This morning,
for our focus text, we will look at a portion of St. Paul’s letter to the
church at Galatia. The Galatians were a Celtic people who lived in what is
modern-day Turkey. Before their conversion to Christianity, they had been
Hellenistic Gentiles – they were never Jewish.
St. Paul travelled to Galatia and founded the churches there during his
missionary travels in Asia Minor, early on in his “career” as an evangelist.
In the years that followed, other Christian missionaries
travelled to Galatia and muddied the waters by encouraging the Galatian
Christians to practice both Judaism and Christianity. These missionaries told
the Galatians they needed to start following Jewish dietary customs and the men
needed to become circumcised. This contradicted Paul’s approach—he saw
Christianity as a new revelation.
Christians were different than Jews, and therefore did not need to
follow Jewish laws. But, the Galatian
Christian people were so excited about their new Christian faith that they were
trying to do it all – follow Paul’s teachings and follow the other missionary’s
teachings. And, in the midst of their
quest to follow all the “rules,” the people of the Christian community started
to argue and fight among themselves.
When Paul wrote the letter to the Galatians, he wanted to
correct the “false” teachings the missionaries promoted. He wanted the people
to understand they were “free” from following the rules of Judaism, rules he
likened to slavery. Instead, they were to embody the fruit of the Holy Spirit
and practice the greatest commandment – to Love God and to love your neighbor
as yourself.
Listen to St. Paul’s words as they are found in his letter to
the Galatians, chapter 5, verses one and thirteen through twenty-five:
Scripture Reading Galatians
5:1, 13-25
It is for
freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let
yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
You, my
brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom
to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.
For the entire
law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
If you bite
and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
So I say, walk
by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
For the flesh
desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the
flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do
whatever you want.
But if you are
led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
The acts of
the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery;
idolatry and
witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition,
dissensions, factions
and envy;
drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those
who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the Spirit is
love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness,
gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Those who
belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and
desires.
Since we live
by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.
Here ends this reading of the word of God
for the People of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Message Freedom and Fruit
St. Paul’s
letter to the Galatian Christians was very fierce – this is perhaps the most
“fire and brimstone” message of his letters to the Christian communities. He
wasn’t happy the Galatian Christians were fighting among themselves. And, he
wasn’t happy with the missionaries who encouraged the Galatians to embrace
Jewish practices. Paul wrote this fiery letter as a clear message to the
Galatians – they should stop following Jewish laws, they should stop fighting
among themselves, they should reject all of the acts of the flesh that get all
people in trouble, and they should embrace the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Their
work was to live out Jesus’ command to love your neighbor as yourself and from
that the fruit of the Spirit would spring forth – love, joy, peace,
forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Fast-forward two thousand years. We
are probably not going to start embracing Jewish practices, so if Paul was
writing us a letter, he wouldn’t bring up the circumcision thing or the dietary
laws. But, Paul would still could make some points with us about other topics
in his letter. We don’t always do a good job of following Jesus command for us
to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. This is work for us, major work. Just
like people two-thousand years ago, we often struggle to like other people,
much less love them. We can all write out a long list of people we struggle to
love: Putin, the presidential candidate from the party we don’t vote for, the
bully who picked on us in 3rd grade, our daughter’s ex-husband, the
manager who fired us when we were 25….we can probably all generate a list of
the people who we find hard to love.
St. Paul’s list of acts of the flesh
that we should avoid are things people in our world still struggle with, some
more than others. We are all tempted to do things that are self-destructive. We
are all tempted to do things that hurt other people. And, our work as
Christians and as people who are seeking maturity is to resist actions and
activities that hurt ourselves and others.
Paul wanted Christians to work to do
better, to work to be better. He wanted us to walk in the Spirit and to work to
love other people as much as we love ourselves. Martin Luther King Jr said:
Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a
greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love...
Our aim must
be to love others. We must love other people because we are working to keep in
step with the Holy Spirit. And, as we love each other, the fruit of the Holy
Spirit will radiate from us: we will share love, joy, peace, forbearance,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Paul’s words echo out to us from
history, and they are calling upon us to live out the teachings of Jesus. We
are called to put love of others foremost in our words and actions. We are
called to resist temptation and to be delivered from evil. We are called to
love, and from that love the fruit of the Holy Spirit will radiate into our
world, to make this place a little more the way God has designed it to be.
Let us do so in love. Amen.
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