Sunday, June 29, 2025
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become enslaved to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.
Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.
In the summer of 1983, I worked in the kitchen of a place called The Maranatha Bible Conference and Retreat Center. It was situated on the shores of Lake Michigan, and Maranatha was an exceedingly beautiful place, with manicured lawns and beds of flowers, a gorgeous pool right on the lake and fine accommodations.
But my accommodations weren’t quite so fine. The management put me in a place that was across the street from the main campus, in an old Victorian-era hotel, called the Hotel India. It was dark and dusty and hadn’t seen a paintbrush in decades. And for most of that summer, I was its sole resident. So, yes, it was a little creepy.
There were no televisions or telephones in the Hotel India, so I had brought along some books to read in the evenings. And since it was the summer of 1983, I decided that I really ought to read George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984 before it actually became 1984. Well, I was hooked from the first page. I just couldn’t put it down. But the more I read, the more frightened I became. It was just me and my book, all alone in the Hotel India.
The novel is set in a futuristic world, in which every movement and thought and decision is monitored by the state. There is surveillance everywhere. “Big Brother” is always watching. And “Big Brother” demands absolute obedience at all times.
In order to get that obedience, the population is brainwashed. Lies become truth because Big Brother said so. And these lies are pumped into the minds of the people over and over again, until they actually come to believe them. Think modern day North Korea.
One of those lies is the party’s slogan, which reads: “Freedom is slavery.” The slogan suggests that true freedom only comes from submission to the Party’s will, and that individual autonomy is dangerous and leads to unhappiness.
Some would say that George Orwell was a prophet and that the very thing he warned against is our reality, because we no longer know what the truth is. We have readily accepted the reality of what is called the “post-truth era.”. And we have come to believe this because this is our experience of life. In 2025, we do not hear the same news. Instead, we hear the news we like. And thus, we live with very different versions of “the truth.”
And that means that even a basic concept like “freedom” - a word we love to throw around at this time of year - is not understood by us all in the same way. What I mean by freedom and what you mean by freedom and what a black person in Mississippi means by freedom and what a trans teenager in Oklahoma means by freedom might not have anything at all in common.
So, then, what is it? What is freedom?
When I was a kid, freedom was defined by me as my lime green bike, and a much safer world, and long summer days tooling around with my friends from dawn to dusk. When I was a teenager, freedom was defined as a car and later curfews and the promise of going away to college. As a young adult, freedom was defined as autonomy and career building and making my own decisions. And now, at this point in my life, freedom is defined as financial preparedness and good health and leisure and travel.
All of those are good examples of what it means to be free. But they are not complete examples. Because everything I mentioned was all about me. It was freedom defined as a self-centered enterprise. In other words, don’t tell me what to do, or how to spend, or who to love. Leave me alone and let me be free.
But that is not all that freedom is. True freedom, according to Scripture, is also a corporate experience. It is something that we do together. And the bottom line, from faith’s point of view, is that we are only be as free as our neighbors are free. And Jesus told us that everyone, everywhere is our neighbor.
In his letter to the church at Galatia, Paul describes this corporate kind of freedom and how it is achieved. He writes: For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become enslaved to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.
In this beloved country of ours, founded on freedom and still called upon to be a beacon of freedom, how tragic that we are in a death spiral of biting and devouring anyone and everyone who does not see the world like we do. The lines of division have become uncrossable trenches. And sometimes that snarling and devouring even finds its way into the church. But it doesn’t have to.
You see, the church at Galatia was embroiled in a major conflict. And Paul was really upset with them and used some of the strongest language he used in any of his epistles. And yet… in the midst of their disagreements, he reminds them of his love for them and then he encourages them to bear the fruit of the Spirit.
We don’t need to agree with one another in order to love one another. I can think you’re dead wrong. You can think that I am full of it. But sincerely held beliefs are never an excuse to fall into the sins that Paul so boldly names in this epistle. He writes of “…enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy...”
That sounds like us. And we wonder: who will save us from this mess.
Well, saving is Jesus’s business. And thank God, we are never left in the messes we make. We are not helpless. There is another way forward. We can repent. We can change directions. We can change our minds. And we can choose to love our neighbors exactly as we love ourselves: our neighbors in the next seat or across the street; our neighbors in Jerusalem and Gaza; our neighbors in Tehran and Tallahassee. I am not talking about some warm fuzzy feeling, some Hallmark moment. I’m talking about the sacrificial love that Jesus showed us. I’m talking about doing what Paul says and becoming servants for the other. And the result of that looks like this: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
That’s the only thing that can truly set us free from this mess we have made. In other words, it is nothing less than absolute devotion to the Kingdom of God on this earth exactly as it is in heaven.
So, let freedom ring.
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become enslaved to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.
Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.
In the summer of 1983, I worked in the kitchen of a place called The Maranatha Bible Conference and Retreat Center. It was situated on the shores of Lake Michigan, and Maranatha was an exceedingly beautiful place, with manicured lawns and beds of flowers, a gorgeous pool right on the lake and fine accommodations.
But my accommodations weren’t quite so fine. The management put me in a place that was across the street from the main campus, in an old Victorian-era hotel, called the Hotel India. It was dark and dusty and hadn’t seen a paintbrush in decades. And for most of that summer, I was its sole resident. So, yes, it was a little creepy.
There were no televisions or telephones in the Hotel India, so I had brought along some books to read in the evenings. And since it was the summer of 1983, I decided that I really ought to read George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984 before it actually became 1984. Well, I was hooked from the first page. I just couldn’t put it down. But the more I read, the more frightened I became. It was just me and my book, all alone in the Hotel India.
The novel is set in a futuristic world, in which every movement and thought and decision is monitored by the state. There is surveillance everywhere. “Big Brother” is always watching. And “Big Brother” demands absolute obedience at all times.
In order to get that obedience, the population is brainwashed. Lies become truth because Big Brother said so. And these lies are pumped into the minds of the people over and over again, until they actually come to believe them. Think modern day North Korea.
One of those lies is the party’s slogan, which reads: “Freedom is slavery.” The slogan suggests that true freedom only comes from submission to the Party’s will, and that individual autonomy is dangerous and leads to unhappiness.
Some would say that George Orwell was a prophet and that the very thing he warned against is our reality, because we no longer know what the truth is. We have readily accepted the reality of what is called the “post-truth era.”. And we have come to believe this because this is our experience of life. In 2025, we do not hear the same news. Instead, we hear the news we like. And thus, we live with very different versions of “the truth.”
And that means that even a basic concept like “freedom” - a word we love to throw around at this time of year - is not understood by us all in the same way. What I mean by freedom and what you mean by freedom and what a black person in Mississippi means by freedom and what a trans teenager in Oklahoma means by freedom might not have anything at all in common.
So, then, what is it? What is freedom?
When I was a kid, freedom was defined by me as my lime green bike, and a much safer world, and long summer days tooling around with my friends from dawn to dusk. When I was a teenager, freedom was defined as a car and later curfews and the promise of going away to college. As a young adult, freedom was defined as autonomy and career building and making my own decisions. And now, at this point in my life, freedom is defined as financial preparedness and good health and leisure and travel.
All of those are good examples of what it means to be free. But they are not complete examples. Because everything I mentioned was all about me. It was freedom defined as a self-centered enterprise. In other words, don’t tell me what to do, or how to spend, or who to love. Leave me alone and let me be free.
But that is not all that freedom is. True freedom, according to Scripture, is also a corporate experience. It is something that we do together. And the bottom line, from faith’s point of view, is that we are only be as free as our neighbors are free. And Jesus told us that everyone, everywhere is our neighbor.
In his letter to the church at Galatia, Paul describes this corporate kind of freedom and how it is achieved. He writes: For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become enslaved to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.
In this beloved country of ours, founded on freedom and still called upon to be a beacon of freedom, how tragic that we are in a death spiral of biting and devouring anyone and everyone who does not see the world like we do. The lines of division have become uncrossable trenches. And sometimes that snarling and devouring even finds its way into the church. But it doesn’t have to.
You see, the church at Galatia was embroiled in a major conflict. And Paul was really upset with them and used some of the strongest language he used in any of his epistles. And yet… in the midst of their disagreements, he reminds them of his love for them and then he encourages them to bear the fruit of the Spirit.
We don’t need to agree with one another in order to love one another. I can think you’re dead wrong. You can think that I am full of it. But sincerely held beliefs are never an excuse to fall into the sins that Paul so boldly names in this epistle. He writes of “…enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy...”
That sounds like us. And we wonder: who will save us from this mess.
Well, saving is Jesus’s business. And thank God, we are never left in the messes we make. We are not helpless. There is another way forward. We can repent. We can change directions. We can change our minds. And we can choose to love our neighbors exactly as we love ourselves: our neighbors in the next seat or across the street; our neighbors in Jerusalem and Gaza; our neighbors in Tehran and Tallahassee. I am not talking about some warm fuzzy feeling, some Hallmark moment. I’m talking about the sacrificial love that Jesus showed us. I’m talking about doing what Paul says and becoming servants for the other. And the result of that looks like this: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
That’s the only thing that can truly set us free from this mess we have made. In other words, it is nothing less than absolute devotion to the Kingdom of God on this earth exactly as it is in heaven.
So, let freedom ring.
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