For the Good of All

Galatians 5:26-6:10

July 8, 2019

William G. Carter

Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another. My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. For if those who are nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves. All must test their own work; then that work, rather than their neighbor’s work will become a cause for pride. For all must carry their own loads. Those who are taught the word must share in all good things with their teacher.

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time. So then whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.

It caught my attention because Paul says, “Bear one another’s burdens.” This is how you fulfill the law of Christ, the law of love: bear one another’s burdens. I can’t think of a better word for the church, the nation, the neighborhood, and for you and me.

It’s a quick admonition dropped into a couple of paragraphs of advice. This was Paul’s general plan for writing a letter: say hello, bless the people you’re addressing, lay out the truth of the Gospel, and give them advice. We hear some of that: restore the sinner with gentleness, avoid temptation, don’t inflate your opinion of yourself, carry your own load, don’t grow weary in doing what’s right, and especially work for the good of all.

In the thick of it all is an expression of mutual care: bear one another’s burdens.

It’s remarkable because it affirms everybody has a burden. No one is exempt. Oh, maybe they try and hide it, pretend in public that it’s no big deal. “Are you OK?” Oh, I buried my father, lost my job, haven’t heard from the kids, and I contracted Lyme’s disease…but I’ll be OK. This is church. I’m supposed to put on a good face in church, isn’t that right?

No, this is the church. In here, we are commanded to take care of one another, to model for the world what it means to love our neighbors. If it can’t happen in the family of faith, how will it ever happen in the world?

If you read the early history of the first Christian community, you discover how radical this was, especially in an empire that ran on power and domination. In the fourth chapter of the book of Acts, here is one of the first descriptions of what it means to belong to Christ:

The whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common...There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. (Acts 4:32, 34-35)

That’s a description of the church. "They were of one heart and one mind." Obviously they weren’t Presbyterians. Put three Presbyterians in the same room and you may have four or five opinions.

"No one claimed private ownership of any possessions. Everything they owned was held in common." Have you ever heard of such a thing? My little brother used to steal my socks. I said, “Put on your own socks. Those are mine.”

Then it says, "There was not a needy person among them." That’s the most astounding description of all. There are only two ways for a church to get described like that. The first is to be very selective in your membership. Never let in a needy person. The second is to take care of one another.

That early snapshot from Christian history embodies the advice Paul gives. Those Christians believed Jesus was alive and the world had changed. They gave up selfishness. They stopped putting people in categories. They refused to let wealth and poverty separate them into two different ghettoes. They ignored the world’s adjectives: male or female, Jew or Gentile, slave or free. They traded in their pronouns: “me” became “us,” “mine” became “ours.” What an incredible picture of what it looks like to love neighbor in the name of Jesus.

I try to imagine somebody in coffee hour, saying, "Listen, Stephen, I have a big house with four bedrooms, and there are only the two of us. You are married with seven kids, living in a two-room shack. That's not fair. Let me sell my house, give you the money, and you can buy something more suitable." Can you believe it? The Bible invites us to believe it: to bear one another’s burdens.

Now, I realize old Paul gets a bad rap from modern day people. But I have to say he has this right. His word about bearing burdens is right next to a line about not thinking too much of yourself. That’s exactly right. You can’t truly care for somebody else if you are preoccupied for yourself.

It’s the kind of lesson that Father Henri Nouwen said he had to learn over and over again. Before he taught at Harvard and Yale, he was teaching at Notre Dame. One day he was strolling across the Indiana campus with an older professor. And the man said,

"You know Henri, my whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted: I'd have a needy student, or an intrusive colleague, or the phone would ring, or I'd get a letter from the dean that needed a response. It never failed: I would get settled down to do some serious work of my own, and there would be an interruption. I've always complained about that, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work."[1]

It's true, isn't it? If we’re busy climbing the ladder to competence and greatness, we get interrupted. The kids want somebody to play ball. Our significant other needs a hug when you're busy doing something important. The phone rings when you're sitting down at the supper table - it's a friend who has a crisis; “Can you come right away?”  Well, it's supper time. One interruption after another.

If you stop to handle every interruption, you never get to your own agenda. Instead you spend a great deal of time and energy on people outside yourself... which, if you read the Gospels, sounds a lot like what Jesus did.

What if we really did care about one another at least as much as we care about ourselves?

Sometimes I wonder if Americans have confused freedom with independence. We have let counterfeits preach freedom when they really meant independence. It’s here in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. The freedom of the gospel has very little to do with independence, because independence means, “I don’t need you, I don’t need my parents, I don’t need my neighbors, I don’t need anybody. I don’t really even need God. I can handle life by myself.”

But true freedom means we are free from turning in upon ourselves. The grace of God sets us free from the imprisonment of our whims and our drive to get ahead. We are free to be there for one another. We are free to carry one another’s burdens, because all of us have a burden. 

I realize this is a wonderful ideal, even if it strikes us as quaint, old fashioned, or even strange. I recall a conversation that I had with an architect named Bill Jones before he moved out of town. I asked, “What is the most significant change in architecture that you’ve ever known?” He didn’t have to give it a minute’s thought. His answer: the elimination of the front porch and the addition of the backyard deck.

You know why he said that. We used to talk to neighbors when they walked by. Now we retreat out of sight to the barbeque grill. We don’t even know the names of our neighbors.

The Gospel calls us to a different way to live. It’s the way of living together. It requires the life-giving conversion of making room for others, even if they are different or you disagree.

Some of us experienced this a week ago in our memorial service for Ed Cole. That wily curmudgeon wrote his own eulogy – and then asked a lifelong political opponent to read it for all of us. It was pure Ed; he gave a couple of gentle elbows to his reader. What was so astonishing, so Christ-like, was that it modeled for us what it means to pursue the common good. There is something more important than winning or being right: it’s loving one another, bumps and all, finding common ground, and serving a great good.

In his final letter to the Scranton Times-Tribune, published a few days before his death, Ed reminded us of the words from President Kennedy, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” We’ve forgotten that advice, he said, or at least our leaders have forgotten it, if they ever knew it. 

So, he declared, “we need leaders who will work together across aisles and divide and do it for the benefit of all… That’s when all of us will prosper.”[2] Sounds like Ed was reading the last chapter of Galatians: “Let us work for the good of all.”

The Gospel gives us this kind of freedom, the freedom to become deeply human. It’s about being kind, but it’s so much more than being kind. It’s about growing into our baptisms in Christ, becoming the people Christ has claimed us to be. It’s about taking one another seriously, and pausing from our own agendas long enough to really listen to the person in front of you. Because he or she is carrying a burden – and so are you.

And the second greatest truth after the truth of Christ’s resurrection is the truth that we’re in this life together. It’s just as Henri Nouwen said somewhere, “The opposite of compassion is competition.” We can’t really care for one another if we are dead-set on nosing ahead of everybody else. But if have the clear and abiding sense that “I cannot truly flourish unless I help you to flourish,” maybe, just maybe we will get through the dark.

For in the end, the best evidence of our Christian faith is our ability to love for one another. To make ourselves available to those in need. To empty our pockets for other people's children. To welcome as family those to whom we are not related. In the words of Paul, “to work for the good of all.”

In the early days of the church, a wise Christian preacher announced the implications of our faith in this way:

We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death . . . We know love by this - that he laid down his life for us - and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God's love abide in anybody who has the world's good and sees a brother and sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. (1 John 3:14, 16-18)

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved

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[1] Henri J. M. Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life (New York: Image Books, 1986) 52.

[2] Edward Cole, “Healing Needed,” The Scranton Times-Tribune, 20 May 2019.