Sermon for June 29, 2025: What is Growing There Anyway? based upon Galatians 5:1, 13-26

Galatians 5:1, 13-26 New International Version
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It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh[a]; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever[c] you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

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    Tasha and I live on land filled with things we did not plant. Our home is the farmhouse on what had been a working farm for nearly a century and a half. We purchased after two other families aside from the original had had the opportunity to shape it into a more modern home. Part of living there for the last eleven years has been learning what has been planted before us. This includes fruit trees. They are mostly apple trees, some plants by the most recent previous owners, some in the woods that probably were planted for hog feed or for cider. There are also two pear trees. We lived in the house five years before we saw one pear. Out of eleven years total, we’ve had maybe 3 summers with any pears at all.

     I think one of the reasons that the apostle Paul’s work come to be understood as authoritative was that he preached and taught clearly, using metaphors that people understood from their everyday lives. When he wrote this letter to the churches in Galatia, he used two that would have been immediately comprehensible. He talked about slavery and he talked about fruit. I must note that Paul lived and worshipped among enslaved people and also enslavers. He could have done a world of good had he told the enslavers to free everyone. It is a shame that he didn’t. Perhaps his assumption that Jesus was coming back soon prevented him from seeing abolition as the moral imperative that it was because he thought people would be free soon. Regardless, it’s a gap in his theology that I wish were not there. 

     Back to his metaphors: questions of slavery vs freedom and what it means to grow a good harvest were real questions with real stakes to his first listeners. There were legitimate risks to their freedom. Or, they were dealing with the moral quandary of owning someone. If they farmed or relied on food farmed locally (not shipped in from halfway around the world as we often do), a late frost or an infestation of bugs or a drought meant hunger and the threat of starvation for many. Paul learned from his time as a Pharisee to take his faith seriously... life and death seriously... so he would use life and death kind of metaphor when he preached and taught about it.

     Paul understood the law to be more than just your ideas about your faith. He understood it to be the ways your faith shaped your actions in the world. Paul said that the central ethic of the law is that you shall love your neighbor as yourself. As we discussed last week, while Paul did not believe that Gentiles needed to adopt all Jewish rituals and practices born of interpretation of the law in order to fully follow Jesus, he did believe that they needed to follow the central ethic of the law. In fact, Paul found love to be so central to both following Jesus and to properly interpreting the law that he said that followers of Christ should be willing to understand themselves as being enslaved by their love of neighbor.

     For those who have never lived under the fear of being enslaved, I think this slavery metaphor doesn’t have quite the same punch as it did for the first hearers of Paul’s words. I have often wondered that for people who haven’t lived with the stories of very recent family’s enslavement or who live under the threat of enslavement themselves, this metaphor of freedom and slavery is harder to grasp. Slavery was almost never a choice people made for themselves, and in the rare occasions it was, it was a sign of the utmost desperation of the newly enslaved person. We can’t forget that every aspect of the enslaved lives were in someone else’s control. Even as some slaves might have had some privileges, like the influential Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 9, their freedom was always bent around someone else’s desires.

     I think that’s why Paul found the metaphor powerful. He wanted the ethic of love to have that level of power in a Christian’s life. Maybe slavery was the closest condition he could imagine that would approximate the level of control he believed that one’s faith should have in their life. He believed that people should behave as if they had zero options but love. As I have said before when preaching on this text, I am uncomfortable with an educated, free Roman citizen using this metaphor so easily. I actually think having the choice to love is far more theologically engaging being coerced into love.  

     I do think his reworking of the image of freedom offers some corrective to how he talks about slavery. He is very clear that God, through Jesus, is calling people to freedom. He needs, though, to make sure that people don't think that freedom that Jesus’ followers indulge in some kind of every-person-for-themselves lifestyle. The Freedom of Christ is not radical individuality. It is radical connectedness... a freedom for one another... a freedom that binds our futures to the well-being of our neighbors. This is where the metaphor of the fruit comes in. He believed that you can cultivate the behaviors that create freedom for one another. While I can’t hang with faith as slavery, I can be here for a conversation about faith as cultivation. The Spirit will show you a way to live bound to your siblings in Christ that is also free of the parts of the law that emphasized love of God and love of Neighbor.

     For Paul, Love becomes the law around which Christians organize their lives. Law becomes the defining feature of not only the individual's orientation towards God, but towards other people. Faith extends outward, into community, and is cultivated through love in relationship with other humans. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are what he calls the fruits of the Spirit, the products of faithful cultivation. Notice that each one of these aspects of love will help you build stronger relationships. One cannot be in genuine, healthy relationship with God, or anybody else for that matter, without these facets of love.

     My preaching professor, the Rev. Dr. Brad Braxton, wrote a book about Galatians. In it, he noted that all of the things Paul believed to be a danger to the fruits of the spirit (enmity, strife, jealousy, quarrels, dissention, envy, and anger, etc.) are forces that disrupt relationships. Even Idolatry is a kind of disruption, that is a disruption of one's relationship with God, the foundation of love that makes all other relationships possible. Dr. Braxton also pointed out that Paul didn’t think sin was just about the stuff an individual does and doesn’t do. It also about how you behave in community and how you cultivate relationships.  Love allows you to build communities that function in the ways God intends. Love allows you to turn your attention outwards, mirroring God's own attention to humanity through Christ. The paradox of faith as Paul describes it is that we are utterly free from the forces that can destroy us and completely bound to our neighbors and God.

     I have spoken several times of the tree in our neighbors’ yard that has five different kinds of apples grafted on to it. I really like the idea of a church being like a grafted tree growing a bunch of kinds of apples. Even though they started out separate, they have grown together, creating a stronger and healthier tree than before, a tree full of delicious and robust flavors. I also like that this kind of tree doesn’t just happen. It is an intentional product that can only exist because we make it happen. Church is like that. So is faith.
Beloveds, we are in a season where unloving actions are being richly rewarded. We are living in a season where love of neighbor is being dismantled by anti-immigrant hatred. In this particular season, we are being encouraged to abandon our transgender neighbors in hopes of security a little bit of safety for ourselves. Vengefulness and hoarding are the tools of the powerful and many Christians have succumbed to them. It is all the more important to love when loving out loud feels dangerous. We may be struggling like those two pear trees in mine and Tasha’s orchard, unsure if we can bring forth good fruit in a challenging season. Let us live in the hope that growth is possible and never forget that the Holy Spirit is tending these trees with us. It will take all the experience, hard work, and luck that we can muster, but I believe the harvest is not yet lost.

Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
​Fred Craddock, "The Softer Side of Pentecost" in The Cherry Log Sermons (Westminster John Knox Press, 2001)
Alicia Vargas https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2874
Sarah Henrichs: https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1684
Elisabeth Johnson: https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=612
​Brad Braxton, No Longer Slaves: Galatians and African American Experience, (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2002)