Readings (Track 1)
Last week we heard Paul’s ringing “For freedom Christ has set us free!” and his Flesh/Spirit contrast. The flesh (our humanity curved in on itself) undercuts that freedom; God’s Spirit boosts it. This week he’s still working that Flesh/Spirit contrast. Two days ago we celebrated the 4th of July. So this sermon is mostly a conversation with Paul—in our early 21st century context.
“You reap whatever you sow.” It sounds like it’s already a proverb, which Paul wants to use to keep talking about Flesh and Spirit. Flesh vs. Spirit isn’t the material/immaterial contrast, as though the latter were intrinsically better. It’s not about escaping from the body. Recall the list of the works of the flesh we heard last week: many of the items have nothing to do with the body: “enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy.” Luther often talked about sin as being curved in on oneself, and I find that a helpful way of talking about Paul’s ‘flesh.’ Nothing wrong with flesh per se; the problems start when we treat it as the only reality. And Spirit: not any spirit, but the Spirit that brooded over the waters at creation, the Spirit that enlivened Ezekiel’s valley of bones, the Spirit that arrived at Pentecost.
“You reap whatever you sow.” Why does Paul think he needs to say that? If we think about our own experience, the upside to sowing to the flesh is that the reward is usually immediate. And that can deceive us into forgetting the downside. So, a warning. On the other hand, the downside of sowing to the Spirit is that the reward is often not immediate. It’s easy to “grow weary in doing what is right.” So, encouragement: “we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.”
And notice what follows: “So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.” As with Paul’s lists of the works of the Flesh and the fruit of the Spirit, the focus is communal, the sowing and reaping that happens in our common life. Paul’s particularly concerned about what happens in the “family of faith”—we might say “the parish.” But the same logic applies outside, and as there’s opportunity, Paul wants us to pay attention to that.
“The good of all.” Back in 2020 the sociologist Robert Putnam published The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again. Looking at economic, political, social, and cultural indicators, Putnam thinks we were getting “more equal, less contentious, more connected, and more conscious of shared values” in the period 1900-1960, and since then “less equal, more polarized, more fragmented, and more individualistic” (pp.285-86). The “How We Can Do It Again” part is necessarily short on detail: it’s a bottom-up process. Our attention to “the good of all” in and past parish boundaries can contribute to that badly-needed upswing.
“Let us work for the good of all.” Well, how? “I’m doing this for your good” is usually not reassuring. And here today’s Gospel provides one clue. Jesus gives the seventy impressive power, and pairs it with self-imposed weakness: “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals… Whatever house you enter… Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide… Do not move about from house to house.” The work demands not lording it over these towns, but entering into community with them.
Which brings us—recalling July 4th—to Paul’s “For freedom Christ has set us free.” What do we think freedom is about? The German theologian Moltmann observes that we tend to think of freedom in terms of what we can do or have, which is, he argues, to see freedom as a sort of lordship. “Everyone should be his or her own ruler, his or her own lord, his or her own slaveholder.… Each one sees the other as a competitor in the battle for power and ownership.” This sounds like what Paul was confronting among the Galatians: freedom as license to continue to compete with each other. The alternative? Freedom as community. “I am free and feel myself to be free when I am recognized and accepted by others and when I, for my part, recognize and accept others.…Then the other person is no longer a limitation of my freedom but the completion of it.”[1]
In case freedom as lordship vs community sounds like apples and oranges, the following might help. If I’m thinking of freedom to consume (“What can I get this week?”) lordship works. But if I ask: am I free to play the flute? To gain that freedom I’d need teachers, fellow students for encouragement, folk giving honest feedback… a community. Am I free to speak Japanese? Am I free to live as a human being?
Freedom as lordship or community: the alternatives align pretty closely with Paul’s lists of the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. They align pretty closely with Jesus’ instructions to the seventy.
Freedom as community invites us to recognize freedom across the status totem pole, as in, for example, our first reading. Consider the folk at the bottom of the totem pole.
First, the little maid, captured in a Syrian raid, and now serving Naaman’s wife. She could easily have kept the information about Elisha to herself, and taken a sort of joy in watching the commander waste away. She could have seen it as a sort of justice, or even as punishment from her God. She’s near the bottom of the totem pole, but she has choices, and she chooses to give Naaman the information that saves him.
Then, Naaman’s servants. Naaman’s response to Elisha’s non-appearance suggests that he had a short fuse, and his servants would have been the first to suffer from that. Never mind whether they thought Elisha’s instructions had any merit: they could have enjoyed watching their master stymied. They’re not much up the totem pole from the little maid, but they have choices, and they chose to deal gently and honorably with their master, to give his indignation an offramp, and he is saved.
Let’s try to pull this together. “For freedom Christ has set us free!” That Paul found it necessary to talk about the Flesh and the Spirit tells us that ‘freedom’ can be ambiguous, and I’ve used Moltmann’s freedom as lordship or community as a way of unpacking that. “Let us work for the good of all.” A necessary exhortation, whether in our parish life or two days out from July 4th. The examples of that servant girl and Naaman’s servants together with Jesus’ instructions remind us that this work isn’t about amassing as much power as possible to impose our solutions.
And, simply for the joy of it, let’s watch all this play out in the verses just after today’s first reading:
“Then [Naaman] returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, ‘Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel; please accept a present from your servant.’ But he said, ‘As the LORD lives, whom I serve, I will accept nothing!’ He urged him to accept, but he refused. Then Naaman said, ‘If not, please let two mule-loads of earth be given to your servant; for your servant will no longer offer burnt offering or sacrifice to any god except the LORD. But may the LORD pardon your servant on one count: when my master goes into the house of Rimmon to worship there, leaning on my arm, and I bow down in the house of Rimmon, when I do bow down in the house of Rimmon, may the LORD pardon your servant on this one count.’”
There are—one might argue—all sorts of things wrong in this request. Elijah and Elisha have spent pretty much their entire careers fighting against idolatry. But this is a foreigner, and Elisha lives in that freedom Paul celebrated. So Elisha says to Naaman: “Go in peace.”
[1] Humanity in God pp. 63-64.
With Jacob at Bethel 