Today’s lesson from Galatians has
always been a lesson that tends to stand out when thinking of the most
important pieces of scripture in my faith journey. About 5 years ago, the lesson began to stand
out for another reason.
One of the most faithful lectors was
reading at the early service at All Saints’.
He was always sort of a bull in a china shop kind of reader, but he read
with passion. And let’s just say he
wasn’t boring to listen to. I liked
it. You never knew what he was going to
say next.
So he got to the list of vices that
we see in Galatians. He read, “Now the works
of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity…” He paused for a moment. I looked down at the text and saw the word
“licentiousness.” I waited with great
anticipation to see how he would handle this one.
I could see
the wheels turning in his head. And then
I saw a light bulb go off. He went back
to the starting line and started over on the list. He blurted out, “Now the works of the flesh
are obvious: fornication, impurity, and other bad things…” And like a kid in a china shop who just broke
the Nancy Regan place setting, he turned to me with a huge grin before
returning to the text.
And other bad things. Over the years I have come to appreciate this
interpretation as more than just a liturgical goof. Even if our spiritual vices don’t appear on
this list, we all know a little bit about those other bad things. Like St. Paul said elsewhere, we all know
what it is like to do the things we don’t want to do and not do the things we
want to do.
We are like
that person who goes to Wendy’s fully intending to order a salad from the
healthy menu. We drive up, roll down our
window, and the aroma of freshly cooked French fries wafts through our
window.
We are
seduced by the smell, rendered powerless, and order a number 2. And when the teller asks what size, we make
it a large size. What to drink? A diet soda because that will compensate for
the 1,000 calorie meal we just ordered!
The problem, for most of us, is that we are
well intentioned people who end up doing other bad things despite our best
efforts. And the temptation is to look
at these lists as a check list of things to do if you want to be a Christian. And it seems the harder we try to do the
things we want to do the more self-absorbed and obsessed with our righteousness
we become, and we end up simply living for ourselves—breeding the other bad
things.
Don King, our Verger—not the boxing
promoter, told an old Cherokee parable last Tuesday at our book study. It is called “Two Wolves.”
An old Cherokee chief was talking to his grandson about life. He told the boy, “There is a great battle
going on inside of me and it is between two wolves.” He said, “One wolf is anger and pride and
lies and self-indulgence and greed. The
other wolf is kind, gentle, disciplined, humble, and full of compassion.”
He said to the boy, “The same fight is going on inside of you—and
everybody else, too.” The boy thought
for a minute and his curiosity asked, “Which wolf will win?” The chief said, “The one you feed.”
The theologian inside of me wants to issue a warning and say that this
parable comes dangerously close to perpetuating the heresy of dualism—that is
the idea that evil and goodness are the products of two separate
creations. I.e. God is good and the
world is bad or we are good and they are bad or there is a good Jack and a bad
Jack. I’ll simply say this. In the beginning God made creation and all
that is in it and called it “very good.”
Okay, back to the Cherokee parable and how this parable can inform how
we are given the ability to exhibit all those good things instead of other bad
things...Obviously, we would all like to feed the good wolf inside of us and
let that wolf win. But based on
experience, feeding the good wolf isn’t as easy as it sounds.
We often treat St. Paul’s list of virtues like something we can just
pick up at the grocery store. But at the
grocery store we also have to go to the check-out line that is filled with
sugars and candies and tasteless magazines—we are overwhelmed by solutions that
look flashy on the outside but leave us empty on the inside.
Even more, trying to pick up the things we need at the grocery store is
like trying to carry around a greased watermelon. At first we can manage. But after a while, we start to lose our
grip. Until finally the watermelon
explodes at our feet at the check-out line.
And what is at the check-out line? We pick up the most convenient options instead.
When we run out of the kind of food the good wolf needs to survive, we
resort to the most convenient food—sugar and carbohydrates—the cheap stuff. We resort to the food that makes us bloated
and tired just a few hours after consumption.
We resort to quick fixes, to the stuff that fills us up quickly only to
leave us in a world of hurt a few hours later.
We resort to the kind of things that con us into believing we can
pretend the bad wolf inside of us doesn’t exist. It has been said, the greatest trick the
devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.
The truth of God tells us that the food that feeds the good wolf comes
from a source bigger than ourselves. Like Jamie tells Mary Katherine, we eat the
food that God gives us—fruits and vegetables and water and bacon. We eat the food that most grocery stores
don’t carry.
This is the food that cleanses us and restores us. This is the food that gives us a better
chance of survival in a world that is saturated with cheap solutions. This is the food that gives us the energy to
run with endurance patience the race that God has set before us—a journey
marked by kindness and mercy and discipline.
A life lived according to the
fruits of the Spirit is maintained not because of our own will—no matter how
good our intentions. Instead, a life that exhibits the fruits of the Spirit is
maintained because we return to worship the One whose life oozes with kindness
and compassion and gentleness and self-control.
We are maintained in the life of God by consuming food from God.
Our worship calls us to consume the life of God in Christ through his
Word and Sacrament. In worship, our
words are shaped by the Word. In
worship, our life is shaped by the life of Christ. At the Lord’s Table, we receive the body and
blood of Christ and are reminded that we are what we eat.
Our worship and our consumption of the life of Christ frees us from worrying
about whether or not we are living right for we no longer live for ourselves—we
live for God; we live for each other—we live for the One who was freed to live
for us. And when we live for God, we are
committing to a faith that believes Jesus is converting all those bad things
into good things.
St. Paul says, “For freedom Christ has set us free. 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.”
Like Paul says, our freedom in Christ is not a freedom to indulge in
all the other bad things and live any kind of life we want. In fact, this is no freedom at all. Instead, this kind of indulgence will make us
slaves to people and ideas and idols and solutions and agendas and cheap food
that will fail us every time—and if they don’t fail us they will certainly fail
those around us.
Instead, the kind of freedom that Paul is talking about is a freedom
that is found when we get outside of ourselves.
Paul is talking about a freedom that releases us from being over
infatuated with ourselves and our livelihood.
When we focus too much on ourselves and our own needs, we breed those
other bad things—idolatry, anger, dissention, jealousy, etc—we feed the bad
wolf.
At Rotary Club a few weeks ago Bill Gamble gave us one of his famous
truisms. He said, “the quickest way to
forget about your own problems is to help somebody else with theirs.” From day one on this earth, Jesus was flooded
with problems. But Jesus committed his
life to helping everyone else with their problems.
And Jesus’ solution had to do with leaving behind a world that is
obsessed with trying to fix the problem with the most convenient solutions and
leading us into a life that is done with temporary fixes. Jesus is taking us on a journey where the
other bad things become less and less tempting because Jesus is showing us a
God whose food will satisfy our hunger to the point where our cravings for the
bad stuff are converted into a passion and energy for a God who fills us and
creation with all good things. Amen.
