Summer is the season for Shakespeare! Recently, I played the role of Celia in Keele Drama Society’s Summer Shakespeare production of ‘As You Like It‘, and I found a fascinating parallel between my character’s decisions and those we make in our journeys of faith.
In the play, Celia’s father banishes her cousin Rosalind – who, as is customary in Shakespeare, is also her best friend – to which Celia declares that he has to pronounce that sentence then on her as well, for she cannot live out of her cousin’s company. He retorts that she is a fool, but passes the sentence anyway. Celia is true to her word and agrees to go with Rosalind, suggesting that they go to find her uncle, Rosalind’s father, in the Forest of Arden. She finishes the scene with the dramatic line that sums up her attitude to this decision: “Now go we in content, to liberty not to banishment!” (As You Like It, Act 1 Scene 3)
Today, we can sometimes see faith in terms of banishment – that we have banished ourselves from certain ways of the world, from pride and greed and lust that can be readily found around us. It can be a struggle, especially for new Christians, to detach themselves from these things, and it can even seem like a burden. However, like Celia, we can turn this mentality on its head – we can instead choose to leave these places “in content”, not feeling that we have been banished from them, but that we are stepping into freedom from them.
We read time and again that Jesus promises us freedom if we believe in him and follow him. In John 8:31 we read: “To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’”
Sometimes, when we read this passage we interpret it as meaning freedom that comes after death, in heaven, and still begrudge the process of holding to Jesus’s teaching. I don’t think that this is how we should look at it, though, as something that we will eventually receive. Jesus is telling us that we will be set free if we hold to his teaching – he doesn’t say you will be set free at the end of the age, he is saying we will be set free… full stop.
When we make decisions to leave behind the ways of the world and follow Jesus’s teaching, we do so to embrace his freedom. We are going to liberty in Christ rather than banishment from the world. Jesus is offering us freedom from sin and greed and death, and as such we should take this opportunity contentedly.
In our production of ‘As You Like It’, the two girls – Celia and Rosalind – took each other’s hand and skipped away merrily as they headed into the forest at the end of the scene. And I think that we should take that exact same mindset and enthusiasm as we enter into the ways of the Lord. After all, Jesus did say that we must enter the kingdom of heaven like the little children.
Having declared in many rehearsals and several performances “Now go we in content, to liberty not to banishment“, the sentiment has stuck with me. I think that it is something to take with us to all aspects of our lives, particularly regarding the decisions we make in faith.
