard the weak. And perhaps while freedom and security are blessings when qualified, they can become curses when turned into absolutes.
The struggle to ensure freedom is not for some but for all is the story of society and church. Maybe what’s emerging is that this struggle, far from being settled long ago, is very much in full swing.
