Readings: Galatians 5: 1,13-25; Luke 9:51-62
It`s funny how travelling can widen one`s view of life, giving us time to examine what we really believe and providing insights not seen when working 5 days a week. Some of you would know that I have been away recently, going to a medical conference in Istanbul and then on to London to visit some friends and family.

In London I stayed with a friend who I went to school with. While over the years we have often shared our faith journeys we now seem to be on different paths. While I have embraced my faith and even work for the church, which my friend is slightly horrified by, she, raised a Baptist, is now contemptuous of anything religious and particularly anything related to the church, finding it without worth or meaning. Di has travelled the world and discovered that what her strict fundamentalist upbringing told her about the world was not true; she found her God missing in the slums of India and Africa and the people she worked with and loved and her faith was diminished. Hers was a faith bound by rules and regulations, and left little room for the moving of the spirit. It could not explain what she had seen and experienced so she has left it behind.

While I agreed with her on many things, particularly with our need to reassess our beliefs and understandings in the light of new findings and new experiences, and to grow in our faith I was not prepared to throw the baby out with the bath water. Some things about our tradition will be kept and some things will be discarded in the process, but that`s okay. It`s the things we keep that end up being the most important.

Joan Chittister says the best beliefs are those that have been tried and found to be consistent with the instincts of the rest of the universe and down the long corridors of time have come back again and again to reveal the truths of life. They are not linked to time and place and laws but are universal. They help to explain who we are, who God is, and how we are to live together.

Recently there have been a number of books released that have talked about what makes a good well lived life. They are not Christian books but secular books asking questions about life`s meaning and purpose. What they all have in common is that they have discovered that a well lived life is a life lived for others. It is a life where peace, love, compassion, generosity and justice are central. Where possessions, money and power, both individual and systematic, do not rule and where the urge to do everything because it is good for the individual is overridden by the needs of the community.

We hear a similar understanding in the reading today from Paul`s letter to the Galatians, written almost 2000 years ago. It has taken all this time for the social commentators and philosophers to catch up to a central but sometimes lost Christian belief. And it fits well with Joan Chittister`s view about what is best in our faith tradition.

Paul`s letter describes the life found in the way of the spirit. It culminates in the golden rule, `love your neighbour as yourself`. Paul wanted to release people from the strict adherence to biblical law and circumcision being preached in Galatia, which he felt did more harm than good. In Paul`s eyes there is no freedom and no transformed life when faith becomes a set of rules. Rather his faith was a faith of the heart, where those who walked in the spirit would be drawn to its fruit.

As Bill loader suggests, Paul was not wanting people to keep rules of goodness, replacing like for like, rather he wanted people to change in themselves through their new relationship with God. As he says, goodness generates goodness, love generates love. This relationship with God and the freedom to live with love would lead to what we would term `a good life`. A life rich in mutually enriching human companionship, peace, happiness and joy, a life lived for others. This is an insight our modern writers are starting to discover.

But Paul was not naïve or unrealistic and neither are we. Many things get in the way of this `good well lived life`. Many things get in the way of God`s spirit working in the world. Paul realises that Christians are still subjected to the desires of the individual which say my needs are more important than yours. He lists some of the temptations that may lead people away from the life in the spirit. Clearly sexual immorality was high on his agenda. But he adds more, many that we could relate to today, things like jealousy, anger and self centredness.

But the problem is much bigger than the individual. It involves the cultural messages a society gives as the norm for living well. Paul urges his followers to keep focused on their relationship with God, so that the spirit flowing within them gives them the strength to follow a different path within their own society. Today the idea of the common good has diminished, and in its place is a competitive and consumer mindset, which sets people apart. Maybe we can think of our family as part of our inner circle, but often the normal social expectation is that everyone outside of that has to fend for themselves, lest they take what is ours and diminish our entitlements. We see that so much in the refugee debate but even in the debate over public education, public housing, public health and welfare support.

Paul`s message is a message for us as well. We also have to look beyond what our culture expects to what the spirit is calling us to do. It is a message that can place us at odds with our friends, family and the wider society.

But we are lucky. We have a model and guide. The truth of life is also seen in the life of Jesus. He above all else signifies what the reign of God in humanity looks like for us, what is required to live fully and completely, with meaning and purpose. While Paul`s words resonate with us, we see the tangible product of them in Jesus.

Jesus presented a different way of living, and his message challenged the accepted norms of his day. We get a snippet of that message today in Luke`s account.

Jesus is heading to Jerusalem, to a certain death. Not because it was preordained but because he challenged the power of the Roman Empire and the conventional wisdom of the day which excluded people. In the story he calls his disciples to leave behind the security of a home, family obligations and even a regular meal to follow him, to a greater more universal freedom with him. He calls them to leave all that they have known, and follow him. The disciples are being pulled and challenged to a new way of living and seeing the world, and as we listen to the story so are we. Our loyalties are also being challenged. But they are being challenged by a human Jesus who faced what we all must face, a culture that we are inevitably going to be at odds with.

Jesus re-imagined a different world, a different way to a good life, which entailed embracing everyone, not just those in our family, our race, our country or our football team. He represents the universality of God`s presence in the world, and in all people. We have to raise our sights beyond those closest to us to actively include others to be his followers. But this can be costly. It was costly for Jesus and for the disciples, and may even be for us. We have to be realistic. Making changes and fighting for justice is not easy, being a voice for the poor, for the refugee and for aboriginal people is not easy, calling for changes in the way we live, working to protect the environment for future generations comes at a cost, and even just opting out of the rush for bigger houses and cars and high paying jobs sometimes puts us at odds with those around us.

But that cost is worth it. Because it leads to a life of engagement with one another, with love, to a life lived for others that everyone can share in. It leads to a life in the spirit.

This is what we hear from Paul today, this is what we hear from Jesus in the gospels, this is what we are even hearing from the secular world, but often it is missing from the church. Rules and dogmas have plagued the church for hundreds of years such that the idea of a transformed life is lost. But what we are finding now in 2013 is a reawakening of the spirit. The secular is joining the sacred to cry out for a new understanding of a good life. Not one based on rules and dogmas and doctrines but one based on the heart, and on love. When we live like this, we find ourselves engaging in the mystery of life where we find God. A mysterious reality that permeates the universe and holds everything together in connectedness and relationship. Whether you are religious or non religious, Christian or Buddhist and to my friend Di . . .

As Michael Morwood says, `it is this presence that moves cultures to a deeper spiritual awareness, moves individual men and women to greater depths of cooperation and care and generosity, assures men and women of hope and healing in the face of inevitable pain and tragedy in this fragile world and moves us to live human life as best we can, in ways that ennoble and dignify ourselves and our neighbours.`

Maybe we shouldn`t worry so much about who is in and who is out of the church or the rules which do the separating. Maybe instead we should see the fruits of the spirit in all those who work for others, who see a better life for others, and who in the process touch something very deep and profound about life. And be part of it.

When I think back to my friend in London I realise this understanding of faith, this way of seeing God in the world, may connect with her, as it may connect with many others. For whether you are protesting for the environment, or for a greater say in how your society operates, whether you are writing letters to amnesty or building a community garden, running a Rainbow Project, supporting those with mental illness, working with the Mowanjum aboriginal community or just saying no to the consumerism that is rife in our society, everything makes a difference and reveals a little of the spirit.

Maybe this is how to keep belief alive in the 21st century.