Context is all

‘Study psychology’ the careers adviser said; ‘the world will be your oyster.’ Not only was this before anyone in Yorkshire had met a vegetarian- hi!- it was also the pioneer days of careers advice when there were both careers to be had and  optimism that once decided on your course, you could trundle down that track till you retired. Basically, they were making it up– ‘cranial surgery looks like  a good fit; have you thought of atomic research?’ but it didn’t matter, because at that point in time Margaret Thatcher seemed like an aberration that would soon be banished back to the nether hell from whence it came and— such naivety- the damage she wrought soon fixed.  ‘Psychology: great choice! careers await in research, advertising, marketing, human resources, management, industrial relations- you name it, you can do it.’ Nowadays youngsters log on to the the career advice AI bot to be told ‘Study psychology: understand why your customers choose flat white instead of cappuccino; realise the motivation for what’s placed on what shelf in the supermarket: it will give you something to think about while you’re stacking them; training those rats to navigate that maze will give you a good idea of what it’s going to be like to be a Deliveroo driver, though the rodents will be better paid and better fed than you ever will be.

But, that’s now. So old am I that I am of that generation for whom it was still possible to spend 3 years of their life watching pigeons press levers in a particular sequence in order to release corn pellets and then go on to actually work– albeit briefly– in something related, and I don’t mean street sweeping. In retrospect I should have studied abnormal psychology, it would have been an immense help when I ended up in the Church, but social psychology was what gripped me, and thus, spat out the other end of higher education, I had a brief career in social and marketing research. That sounds way more exciting than it is, the reality being things like finding out what brand of cornflakes people prefer and, bringing us full circle, what the best shelf to put the overpriced proto-cardboard on is.

A lot of time in psychology research– marketing or social– is spent designing the questions you are going to ask your volunteers. There is a science and an art to designing research so as not to get the answer your client wants. They won’t thank you for it, they won’t like you for it, but hey, you have a science degree for just that,  so at least you keep your integrity intact when they sack you for not telling them what they want to hear. The answer you get to a question will differ radically depending on not only how you phrase a question, but also, how you order your questions and what comes before and what comes after— how you contextualise them. Context is all. For questionnaires, and — I hope you saw this bit coming— for reading Scripture. What you read before and after the bit you’re interested in. How it’s said. How many times it’s said.  Who’s saying it. And where in the stream of scripture it’s said. Context is all. 

There is, as we’ve rehearsed many times in previous sermons, the importance of understanding Scripture’s cultural and historical context; that, hopefully, goes without saying. You know that, you’re a hermeneutically astute lot by now; that’s not an insult, it’s a recognition that you’re scripturally smart. But there’s another context to consider, which is how the writers and editors of the Bible chose to present what they have to say, the order they say it in (whether they’ve thought about it or not) and how that might then influence what we then understand to be the teaching of the scripture.

This morning, we’re going to consider Paul’s letter to the Galatians. The part I’m zeroing in on is a sort of Freudianism two thousand years before Sigmund got all excited about the repressed fantasies of the Viennese bourgeoisie. For St Paul  as for Freud, there was a battle going on in the human psyche- not between the id and the ego for Paul but between the flesh and the Spirit.

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

Now, tell me what you see when I show you these ink blots.

Paul continues in a more practical vein, unpacking what he’s just said.

Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness,  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 Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.

Now Paul didn’t sit down with a pad of Basildon Bond and pen his letters: he dictated his letters, talking off the top of his head while someone scribbled it all down. No tippex or delete keys back then, so out his thoughts pour without a lot of time to think about how it’s ordered. The unfortunate effect in Galatians is that they way what Paul had to say is phrased and presented it can easily lead us to imagining a harsh, either-or interpretation, a terrifying battle of binaries, a zero-sum conflict with your soul at stake. There is either flesh or spirit; flesh is wrong (‘those who do these things will not inherit the kingdom of God’) spirit is right (‘there is no law against such things’). You are at war within yourself, therefore destroy the flesh, live by the Spirit. That certainly is where the inline text context has taken us. But there is another way of understanding the flesh and the spirit, less harsh, perhaps more helpful which still takes Paul’s teaching to heart.

We could think of it this way. What Paul lists as the soul-destroying works of the flesh are normal human tendencies, urges, desires that have been allowed to run unchecked, out of control; crucially, expressed in the wrong context. Taken to the extreme what might be natural, beneficial even, becomes distorted and harmful. So fornication has its root in the desire to love; idolatry, the yearning for the divine;  quarrelling, the desire to do what is right, and so forth. Sometimes the works of the flesh and the fruits of the spirit are different results from the same propensities: the same human impetus might end in either exultation or dissipation.

If we are at war within, then the flesh is conquered not so much by fighting against the wrong but— sorry for being a broken record here— by encouraging the right

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness,  gentleness,

Look what the Spirit brings to the battle:  not weapons of war but gentle strength, like the power of water slowly, slowly but surely wearing away the rock; a gentle balm that cooling the excessive heat of the fires of fleshly passion. Each of the terrifying works of the flesh have a tempered restorative of the Spirit. The fruits of the spirit are not simply signs—someone filled with the spirit will be like this or that— they are remedies for the failings of the flesh, often, perhaps, something rather similar, but at different ends of a continuum.

In Christian theology, we are a psychosomatic unity. This does not mean that we’re all always imagining we’re ill, but that we’re a body and soul united. The body needs the soul to quicken it, the soul needs a body— in this life a fleshly one and in the world to come a spiritual one— to function and realise its potential. The spiritual body is superior to the body of flesh, but the flesh is infused by the Spirit. Hands that reach to heal, to help, to embrace; that beat the sword into ploughshares and the spears to pruning hooks; that are offered in friendship and reconciliation; these hands are hands of flesh, doing the work of the Spirit.

Bring kindness to anger, make yourself think good things about those angering you,  pray for them and your temper is overpowered;  fornication is beaten by respect for others; licentiousness defeated by self-control; impurity overcome by self-respect;  idolatry banished by faithfulness; jealousy and envy vanquished by generosity;  enmities and strife mastered by empathy,  quarrels and dissensions quashed by patience; and all fleshly failings fall under the onslaught of love. For Love, the greatest of the virtues, conquers all.

Love is strong as death
Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame.
Many waters cannot quench love, 

neither can floods drown it. 

The Spirit arms us with Love Divine: if we are waging a war within, with God on our side, how then can we fail? 

It is not a fight to the death, but a battle for becoming; the goal is not obliteration but  transformation; the antagonists at war become allies; body and soul  working together, filled with the Holy Spirit,  singing the harmonies of heaven, singing the triumphal anthem, singing the victory of Love.