A housewife took a lover during the day while her husband was at work. Unknown to her, her nine-year-old son was hiding in the cupboard. When her husband came home unexpectedly she hid her lover in the cupboard. The boy had company.

"Dark in here", he says.

"Yes it is," says the man.

"I've got a football."

"Have you?"

"Want to buy it?"

"No thanks."

"My dad's outside."

"How much?"

"£250."

A couple of weeks later it happened again, and the mum's lover and the son are in the cupboard once more.

"Dark in here."

"Yes it is."

"I've got football boots."

"How much?"

"£750."

"Fine," says the man.

A few days later the father says to the boy "Let's go and play some football! Get your boots. Get your ball."

"Oh, I'm sorry Dad, I can't. I sold them."

"Sold them! How much did you sell them for?"

"£1000."

"That's terrible – to over-charge your friends like that – that’s more than ten of those would have cost. You must go to Church and you must make your confession."

So they go to the Church, and the father gets the priest, and they go into the little confessional booth and they close the door, and the boy says

"Dark in here.”

"Don't start that again!!!"

Clearly you're not too offended by that.

Two Glaswegians, a Catholic and a Protestant. The Protestant comes across the Catholic writing graffiti on the wall: STUFF THE POPE

"Why are you writing that?"

"Oh I can't stand the Pope! No woman priests, no contraception, no this no that!"

"Aye" says the Protestant. "You're right. We have the same trouble in the Protestant Church. Give me your pen!"

Whereupon he wrote: STUFF THE MODERATOR OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND

A little bit more offensive possibly.

Would you like to hear the joke about the gipsy, the nigger and the queer?

No! Well actually I don't know any. I just make a point about offence; and who decides what is offensive? To our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters that first joke may well have been quite offensive, because it brings back too much truth.

There is, as you know, a huge discussion at the moment about the cartoons that first appeared some four months ago in the Danish newspapers. Now even the General Secretary of the United Nations has entered into the fray, as a Muslim, saying "We must accept the apology of those who have offered the hand of friendship".

The question for us as Christians is, where does it leave us in our attitude to freedom of speech? Where does it leave us in our attitude to freedom. Paul writes in that reading from the first letter to the Corinthians,

Though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, that I might win more of them.

The issue is not about our freedom, for we are indeed free. We are free from sin - that's what the cross is about. We are free from guilt, which has no place in the Christian story. We are free from darkness, for the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness shall not overcome it. We are free. It is what we choose to do with our freedom, it is how we choose to exercise our freedom, and the impact that our decisions have on others that matters.

Does it enable them to become more free themselves? Does it help them to grow as people, to become wiser, healthier, more autonomous, more likely themselves to exercise their own freedom with responsibility? And what is the effect on those who are most different from us? The underclass, the poor, the dispossessed, those of minority faiths, and minority communities? Does the way I exercise my freedom benefit them, or at least does it not deprive them further?

One of the great traditional Anglican theologies that has been tarnished of late I think, is the idea of submission; that we submit ourselves to Christ; that we are under Christ. And I think one of the reasons that it's having a bad press, (and I don't particularly like the idea of submission myself, so I put myself very firmly in that camp) is that the use of the word – "submission" – makes it sound oppressive. Those who are under submission are those who are under someone else's cosh or under their thumb. It is not a liberating word. It seems to be an oppressive word.

But there is a theology in there that is good and wholesome, and very much of our Christian story. So I've been trying to think of a word that we could use instead of submission. The one I've come up with so far, (and this you could describe as a work in progress, so anyone who's got another word, please feel free to say) how about replacing the word "submission" with the word "subscription"?

We subscribe nowadays to E-mail news letters. I subscribed to another one yesterday on a joke website, so I am going to now get a joke every Friday night, which sounds like quite a nice idea. But if I get fed up with them I can unsubscribe. It is my free will that takes me to that place.

And the tradition of the word, (sub meaning under, scribere meaning write) we underwrite what comes before. Whatever it is that we are subscribing to, we literally underwrite it. It is of my own free will that I subscribe to that which goes before, to that which I assent to. So if we subscribe to the Christian faith, we do that freely, we do that voluntarily.

But our faith is not about doing what we want to do. It is not about doing what makes me feel good, or me doing what I perceive will make you feel good. It is about being what Christ calls us to be, and doing what Christ teaches us to do. And if we do that, then we give away quite a lot of our freedoms. When we subscribe to Christ, we give away our freedom to be envious or boastful or arrogant or rude; we give away our freedom to be irritable or resentful and to rejoice in wrong-doing; we give away our freedom to insist on our own way.

That is what Paul is about to tell the Church at Corinth, in just a few chapters' time. Paul is writing to tell the Corinthian Church that subscribing to Christ is subscribing to a loving life.

Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful, or arrogant or rude; love does not insist on its own way; love is not irritable or resentful; love does not rejoice in wrong-doing, but rejoices in the truth; love bears all things; love believes all things; love hopes all things; love endures all things.

So in the end, what is offensive is not ours to determine. We have given our freedom to Christ, and our calling is to enable others to join us in that freedom, so that they become free as well. In fact they become so free that they too give up their freedom and subscribe to Christ.