Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

French intellectuals in the late 19th century loved the United States for its form of government. In the years following the American Civil War, a French artist by the name of Frédéric Bartholdi, wanted to honor the ideals of freedom, which he found expressed in the American Constitution. Eventually, Bartholdi’s ideas took the form of a statue 151 feet high. With the pedestal it would be twice that height, over 300 feet if measured from the surface of the water. A French civil engineer by the name of Gustave Eiffel, later famous for the Eiffel Tower, made the artists design work as both a sculpture and as a large public monument that could withstand the effects of time, weather, and daily visitors.

Lady liberty continues to stand today in New York Harbor as a monument to freedom and to the universality of that freedom regardless of race, nationality, religion, or socio-economic status. This gift from the French signified that the Ideals of freedom would hopefully be the new normal for countries around the world—even for traditional monarchies like France and England!

Appreciation of freedom, however, does not always come naturally or easily. Even at the time the Statue of Liberty was installed, people protested that a statue should not be dedicated to liberty until the United States actually lived up to its own principles of freedom. And given that the post Civil War status of blacks was still tenuous at best, they had a point. But, ironically, more minor issues seemed to fuel most of the opposition. Even before the statue could be shipped from France and assembled on the little piece of property renamed Ellis Island, Americans couldn’t decide if they really wanted this expensive gift from their French cousins. After all, did they really need a big bronze woman standing in the harbor? What did that even mean? And why didn’t the French throw in the pedestal along with the statue? Why did Americans have to help pay for a French gift?

Expressing the ideal of freedom with a statue in the harbor turned out to be one of the most iconic of American symbols of freedom and perhaps the most important symbol of hope to all who would aspire to become citizens. We may not always live up to it, but freedom really is the new normal. Against the backdrop of human suffering at the hands of despots and dictators, the promise of freedom is a beacon of truth and hope for all human beings.

I wish I could say that the ideals of freedom expressed by the Statue of Liberty came from Christianity. But they didn’t, at least not the kind of Christianity most of the world had known. Certainly, there was general recognition that being made in the image of God meant something with respect to individual dignity and freedom. But that dignity had been relative to one’s station in life and how much influence you had within your own country or church. The history of so-called Christian nations, and religious organizations, was littered with the remains of violence in the name of God, and kingly authority as the last word on God’s will. Freedom of choice was not something for the ordinary citizen. It was the divine right of kings, perhaps, but certainly not something due to foreigners, slaves, or women.

We can, however, go back to the very first expressions of the Christian faith and discover there the seeds of freedom. Those principles may not have been worked out completely in the first century church. But they challenge us still today. Are we truly free? Do we grant others the freedom that Christ has given us? Let’s measure ourselves by a couple of statements of the apostle Paul in the book of Galatians.

There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28 NLT

In true Christian freedom, distinctions are set aside in favor of the value and dignity of all human beings. The world may treat them differently. But in Christ, all have equal access to resurrection life, liberty, and the pursuit of meaning in God’s universe.

In spite of Paul’s clear statement, the Bible, even the new Testamen, is not always clear on this point. Certainly, slave owners, misogynists, and even terrorists have always had their proof texts, as do those today who would subjugate a given class—whether it happens to be church officials discriminating against women pastors, or a government official quoting the Bible while being inhumane toward refugees and immigrants.

Even in sacred history, godly people did not live up to all the principles of freedom as found in the Gospel. Slavery, polygamy, subjugation of women, human trafficking, torture, genocide, and all manner of human rights violations were tolerated to some degree in parts of the Bible. But that gives us no excuse to avoid the clear principles of freedom such as those articulated in Galatians. We dare not excuse our weak, ignorant, and socially irresponsible religion by saying, “they did worse!”

Paul not only prohibits discrimination based on ethnic, economic, or gender classifications, he tells each one of us that we are each free to be our own kind of humanness and to not let anyone tell us otherwise. We are each valuable to God. And in Christ we are one humanity. We are not just free to be included. We are free to be ourselves, and also to be included!

And that brings us to the brief and profound declaration of freedom of Galatians 5:1.

So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law. NLT

Be sure you stay free. Why? Because in our insecurity we often try to measure ourselves and others. It is our human inclination create a pecking order, to decide who is in and who is out. And invariably instead of relying on the principles of freedom, including love, mercy, empathy, and compassion, we resort to judgment and law. In the case of the Galatians, they were being tempted to put religious laws above the Gospel. They were being taught to rely on religious and ethnic distinctives, rather than on Divine love for all humanity.

Paul shows here that the core of Christian belief and freedom supersedes that of all nation states, including our own. Whereas the constitution and the laws of a free nation must balance the needs of the individual, the needs of the nation, and the will of the majority, not letting any one of them supersede the others. Paul, Jesus, and the apostles envisioned a kingdom in which everyone willingly used their freedom to serve each other in love. Thus, a written law would not be needed and having one could even hurt the cause of Christ. The closest the early church came to a constitution was Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and Paul’s soliloquy on love in 1 Corinthians 13. Obviously the ideal of love and freedom does not fully exist yet, this side of heaven. But it remains foundational to all who aspire to a new heaven and a new earth.

When fundraising for the Statue of Liberty pedestal hit a snag, organizers approached a young author, the daughter of a prominent immigrant family in New York. Emma Lazarus had been born into a wealthy Jewish family who had assimilated into high society in New York City. Emma, however, did not assimilate. She didn’t hide who she was as a woman, as a Jewish immigrant, and as a writer poet. She also became a fierce advocate for Jewish refugees who were fleeing an ongoing massacre in Russia.

Those raising money for the liberty pedestal approached Emma Lazarus with the idea that she should write a poem about liberty, which could be sold at auction alongside the works of Mark Twain and Walt Whitman.

At first, Lazarus refused, saying she didn’t write “to order.” But given the chance to put words in Lady Liberty’s mouth regarding those who would flee to the United States, Lazarus wrote what would be her most memorable and popular work, a Sonnet called “The New Colossus.”

The original Colossus was an ancient Greek statue in the harbor of Rhodes. It was a huge representation of the sun god Helios and was considered one of the wonders of the ancient world. It had been constructed to celebrate the victory of Rhodes over Cyprus. In writing “The New Colossus,” Emma Lazarus expressed a different purpose for the Statue of Liberty. This colossal statue would not celebrate a battle or a war. Instead, it would welcome the victims of conflicts and those looking for a better life.

So, the sonnet begins:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
MOTHER OF EXILES. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

Interestingly, the expression of “a torch whose flame is the imprisoned lightning,” is a reference to the use of electric lights inside the torch, something that was an innovation at the time. The twin cities, is a reference to New York City and Brooklyn, which at that time were two separate cities. The sonnet continues:

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

While Lazarus’ poem did not put the fundraising effort over the top, by any stretch of the imagination, many felt that her words had given a necessary purpose and meaning to the Statue of Liberty. The statue was dedicated on October 28, 1886. A parade through New York began the festivities. Some have estimated that as many as a million spectators came out that day. And when the procession passed the stock exchange, brokers threw their ticker tape out the windows onto the parade route, thus beginning the tradition of the New York ticker tape parade, that continues to this day. The day became long with speeches, including one by President Grover Cleveland. But in all of that, no mention was made of Emma Lazarus or the poem she wrote expressing what the statue represented.

A year after the statue was dedicated, Emma Lazarus died, November 19, 1887, of cancer at the age of 38. Almost two decades later, in 1903, the poem by Emma Lazarus was rediscovered and was finally put in bronze and attached to an inner wall of the pedestal beneath the Statue of Liberty.

The connection between Christian freedom and the Statue of Liberty is this: Never take freedom for granted. Celebrate it – with a statue and a ticker tape parade if necessary. And don’t let anyone take away your freedom. Just as a nation has to protect its freedoms, so believers who are free in Christ have to protect their freedom as well. There will always be fanatics who make the gospel a tool of the state, or into a form of slavery with their sacred rules and traditions. And most of them have proof texts for their fanaticism. Like the Galatians we must stand up to the law fanatics. Don’t let anyone guilt you into giving up your freedom!

Jesus said, “Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God belongs to you. (Lk 6:20) The Statue of Liberty says, “Give me your tired, your poor.”

Paul said, “Christ has truly set us free.” (Ga 5:1) In the words of Emma Lazarus, Lady Liberty invites the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

Freedom is the new normal. But we have to keep it that way, in our homes, in our churches, and in our country.