(Please read this Scripture passage first, before the homily.)
When my older brothers and sisters were growing up, our parents were naïve. If they were leaving, they would say, “Good bye and don’t fight.” We found many ways of not fighting. When the two youngest came along, our parents had grown much wiser. When they were going out, they would say, “Good bye and share your things.” That did not leave much wiggle room: either we loved or we did not love.
Now the Law says, “Do not fight.” The Spirit, however, says, “Love one another.” The works of the law are immorality, jealousy, factions, envy, orgies and the like. The works of the Spirit much more expansive. Love, joy, peace, patience and the rest expand our personal universe to include everyone. It also can move our national conscience to embrace all nations and expand us into true greatness.
Paul argued strenuously in Galatians for the Galatians to go back to the freedom Paul had preached to them. That freedom would allow them live free of the restraints of the Law and enjoy the expansive freedom of serving God with joy.
Paul had seen that the Law was something like a school crossing guard whose job was to watch the child until the child could grow up maturely and be ready for adulthood. When that adulthood was achieved, the purpose of the Law was over and the person could live in the mature freedom of adulthood. The Law would say things, like “Don’t fight” and adulthood would say, “Love one another and share your things.”
The flesh, the human body gives us restraints. In my body, I can walk three miles in less than an hour. In my mind, I can run more than a thousand miles an hour. In my spirit I can go all over the universe, but in my body I am confined to the here and now.
The Galatians had to be scolded at times to give up the law in order to live in the freedom of grace and the Spirit. They would have no restraints when they would live according to the Spirit. When they were
living according to the flesh, according to the law, and in ways that were immature, then they had restraints. Sometimes, we are Galatians, both individually and as a group and we need to grow up in the Spirit of God, both individually and as a group.