3rd Sunday after Pentecost

At a very basic, elemental level, all through our lives, we’re trying to answer just one basic question: What’s it all about?

And this isn’t just a matter for philosophers or theologians. It’s our common, human vocation. Every day, every experience and interaction is being added to the hopper of our mind:

What’s it all about?

What is this life we’re experiencing?

Who am I?

What’s my place in the grand scheme of things?

Who am I in relationship to other people?

To creation? To God?

And who is God? or what is God?

And tied to all this is the fundamental issue of our responsibility as humans on this planet: What am I supposed to be doing? What are we supposed to be doing? And at this level, what we’re talking about, is the whole issue of ethics and morality: What are the grounding principles by which we determine how to live in this world and with one another?

And this becomes very urgent when the conditions of our lives, of our world, are in tumult. Which is certainly true of our days.

Everything has been disrupted by COVID. And we still don’t know where this disease is headed and what it’s long-term effects will be on our bodies and on our society.

There’s the whole issue of gun ownership and gun violence and all the cultural energy radiating out of it: the fear, the outrage, and the determined priority of the second amendment.

There’s the January 6 Hearings and this extraordinary phenomena of how the nation has split around the person and character of Donald Trump and the broader questions of what that means and who we are and how we’re responding to the circumstances of our world.

There’s this whole tension around race and how racism is or is not integrated in the structures of our society. And just as an aside, (so for as I can tell,) the two “staining sins” in our nation’s history are: the Genocide of Native Americans and the subsequent policies affecting them and the institution of chattel slavery and its ongoing, unresolved legacy not only for African Americans, but all Americans.

There’s the emerging complexity of how we’re understanding human sexuality and gender identity and how this is liberating for some and threatening for others.

And then, of course, there’s climate change and its unprecedented threat to all living things.

And this week, there’s the overturning of Roe vs. Wade by the Supreme Court. For those who have sought for decades to secure an ideological majority on the court – for this reason specifically – this week is an absolute triumph. For others, it’s an outrage, not only for what it will mean to those whose lives will be affected by it, but for the acute anxiety it causes for what else may be overturned by this court.

All of these things, and more, are swirling around us. And in the midst of such trauma and fear, we’re trying to make sense of it all, to find meaning in this life, to know what our role is and what we’re supposed to do in the face of it all!

And it’s not easy. It’s really hard. And it’s confusing, and it’s taxing to our souls, this unrelenting struggle to know what is right and to do what is right in the face of such overwhelming brokenness.

This is our human burden which, I think, is the central issue of the Adam and Eve story at the beginning of the Bible. The crisis in that story was their decision to eat the fruit from the forbidden tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

The story begins with this idyllic, peaceable life. They haven’t eaten from that tree yet. So they’re completely unburdened by any awareness of what’s right or wrong. They have no responsibility to interpret the world around them through any kind of moral or ethical lens. There’s no sense of guilt or shame or anxiety for living with the consequences of having chosen wrong.

But then they do eat of it. And they do now know what’s right and wrong. And I think the underlying wisdom of this story is the awareness that (so far as we can tell) our human experience is uniquely framed by this elemental burden of moral agency, of – day after day – needing to determine what is right, especially in the face of our species’ obdurate refusal to abide by any shared sense of the common good.

Which brings us to the lesson we read earlier today from Paul’s letter to the Galatians. It’s a substantial scripture in the way it delineates the works of the flesh versus the fruits of the spirit. He lists what he means by the “works of the flesh: fornication, impurity, icentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing. On the surface, it can just sound like a list of prohibitions. And to be clear, Christians have often used it this way. It’s fostered a kind of prudish spirit that disapproves of most everything in the world. By calling it the “works of the flesh,” it’s fostered in Christian tradition this general dis-ease with the human body, that anything “fleshly” is bad or sinful (or apt to make us sin).

Which is totally contrary to the elemental value God places on every physical aspect of creation, especially the human body – to say nothing of Christ himself taking on human flesh and dignifying our very creatureliness.

So I’m sorry Paul used the term “flesh” and all the harm it has done. Because that does not seem – at all – the intention of the text. This long list of examples reveals to me a kind of life that is totally ungrounded – this kind of uncontrolled, impulsive, reactionary, unprincipled life. It’s a kind of “Frat boy” way of living in this world: impetuous and self-gratifying.

But then Paul contrasts it with, what he calls, “the Fruits of the Spirit.” These are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. And when you hear this list, our human spirit can immediately recognize them as wise, true, and desirable qualities of how to live.

As humans, looking for meaning in this life, as humans seeking to be like Jesus, scriptures like these can become a kind of reliable touch stone. We know them in our gut to be worthy, an anecdote of sorts, to that kind of out-of-control living.

And so, as we struggle to live with moral agency, in the face of so much trauma and chaos, this list might not tell us exactly what to do or what specifically to believe, but it does provide a clear picture of what matters and the spirit we want to foster within us as we do our work of trying to be like Jesus in this world.

I read recently, the example of a pediatric surgeon – whose work is long and serious and grueling. And he used Paul’s “Fruits of the Spirit” to write a litany he prays before surgery and during the breaks:

Grant me, O Lord, for your sake, through the work of your Holy Spirit, love for my patient, joy in participating in this work, peace as I follow your lead, patience in the trying times of this case, kindness to all in the room, goodness in this difficult task, faithfulness to have integrity in the details even when no one else but you sees, and self-control that my own sins of anger, anxiety, and vain-glory would not mar my judgment.

Then he prays for his patient by name, and heads into surgery.

I appreciate the very practical and literal way of incorporating these fruits of the spirit into the way he approaches his work.

But there’s also another way of incorporating these values into our thinking, or of being able to perceive them in the world around us. And that’s the whole role that art can play.

Whereas the doctor’s litany is a literal rending of the words, art provides symbols that speak to us in a different way. The power of a symbol, is that a single image can absorb a vast and complex range of feelings and meanings and values, far beyond the limitedness of words. And once those symbols are in us, we can recall them and experience this entire range and depth of meaning.

Knowing Bill’s art would surround us during this morning’s service, I spent time with it this week, reading the lectionary, and watching to see, does this art help me to understand the texts I’m reading? Does this art help me to integrate the texts I’m reading with the world I’m living in right now, and all its various woes?

And I found that it did.

It was his painting, “A New World,” that spoke to me.

The title itself spoke to me, this yearning for a new or better world, redeemed from the sorrow and violence that’s so pervasive in our world today.

I saw this vast field of brown that dominates the center of the painting. It became for me the literal threat of climate change – the heating up of the planet, the droughts. And also a figurative sense of the barrenness of spirit that so permeates our world.

And this figure at the top, left. It looks like a trumpet or speaker. And it became for me the amplified voices of fear and anxiety and outrage that surrounds us – this unrelenting voice that shouts at every venue. It feels like that first list in Paul’s letter – this spirit of uncontrolled reactivity.

And I saw that a similar form, with similar colors reappeared on the body of the figure who’s watching this whole scene. It is as if that blaring voice has punctured the person – done damage to her very body.

And then I saw this other circle, in the bottom, left. It looks like our planet earth, as seen from space. I remembered the testimony of an astronaut who said – having seen the earth from space – how it engendered a love in him for the entire earth, a kind of love that overcomes nationalism and tribalism and any sense of boundary between one another, that we are all one, in this one shared experience.

And this spoke to me of Paul’s fruits of the spirit. That, viewed from afar, we can still believe these fruits to be the eternal witness, the eternal values, that hold far more authority than the current crisis. They will remain. They are trustworthy. And they will fill the gaping wound within us.

And then I saw this little strip of green within the field of brown. A glimmer of hope. That even amidst the barrenness there remain oases. God is with us. And we with God. And all that is true will remain true forever. Amen.