How We Live Together
Text: Galatians 6:1-10
Pastor Phil Hughes, American Fork Presbyterian Church, UT
July 9, 2023
You are doing something that most people in this nation are not doing today. You are sitting in church. You are with other people in a community of faith.
A church is a community of faith and fewer people belong to communities of faith. There are many reasons for this. But as whole our society is less engaged in any type of community whether religious or otherwise. More and more people are doing life alone. And by the way, our culture is also seeing more loneliness. More people feel isolated. Some psychologists are calling it an epidemic.
In spite of feelings of isolation people are separating themselves from others. We think of others less, concern ourselves with others less, and just tend to our own selves. This is certainly true outside of churches, but it has crept into churches as well.
Individualism might be fast becoming an idol in our modern culture. The Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister wisely writes,
“Community is the only antidote we have to an individualism that is fast approaching the heights of the pathological and the sinful in this world.”[1]
One reason to live with others “is to enable us to be about something greater than ourselves. It is no small task in a world that tells us constantly that we ourselves are enough to be concerned about and that everything else will take care of itself.”[2]
The Christian faith is not lived alone. Jesus didn’t live it alone. He was part of a synagogue and he gathered a group of disciples to be and live with. The New Testament is about the church and how people live together by faith.
“A person all wrapped up in himself makes a very small package.”[3] Christian spirituality is about living with one another, in the good and the bad, in times of wholeness and times of strain. Those of you who have been in this church or other churches for a while know this.
No sooner does Paul write about walking and being led by the Spirit, and the fruit of the Spirit, than he begins to write some practical instructions about how the Galatians are to live together. And what he writes is for any church.
The pastor and Bible teacher John Stott noted that “the first and great evidence of our walking by the Spirit or being filled with the Spirit is not some private mystical experience of our own, but our practical relationships of love with other people.”[4]
Today many people think spirituality is sitting alone, in some quiet pose, detached from other people and any disruptive places. We all need times of quiet. We need peaceful places where we can seek God. But Scripture shows us that being spiritual has as much to do with how we treat and live with those around us as it does how we pray to God. Faith is lived in a community, the church. And sometimes that can be messy.
Churches are messy because they are full of broken people. I am one of them. You are one of them. We all have problems, stresses, struggles, histories, wounds. We all have weaknesses. We make mistakes. We have transgressions. We fall. As much as we can be loving and supportive, we can sometimes be harsh and tempermental. The pain we try to cover up seeps out of us.
Galatians is written to help these Christians see what it is to live in the freedom of grace. These instructions that Paul writes about in chapter six are about how people in churches live together led by the Spirit of Christ and live together in grace.
There are three main things I want to highlight in this passage. Three things that are vital for any community of faith as it lives together. 1. Restoration of those who have made mistakes. 2. Bearing the burdens of others. 3. Doing good.
Hear the grace in verse 1: Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted.
Just because we are Christians doesn’t mean we can’t slip up. And I think Paul has in mind here not those smaller, everyday sins but the larger sins that make eyebrows go up and are of a more serious nature.
Those people should be restored. This restoration should be done by those who live by the Spirit. Restoration of those who have failed is to be done by those of spiritual maturity, wisdom and have evidence of the fruit of the Spirit in their lives. And it is to be done not harshly but gently. Gentleness is one of the fruit of the Spirit that Paul lists.
The way of our society has become to jump on someone if they make a mistake. Post their transgression on social media. Someone says or does something wrong and people start shouting. Lots of pointing of fingers. A lot of self-righteousness.
The church of the Lord Jesus Christ is a place where we need to be able to say, “I’ve failed” and there will be people to gently help. We need healing not shame.
The word “restored” was a medical term in the Greek world for setting a broken or dislocated bone back in place. Mark uses the word in his gospel to refer to the disciples in their boats mending (restoring) their nets. There is a sense of putting back together, of repairing.
Big sins can blow huge holes in people’s lives, bringing pain, guilt and isolation. The church is to be a place of gentle restoration. Not just looking away, not excusing or rationalizing, but putting that person back together with others, and within him or herself, and certainly with God. And it is to be done with Spirit-led gentleness.
J.B. Phillips wrote a modern translation of the New Testament back in the sixties. Maybe some of you have this on your bookshelf. This is how he beautifully translated Galatians 6:1: “Even if a man should be detected in some sin…the spiritual ones among you should quietly set him back on the right path, not with any feeling of superiority but being yourselves on guard against temptation.”
Isn’t that what Jesus did with his own disciples? They all abandoned him. Peter denied him. Jesus restored them though they absolutely failed.
When we restore people we don’t place ourselves above them as if we are better. All of us have our weaknesses and temptations. Maybe we have been the one who had to be restored before. Maybe we will be that person someday. Maybe the saying can be applied: There go I but for the grace of God.
Second, Paul goes a step further about how we live together under grace when he says, “Carry (or “bear”) each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”
It’s easy to carry joys. I love to be with those for whom life is good and easy. But burdens are heavy. To carry another’s burden is to be willing to stoop low and lift, and to assume some of the weight.
Isn’t this what God in Christ has done for us? Didn’t we see Christ bend low to tax-collectors and prostitutes? Lepers and children? His own disciples? Didn’t he bear our sins on the cross? Didn’t he bear our pride, our lust, our selfishness, our rebellion, our anger?
The law of Christ is the command to love one another. We fulfill that when we help each other bear our burdens.
To carry someone else’s burdens means to bear with their weaknesses. And that can try our patience.[5]
I had a friend in college who had a terrible problem with procrastination. It was so serious that he needed professional help. It became the issue with his longtime girlfriend about whether they would get married. He was a graduate student and the faculty had patiently extended many deadlines for his papers and his thesis.
I was living by myself in a small in-law apartment in San Francisco and Tom thought that working in an environment away from his resident would help him. So, I allowed Tom to come and work on his papers at my place. In essence, I let him live with me in hopes of encouraging him and getting him through.
I would go to bed and he would be working at my kitchen table. I would awake in the morning and he had done nothing all night with a deadline pressing. Procrastinated the night away.
I, and others, really became frustrated with Tom. I was borderline angry and even thought him just plain irresponsible and lazy. But I also helped him by typing his handwritten papers (this was in the pre-computer days) so that he would get them in. I would set aside whatever I had to do to try and get him through.
I tried to carry his burden with all the frustration, friction and collision that came with it. One of our friends even noted how on the one hand I could be so mad at Tom, which I admittedly was and probably verbalized it in less than gentle ways, but I was also willing to help him. Have you ever wanted to hit someone upside the head with a frying pan and hug them at the same time?
In the church we carry one another’s burdens. Sometimes there are things much deeper and serious than procrastination that we carry for others. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor in Germany during World War II whose writings continue to strengthen Christians, said that bearing someone up is really a privilege. It means “not to have to give [that person] up as lost, to be able to accept him, to preserve fellowship with him through forgiveness.”
We don’t need to judge. We need to show mercy.[6]
Third, Paul speaks of good. He says, “Let us not become weary in doing good.” And “As we have opportunity let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.”
Paul uses farmer language. Have you ever heard the phrase “You reap what you sow”? Well, here it is. You plant potatoes you get potatoes. You plant tomatoes you get…? tomatoes. You plant strawberries you get…? Strawberries. You plant good you get…
Paul tells the Galatians Paul to sow what is good. Plant those seeds of love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness and self-control because what we plant is what we get. Plant good and good will come.
The thing about planting and harvesting is that it is hard work. Farming can be fatiguing. That’s why Paul encourages us to not to grow weary in doing good. Don’t we sometimes wonder if we have anything more in us to carry that burden, to help, and serve? Doesn’t our patience and energy get worn?
A harvest takes time. I’ve never seen a field of potatoes or onions or corn come up immediately. It takes time, patience, work, and nurture before there is anything to reap. It can be the same with good. It can take days, weeks, months, and even years before we see the fruit. And so Paul says, “at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”
Grace helps us hang in there, do good, and not give up.
Jeremy Courtney is the executive director of Preemptive Love Coalition, an international development organization based in Iraq that provides lifesaving heart surgeries to Iraqi children and training for local healthcare professionals.
All the turmoil in the Middle East has made birth defects a major problem. One out of seven Iraqi children are born with a physical birth defect, and cancer rates are higher than Hiroshima.
Courtney has written a book of his story of being a Christian in such a place, and all the struggles and dangers that have come with it. Talk about being weary of doing good. I can’t imagine how he and his family have done this.
In an interview, Jeremy Courtney spoke about how his faith has been transformed. He said he now finds it difficult to speak about “’what Jesus did for me’ on the cross without eventually seeking to understand what my commitment to [Jesus] would require – and liberate – me to do for others, even to the point of death.”[7] Jeremy Courtney sees what Jesus did for him on the cross as freedom to do for others, not just a ticket for his going to heaven.
Doing good can be wearying. It costs. It demands. It costs sharing ourselves, our time, our stuff, and doing the daily little things that add up to big things. But doing good for each other with all our sins, hurts, and blessings, and especially those who belong to the family of believers, is how we live in the grace and freedom we know in Christ.
There was a superb column in The New York Times last Sunday by a Jewish rabbi. He wrote about all the hardships he has seen in his years leading his synagogue, and the privilege of being a part of it all.
He said recognizing that we are all broken is what binds a community of faith together. The need for doing good in this world and walking through the valleys by faith is what raises us.
The rabbi wrote, “I still believe the synagogue is a refuge for the bereaved and provides a road map for the seeker. I have been moved by how powerful the teachings of tradition prove to be in people’s lives, helping them sort out grievances from griefs, focusing on what matters, giving poignancy to celebrations.”
And he ended with this, “Religion may be on the decline in this country and in the West, but if you wish to see the full panoply of a human life, moments of ecstatic joy and deepest sorrow, the summit of hopes and the connections of community, they exist concentrated in one place: your local house of worship.”
So let’s restore people with gentleness. Let’s carry one another’s burdens. Let’s do good and seek opportunities to do good to everyone, but especially to those in our own household of faith.
This is how we are to live together.
Prayer: Lord Jesus, send your Holy Spirit upon us to live as a loving, bearing, growing community of faith. Give us the endurance to never grow weary in doing good, but to give ourselves away to one another as you have given yourself to us. Help us to walk by the Spirit in this way. Amen.
[1] From Wisdom Distilled from the Daily: Living the Rule of St. Benedict Today, p.41
[2] Ibid, p.45
[3] Eugene Peterson, Traveling Lightly, p.178
[4] The Message of Galatians, p.154
[5] p.101
[6] Pp.102-03
[7] http://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.com/2013/10/15/jeremy-courtney/