Read Galatians
5:15-25
Scientists speak of entropy
as a unit which allows them to measure the degradation of a system. Popular
authors turn it into a principal: that the whole world is decomposing, sliding
into an undifferentiated state. Entropy is the rust that attacks us, old age
creeping up on us, fire reduced to embers, time fleeing. Entropy means
everything comes to an end.
We could speak of an
analogous principle in the spiritual life. Left to oneself, the human person
degrades, turning in on oneself in self-sufficiency and deadly selfishness. The
human community is dislocated, divided, at war. Human hope is darkened by
visions of unending strife, irreversible injustices, unsolvable ecological and
economic crises.
What is astounding in such a
context is not that there should be evil in the world, but that the world
should continue to spin in spite of all this evil. What surprises is not the
existence of hatred and jealousy, but the fact that love manages to surge forth
and make a path for itself. There must be another principle at work here, a
dynamism more powerful than the moral entropy Paul names sin. This greater
power is the Holy Spirit.
Without the Spirit, men and
women are carried away in a spiral of hatred and violence: "an eye for an
eye, and the whole world goes blind." Such an evil-spawning spiral can
only lead to the plethora of vices Paul lists in today's text, expressed
powerfully in Eugene Peterson's translation: "loveless, cheap sex; a
stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs
for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness;
cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal
temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives;
small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing
everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly
parodies of community." This is a living hell that, sadly, too many people
know too well.
Jesus-Christ came to reverse
this deadly movement, to smother this fatal tsunami. He came to release in our
hearts a new power, a new breath. Under the influence of his Spirit, something
new is coming to birth. The inertia that grinds us down is overcome, the
death-dealing spiral is undone. A hand is stretched out in friendship across
borders, a word of peace resonates in the silences of hatred, an act of
kindness warms frigid solitude. And the beautiful virtues Paul rejoices in
naming can flower: love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, trust,
tenderness, self-control.
We recognize the Spirit
alive within us every time we surprise ourselves into forgiving, sharing,
praying for someone who no longer knows how to pray. The Spirit dwells within
those moments that awaken within us a gesture of friendship, a word of kindness,
an act of generosity. The Spirit awakens us to a world make for transformation
in beauty, truth and gratefulness.
Are we of this Spirit? The
choice is ours. We need only open our hearts.
