Fruit of the Spirit
16 March 2007 - 27 אדר 5767 by Huw
Now the works of the flesh are manifest, and they are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, quarreling, rivalry, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envying, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like. About these things I tell you again, as I have also told you in times past, that those who do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
St Paul, in his Epistle to the Galatians, draws this list of opposites for us between the “works of the flesh” and the “fruit of the Spirit.” In doing so he uses two Greek words: πνευμα (pneu’ma) for spirit and σαρξ (sarx) for flesh. We are tempted, if we want to be dualists or Gnostics, to see Spirit and Flesh at war in this passage and elsewhere in the epistles. For St Paul, I think they were, many times, at war. We see the same theme again in Ephesians. St John, however, draws a very different picture of the flesh, noting that “The Word became σαρξ” (or, as it says in The Message, “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.”) This same sarx eats fish after the Resurrection. We’ve seen it with our eyes, touched it with our hands. It’s real.
Two very different views of flesh, I think, but also just different angles, not conflicting ones.
We can create the conflicts if we chose to. St Paul’s dynamic opposition, Our Lord’s radical redemption of sarx can invite us to pull apart the scripture into the camps we like vrs the camps we don’t like. We can quote our bullet points until we shoot each other to death.
Or not.
I had an interesting conversation with an ECUSA clergywoman on Sunday. She asked me how I felt about women clergy. My reply, “I’ve known ‘love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance’ in your ministry.” And that’s where I turn for all things suddenly. I’ve known women AND men in real life and on the internet who were ordained and showed no sign at all of those items. Love, peace and gentleness were the furthest things from their lives. But I would not then judge either women or men (as a group) invalidly ordained. Some women and some men lived forth the whole spiritual bouquet.
And when we use the same scales to weigh other things can we find, maybe, the same balance? Mindful that judgement for sin is in the first-person - of ME by God and not of YOU - might I find that some who might be considered “wrong” by Christians also show forth these fruit? That their σαρξ which produces so many sins is also capable (often at the same moment) of offering Divinely pneumatic gifts to the world?
I really am enjoying these reflections on the Scriptures. Perhaps in part because I see in these reflections as analogous of some of my own struggles.
How do we make sense of the tensions inherent in the Faith in the midst of Christians who want to obliterate all tension.
Oddly enough it is Orthodox thinkers like Schmemann, Meyendorff, Florovsky, and Hopko to whom I turn to as guides in living in the tension rather than reducing them( as well as the Philokalia). And there are a few Protestants, Braaten et al. but so few of us(Protestants) actually understand the tradition well enough to want to keep it as part of these tensions. I find impatience all around in my context.
So I hope you keep on with these reflections and if it means anything to hear this from a Protestant, there are Orthodox resources for seeing the faith in a less systemetized and closed fashion, in fact some would even say that the systemization is a coruption of true Orthodoxy. For what its worth.
Larry - thank you! I’m learning to love the tension… and, while that tends to be a really Orthodox thing it also tends to be a liberal Protestant thing. Increasingly I’m reminded of the “bridge” (at the ECUSA Parish in San Fran) that made it easy to go from Liberal Protestant to Eastern Orthodox… the parallels are more evident than many realise, although many in our current crop of converts (and I’ve been on that list for some time) want, basically, a liturgical fundamentalist church.
I did these meditation near daily (5-6 a week) for 2 years as an Episcopalian. It gave me a deep contact with the ECUSA Daily Office Lectionary. I had the same problems with grammar and editing then as I do now, however :-)
You know you’re point about it also being a liberal Protestant thing I had always assumed, but I have been beginning to wonder as more and more the liberal Protestantism I am in contact with seems to be wanting their own certainties and willing to thow out whatever doesn’t fit their agenda.
It’s like the people who gave me strength to resist fundamentalism as it took over a congregation I was a member of in college now want me to have the same unquestioning loyalty to their version of Christianity. I am no more free to question the liberal Christian theology and ideology of human sexuality or ordained women then I was to question inerrancy of the fundamentalists. To even say that maybe the Catholics or Orthodox in their own way are simply being consistent and not homophobic or patriarchal is not acceptable discource. So I am questioning my own quesitoning, and wondering where this all leads in the end.
Not to say that I am ready to abandon the ordination of Women etc. but it is shocking to me how all of a sudden( or at least that is how it feels) these things have taken on the aura of absolute truth.
This is especially confusing since that “bridge” you spoke of is pretty much how I found Orthodoxy, I read liberal Protestant theologians and they lead quite naturaly to Schmemann and Florvosky and others, or so it seemed to me at the time.
Exactly! I’m with you 1,100%
It has long been my argument that there are liberal fundamentalists, too. They make a church that is just as scary.
I can read with Schmemann and Olivier Clement… and they quite naturally seem to dance with the folks at St Gregory of Nyssa Church in SF. But not all of the folks there would be happy with that! SOme would. Meyendorf had meetings with one of the rectors of St Gregory and encouraged him to stay Episcopalian because that was where God was making contact *for him*. How odd that might sound to an Orthodox convert (like myself) who wants to keep everyone in boxes. That rector reminded me recently that some who claim the label of progressive or liberal want to, as you say, have their own certainties and toss everything else out. No more than conservative fundies, these guys don’t want to wrestle with Scripture, to enter into the Rabbinic debate that pervades the text. They just want to be handed some black and white rules and move on.
One of the interesting and hopeful things about ECUSA right now is that (at least in speaking - we’ll see about action as it happens) the new Presiding Bishop is insisting on a Communion that is big enough for both conservatives and liberals. This idea that “room for all” means “ALL OF US” is woefully missing from a good few versions of gospel on left and right. The conservative Anglican priest I spoke to last week seemed to want to lump into a pile all those who disagreed with her on homosexuality (she didn’t like it) and those who disagreed on women clergy (she supported it) so there was a *new* pile of exclusions coming out.
Now, is there room to sit at Jesus table for all of us? Yes, I’m sure of that. How does that work out in Church? I don’t know. We have several exclusive bodies in A’ville. I wish I could find one that was progressive enough to be inclusive of conservatives. I’ve joked with one of the local EM pastors (who is way more conservative than I’d expect a EM guy to be) that I may just have to start my own!