Prop 8c.07                                                            July 1, 2007

It is an axiom of my generation that,

         “If you remember the 60's, you weren’t there.”

The 1960's cultural revolution continues to define
         our spiritual options today.
Professor Clifford Orwin, says:

         “American Christianity . . . reflects . . .
         the . . . Cultural Revolution that began in the 1960's
                  and has not abated since.
         Where there is a cultural revolution there will commonly be
                  a cultural war, a reaction

                  (... an equal and opposite one)
         that will gather steam even as does the revolution itself.”

This culture war plays out today in polarized arguments over
        sexuality, family structures, abortion, and religion itself.
Differences over political and economic policies are part
        of the ordinary course of being a democracy.
But the Culture War runs deeper,
        and tears as the moral fabric of our country.
This war is a struggle between law and liberty;
        and it played out explicitly in the life of one man,
                 a cultural icon of the 60's.
Neal Cassady, king of the beatniks,
        was the real life model for the hero
                 of Jack Kerouac’s novel, On the Road.
His defiance of law in favor of liberty landed him
        in San Quinten prison.

While serving his prison term,
       Cassady was converted from the bohemian life
                to the Catholic faith,
       the reactionary version you see on Channel 41.
I wish I could say he lived happily ever after. He didn’t.

After Neal Cassady was released,
       a combination of drugs and relentless work
                brought him to an early grave.
What went wrong?

I found a clue in one of his letters.
He wrote,

        “(My spiritual director . . . says,) . . .
        I’ve fallen heir to . . . Jansenism;
        a difficult to pin down heresy . . .
        typified by a deep sense of unworthiness,
        actually self-hatred, it . . . forces refusal of God’s grace;
        in short, not loving self, one can’t love God – or neighbor . . .”

Cassady’s widow, Carolyn, said,

         “Neal’s ‘miserable worm, worthless sinner’ conditioning,
               (and) his increasing sense of guilt,
               remained triumphant to the end . . .
         He was at last released from the prison of his own making.”

If the culture war was at work in Neal Cassady’s life,
         if he fought on one side and then the other,
                 then his tragic story calls both sides into question.

St. Paul thought both sides fell short of Christian faith.
His letters are as timely as today’s newspaper
         because the first generation of Christians
                 engaged in a remarkably similar culture war.
Like today’s traditionalists, who long
         to restore the social order of the 1940's and 50's,
                 the Galatian conservatives wanted to enforce the law,
                          restore tradition and uphold moral standards.

On the other side were the libertines,
        who claimed freedom from the law,
                 as a licence to do what they wanted,
                 when they wanted, how they wanted.
Grace, to them, meant they could indulge
        whatever passions moved them at the moment.

The post-modern equivalent of the libertines
        are people who sample spirituality as a self-help option,
        but don’t let it get in the way of anything they want to do.
Writer David Brooks calls them Bourgeois Bohemians

        – or “Bobos.”
Brooks says “A Bobo never limits his options,
        so while he may dabble in a range of sacred practices,
                he can never dedicate himself to any.”

It’s a spirituality tailor made to fit the ego
        without rubbing any inconvenient callouses,
        a Jesus who won’t interfere with anything we enjoy
                or cost us any time or money.

Well, both sides of our culture war were going at it
        in the First Church of Galatia 2,000 years ago.
Most of Paul’s letter to them is a diatribe
                 against traditionalism and legalism,
        saying that kind of rigidity denies God’s unconditional love,
                 makes Christ a harsh judge and not a loving savior.
“For freedom, Christ has set us free,” Paul says.

But, in today’s lesson, he admonishes the libertines,
        and so cautions the Bobos as well.
He says “Christ has set us free;
        but do not use your freedom
                 as an opportunity for self-indulgence.”

Paul goes on to contrast the fruits of the Spirit,
        with the works of the flesh

                 – but he doesn’t mean the body.

Many Bibles don’t even use the word “flesh”
        because we are so likely to think it means the body.
They use the more literal term, “self-indulgence.”
The works of self-indulgence, Paul says, include such things
        as factions, rivalry, jealousy, and malice.
Self-indulgence works like termites in our character,
        makes us selfish, dissolute, and spiteful.

Paul knows that freedom from the law
        turns into slavery to ones own inner compulsions
        unless one also claims freedom from self
                 by voluntarily giving self away.

Instead of using the freedom Christ gives us
        to gratify our needs of the moment,
        be they physical, emotional, or financial,
                 we use our freedom to serve Christ in each other.

That’s what Paul means by life in the Spirit,
        and the fruits of the Spirit, he says, are love, peace, joy,
        patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control
It is an odd freedom Paul teaches

        – not the individualist freedom of democratic capitalism

        – not the freedom to assert ourselves, make much of ourselves,
                  fortify ourselves

        – but the freedom to become voluntary
                  slaves of love for one another.
Only the active practice of love can set us free from
        both law and self.

I wish Neal Cassady had been able to get outside himself;
        to stop gratifying himself as a Bohemian
                  or castigating himself as religious conservative.
I wish he’d found someone else to live for,
        to serve in ways large or small.

I wish he’d found the path self-surrender
        that sanctified the lives of Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton,
        Clarence Jordan, Dag Hamersjold, and Martin Luther King.
And I hope that each of us can find that path
        outside ourselves and into Christ.

                                                       Amen.