Sermon by Jane Larsen-Wigger

Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church

July 4, 2010

 

Galatians 5:1, 13-25

Psalm 30

 

Grace. Faith. Salvation.

 

Those are the big concepts Paul has been writing to the Galatians about. Over the past few weeks we’ve heard over and over the basic message he preaches: We are not saved by anything we can do, but rather by what God has done in Jesus Christ.

 

Today we hear Paul talking about the freedom this good news brings us. Freedom. Another big concept. One very appropriate for this particular national holiday that just happens to fall on a Sunday.

 

(Read Galatians 5:1, 13-25)

 

Our nephew, Jackson, is eight years old. He was upset with his parents this week because they’ve told him that, at 8, he is too young to have a pocketknife.

 

"But..." he argued: "How will I get free if I get stuck hanging upside down from a tree with a rope tied around my ankles?"

 

His mother told him to do his best not to get into that situation.

 

I think Paul would understand Jackson’s hypothetical situation – at least as a great metaphor. In fact this is what we’ve been hearing Paul talk about really for the past few weeks – how we humans get all bound up and think we can free ourselves.

 

We get bound up by the law, by expectations, by our own efforts to prove ourselves. Bound up, too, as Paul points out today, by the desires of the flesh - by the very thing that wraps around our souls making us living, breathing humans......but then gets in the way, stifles the ‘living’ right out of us sometimes.

 

How DO we get free when we’re so bound up?

 

As Americans we talk a lot about freedom. It’s one of the hallmarks of our heritage. It’s what we’re celebrating this weekend with flags and parades and fireworks. We know what it means to be free: it means having the freedom to worship as we feel led, to speak out as we feel moved; it means having the freedom to elect our own leaders and to disagree with those leaders, even protest against them. And, just this week, our freedom to carry a firearm to protect ourselves has been assured. We understand freedom as one of our "inalienable rights," an achievement we have gained and can hold onto if we fight hard enough.

 

But a pocketknife - or a handgun - will not assure our freedom. In fact, such things can keep us bound up all the more - in thinking that it is within our control to free ourselves.

 

It has already been done Paul proclaims. Christ has set us free –

 

This is what we are reminding ourselves of every Sunday morning when water splashes into the baptismal font accompanied by words of forgiveness. What we cannot do for ourselves, God has done for us in Jesus Christ: This is the good news of the Gospel: In Jesus Christ we are forgiven.

 

That forgiveness does not leave us to continue doing and being our old sinful, bound up selves. We’re not left ‘as is’, just as we are. As someone has said, that’s would be a good definition of ‘hell’ – to never change, to be exactly like you are today forever and ever.

 

But thanks be to God! God’s graciousness leads us into something new. Grace changes us.

 

We are freed from that which binds us up, keeps us from being fully human, fully alive. We are saved.

 

"Salvation" isn’t a word that slides easily off Presbyterian tongues. A ‘definition’ I’ve found extremely helpful - not just in an intellectual way, but also spiritually is from Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal preacher and writer who has a stunning way with words:

 

As she describes it: "Salvation is a word for the divine spaciousness that comes to human beings in all the tight places where their lives are at risk." (Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church)

 

"Salvation is a word for the divine spaciousness that comes to human beings in all the tight places where their lives are at risk."

 

This is the freedom Paul is talking about: the freedom that....sets us free. Free from what binds us up and puts our lives at risk; free from our dependence on our own efforts; free from our insecurities or enslavement to the desires of the flesh. Free from having to justify ourselves.

 

There’s a tendency, maybe especially for us as Americans, to think of freedom as independence, as that which gives us personal autonomy so we can do what we want. Whatever we want. Without regard to others. Without regard even to what’s best for oneself or one’s family, let alone the larger community.

 

Paul’s understanding of freedom isn’t quite like this. Paul is saying we are anything but independent creatures, free to just do anything we want, to do something because we can. As Christians, we ARE free Paul proclaims. But, as theologian Edward Farley explains it, this is not just a freedom from, but also freedom for.  (Edward Farley, Ecclesial Man)

 

Free for others. Free for a life that ‘works.’ Free to be fully who God created us to be. Free to bear the harvest of the Spirit. Fruit which benefits the whole, the community – and is better for us as well.

 

Let’s try a little experiment...

 

I want you to feel, maybe even see, the contrast that Paul is pointing out in this passage: the contrast between what he terms ‘the desires of the flesh’ and ‘the fruit of the Spirit.’

 

Maybe close your eyes: notice what images, even colors are created in your imagination when you hear the words I will read to you. Pay attention, too, to how these words make you feel - because most, I’m guessing, you HAVE felt the effects of them before - within yourself - and all mixed up with relationships.

 

Well, maybe not sorcery .... but how about enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, dissensions, factions, drunkenness, envy.

 

Just to bring such things to mind makes me feel bad. Not how want to be. You probably don’t need to be warned that such things will eat you up.

 

These ‘desires of the flesh’ indeed bind us up, make us feel and act anything but alive and free.

 

These works of our sinful nature batter down our relationships, affect our families and church....even our health. Communities - like a family or a congregation or even a country - are torn apart when people act out of the short-sighted desire to ‘gratify the flesh’ with "fornication, impurity, promiscuity, drunkenness, carousing..." Those things do not help the common good. Or our selves.

 

This is not a life that works. This is not what we are called to. Not what we are saved for. This is what Jesus is setting us free from.

 

Paul knew all about sinful human nature. But, he also knew about God’s Spirit. He knew that the Spirit’s presence is known by the fruit it produces in us and among us.

 

Close your eyes again and notice the difference of this harvest of good things like "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control."

 

I don’t know about you, but even thinking about bearing such fruit is beautiful, pleasant. 

 

"Yes! That’s what I want to be!"

 

And that is what the Spirit of Jesus frees us for.

 

Again, we don’t conjure it all up on our own – we are human after all; dissension and envy, jealousy and anger come quite naturally for us.

 

But this is the fruit of Christ’s Spirit living in and through us. And we can block and impede that Spirit, let weeds choke out the harvest. Or we can nurture its Presence, honor and tend to the Gift.

 

Just as our sister-in-law advised young Jackson to try not to get into the situation of being tied upside down to a tree..... Or, as Paul put it: "not submit again to that yoke of slavery."

 

And pay attention, instead, to what is saving your life now – and nurture that.

 

There’s a story about a man who is deeply troubled, just feels like there’s a battle going on within him all the time. He travels to a village to speak to the Wise One.

 

"I feel," he explains, "like there are two dogs inside me. One is positive - loving, kind, optimistic. And then I have this pessimistic, angry, fearful and negative dog. They’re at odds with each other. Fighting all the time. I don’t know who’s going to win."

 

The Wise One pauses and then responds:

 

"The one you feed."