Pentecost 6, June 26 2016
1 Kings 19:16B,19-21; Gal 5:1, 13-18; Luke 9:51-62
Brookdale

Today’s second reading from comes from St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians. In the letter, Paul tells the Christians of Galatia at some length that they are free. They don’t have to be circumcised; they don’t have to keep kosher—they can eat as much bacon as they want and still be good religious Jews. They don’t need to keep an eye on the rules.

But people can get the wrong idea about freedom. It’s easy to think that freedom means, “I can do whatever I want.” This leads to selfishness: “If it feels good, I should just do it. If I want it, I‘m entitled to take it.” Paul warns the Galatians that that kind of attitude just leads to conflict and destroys community. Without self-restraint, we end up devouring one another and the community dissolves in fighting and hatred. Everybody is hurt.

So where does self-restraint come from, if not from following the rules, which St. Paul has just told the Galatians they are free from? Well, of course, there are the ten commandments. But Paul doesn’t want to say that some rules are more important than others. If that were the case, then maybe some of the ten commandments would be more important than others. Instead of such legalistic arguments he cuts to the heart of the matter: You have to have the right spirit, which inspires us to truly love one another, which leads naturally to self-restraint.

This principle, by the way, comes from the Hebrew Scriptures. The book of Leviticus (Lev 19:18) tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves. But it’s a principle we tend to forget, in favor of rules. Have you noticed that Pope Francis doesn’t talk about rules and laws? For example, he didn’t give our Congress a rule about illegal immigration, but encouraged them to remember that the people who cross our borders illegally are human beings just like us. That’s the right spirit in which to solve a difficult problem.

Now when Paul says “spirit,” he is talking about the Holy Spirit, the spirit of God that can flood our souls with peace and inspire us to be kind to one another and encourage us in difficult times. But why does he talk about the opposition between flesh and spirit? Is the flesh really at war against the spirit? Consider this passage from today’s second reading:

“For the flesh has desires against the Spirit,
and the Spirit against the flesh;
these are opposed to each other.”

When we hear today’s second reading, we tend to equate the “flesh” with the body, and the “spirit” with the soul. To many Christians, St. Paul seems to be saying that the body and the soul are in conflict, almost at war. Is that what you heard in this passage? The history of Christianity is full of examples of people mortifying the flesh by means such as hair shirts, extreme fasting, and self-flagellation. People even went without bathing for years to avoid pampering the body—I’m really glad that practice has been abandoned!

But notice that Paul does not use the words “body” and “soul” in this passage. Instead he talks about “spirit” and “flesh.” When Paul says “flesh,” he is not talking about the body. Rather, he is talking about our human nature, about selfish human beings. The flesh in this sense does tend to be the natural enemy of the spirit: it keeps saying, “I want this; I deserve that. Why can’t I just do what I want? My wants are more important than yours.”

Body and soul—we grew up with this dichotomy. The distinction between body and soul was a characteristic of classic Greek thought, but Paul was a Jew, not a Greek. For him, the words “body” and “soul” represented two different ways to look at the whole person. “Body” refers to the person as a physical being. The word “soul” refers to the person as an emotional being, with fears and desires—what we would call the heart. But both refer to the whole person. Paul would never have said that he was a soul who had a body.

So the opposition between flesh and spirit is not between body and soul. It’s between us as selfish creatures and us as children of God, vivified by His own Spirit and inspired with genuine concern for one another. As Paul says, “Live by the spirit…. If you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law.” St. Augustine put it this way: “Love God, and do what you want.”