June 27, 2010 | 8:00 a.m.

Free to Bear Fruit

Joann H. Lee
Pastoral Resident, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 77:11–20
Luke 9:51–62
Galatians 5:1, 13–25

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime;
therefore, we must be saved by hope.
Nothing that is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense
in any immediate context of history;
therefore, we must be saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone;
therefore we are saved by love.

Reinhold Niebuhr

By this time of year, students from all around the country are experiencing a very particular kind of freedom: a freedom from tests, teachers, classrooms, and lectures; a freedom to fill your days with whatever you want to do.

That feeling of liberation on the last day of school is hard to forget, even years after we’ve finished with school: the relief, the joy, the sheer gratitude for finitude. And summer is filled with the sweet fragrance of freedom.

Perhaps the freedom of summer is so sweet because you know precisely what you’ve been bound to before. You know exactly what you’re escaping, what you’ve gained freedom from.

But in today’s passage, as we hear Paul’s rally for freedom 2,000 years later, it’s harder to capture that sense of liberation, harder to nail down exactly what we are free from or what we are now free to do. It’s all a little more ambiguous and subtle and much more complicated than the last day of school.

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul tells us that Christ has set us free. But it’s not necessarily a freedom from something, but rather a freedom for something. It’s a freedom to love our neighbors as ourselves; a freedom to bear fruit in and with our community. And, some would say, a freedom to live by the Spirit and not by the flesh.

Now, when we hear these words—“Spirit and flesh”—we often think of an anthropological dualism, a duality that occurs within our own being. And it seems mainstream culture has come to believe or accept that within each human being is a fleshy, sinful part that battles against a holy, spirit-like soul. This particular duality has caused many of us to hate our bodies, to deny our bodies and all that they need or desire.

Paul here, however, isn’t talking about the “Spirit and flesh” in that sense. Our physical flesh isn’t the embodiment of evil; nor is this notion of “soul” some incarnation of good. Rather, the Spiritthat Paul addresses here is the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, the “active presence of God” who moves and breathes and cannot be tamed (Richard Hays, New International Study Bible).

And flesh, or sarx in Greek, represents human nature or humanity as a whole, and it carries with it a connotation of mortality. One commentator equates this word flesh with the “realm of autonomous fallen humanity, living at odds with God” (Richard Hays, NISB). It’s a state of fallenness, a state of separation from God, with a false sense of self-sufficiency and autonomy.

So I believe what Paul juxtaposes is not something that simply duels within us, but something that is beyond just our own selves. He highlights not an inner struggle, but rather one on a more cosmic level. He draws a distinction between the ways of our fallen and broken world, which is finite, mortal, and limited, in contrast to God’s kingdom, which is infinite, eternal, and limitless. Richard Hays calls it a “cosmic conflict between the redemptive power of God and rebellious fallen creation.”

For some, this may come as a great relief. If it’s not just about us, about our own personal holiness or fruit bearing. It’s almost like we’re off the hook. But it’s not quite that simple. It’s not just about our own personal ability to bear fruit, but it is about that as well. It’s not either-or; it’s both-and. You can’t have one without the other. We as individuals must bear fruit. Yet this mandate is also beyond ourselves. It is a call to the people of God as a whole and to humanity as a whole to live as people who have been set free.

It’s actually a much harder calling to live into. And it’s much, much bigger than we had first assumed.

It no longer is just an internal struggle for purity, but rather, a call to live as countercultural people who challenge the ways of the flesh. We, who have been set free, must order our lives and our world to follow in the way of Christ. “See the works of the flesh, the ways of this world, are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing”—fifteen works of the flesh are named. They’re obvious, Paul says. Be that as it may, they’re also pervasive and commonplace in our society.

We have gotten used to, become numb really, to jealousy and quarrels, dissensions and factions. We turn on the TV and “works of the flesh” are all we see: reality shows constantly pit people against one another, breeding competition, strife, and jealousy; sitcoms and dramas earn ratings off of drunkenness, carousing, and fornication; even news reports thrive off of our factions and dissensions, polarizing us as a country more and more. We have come to accept these “works of the flesh,” these “ways of the world” as our way of life.

They don’t seem like something to be set free from. Rather they are merely the muck in which we stew. Little do we know, the more we stew, the more we are bound to them and the harder it is to even seek freedom.

After all being “free,” as Paul defines it, doesn’t always seem to make sense. Loving our neighbors, practicing self control, giving generously—it’s not the way we are taught to survive in this dog-eat-dog, pull-yourself-up-by-your-own- bootstraps kind of world.

Martin Luther King Jr. recognized this. He said, “Of course this is not practical. Life is a matter of getting even, of hitting back, of dog eat dog. . . . Maybe in some distant Utopia, you will say, that idea will work, but not in the hard, cold world in which we live.”

“My friends,” he went on, “we have followed the so-called ‘practical’ way for too long a time now, and it has led inexorably to deeper confusion and chaos. Time is cluttered with the wreckage of communities that surrendered to hatred and violence. For the salvation of our nation and the salvation of humankind and for our children, we must follow another way” (Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, pp. 55–57).

God’s way, the way of the Spirit that bears the fruit of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control”—that’s the way. There’s no room for violence in that. No room for competition or envy. No room for scarcity or hoarding.

It’s a wide-angle view on life. One that is not finite or mortal. One that reminds us of Reinhold Neihbuhr’s quote on our bulletin cover, that “nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing that is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.”

It’s a wide-angle view on life. A view from eternity. A view that doesn’t demand immediacy through violence, or wealth through hoarding or greed.

Niehbuhr’s quote reminds us that we can’t do it alone, that we don’t do it alone. We need each other. Our faith is not just about our own personal lives or our own personal spirituality.
It’s about how we partner with God to change the world together. How we work with one another to begin a movement that is free to live by the Spirit.

We are bearers of freedom, even as we live into freedom.

As we live by the Spirit, as we are free to bear fruit, we give witness to the Spirit. We show the world that there is another way, a better way, a still more excellent way.

And every time we choose that way, we bear witness to the transforming power of God. We bear witness to the fact that there is more to this world than what we see and experience daily.
When we as a community of faith stand united and refuse to be torn apart on issues or points of conflict, we bear witness to God.

When we choose to build up the community rather than tear it apart with our enmity or strife, we bear witness to God.

This doesn’t mean we all agree all the time, but it does mean that we deal with our disagreements with love and patience, peace and joy.

This upcoming weekend, several pastors and members of Fourth Church will travel to the Twin Cities for the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). This denominational gathering occurs every two years in our church life, and lay people as well as ordained clergy come together as a decision-making body to discern where God is calling us as a church. People come from every corner of our nation with all kinds of theological and political ideologies.

Needless to say, there is a great difference of opinions when it comes to many, if not all, of the proposals that come before this assembly. From discussions on gay ordination or gay marriage, to our response to situations in the Middle East or the Gulf, or to conversations on our own church’s polity and rules, people simply do not agree with one another.

This assembly is bound to disagree; it is bound to argue. But how we argue and how we disagree matters. We can love one another without agreeing with one another. We can be united without being uniform. We can stand in solidarity without being the same. We can accept one another without expecting assimilation.

For many of us in the pews, the work of the Assembly doesn’t really seem to matter. It doesn’t seem to affect our own faith journey in any significant way. I’d argue that isn’t the case, but I can see how people would feel that way. What this Assembly is, is a witness for what God is doing in our wider church, not only to the world but to ourselves.

If we can bear fruit in the context of great dissension, that bears witness to the freedom we’ve found in Christ.

After all, it’s not by our own doing, but the very work of God.

Joan Brown Campbell, who led the National Council of Churches and so knows about differing opinions, says this (bear with me through her long quote):

The message of the text [our Galatians passage] is not primarily about the fruits, but it is about the vine that gives them life. It is about the Spirit coming into our lives and our communities and filling us so full with the love of God that we act toward one another in ways that give glory to the God who promises [to . . .] never leave us. . . . Christians whose lives have been touched by the Spirit will, I’m afraid, find it impossible to ignore suffering and hunger and hatred. . . . So in the midst of war and famine, violence and division, we pray for unity and for a spiritual renewal of people of all nations, of the earth, and of the world. It is not a time to grow weary, but a time to be open to the Spirit moving in our midst. . . . Such an outpouring of faith would surely transform our chaos into community.

Christ has set us free. This freedom allows us to love one another, to live in community, to bear fruit, and to transform our world. As liberated people, then, let us partner with God and one another to proclaim this freedom to all God’s creation.

Amen.