Galatians 5:1, 13-25
SERMON “Debauchery and Other Hobbies”
Back in the day, when I was still a Boy Scout, and later a Scout Leader, I wondered about the Scout Oath. I was personally comfortable doing my duty to God and my country. Well, at least I was back then. But I wondered about Scouts who did not believe in God.
Buddhist Scouts in Buddhist countries presumably had a different oath, one that maybe included the three jewels of Buddhism: the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha. But what about Buddhist Scouts in the United States? I mean, you could earn a religious medal for a variety of faiths, and Buddhism was one of them, so at least one Buddhist Scout must have existed in the U.S. How did that little fellow swear to do his duty to God and country when he didn’t believe in God?
I didn’t know about Tibetan Buddhism yet, where Bodhisattvas are a slap-dash paint job over ancient Bon gods, but the point still stands. Buddhists do not believe in God.
I would eventually have my own reckoning with that Scout Oath, for it ends with a promise to be morally straight, and straight was not exactly my specialty, even back then.
If the Boy Scouts of America assumes a particular and personified theism, the World Council of Churches assumes a particular credal system of belief. Not a complete set of dogma, no multi-page catechism, just the Nicene Creed. It is the default litmus test for Christian.
Somehow, the United Church of Christ got to stay in the World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches, even after we decided that creeds were not important. You will note that we do not ask you to affirm any creed, Nicene or otherwise, on Sunday morning at The Park Church. We rarely even mention our own United Church of Christ Affirmation of Faith, which does actually exist, and is pretty palatable.
To be fair, the Roman and Anglican traditions don’t recognize our clergy since we aren’t part of the fictional unbroken line of bishops that goes back to Peter. The Lutherans are willing to give us a pass on that. Though everyone is on board with baptisms, as long as they follow the Trinitarian formula.
Fundamentalists, who rarely care about creeds, dislike us because we pick-and-choose different passages than they pick and choose, so they don’t all consider us good Christians. And if you look at Fundamentalism for too long, you’ll quickly come to the conclusion that their religion is about sex and gender, who is getting lucky, who they are getting lucky with, and whether someone should be wearing that outfit and swimming in that division. Though to be fair, I sometimes wonder about people’s outfits too, not because of their gender, but because of their taste.
For Fundamentalists, gender is about power and sex must is about procreation, which aligns well with the white supremacist eugenics of Elon Musk and members of the Trump Administration. Except for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who seems hell bent on killing as many children as possible, regardless of race.
The problem, of course, is that most Fundamentalist churches, if you scratch the surface, look a lot like the Harper Valley P.T.A. That smash hit from 1968 was written by Tom T. Hall and performed by Jeannie C. Riley. A mother, chastised by the Junior High Parent Teacher Association for her loose lifestyle and short skirts, shows up at the next meeting and exposes the hypocrisy of the organization’s leaders, themselves a bunch of drunks and adulterers. Feels pretty biblical, since Jesus hangs out with sinners, and warns about judging other, lest you be judged yourself.
There are few scripted sitcoms on television anymore, but I am pretty certain that every family sitcom that makes it a full season will have at least one episode about a P.T.A., probably the annual school fair. The organization is notorious as a hotbed of gossip, scandal, and control freaks, right up there with churches and homeowners associations. If you know, you know, and if you don’t know, consider yourself to be lucky to be in this particular boat of sinners, for you have been blessed with healthy lay leadership.
Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, sets up a problematic binary between the spirit and the flesh, one that doesn’t really work for us, folks who see original blessing instead of original sin, see a world filled with creativity, not corruption. But Paul also offers a helpful list of virtues and vices in this passage. And while the wingnuts are worried that Harry Potter is going to teach their children sorcery, which is listed, and the rest are focused on all the sex, because sex, I’d like to call your attention to the boring parts.
Paul calls out enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, and envy, which is to say, Paul knows people and how we all too often treat one another.
All that justice, kindness, and humility I preach week after week is meaningless if we are a cesspool of ill will and division internally. Equally as bad is the tendency of congregations to tolerate awful behavior, sometimes because shrinking churches are anxious churches, and they cannot quite see that church bullies accelerate the decline, as people quietly vote with their feet.
Sometimes it is financial anxiety, the “I will take my money and leave” threats, a clear indication that someone never got the memo about our democratic process and the work of the Holy Spirit.
And sometimes the system has been broken for so long that people think fear and abuse are normal for a church.
Fear is not normal for a church. Not that it is all rainbow ponies. But a healthy church, like any healthy organization, shares a common purpose. There are core values that people understand. In the best of circumstances, members can clearly state the mission. There is a process for listening to one another, and people feel heard, even when they don’t get their way. Discernment and decision-making, while not always resulting in consensus, always leave room for the dignity of all participants.
Healthy organizational culture creates room for healing when the inevitable conflicts arise, when the community covenant is strained. One of the most misused of Christian Testament cliches is the phrase “where two or more are gathered in my name,” which is actually about church members calling the wayward companion back to covenant, back to their better selves. It is a passage about discipline and healthy boundaries.
I sometimes bristle at legalism in the church, something Jesus also despised. Parliamentary procedure, meant to be a clear and fair way to make decisions, is all too often used to bully and obstruct. And don’t even get me started on honesty, because that is supposed to be a given, and it is bad enough that people sometimes believe things that are untrue. All too often these days, anything is permissible, any lie is acceptable, as long as you win, the gospel according to Joseph Goebbels and Newt Gingrich.
Humility, that last part of Micah 6:8, seems to be the key. I might be wrong. You might know things I don’t know. And God is always experienced never known, never small enough for our boxes, never static enough to be captured on a page.
We listen to stories, stories of God, ancient stories and new stories, stories of folks not like us, stories of ministries that work, ministries that no longer work, tell our own stories. And if we lean into the good stories, we’ll learn those fruits of the Spirit that Paul names in this ancient text, still good today, needed more than ever, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”
The change we want to see begins at the local level, practicing community, mutuality, and accountability. That doesn’t mean we’ll always agree on the right thing. Heck, we might not even be sure what the right thing is. But with justice, kindness, and humility, we might yet save that P.T.A. in Harper Valley, that old growth forest in Alaska, and that addict who is sick and tired of being sick and tired. Amen.