Pastor William R. White
July 1, 2007 - Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Bethel Lutheran Church, 312 Wisconsin Avenue, Madison, WI

The Sermon Text — Galatians 5: 1, 23-25

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Listen! I, Paul, am telling you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you. Once again I testify to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obliged to obey the entire law. You who want to be justified by the law have cut yourselves off from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love. You were running well; who prevented you from obeying the truth? Such persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. A little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough. I am confident about you in the Lord that you will not think otherwise. But whoever it is that is confusing you will pay the penalty. But my friends, why am I still being persecuted if I am still preaching circumcision? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed. I wish those who unsettle you would castrate themselves! 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 neighbor as yourself.” If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 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 with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.








Sermon – Fruit of the Spirit
In his most famous speech Martin Luther King, Jr. articulated the hopes of not just black Americans, but all Americans with these lines.
“And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that: Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, free at last.”
Freedom is our universal longing. This past week in Maracaibo, thousands of Venezuelan soccer fans used an international tournament to show opposition to President Hugo Chavez, rising to their feet with chants of "Free-dom, free-dom, free-dom!" Many of us remembered the same chant going up from the throats of the German people before the Berlin wall fell.
July 4 is upon us. Freedom is in the air. This week we will see pictures of it, sing about it; and give thanks for it. Freedom means the right to follow our dreams. It means being judged not by the color of our skin, or our gender, or by our parent’s position in life, but by our ability, skills and the content of our character. It means being able to assemble anywhere at anytime without restriction. It means to worship in the manner that touches our hearts, not what is dictated to us by a government. It means electing our officials, not having them inherit their positions of power.
This week we will think about how our nation began, how we cut the apron strings that bound us to our European parents, parents who wanted to control our country. We will think about a civil war that was fought over the question, “Does one person have the right to own another, a question that was answered with a resounding NO!
This week we will debate our involvement in another war, a war some insist needs to be fought to keep terrorists off our soil. A war others insist needs to end, because our involvement only provokes greater opposition.

But what would happen if we had freedom handed to us and we chose to give up that freedom and live without it? That is what St. Paul writes about in his letter to the people of Galatia. This is a letter unlike anything you will find in the pages of the New Testament. Paul is steamed! He is angry! If you are offended when Christians aren’t polite and don’t act nice, you won’t enjoy this letter. This is a letter you read while wearing asbestos gloves. Listen! “I can’t believe your fickleness—how easily you have turned traitor to him who called you by the grace of Christ…” Or, “If anyone, regardless of reputation or credentials, preaches something other than what you received originally, let him be cursed!”
Here is what happened. Paul came to the region of Galatia telling people things that were absolutely new to them. Most people in that region at that time believed that there were gods for land and sea, gods for hunting and agriculture and gods for every city and hamlet. Paul told them this was not true. He said, “There is only ONE God…and that the One God wants people to be ONE family.” God, he declared, has chosen to work through the Jewish people to give this message to the world. Though God has worked through the Jews there is no advantage of being a Jew. In the eyes of God all races, all genders, all people are the same. Everyone in God’s eyes is equal.
A number of people believed. A church was formed. Then, as was his custom, Paul left to establish another church, in another region.
And right behind him came a group of people that said, “Paul doesn’t have it entirely right. God did speak to the Jews first, so in order for you to be a part of this movement you have to first become a Jew. Only then can you become a Christian. Men will have to be circumcised. Everyone will have to obey the dietary laws and all of the laws of Moses.” And the many people who once believed Paul now believed this new group.
Paul found out what happened he became furious, and wrote a scathing letter. He was astonished that they chose to go back to the painful old methods of living by rules rather than by grace. “Living by rules doesn’t work,” he wrote them. “I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work. So I quit being a ‘law man’ so that I could be God’s man. Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it…” He concluded this section: “Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God?”
This past week I saw a Norwegian film entitled, “The Other Side of Sunday.” It is the story of Maria, a young girl in a small town in Norway during the end of the ‘50s. Maria’s father is the pastor of a very conservative church, which I assume is Lutheran. It was a church where being a Christian was primarily defined by what people didn’t do. For example, women didn’t wear earrings, or make-up. If you did you weren’t a Christian. Maria struggles with all the rules and wonders if she is a Christian. One of her friends who is going through the same agony confesses, “I believe in God, I really do, but I want to be pretty too.”



Maria finds a soul mate, an older woman who works at the church. She leads Maria to understand that the god of the majority of the congregation is not the God of the 23rd Psalm, the one “who makes her lie down in green pastures and leads her beside still waters. He restores my soul.” God wants us to be free. The people of that community chose a kind of slavery, ignoring the freedom that God gave them.
Paul’s letter to the Galatians is a warning to us that whenever we put a condition on faith we soon stray from God. Get rid of all of the “ifs” such as, “If you are sincere you will be one of God’s children.” “If you hold the right social opinions you will be a Christian.” “If you pray hard, you’ll get what you ask for.” Each “if” puts the burden on us. Your life with God does not depend on any of this. Your life with God is a gift. It is given to you with no strings attached. Paul writes, “So those now who live by faith are blessed along with Abraham who lived by faith…” (3:10) We don’t become a child of God by keeping rules. We become a child of God as a gift from our loving Father in Heaven.
People said to Paul, “You say I’m free. Am I free to do anything I want to do?” The answer is yes. That doesn’t mean, however that it is in your best interests to do anything. You can do what that 29 year-old Japanese man did a year ago, you can eat 53 ¾ hot dogs in twelve minutes and you can say, “It is a free country.” But just because you are free to chow down, it doesn’t mean it is good for you. Assuming you are healthy, you are free to be a lazy bum, never exercising, just vegging out in your recliner night after night, but you will pray a price for your lack of activity.
Paul writes, “You are free, but the reason you were given freedom was to enable you to invest it in love.” The entire 10 commandments, Paul says, is summarized in this: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”
In Saturday’s paper we read the tragic story of a 19 year-old Mount Horeb woman who told police she drank a pint of cognac and a little vodka and ingested a line of cocaine in addition to taking medication for anxiety before she drove her car 120 miles an hour striking the car of a Whitewater professor, and killing the professor. Was the Mount Horeb woman a free woman?
If you insist on planting your freedom in a field of selfishness or foolishness you will harvest a wild crop: immorality, strife, jealousy, anger, envy, drunkenness, carousing. If instead, you plant your freedom in God’s field, a field of cooperation and grace, if you use your freedom to love people, you will harvest a wonderful crop of fruit, what Paul calls “the fruit of the spirit,” which includes: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The choice is up to you.
We are free, but if we choose addictive or life-threatening behaviors, we lose our freedom. This week we cry out: Let freedom ring. Let it ring across our great land. Let it ring through the solid choices that we make. Amen.

© 2007

Not for publication.