The Grace of Gardening ~ Galatians 5:16-26

I don’t have a lot of fancy words today, miraculous insights, or inspiring stories in this sermon. But, I do have a lot of hope – a realistic yet unshakable gospel belief that we can, by the power of the Spirit, experience transformation and God’s kingdom in this life. That’s the message today – that you can be the Spirit-gift God made you to be for the world. The true test of Christianity, if not every religion, rests upon two unshakable features. 1) We must be able to tell the whole truth about ourselves – be honest, realistic and authentic, about the human condition. Any version of Christianity that doesn’t help you tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, is not worth practicing. 2) We must be able to be transformed, to become more of what we were made to be and experience that freedom in this life. I’m not saying that all of that can happen or will happen all at once but if your beliefs are only skin deep, if they don’t tug you into new ways of living, if they don’t often bear sweet fruit worth eating and sharing then, once again, you should ditch those beliefs. So with those two elements in our head and hearts. Let’s begin. 

You must grow but YOU don’t grow anything., vss. 16-18

 
Paul’s charge to “live by the Spirit” is not simply nice spiritual talk but the deep recognition that we need to unselfed and decentered. It’s the reality that the only true starting point of transformation is the experience of our own powerlessness. If it is grace alone that saves us then spirituality can’t be done by gritting our teeth harder, flogging ourselves more, or beating ourselves up. In fact the “flesh” or ego or self loves any option that has us either cannibalizing ourselves or imagining that we are the greatest (in both the self remains the center). Importantly, Paul will offer no techniques for our transformation and emphasize this well in another letter to the Church at Colossae where he is also discussing the freedom we are to have as believers. He calls believers not to submit to rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!” These rules . . . are based on human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have a show of wisdom in will-worship . . .” (Col. 2:20-23) The term “will-worship” is from the compound Greek word ethelothreskeia, which has two roots, ethelo, “to will,” and threskeia, which has to do with “religious worship.” It is such “will-worship” that might be the biggest hindrance to the spiritual life that the Spirit seeks to save us from. If the engine of our transformation is about our “wills” we will always turn Christianity into a “worthy” contest and a devout belief that “the one with the most willpower wins.”
No, to live by the Spirit or be “led by the Spirit” is the gracious surrender that happens when we say to God, “I need help. I can’t do it on my own. You are the source of my very being and the engine of my transformation.” It’s waking up every morning with the simple, honest declaration: “I am frail and fragile. All who I meet today are frail and fragile.” It’s the humble recognition that a gardener does not actually grow plants. A gardener practices certain gardening skills that cultivate growth that is beyond their direct control. And so being led by the Spirit is not a technique, but a skill of graciously placing one’s self every day into the hands of God so that God can grow God’s fruit in our lives.
This is Jesus’ point found in Mark 4:26-28: “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. 28 All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head.”
The moral life is the fruit of a life transformed by the grace of God through the Holy Spirit. We are being saved by the indwelling energies of divine Grace from sin, from our attachments and addictions to death-dealing and other-harming ways.
So when we see an abundance of poison fruit growing in our lives, we have to ask ourselves how or why we are resisting that grace. We examine ourselves by the fruit that grows and this indicates which kingdom we’ve planted ourselves in. And that leads me to my second point. 

The Kingdom is present fruit-bearing in the broken., vss. 19-23

 
There has developed in Evangelicalism a dangerous notion that salvation is only about when we die determined by a decision that we supposedly make only once. We have falsely understood the “inheritance” that Paul speaks of as solely personal salvation occurring at our death rather than at the death of Jesus and his resurrection. This has made us fashion more of a fire-insurance spirituality that cares only about our end rather than a fruit-bearing one that cares about our lives in the present.
“Inheriting the kingdom” here is not first of all about whether I will go to heaven when I die. The question is which kingdom I am participating in and experiencing through my surrender to Christ or defiance to him (c.f. 1 Cor. 4:20). So how should we read the “acts of the flesh” in vss. 19-21?
Watch what Paul is up to here. He’s talking to Christians. He does the same thing in Romans 1-2, by the way. He starts with outrageous pagan activities that initially hook them into their self-righteous judgments. Naming things such as sexual exploitation like prostitution [porneia], idol-worship, sorcery . . . Yeah, Paul! Get those supposedly sudisgusting pagans with their hideous practices like murder and orgies.
But then look what he squeezes into the middle of his list of kingdom-denying stuff: hostility, jealousy, angry outbursts, rivalry, dissension and factions. Who’s he talking about? He’s nailing the Galatian Christians! And he’s saying, “If we’re going to talk about bad fruit, let’s look at ourselves first, let’s salt ourselves with fire, because if we don’t, we’re really not living in, entering or experiencing the kingdom of love, joy, peace, etc. The fruit of the Spirit IS the kingdom. But we will only cultivate it when we are painfully aware of our shortcomings and pray, “Lord have mercy, return us to the soil in which we were meant to live.”
In the end, rather than appealing to some binary vision of virtues – good or bad, evil or godly, right or wrong, Paul seems to want us to acknowledge a deep awareness that as kingdom people we are both. We are, in the words of Martin Luther, simul justus et peccator [simultaneously sinner and saint or justified and sinful]; that’s how we know we are experiencing kingdom. We don’t always bear the fruit we should but we always tell the truth about it. 

You are the plant and you are the fertilizer., vss. 24-26.

 
Paul has been telling us that you cannot grow yourself. You cannot will yourself one-inch higher, one-fruit bigger, one-leaf brighter. The only way for this plant to grow truly – as it was designed – as Jesus showed us – is for us to surrender to the Spirit and die. We need a power greater than ourselves to restore us to sanity. We are not self-propelled, will-worshipers, but Spirit-grown and transformed through the deathly recognition that we are fragile human beings, sinners and saints, grace-infused trees bearing the fruit of God through Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit. Now – all of that is difficult – at times excruciating – there is a reason and it’s more than metaphor that Paul refers to this process as “crucifixion.” But Paul is not calling us to more work but to death. And from that death, from that decentering, from that deep recognition that we are, all of us, God’s house plants, God’s orchard, God’s vineyard, we actually thrive. We fertilize our spirituality when we die to the notion that anything spiritual is ever earned.
The way to die – is to pray. Prayer is not primarily saying words or thinking thoughts. It is, rather, a deep, grace-filled awareness that God doesn’t know how to be absent and is everywhere and at all times wooing us with love regardless of what we do. And the longstanding way to experience that love is through some form of contemplative prayer practice – silently consenting to the presence and action of a God who is as close as our breath. A regular practice of silent prayer is the only thing that will kill your short-sighted will-worship, your self-serving ego, your self centered desires, and self-attached anxieties. The origin of contemplate (see the word “temple”; the word literally means to be together (with the Holy in marked out, sacred space) is to recognize that we are the sacred ground in which God inhabits, graciously, lovingly. Seen from this angle – everyone you meet was built to be a church in which God reigns, everywhere you go you have access, you carry God’s Spirit within. You are sacred space.
The ego will always love work more than death. That’s not to say that we aren’t called to pursue holy things in our world. Through activism we confront toxicity in our world; through contemplation we confront it in ourselves.  And we will never be able to pursue the change of the world without a change in ourselves.
Contemplation is what Simone Weil describes as a form of attention, paying attention to something that’s not us. This form of attention can be learning to be present to God or learning to be present to our suffering neighbor without trying to turn them into ourselves in some way.  This is a gift from the Holy Spirit and a spirituality that unravels all our work so that we might become the fruit of God to a hungry world. When you recognize that – you are sacred space that God inhabits, where God’s kingdom resides, and where God is at work growing fruit – graciously, lovingly – your self will not be able to remain in the center. When you discover and contemplate that that is who you are and how you are loved – the self will graciously, lovingly, die.

Reading the Bible Gospely: How to Read Scripture like Jesus and Paul ~ Galatians 4:21-31

 

 

 I will apologize first. [Start singing “This is the Song that Doesn’t End” and invite people to join you.] Who remembers Lamb Chop and Shari Lewis? This clever song is a one verse wonder that once you start singing has no discernible end. It simply and naturally repeats. By now you’re realizing that the Apostle Paul is much the same way. Paul is both creating an argument and addressing critics which has him rhetorically building a number of arguments that continue to make the same point. Like a spiral staircase, they repeatedly swirl in the same direction in order to reintroduce the same point over and over again – God has graciously redeemed us through the faithfulness of Jesus, nothing else is required. This is the song that doesn’t end. I’d like to explore Paul’s song once again as he talks about our Father Abraham, how to read the Bible gospely, and what we need to get rid of. 

1.    Redemption is on Repeat - You gotta laugh.
Paul’s rivals were teaching the Galatians that to become descendants of Abraham, they had to both follow Jesus and be circumcised. In response, Paul taught that they became so through the faithfulness of Jesus. We’ve heard now, on repeat, that salvation is the activity of God and that it is God’s promise alone that gives birth to what God wants. And to ensure that we get that – Paul tells us that God loves to make big promises to barren realities. The Apostle Paul is telling the ancient love-triangle-story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar and God’s promise to bless all the nations through Abraham (Gensis 16-18, 21; cf. Genesis 12).
The issue is not that Ishmael was bad, he was even circumcised and also “blessed by God,” but that he could not be allowed to inherit and so reduce the inheritance to the child whom God had promised, Isaac. Ishmael was a blessed child but Isaac was a miracle. I also can’t help but remind you that Isaac, the free-child’s name, means “He laughs.” Think about the power of that for a moment. That’s your nickname too. You don’t have to earn God’s love, aren’t commanded to do something that would allow God to love you. No, God birthed you, Paul says, just like Isaac through God’s own initiative and promise. Take that with you during your week. “He or She laughs” is God’s pet name for you. Your destiny was not born not by any human decision, “according to the flesh,” but by extraordinary divine agency. God has done for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

2.    The gospel is a story that is “baked” into the Bible.
Jesus, the Apostle Paul, and most of the early church, thought the Bible was like a King’s cake. King’s cakes are a big deal in French homes. It’s a phylo-dough cake made during the season of Epiphany, after Christmas and before Lent, which celebrates the arrival of the Magi at the home of Mary and Joseph. The tradition is that a small ceramic figurine of the baby Jesus is baked into the cake and that the one who finds the figurine in their piece is the King or Queen of the party. For Paul, Jesus and the story of the gospel is the story the Old Testament wishes to tell. That’s what he means by reading “allegorically” or, perhaps, I might say, “gospely.”
But don’t confuse law and Gospel with Old Testament and New Testament. Paul is presenting the gospel solely from the Old Testament and learned this way of reading from Jesus himself. Rather than drill down into Paul’s reading of the Sarah / Hagar story I would love to spend some time on this point. I’ve preached about this before and here are a couple of practical take aways for those who wish to read the Old Testament as Jesus intended.
First, read it well. Gal. 4:22, 24, 27, 30. Paul quotes multiple Old Testament texts freely because he knows these texts. In the four Gospels, a constant indictment against the Pharisees in theological debates was Jesus’ astonished question: “Have you not read . . ?” So, Jesus and Paul both read and knew the Old Testament well. They loved it, revered it, and studied it, carefully. Don’t hide from it; not even from books that might seem scary or from stories that might not seem pertinent. Jesus loved to quote the book of Leviticus as “good news” and even made one of its verses: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:34) one of the quintessential elements of his movement. To read it well, in other words, is to read it carefully, thoughtfully, paying attention to the words, consulting different translations, asking questions of context and genre, and reading them alongside trusted partners of the past as well as the present.
But just reading it – isn’t enough. There are plenty of things the Old Testament commands that we should no longer do, plenty of positions that we must no longer take. And we must acknowledge that in terms of technical reading – what we might even call a “literal” reading - Paul’s opponents have the clearest Biblical position. Circumcision and following the law were required to be a part of the people of God.
Second, read it gospely – which is what Paul means in vs. 24 to read the story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar “allegorically.” We must read it seriously as that which bows itself and prefigures the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection for our salvation. It means asking, How might this passage prefigure or point to God’s climactic story of salvation through Jesus? How does this passage anticipate Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection? Jesus himself will read the Bible this way as a story about his life, death, and resurrection. In Matthew, for example, he will speak about the story of Jonah beyond its literal meaning to refer to himself. He will allegorize Jonah’s time in the whale to prefigure his death. (Matthew 12:38-41). In John 5:39-40, he will state: You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” In Luke, Jesus will use an Emmaus-way hermeneutic and use “all the Scriptures” to explain what happened on the cross. “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” (Luke 24:27). This is what Paul is doing when he reads the Abraham story in light of Jesus. He is reading it like Jesus as that which points to Jesus’s salvific work.
Third, read it with Christlike love. Read it seriously as that which bows itself to the life of Jesus and becoming like him. A moral reading of love asks, “How can I read this passage to encourage my growth as a follower of Jesus? How can I read the Old Testament as that which helps me love God and neighbor? Again, we need only look to Jesus for this hermeneutic. “All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. ~ Matthew 22:40. The Apostle Paul will make the same argument in Galatians: 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ~ Galatians 5:14 (see also Romans 13:8-10).

Augustine will echo such a position stating that literal readings of the law were what kept him from becoming a Christian until the great preacher Ambrose taught him that all of the law bowed to a gospel reading of love. What if we held as our most important reading strategy of the Bible not our own fulfillment, our own growth but love of neighbor? Augustine, in On Christian Doctrine, set forth a vision of how to interpret the Bible. He argues that the building up of love – love of God and love of one’s neighbor is the end or purpose of the Bible. 

I understand that saying “love” is our interpretive lens doesn’t settle the argument but it certainly should frame it. Love fulfills the law and people must be loved. Reading it towards forgiveness and enemy love is the proper way to read it.  

3.    Get rid of what?
The Apostle is trying to speak to a serious issue that culturally, socially, as well as theologically is placing the Galatians back into a spirituality that is enslaving. It’s easy to read his quoting of Sarah’s words in Genesis 21:10 as a fiery command to expel the false teachers who supposedly represent Hagar’s children. In fact, a few commentators read it in precisely that way. And I would like to argue against that on two grounds. First, the Apostle has already argued that he is not setting up this allegory to reflect the choices of people per se but two covenants (v. 24). The expelling then refers to the idea of an enslaving spirituality that commands that people follow Old Testament laws plus Jesus. Such a position was akin to allowing someone to talk you out of your inheritance by stating that you weren’t truly an heir. Paul is not so much advancing a “get the hell out of here approach” but speaking to a serious issue of a teaching that will only lead to hurt and harm. So it’s not a “who” but a “what”, not a people, even though they’re being hurtful and divisive, but an idea that is harming. The church is at its worst when it forgets to separate people from ideas. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t speak up when people are being harmed but always to remember that Jesus disarms enemies by challenging their positions and loving them into a different way of being. Expelling people may feel good but it doesn’t reflect the gospel of Jesus Christ who forgives all his enemies from the cross.

I would also like to hearken back to another – two-son-story. I find it interesting that the way Paul introduces this story, “Abraham had two sons . . .” is reminiscent of Jesus’ most famous parable from Luke 15 about a man who “had two sons” (Luke 15:11ff.) In that we find two sons, one wayward and one legalistic who both encounter a gracious father who longs for their presence, their inclusion, a celebration for both. Our world right now can’t stand such a position. We must have winners and losers, haves and have nots. Both must not be blessed. And that takes me back to Hagar – the Egyptian slave – Paul’s anti-example, who after being driven out by Sarah, finds herself in the desert and near death. And who finds her but none other than the living God, the God of the Old Testament, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And this God promises to bless her child and care for as well. And she offers a name for this God – She says, “You are the God who sees me” (Genesis 1613). Friends, let’s follow that God, our Lord Jesus Christ, out into the world who offers the divine promise of salvation to all.