Galatians 5:22-28 (The Message)
22-23 But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.
23-24 Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified.
25-26 Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original.
Reflection
Today is the sixth Sunday of Pentecost. We started with Pentecost when the Holy Spirit just poured out in the world, blessing people with the gifts of God’s grace and made alive in the hearts and minds of people, who are open to the Spirit of Christ entering into their lives.
Lately, we’ve talked about God’s grace being a gift to everyone, to and for the whole world. Paul worked hard to help the people, in the early communities of faith, understand that no one had to be a Jew or be circumcised, or follow the 627 Judaic laws: Greek – Jew. Male-female, free – slave – all of it made no difference. All one had to do to receive God’s grace was accept that they were accepted just as they were through their faith in Jesus the Christ.
All you have to do is accept God’s gift. But then what?
Paul in Galatians 5:6 says: “For when we are in union with Christ what matters is: faith that works through love.” – Faith that works through love!
A faith that is free from the yoke of the law frees us to move with the Spirit, to do what love requires rather than what the law requires. If the law, and by law I mean all the rules that get stuck in our head by families and religion and school and whoever else is handing out rules in our life. If the law is our guide it’s like we are in a play and everything we do is scripted or prescribed – diet, clothing, prayer, sacrifice, ritual – there is a requirement to live on the straight and narrow and any deviation requires confession and atonement- if not at the moment then at some future point. No wonder the Pharisees, who were known to try so hard to obey the law, were so hard on everyone – they were hard on themselves.
What does faith that works through love look like? Paul in Galatians gives a whole list of what he calls the fruits of the Spirit – I like to call them gifts of the spirit because I keep envisioning a banana popping out when you least expect it!
Here’s the list in Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, kindness, patience, goodness, faithfulness, humility and self control. This is what your life looks like when you live a Christ centered life. This is what you look like when you follow Christ.
Paul was a hopeful fellow – wasn’t he? I mean this is what I want my life to look like! This is what I would like my life to look like! But- there is always a but- my life doesn’t always work out that way.
Let’s look at Jesus for a moment, if anyone exemplifies living in the Spirit, it would be Jesus yet he gets angry and does some very strange things – turning over tables in the temple could be classified as acting out of a real love for God and what the Temple in Jerusalem, as the home of the Ark of the Covenant and the place where God resided, stood for. So righteous anger but I never have been able to figure out the withering of the fig tree in Matthew 21:18-19:
“Early in the morning, as Jesus was on his way back to the city,
he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it
but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it,
'May you never bear fruit again! ' Immediately the tree withered.”
Even if it was some kind of symbolic gesture – it was a fig tree and how does that even line up with the seventy times seven for forgiveness lesson he gives Peter?
And what about Paul, he was known to get a little testy in his letters to the churches!
I kind of like that Jesus and Paul show themselves to be human because it means there is hope for you and me.
Sometimes when I look at the list: love, joy, peace, kindness, patience, goodness, faithfulness, humility, self control and I wonder how many I could check off in a day- there are probably more I can cross of than check off. Why is that?
It makes me wonder if I have traded one kind of impossible bar or goal for another – after all if I were a Jew living under the law I could check off something almost every time I did anything – eat a meal and check off washing ritual, kosher utensils and dishes, dietary laws, prayer – whereas it is a little more difficult to keep those check marks going for love, for joy, for peace, for humility. It’s hard to get check marks for a way of being as opposed to doing!
Imagine how hard it was for people of the Way. The Jews used to getting check marks, no longer had a way to tell how righteous they were being (or how righteous others were). And the Greeks – gentiles – pagans, well, they no longer could participate in their communities without coming into conflict with what Paul, also in Galatians 5:13-21, says they can’t continue to do.
So you don’t just get to do whatever you want to do. There are things that are contrary to the Spirit, mostly to do with pagan feasts and festivals which included worship of idols and immoral and indecent behaviour.
This would be the point at which the followers of the Way and the official dominant Roman culture would come into conflict. The Jews would not have been noticed as being absent from the feasts and festivals but the pagans would have been and the easy way out for them would be to show up. What strength and courage it would have taken for these early Christ followers to remain faithful!
Paul is both wiser and smarter than we think- you see he added that seemingly out of place gift of the Spirit – self control. It’s so out of place that some lists of the fruits of the Spirit don’t even list it. What is self control when compared to love, joy, peace – even humility. You see it seems out of place and yet that self control is part of the key to the whole thing – weird!.
Without self control those gifts of the Spirit quickly cross the thin line into judgement, anger, self-righteousness, and selfishness. The self control is like a guidance system that keeps us from pouncing others and from beating up ourselves.
I don’t know about you but I don’t think we have progressed much further than those early communities of faith when it comes to living into the gifts of the Spirit. We are all faced with the same questions and have to find answers that fit our time and situation.
How to we become our true selves as faithful followers of Christ?
How do we truly be the church for one another?
Does being the church make a difference in our lives and in the world?
These are honest questions for us to ask – you may have more. We are not without resources in searching out the answers and in living out the answers.
The gifts of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, humility, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self control are present among us. Let us make sure that in this community they are valued and nurtured so that we may truly embody the love of God together.
Amen
22-23 But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.
23-24 Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified.
25-26 Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original.
Reflection
Today is the sixth Sunday of Pentecost. We started with Pentecost when the Holy Spirit just poured out in the world, blessing people with the gifts of God’s grace and made alive in the hearts and minds of people, who are open to the Spirit of Christ entering into their lives.
Lately, we’ve talked about God’s grace being a gift to everyone, to and for the whole world. Paul worked hard to help the people, in the early communities of faith, understand that no one had to be a Jew or be circumcised, or follow the 627 Judaic laws: Greek – Jew. Male-female, free – slave – all of it made no difference. All one had to do to receive God’s grace was accept that they were accepted just as they were through their faith in Jesus the Christ.
All you have to do is accept God’s gift. But then what?
Paul in Galatians 5:6 says: “For when we are in union with Christ what matters is: faith that works through love.” – Faith that works through love!
A faith that is free from the yoke of the law frees us to move with the Spirit, to do what love requires rather than what the law requires. If the law, and by law I mean all the rules that get stuck in our head by families and religion and school and whoever else is handing out rules in our life. If the law is our guide it’s like we are in a play and everything we do is scripted or prescribed – diet, clothing, prayer, sacrifice, ritual – there is a requirement to live on the straight and narrow and any deviation requires confession and atonement- if not at the moment then at some future point. No wonder the Pharisees, who were known to try so hard to obey the law, were so hard on everyone – they were hard on themselves.
What does faith that works through love look like? Paul in Galatians gives a whole list of what he calls the fruits of the Spirit – I like to call them gifts of the spirit because I keep envisioning a banana popping out when you least expect it!
Here’s the list in Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, kindness, patience, goodness, faithfulness, humility and self control. This is what your life looks like when you live a Christ centered life. This is what you look like when you follow Christ.
Paul was a hopeful fellow – wasn’t he? I mean this is what I want my life to look like! This is what I would like my life to look like! But- there is always a but- my life doesn’t always work out that way.
Let’s look at Jesus for a moment, if anyone exemplifies living in the Spirit, it would be Jesus yet he gets angry and does some very strange things – turning over tables in the temple could be classified as acting out of a real love for God and what the Temple in Jerusalem, as the home of the Ark of the Covenant and the place where God resided, stood for. So righteous anger but I never have been able to figure out the withering of the fig tree in Matthew 21:18-19:
“Early in the morning, as Jesus was on his way back to the city,
he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it
but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it,
'May you never bear fruit again! ' Immediately the tree withered.”
Even if it was some kind of symbolic gesture – it was a fig tree and how does that even line up with the seventy times seven for forgiveness lesson he gives Peter?
And what about Paul, he was known to get a little testy in his letters to the churches!
I kind of like that Jesus and Paul show themselves to be human because it means there is hope for you and me.
Sometimes when I look at the list: love, joy, peace, kindness, patience, goodness, faithfulness, humility, self control and I wonder how many I could check off in a day- there are probably more I can cross of than check off. Why is that?
It makes me wonder if I have traded one kind of impossible bar or goal for another – after all if I were a Jew living under the law I could check off something almost every time I did anything – eat a meal and check off washing ritual, kosher utensils and dishes, dietary laws, prayer – whereas it is a little more difficult to keep those check marks going for love, for joy, for peace, for humility. It’s hard to get check marks for a way of being as opposed to doing!
Imagine how hard it was for people of the Way. The Jews used to getting check marks, no longer had a way to tell how righteous they were being (or how righteous others were). And the Greeks – gentiles – pagans, well, they no longer could participate in their communities without coming into conflict with what Paul, also in Galatians 5:13-21, says they can’t continue to do.
So you don’t just get to do whatever you want to do. There are things that are contrary to the Spirit, mostly to do with pagan feasts and festivals which included worship of idols and immoral and indecent behaviour.
This would be the point at which the followers of the Way and the official dominant Roman culture would come into conflict. The Jews would not have been noticed as being absent from the feasts and festivals but the pagans would have been and the easy way out for them would be to show up. What strength and courage it would have taken for these early Christ followers to remain faithful!
Paul is both wiser and smarter than we think- you see he added that seemingly out of place gift of the Spirit – self control. It’s so out of place that some lists of the fruits of the Spirit don’t even list it. What is self control when compared to love, joy, peace – even humility. You see it seems out of place and yet that self control is part of the key to the whole thing – weird!.
Without self control those gifts of the Spirit quickly cross the thin line into judgement, anger, self-righteousness, and selfishness. The self control is like a guidance system that keeps us from pouncing others and from beating up ourselves.
I don’t know about you but I don’t think we have progressed much further than those early communities of faith when it comes to living into the gifts of the Spirit. We are all faced with the same questions and have to find answers that fit our time and situation.
How to we become our true selves as faithful followers of Christ?
How do we truly be the church for one another?
Does being the church make a difference in our lives and in the world?
These are honest questions for us to ask – you may have more. We are not without resources in searching out the answers and in living out the answers.
The gifts of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, humility, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self control are present among us. Let us make sure that in this community they are valued and nurtured so that we may truly embody the love of God together.
Amen
