Proper 8, Year C
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross
June 30, 2019
Jonathan Hanneman
For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore,
and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. – Galatians 5:1
For Americans, “freedom” is a powerful word. We talk about freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom in a variety of other forms. Citizens of the United States know their personal rights, and we tend to be pretty vocal whenever we feel like someone else is impinging on them. But with Independence Day coming this Thursday, even as we celebrate our country’s founding, we note that “freedom isn’t free.” It has a cost. It’s founded on something deeper and more expensive than itself, things like hard work, generosity, and sacrifice.
My family has known some of the sacrifices freedom requires. Ancestors on my father’s side emigrated from Germany around the turn of the 20th Century in order to avoid war in their homeland. Both of my grandfathers served in World War II, and my dad was a medic in Vietnam. My generation was able to avoid significant war in part because theirs had to endure it. We know, through our collective memory, that even in the United States, “freedom isn’t free.”
Nor is our freedom as Christians free. Jesus endured the cross and rose again to deliver us from captivity to sin and death. In our epistle today, Paul is reminding the young church in Galatia, which was part of modern Turkey, just that. Paul helped found their church, but after he left, some new missionaries came who started to teach the believers strange things. On the surface they weren’t bad. Instead of starting out saying Paul was wrong in what he had taught the Galatians, they took more of a “yes, and…” approach. The Galatians would say, “Jesus is good. We want to be like Jesus.” And the missionaries replied, “Yes, and living a morally upright life, like Jesus, is also good.”
No problem there.
“Jesus is good. We want to be like Jesus.” “Yes, and the customs and rules Jesus lived under are also good.”
Again, nothing particularly troublesome.
“Jesus is good. We want to be like Jesus.” “Yes, and you know why God was pleased with him? Because Jesus kept all of God’s command’s perfectly. If you really want to be like Jesus, you should follow those rules, too.”
It’s a very subtle shift, yet Paul seems to think it’s a dangerous redirection.
“For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore,
and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
In some ways, the other missionaries had a good point. I, for one, have always been a rule follower. I generally prefer order over chaos. I like to know what’s considered right and what’s wrong. Even if I disagree with a rule, I want to know the consequences of a particular action before I take it. But mostly I like rules because then I don’t have to think as hard—I already know what’s expected of me. Despite our love for individual freedom, we Americans at large have quite a fascination with rules and laws as well. “Law and order” was a common cry during our last presidential election. Anarchy is frowned upon. Deep down we understand that rules and laws set boundaries that can help protect us as individuals. They help us understand what’s expected of each citizen in our society. Rules in and of themselves are not necessarily a bad thing. So why is Paul so concerned for the Galatians here?
“For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore,
and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
Everyone loves morality. Everyone wants to be seen as a good person and wants others to behave well. I taught English in China one year in the early 2000’s, and despite their government embracing an extreme form of atheistic Communism, they were quite happy to have Christians, especially the more conservative evangelical kinds, come as educators. Despite any danger our religion may have posed to their regime, they knew that Christians would be good moral examples to their young people. The certainty of a life of morality was worth the small risk of religious instability.
For Paul, though, the potential instability of the Galatian believers was far more important than the risk specific moral and cultural rules imposed. Paul wasn’t against rules (you can find a lot of them from the authors of the later Pauline epistles). But Paul was very pro-Spirit.
Paul understood what the Hebrew Bible was for: a set of guideposts to help the Jewish people follow God and respect their neighbors in a particular manner appropriate to their culture. Through the resurrection of Jesus, he recognized that God had opened a path for all people to become children of God, not because of what they did, but because of what Jesus had accomplished. People, especially those who followed the Spirit of Christ, didn’t need specific rules to help them know what was right or wrong. Paul believed the Spirit had introduced a new age, one where God’s laws were written on people’s hearts instead of on sheaves of paper or tablets of stone. The Spirit would give direction to the Church, and that dependence on the Spirit was to be a mark of the Church. Instead of having a long list helping us know what to do and what not to do, we are to depend on the guidance of the Spirit, who will lead us into all good works.
The other missionaries thought that this potentially flighty dependence on the Spirit would lead to immoral behavior, so they tried to prop up the Galatians with an old, reliable set of rules. But Paul saw those rules not as a crutch to help the weak gain strength, but as a hindrance, one that led to an unnecessary and ill-fitting long-term dependency. Paul didn’t want to leave behind a bunch of people who were good at following the rules. He wanted to spread a community that was skilled at following the Spirit. And if you’re truly following the Spirit, your life will be naturally ordered to match God’s love.
Our reading today said, “Live by the Spirit…and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.” You may think, “hey, that sounds like a rule.” And you’re right. It’s written as two commands in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible: (1) “Live by the Spirit,” and (2) “do not gratify the desires of the flesh.” Isn’t Paul contradicting himself? He may not want the Galatians to follow the external rules the other missionaries introduced, but instead it looks like he’s just making up his own simpler set.
The problem here is that our translation is wrong. Paul does indeed open his statement with a command, “Live by the Spirit,” but the second half of the sentence should be a promise rather than an imperative: “Live by the Spirit…and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” Paul wasn’t a dualist. Body and soul were not separate competing realities. For Paul, “the flesh” is not referring to our bodies or really anything to do with them. When Paul talks about “the flesh,” he’s speaking in general to any activity that opposes God. So what he’s saying is: (command) “Live by the Spirit” (promise) “and you will naturally avoid the pathway opposed to God.”
So what does that mean for us today? What should we do in light of Paul’s teaching?
I wish I could tell you. I’d love to say that we should all oppose the same unjust laws, that we should all rebel against the cruel treatment of other people. I’d love to be able to tell you how to behave and who to vote for. But that’s not really the point, is it? If I did that, I would be just like the missionaries Paul is opposing in his letter. The truth is, I can’t necessarily tell you what’s right or wrong in most situations. You, as an individual and as a community, need to discern that for yourselves. However, I can tell you what Paul says, what kind of guideposts he sets up. You might even be able to say it with me: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.”
Paul doesn’t leave us with a list of rules to obey but with a list of virtues that will naturally flow from the Spirit-led believer. He doesn’t tell us what to do; he shows us who we will become.
Entering this week of celebration and remembrance, we do well to recall that “freedom isn’t free,” but we also know that true freedom has a shape, not one bound by laws and strict instructions, but one formed by the neighbor-loving power of the Spirit: “Live by the Spirit…and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.”
“For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore,
and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”