The Nature of Freedom
Sermon by Jamie Howison on Galatians 5:1, 13-25 and Luke 9:51-62
Sometimes when a preacher turns to read the scripture passages set out for the week, the connections are absolutely clear and vivid, and the sermon just flows. Other times? Well, a bit more wrestling is in order… and this would be one of those!
I do want to focus largely on the reading from Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, but some comment on this passage from Luke are also very much in order. As the reading tonight opens, we hear that Jesus has “set his face to go to Jerusalem,” which is another way of saying that he is now drawing his ministry in Galilee toward a close and is focussing on the confrontations that will happen in Jerusalem, with both the temple authorities and the Roman rulers. There is still a ways to go in the gospel—this is only chapter nine of twenty-four—but the tone is now beginning to shift. There is, for instance, this moment when he enters this Samaritan village—and he has been shown to help non-Jews prior to this in Luke’s account—“but they did not receive him, because his face was set towards Jerusalem.” It seems as if they can recognize his determination here and so don’t really want or need him in their town, but I’d just caution against thinking the way the disciples do, which is essentially to take a posture of condemnation. Instead recall that in the very next chapter Jesus will tell his great story of the good Samaritan.
And then there are these verses about these three people who seem quite eager to join his movement, but who are then met with some tough responses. “Let the dead bury their own dead,” he says to the one who just wants to complete the burial rites for his father—something crucially important in Judaism—and to another “No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” And that guy just wanted to go home and bid his family farewell!
It think the important thing to realize here is that there is a deep intensity to this moment in his life, and that he needs any potential follower to grapple with that right then and there. Not that some of the same tone isn’t also present for us at various stages along the way. As N.T. Wright puts it, “Where is Jesus asking us to travel… [and] are we ready to follow him wherever he goes?” Sometimes that can be “a long obedience in the same direction” (to borrow Eugene Peterson’s phrase), but sometimes that can also be a pointed right here now sort of challenge to respond. It was the “right here now” that Jesus needed to emphasise to those potential followers at that moment in his journey.
Now, on to the passage from Paul’s letter to the Galatians. I think it is important to note that Paul is trying to get this particular Christian community on track for the longer haul of being God’s people in the world. In that sense, he’s not saying “let the dead bury their own dead” or “put your hand to the plough and don’t look back,” because there’s a very real sense in which he wants his readers to stop, reflect, and reconsider some of the patterns they’ve set in their lives. He’s actually inviting reflection here; calling them to slow down and think again.
“For freedom Christ has set us free,” is how we began, and then very quickly we came to “you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters.” Listen again:
For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.
That line about biting and devouring and being potentially consumed by one another is telling, because what it strongly suggests is that this is what is actually happening in Galatia! In his commentary on this epistle, Charles Cousar says this two-fold emphasis on being called to freedom “clearly makes Christian freedom the basis for ethics.” Paul’s great concern is to proclaim that in Christ this community is now free, but that freedom most definitely arcs in a very particular direction.
It is at this moment that he begins to write about the contrast between a life moored in the flesh with a life lived in the Spirit. For readers unaccustomed to the nuances of the original Greek in which this epistle is written, that can easily sound like the physical, the earthly, the embodied is somehow bad, while the Spirit—and the spiritual—is what will transcend all of this nasty stuff. But that’s not his point at all, and in fact cuts completely counter to a Jewish vision of the human life.
In Judaism—and remember that Paul, the great apostle to the Gentiles, remains someone whose starting point for his whole way of seeing the world is still very much Jewish—the created world is good, and for all that we humans can make a mess of our lives, it is not because we are embodied creatures who are a part of creation. No, the problem is the way in which we so easily get distorted in this created world, and so can distort and hurt and corrupt one another.
Part of the key is the word Paul uses that is then translated as “flesh.” His word here is sarx, which different versions of the English bible translate differently in this chapter: in the New English Bible it is “lower nature,” in the New International it is “sinful nature”, in the Jerusalem Bible it is “self-indulgence.” The point is that as Paul uses the word, he’s leaning on it in a very particular direction, namely distortion. In other places in the New Testament the word is used in a much more neutral way; for instance, in the prologue to the Gospel according to John we have “the Word became flesh—sarx—and dwelt among us,” which does not load the word sarx with any negative meaning. But words are like that, and not just in Greek. If I say “I got a ticket today,” that might be bad news—I got a speeding ticket or a parking ticket—or it might be good news—I got a concert ticket or a Bombers ticket. It is the context in which the word “ticket” is used that makes the difference, and that’s the same with Paul’s use of the word sarx.
And so Cousar writes,
The Spirit and the flesh in this context are not components of human nature but two realities in which individuals can base their existence, two directions to which they can move. They can live “according to the flesh” or “according to the Spirit.” To focus on one is death; to focus on the other is life and peace.
He is not saying that material things are inherently evil, nor is he implying that human feelings, physical desires, or sensual pleasures are themselves to be avoided or suppressed. What makes the flesh—sarx—so destructive is that it can become the norm by which people’s lives are lived.
And this is precisely what Paul is confronting in Galatia at this moment. Earlier in the epistle he’s challenged the Jewish Christians who are essentially insisting that Gentiles must become observant Jews in order to be Christian, and now he’s turning to the Gentile believers and saying, essentially, that the habits, patterns, and assumptions of their pagan past need to be set aside for something altogether more life-giving. And so he writes,
By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh—sarx—with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.
He is calling them to “a still more excellent way,” to borrow his phrase from his 1st Letter to the Corinthians.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus is addressed a very specific and critical moment in time, whereas here in Galatians Paul is trying to shape a people for the long haul. And truth be told, there are times when we might most need to hear Jesus’ pressing and immediate challenge, and times we need to listen to Paul and think deeply about the entrenched habits of our time and culture which can easily draw us off badly off course.
And so I will leave you with Robert Farrar Capon’s take on these teachings from Paul. I received these good words from Robert back in 2004, during three days of spending time with him in his home on Shelter Island in New York:
The whole thing is done in Christ, and Christ in me. When you get to the fruit of the Spirit—one fruit—as opposed to the works of the flesh. The works of the flesh—adultery, uncleanness, lasciviousness, witchcraft, hatred, strife, wrath, sedition, all that stuff—those are all things we’re perfectly capable of doing and executing and planning and acting on ourselves. They are works that we can accomplish, every one of them. And opposed to them are simply nine, unboring fruit. Ninefold fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the spirit, of course, is Jesus. Blessed is the fruit of your womb. Therefore, the ninefold fruit of the Spirit is Jesus in me and in everybody. Then it becomes interesting because it means that I already fully possess everything that is that fruit. I possess all of his love now, complete, and it is operative, active, in me. (Robert Farrar Capon in conversation with Jamie Howison, 2004)
May it always be. Amen.
