Freedom in Christ

July 5 (Galatians 5)

We are beginning a new worship series that explores letters written to the early
church. The early church was quite an interesting and diverse group. Those who heard
and believed the Gospel included men and women, those living as slaves and those living
as masters, religious Jews and pagan prostitutes, rich and poor. All these people gathered
because of a people who were living and speaking in a way that began to transform their
own lives. Some were asked to humble themselves in repentance and others were raised
up to new found dignity but all were called to this person Jesus who spoke of a Kingdom
which was coming and in fact was already being established on earth. Anyone, anyone,
regardless of their past or present with ears to hear and eyes to see was called from the
kingdom of their world to live in the growing Kingdom of God and many flocked to this
kingdom. So early believers such as Peter, James, Barnabas and Paul were thrust into
positions of leadership trying to navigate what it meant to live faithfully to this Kingdom
and to the lord of this Kingdom Jesus Christ. They struggled with a new outpouring of
the Holy Spirit that seemed to extend beyond their comfort zone at times. They
wondered how they could be both faithful to the revelations in scripture and sensitive to
God’s Spirit that often seemed to flow outside their understanding of these revelations.
God has clearly called us to be circumcised and eat meats that were approved by Moses’
law but now the Spirit seems to be reminding us that there is something more to
faithfulness than just following those practices. And so we have a significant portion of
the New Testament reflecting this period of transition where churches are wrestling with
what it means to worship as one body in the midst of diversity.
These letters were written to encourage and to discipline. They were written so
that God’s Kingdom might to continue to offer a faithful witness to the life of Christ and
to the pouring out of God’s Spirit. Our reading this morning is part of letter written to the
church Galatia which would consist of the eastern region of modern day Turkey. Paul’s
primary concern in this letter addresses how the church accepted the message of grace
through faith in Jesus but then began to follow others who came to the church and taught
that they also needed to be circumcised as the Jews were (and as Jesus was) and also to
follow particular religious practices and times in order to maintain or achieve their
salvation from God.
What Paul seems to be driving at in our passage this morning and in the book of
Galatians in general is what constitutes an authentic Christian spirituality, which means
of course simply asking what life in the Spirit is. Today spirituality has become a
notoriously difficult term to try and come to grips with. I recently took a class at
Waterloo Lutheran Seminary. The course was geared for working with children and
adolescents. The class was mixed with pastoral students, counseling students and social
work students. The course was not taught from an explicitly Christian context but from a
broad base of perspectives. I found this approach generally quite effective. One class,
however, the instructor thought it would be important to include what our understanding
of spirituality was and how it might affect the work we do with children and adolescents.
I wish I would have jotted down more of the responses but by the end of that time I was
feeling quite unsettled or disorientated. It seemed that spirituality meant just about

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anything that we wanted to ascribe some greater meaning, hope or value to. Spirituality
was simply a way of achieving a particular end.
Spirituality was just vague enough that it could fit well into our culture of choice and
taste. I was left wondering if spirituality was understood simply like a mild prescription
drug to help us through life.
There is often another view of spirituality that tends to be common among us. In
this view calling something or someone ‘spiritual’ creates an almost super-human aura of
ability or presence. Here the spiritual person is viewed as the unflinching mystic who can
remain calm in the face of any conflict or crisis. Or perhaps it is the visionary who works
tirelessly for dramatic change in the world. These individuals are lifted above and
beyond the realm of our daily lives.
In his book The Politics of Spirituality William Stringfellow tells the story of his
friend Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit and activist, who was heavily involved in the non-violent
protests of the Vietnam War. Berrigan was being pursued by the FBI for his civil
disobedience and hid out in Stringfellow’s home until he was finally apprehended. This
capture was heavily covered by the media and one news cast interviewed another Jesuit,
John McLaughlin, who was incidentally a candidate for the US senate. In the interview
McLaughlin created a division between those who would work within the system for
change and those who would work outside of the system. And then at the end of the
interview he is quoted as saying, “Of course you must remember that Dan is a poet.”
Stringfellow took great offence to this statement. He writes, “With that accusation, he
not only dismissed the Berrigan witness against the Vietnam War but also banished Dan
from the company of ordinary folk. Dan is different from other people: Dan is a poet:
Dan is eccentric: what applies to Dan does not have relevance or weight for other
persons. . . . [A]n ordinary human is excused from the claims of conscience which may
be thought to influence poets.” Stringfellow sees this distinction of ‘poet’ as how we also
view those famous individuals who we would call ‘spiritual’. Practically speaking we
separate these individuals from how we understand and live our own lives.
So we have on one hand a popularized, individualized account that allows
spirituality to simply be whatever will make life a little easier or more meaningful
according to our tastes. On the other hand we have those giants of history who seem to
have been granted otherworldly gifts and abilities to accomplish their goals. The first
view of spirituality leaves us unchanged because we in fact are the ones who have control
over what spirituality should mean to us. The other view also leaves us unchanged
because here spirituality is too grand, too significant in comparison to our routine and
practical lives. And yet in the midst of these views Paul calls out to each member of the
Galatian church, “It is for freedom that Christ has set you free.” And again later, “You
were called to be free.” Freedom for the Christian is freedom in the Spirit. Our
spirituality as Christians is concerned directly with freedom. For Paul this means
freedom from both the tyranny of our own whims and wishes and compulsions as well as
the commands of our culture or history or religion. So take a moment now and sit with
this phrase.
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.
Take another moment and a few deep breathes. Your life, if it is anything like mine or
the person beside you, is filled with competing claims and compulsions. You likely
know with detailed clarity the claims that you feel around your family, your spouse, your

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parents, your children. You know with clarity at least what you think is expected of you.
And perhaps even more clearly than these felt claims you know those places that you
think you are failing with respect to those claims. You feel the claims that are being
made on you as man or a woman, to be strong or beautiful or nurturing or protective.
You feel claims on yourself as a student or as someone with or without employment to be
productive or intelligent or submissive. And again you know full well all those places
that you feel you are coming up short. And then for many of us God hangs over all of
this. What on earth does God want from me in the midst of this? Yes God, I will try
harder. God I will do better next time. God, why is this happening . . . what am I doing
wrong? God, do you actually care what is happening here?
Then in our minds these claims clash and conflict and war with one another
pulling and pushing. And worse than this there are times when these claims do not
conflict at all but rather they gang up on you and together they push and push until they
create a master and you become enslaved to their expectations. And then there are times
we can admit, if we are honest, that life is in many ways easier if we can simply follow
the rules and expectations of someone else rather then to live in the freedom of the Spirit.
Living in the Spirit after all means putting all [I put that in italics here!!] of those
claims aside whether they come from within us or around us, whether they come from
good intentions or otherwise, whether at the moment we are profiting from them or being
hindered. In God’s Spirit these claims can have no more claim on us.
What can it mean then to have the Spirit’s freedom touch our lives? If our
spirituality is simply a reflection of our own or our culture’s changing whims and claims
or if it is something beyond our achievement then it is nothing. Then Christ will mean
nothing to us. What is the point of speaking about spirituality if there is no possibility
that we as a church and as individuals are called now, here in this place to be free, to be
growing in freedom that we read about in scripture? What is the point if Christ’s
message makes no difference in the world’s claims and demands that seem to rule us for
the other 167 hours of the week outside of Sunday morning? Why bother if there is not
something else that we can be living into?
In accord with of our scripture reading this morning Stringfellow says that
authentic Christian spirituality is the journey of trusting God with every aspect, every
single aspect of our lives. There is no specific goal large or small that you have to
achieve. There is no set of commands that you need to fulfill. There is only the daily,
hourly and momentary trusting that God is with you, that God loves you, that God is at
work healing you and making you whole to the glory of God and the peace of the world.
Rather than our spirituality being relative, diluted and marginalized our spirituality
becomes all encompassing, rigorous and penetrating. And as such it cannot remain only
for those we perceive as great men and women. Because it is all encompassing God’s
Spirit desires all people, all abilities, all gifts, talents, all weaknesses and faults.
The Spirit of God calls everything that has breath. In contrast to how we often
understand it Stringfellow calls biblical spirituality the most practical of all expressions
of life.
This morning the Gospel calls to you saying that there is no claim in this world
that can hold you enslaved that is greater than the Spirit and there is no excuse or fault
that denies you the chance to live freely in that Spirit. Know only this, as you follow
freedom in the Spirit you will be severing yourself from the claims and the temporary

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promises of the world. Life in the Spirit allows no claim to status and privilege by the
world’s standards. There is neither male nor female, rich nor poor, slave nor free, Jew
nor Gentile. Stringfellow says that “biblical spirituality means powerlessness, living
without embellishment or pretense, free to be faithful in the gospel, and free from anxiety
about effectiveness or similar illusions about success. . . . It means acting . . . in a manner
which confesses insistently, patiently, fearfully, joyously that Jesus Christ is the Lord and
the Lord already reigns.”
A recent speaker I heard who works extensively with churches in Canada and US
said that an active spirituality is, surprisingly or not, one of the most absent expressions
in the church of North America. It is no wonder if in indeed spirituality means the sort of
freedom that Jesus, Paul and even Stringfellow advocate. How you dressed and prepared
yourself this morning gives you no status in God’s Kingdom. Neither does what you
drove here in or the amount you put in the offering plate. Your intellect or abilities in
themselves will grant you no privileged position. This freedom comes to most of us at
least at first as jarring and risky. The spirituality of our Gospel says only this.
God loves you. Jesus Christ is that love. That love is freedom. The Holy Spirit will fill
you with that love so that your moments and your days will be marked by freedom from
the powers of death.
May this Spirit come and bear her fruit within and among us.
Amen.