“Live By the Spirit”

A Sermon Based Upon Galatians 5: 13-26, NRSV

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin.  
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Pentecost 12, August 23^th, 2015

 

^“Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.

(Gal. 5:16 NRS)

 

Back in May, CBS THIS Morning news program introduced their audience to the wildly popular, NY Times best-selling new author, who goes by the pen name of Meredith Wild.  “Meredith” is a mom, who was once CEO of a small software company, who now stays at home to write her highly successful series of erotic romance “Hacker-series” novels about a billionaire software mogul named “Blake” who pursues the ‘object of his desire’, an internet entrepreneur named “Erica”. 

When they tried to read a few lines from her book on the morning news, you couldn’t make sense of what they were reading because of the “bleeps” that tried to hide the so called “soft-porn” language.  I think it rather ironic that her so-called ‘soft porn’ books have titles like “Hardwired”, “Hardpressed”, “Hardlined”, and now,  “Hard Limit”.  How do you get ‘soft’ out of that?

 We live in a world that is ‘dominated’ by powers that give into fleshly desires.   While this is not new, what is new is that there is less restraint, both publically and privately.  While the world has not quite gone to ‘anything goes’, you could call our current ‘laissez faire’ attitude to be ‘let’s allow it and see how well it goes for most people.’  What is now missing in our culture is any kind of agreed upon standard of religious restraint for our moral conscious.   It remains to be seen is how far we can go and how long we can survive without the “Christian” moral compass that has been our consensus and guide up until now.

 

WHAT THE FLESH DESIRES

While the world around us releases itself from religious restraints, “We must not ‘forget’ about the ‘menace’ of the flesh”,  wrote pastoral teacher, Maxie Dunnam.   Even when we yearn to be free ‘spirits’, even to free ourselves from ‘religious’ restraints that have become as negative for us, as some were in Jesus’ day,  we must remember that we still inhabit bodies of ‘flesh and blood’ and bones.   To inhabit physical bodies means that not only can they be damaged physically, but that they can also be damaged spiritually, emotionally, mentally, psychologically or socially. We live in a world where the ‘desires’ of the flesh still pull on us downward, will limit us, war against us, and can even overcome us, so that we can fail to reach our full promise and potential as human beings.   “Don’t forget about the ‘menace’ of the flesh”!

 

When I first read that word ‘menace’ my mind immediately turned to that famous TV show of the 1950’s “Dennis the Menace”.  You recall how “Dennis” was a ‘menace’ to his family because he was always getting into things, trying things, exploring things.  It is part of growing up, but Dennis was worse than most.  However, when the ‘joyride’ was over, every show finally came around and ended with some kind of moral teaching that Dennis needed to learned by having his ‘fleshly’ and ‘mischievous’ ways corrected.    The show was ‘fun’ to watch because it spoke to something that is true to all of us---the pull of passions, desires, and weaknesses of people who inhabit human flesh.

 

This reality of our human struggle with the flesh goes further back than the New Testament language that Paul expresses in this text.   The ancient Greeks wrote about it, and probably Paul gets some of his own cues from the culture around him.   Ancient Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and others wrote often about the potential ‘negatives’ of the physical world that needed to be overcome, conquered, controlled or disciplined, before a person could achieve moral and ethical excellence.   Socrates said that human actions need to be useful.  Plato said that the world of ‘ideas’ is more eternal than the world of temporary ‘matter’.  Aristotle took the teachings of Plato and Socrates and wrote about the need to live a life of “virtue” or character by balancing human reason with human desires.

 

So, when Paul wrote to the Galatians, “Do not gratify the desires of the flesh” (5:16b), his readers knew much about ‘the struggle’ human beings have to try and overcome the lower, negative, fleshly desires.   They knew about it and we still know about it.  When David Letterman recently retired from CBS’s Late Show, he spoke with Jane Pauley about his past addiction to Alcohol.  “If I hadn’t stopped drinking at age 34, I’d be dead.”  The struggle against our own ‘fleshly’ lower nature continues, whether it is admitted or not.   We see in the continual struggle with crude and rude language.  We see it in the presence of pornography where lines are continually pushed on ‘television’, online, or in print.  We even see our own struggle with the ‘flesh’ showing up at church, when people follow whims, fads, or give into the ‘fleshly’ allure of appearance, pretense or the glitter or gold.

 

I’ve spoken about an associate pastor the church where I was pastor was searching for.  We had discovered a very talented young man, who could preach well, was musical and had many of gifts for ministry.  The congregation liked him, especially some of the younger ladies, for he was handsome, energetic, and appealing.  While we allowing him to do some ‘intern’ and ‘interim’ work for us, some of us in leadership, saw some the ways he ‘used’ his talents, not just to ‘move’ people, but also to ‘manipulate.  By doing our homework, we discovered that he had been run out of another town because of having an affair with a church member’s wife.  It was then that we had to make the ‘unpopular’ decision to release him from ‘consideration’ for our position, because he was living and leading by ‘gratifying the desires of the flesh’.

 

We must realize that Paul is not writing this letter to non-Christians, who have not been “converted” or ‘transformed’ by the Spirit, but he was writing to Christians, who were still being ‘converted” and still being urged to be ‘transformed’ by ‘the renewing of their minds by the Spirit.  In the New Testament, the conversion experience is not a one-time event, but it is an ongoing process, which continues as people are ‘being led by’ God’s Spirit.  In other words, no one has ‘arrived’ as long as we still inhabit this body of ‘flesh and blood’ and bones.

 

So that no one will be confused about what it means to be pulled ‘downward’ toward their lower nature,  Paul makes a list of some of the end results of those living ‘unopposed’ to their lower nature.   He even says these are ‘obvious’ and need no argument.  By this he means that no one ‘in their right mind’ would want to live this way.  He even goes on warn that if you give into these lower ways that you will remain subject to the law and you will live a lesser life and remain outside of sphere of God’s rule.   These ‘fleshly’ ways included sexual, spiritual, religious, emotional, relational, and social taboos and impurities.  Again they ought to be ‘obvious’ to us,  and no one in their right mind should live this way, but what happens when a culture ‘loses’ it’s right mind starts to call even these ‘impurities’ or taboos ‘the new normal’?  How can we continue to see Paul’s clear warning about the lower desires in a world of ‘blurred lines’?   Can people still rise above the culture to be ‘led’ by the Spirit when the norm has become to ‘gratify’ or ‘give into’ the lust of the flesh? 

 

THE FRUIT THE SPIRIT GROWS

Before we can learn ‘not gratify the desires of the flesh’ we need to distinguish that Paul is not saying we that we deny ourselves of what we need.  For Paul it is not the human body (soma) that is the problem, but it is ‘flesh’ (sarx) that is the problem.  Living in the ‘flesh’ mean living the kind of life that only lives to ‘gratify the desires of the flesh’.   To fail to understand this difference has led to all kinds of weird, mistaken religious and secular attempts to overcome the lower, lesser elements of human nature.  Some have even attempted to ‘punishing’ the flesh by inflicting pain so that even it becomes ‘strangely’ pleasurable because the physical pain feels easier than the emotional.  This kind of sadistic perversion corrupts Paul’s intended point.   The point is not the ‘punishment’ of the flesh, or to refuse all ‘gratification’ of the flesh, but the point is the right way to ‘gratify the flesh’ which, balances human reason and desires (Aristotle) by being led by the right Spirit (Paul). 

 

Paul’s approach to controlling lower ‘fleshly desires’  assumes that one can’t control the flesh by simply ‘denying’ it, but one can only control the lower desires of the flesh by ‘growing’ a new kind of ‘fruit’ which is more appetizing because it has become the become the heart’s stronger desire.  Just like you don’t take candy from a baby, you must give them a carrot instead, you also can’t help someone by simply taking something away, but you must teach that person to experience and to like what is more lasting and what is potentially more pleasurable.  You must help them to be gratified by what also satisfies, not only the flesh, but satisfies the whole person who is not only a body, but who is also has a mind, and is a soul who has a spirit.   Paul goes on to show us that the soul’s complete satisfaction is something only ‘love’ can do.

 

When you read on, as Paul unveils his list of ‘spiritual’ virtues as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness…. and so forth  you must notice that they all unfold out of the single, foremost virtue, which is love.   The “Fruit of the Spirit” is really singular and all the greatest, most satisfying values and virtues every human needs, grows out of a context and a commitment to love.  Only ‘love’ can help a person overcome ‘the lust of the flesh’.  For only when you know unconditional love,  are you filled with a satisfaction of love that no ‘lust’ can ever mimic or multiply.   In other words, as the chorus of a Billy Preston song once demanded, “Nothin from nothin means Nothin!  You gotta have something, if you want to be with me.”   His point was that life means more than fulfilling lesser desires, but it means fulfilling the best desires,  which at that time he meant doing something ‘compassionate’ with your life. (http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/b/billy_preston/nothing_from_nothing.html).

 

Besides teaching us that we must ‘replace’ the lesser behaviors with the better behaviors, the other thing Paul teaches about being ‘led by the Spirit’’ is that ‘spiritual’ fruit is a ‘taste’ that grows on you when you starting growing and feeding on it in your own life.  Being patient, kind, generous, gentle, or faithful, is not automatic.  Just like you don’t always immediately like the foods that are best for you, you can acquire a taste and a desire for them, but you have sometimes have to find a ‘motive’ to take the first bite and you have to keep feeding on most nourishing things.    But how do we do this?  How do we take the ‘leap of faith’ we need to overcome our lesser, lower desires that can be so destructive and eventually debilitating?

 

BELONGING TO CHRIST

Paul suggests how this new kind of ‘high-life’ commences and continues, when he says that ‘those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires’ (v.24).   Someone looking to stay in their destructive patterns will immediately gravitate toward the negative implications of Paul’s language.  Why would someone use to ‘gratifying’ their flesh want to ‘crucify’ their flesh?  Do you not see the ridiculous, if not absurd ‘impossibility’ of this demand?  Who would want ‘die’ to anything that is fun, pleasurable, and full of excitement for oneself?  Who would want to inflict upon themselves the difficulty of being ‘patience’, be ‘kind’, ‘generous’ or ‘faithful’ ?   Why would you seek a deeper joy, or desire a peace’ that promises more from love than with hate?  

 

Few take the risk, unless they find a ‘love’ that ‘lifts’ them beyond themselves.   When you finally know that ‘you are not alone’ or that life ‘is not just about you’ so that there is someone to live or a hope to die for, will you be able to ‘crucify’  the lesser desires you have now, for the ‘higher’ ones.   The key to everything Paul hopes for the Galatians, and for what Jesus died for, is that we too might gain this greater sense of ‘belonging’—to each other, and to God.    

 

In one of the first social studies of this century entitled “Bowling Alone”, Harvard scholar Robert Putnam, tells about two guys who just happened to be in a Michigan bowling league together, who are most unlike each other; one old, one young, and one black and one white, one in one profession, and the other in a very different.  They were not alike at all, except that they ‘belong’ to a same group of people who ‘bowled together’ in a league.  When the young white man realizes the older man needs a kidney, he steps forward and finds he is a perfect match.  The younger man of 33 tells the older 63 year old, “I really like you and I wouldn’t hesitate to do this all over again.”  

The older man responds, “Well, Andy, I cared about you before, but now I’m really rooting for you!”  (From E.L. Greene, www.boiseuu.org/sermons/april702bowlingalone.pdf).

 

Yogi Bera, the very articulate baseball great once said, “If you don’t go to people’s funerals, you can be sure that they won’t come to yours.”   We live in a world where the much of the culture is so ‘busy’ feeding its own desires, that is losing it sense of community and love.   As Robert Putnam has rightly suggested, a culture that only feeds its desire to ‘bowl alone’ will lose the healing, the wholeness, and sense of life and love that can only come from ‘belonging’. 

 

In her poem, Spiritual Literacy, Marge Piercy, writes that “…It starts when we say WE, and know WHO you mean, and each day you say it you mean one more…”   Is there any greater sense of ‘belonging’ than to belong to the source of love?   This Christ sent from a God who so loves,  calls us to be ‘led’ by the Spirit so we can learn to desire  the life we should desire, because he has given us the love we need most.   When you ‘live by the Spirit’,  you know that you never live or 'bowl' alone.   AMEN.