Sermon on Galatians 5:19–23 by Finn Chirnside at Sumner Redcliffs Church
A sermon exploring love, joy, and peace as fruits of the Spirit, set against a backdrop of cultural anxiety and global upheaval.
Summary
Finn Chirnside, Associate Vicar at Sumner Redcliffs Church, delivers a sermon on the first three fruits of the Spirit from Galatians 5 — love, joy, and peace — as part of a month-long series. He opens by connecting the cultural mood of existential dread, particularly among younger generations, to the band Polyphia's viral song "Can You Feel It?", which he uses as a lens for understanding widespread anxiety about a world that seems to be falling apart. He argues that this is not historically unprecedented, drawing on the catastrophic year 536 AD as a parallel, and contends that the Christian response — rooted in agape love, Spirit-given joy, and the Hebrew concept of shalom — offers a genuinely different and better way to live. He closes with a direct invitation to non-Christians, quoting Jesus' words from Matthew 11 about rest for the weary.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction: Guitar Fingers and a Band Called Polyphia
Finn Chirnside: If we've met before, my name's Finn. I'm the lay minister. I also play guitar. Sorry, I've got guitar fingers. That's pretty cool. I don't know why I said that. On the guitar, I understand the feeling of your fingers after playing. So the four people in the room who get that — God bless you. The rest of you, a bit awkward.
A few weeks ago, there was a band named Polyphia. And the moment I say a band named Polyphia, 80% of the room goes, "Eh?" It's fine. They released a song called "Can You Feel It?" If you're not aware — which, judging by the ambiguous stares into the distance I'm receiving — Polyphia are a cultural phenomenon. They're a band that stylistically is a fusion of metal, rock, pop, funk, mainly instrumental, heavy on guitar — two guitarists, a bass player, and a drummer. For the drummers in the room, he basically follows the melody line the entire time. It's really, really weird. So it's like music for nerds, but then it's like four chords designed like a pop song, and their marketing is like boy band marketing. So it's really weird. They've broken through from music for nerds to music for 14-year-old goth girls at a party on Saturday night, and they're doing both things simultaneously. It's really, really odd.
They released a song called "Can You Feel It?" and the song is really upbeat — that kind of thing — and you've got death metal guitar over the top. It's very odd. I think it's dope because I'm like, man, that's incredible, I can never do that. But I don't bring it up to talk about how music is evolving, because I would love to. I want to talk about it because it captures the current mood amongst many people in our culture, and I'll explain why.
The Cultural Mood: Everything Is Falling Apart
Finn Chirnside: Firstly, they clip over a viral sermon that came out in like 2006. I will not quote the sermon because it's riddled with expletives. It's some guy on what would be like a televangelism TV channel in the States, probably at 2 a.m. in the morning, and he's calling the devil a liar and dropping expletives and saying all these crazy things, and they clip it over the song. Then the music video — which, don't watch it, by the way. It's gross. I'm being genuinely serious. It's gross. But this is important because this went genuinely viral.
It's hundreds of clips, like jump cuts — exploding buildings, earthquakes, the Iron Dome, Hollywood parties, Epstein's Island, AI images of Trump and Obama dancing. And interposed with it is Christian imagery from Revelation. The marketing is built around the beasts from Revelation. If you're not a Christian and you have no idea what I've just said, think like hyper-poetic imagery trying to convey a point. In Revelation, there are these beasts — they've got seven heads, one comes from the land, one comes from the sea, they represent a whole bunch of stuff which I don't have time to get into. The marketing is based around that. The video ends with a depiction of nuclear war. And then, while that's happening, Trump and Obama dancing in AI-generated images. It's a whole thing. And playing over it all is this ravey house music: Can you feel it? Just looping. And it's like the world's falling apart, and it's like dancing while Rome burns, kind of thing.
It's hard to tell what they actually think theologically. I'm not sure that they're Christians, judging by their marketing and by some of the other songs they've released. But it's very religiously heavy, some of their stuff. My hunch is they grew up in church and they don't like the church anymore, but they're still saturated in that imagery. But I think the reason they used that marketing and did that is because they're trying to communicate something that particularly younger generations are feeling, which is this: everything is falling apart, and this isn't what was promised to us.
On Monday, I was sitting down with a friend of mine who's not a Christian at all. He thinks I'm an absolute numpty for having a job like this and for becoming a Christian. But he said to me something really interesting. He said, "For the first time in my life, I've started to feel existential dread." And in my brain, I was like, "Good. About time." But I didn't say that to him. The point was, everything is crazy. And he's one of the most positive — or I think just oblivious — mates I have. But he now looks at the world and goes, "How can humans keep going? Is this the end?" Whatever a secular end looks like — climate change or nuclear war or whatever.
536 AD: The Worst Year in Human History
Finn Chirnside: But firstly, this isn't the first time in human history we've had this sense of everything falling apart. When Jerusalem fell to the Romans, they were pretty convinced it was the end of the world. When the Islamic empire swept into Europe and hit Constantinople, they were genuinely convinced this might be the end. When Rome fell to the Huns, or World War I, World War II, the Cold War — for the historians in the room, did you know there is a relatively commonly accepted worst year in human history? I'm not joking. It was a group of scientists and a bunch of historians, and one guy in particular. They looked at the data and the historical impacts of what happens in a year, and they landed on one. You'll never get it, although I think Harry knows it. Do you know what it is?
536.
Why? In 536, a mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness for 18 months. The Byzantine historian Procopius — which is a spectacular name — writes: "For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year." The fog was ash from a volcanic eruption in Iceland. Temperatures in the summer of 536 and the preceding years fell between 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius, which initiated the coldest decade in the past 2,300 years. Snow fell in summer in China, which was really weird. Crops failed, people starved. There was an Irish historian who recorded a failure of bread from the years 536 to 539. Then in 541, which may have been an aftermath of all of the things falling apart, the bubonic plague started in Egypt. It became known as the Plague of Justinian, and it spread rapidly, and about one-third to one-half of the population of the Eastern Roman Empire died. Many cities in Europe would not get back to the same pre-536 population until a thousand years later.
Human history is rife with apocalyptic events. This isn't the first time this has happened. But it doesn't mean that our going, "Oh my gosh, everything's falling apart," is not valid, and it doesn't mean it's not unique. I think part of our problem is that we're children of a mini golden age of relative peace — and I say relative because we're factoring the Iraq War into that — but in terms of a global conflict, we haven't really had something like that for a while. And we kind of had this maybe subliminal idea that we would progress to this blissful utopia where technology would make our lives less stressful and poverty would be eradicated and where you could travel and do whatever you wanted to, where people of all backgrounds, creeds, and religions would come and submit to the pluralistic vision of the West. Turns out it didn't work. And it turns out humans are far more complex and far more selfish than you could ever dream.
So now we live in a world that is rife with conflicting worldviews, cultures, religions, and ambitions, and we can all discern that it's falling apart, but we all rapidly disagree on how to fix it. Do we embrace a nihilistic Nietzschean perspective and just watch the world burn? Do we go out and do whatever we want because nothing really matters? Do we become Marxian revolutionaries who tear down all oppressive structures and systems in order to rebuild the world the right way? Do we sit idly by and do our own thing and hope that it will work out? Do we embrace a form of Christianity that is hyper-nationalistic, violent, and sacrifices the poor and the good of others in order to hasten the return of Jesus? Shots fired. Do we consume technology and regurgitate whatever YouTuber or streamer is telling us?
Can you feel it? Surely there must be a better and different way to live.
Paul's Context in Galatians
Finn Chirnside: So when Paul — who's the guy who wrote the reading we just read out — when he wrote the text in Galatians, he was addressing a community that was struggling with cultural tensions in the middle of a dominant empire that did its very best to make sure you pledged allegiance to its way of viewing the world. Sound relatively familiar?
This was known as the Pax Romana, and you were free in this culture to worship whoever you wanted, as long as the Roman state and the Roman gods, and of course the emperor, came first. What was so distinct about Christianity was that it was multicultural, which was unique at the time. It didn't have a hierarchy of slave and free — it was like everyone's on the same page. But it also placed its allegiance to Jesus above all others.
For the nerds who care about this, the rest of you can zone out. The start of Mark is very intentional. It talks about the beginning of the good news of Jesus the Messiah, and so on. It is a direct riff on a document that was circulating about Augustus the emperor, talking about him being the son of God — the gospel of Augustus. So when Mark riffs on that, he's like, "Oh yeah, cool, Augustus is all right, I guess, but this is the actual Son of God." A big part of what Christians were doing was a critique of the Roman cult. Christians looked to Jesus, not the dominant culture, for how and why to live. They refused to give in to attempts to colonise the Jesus religion, and in many cases it would cost them their homes, their families, and even their lives.
The challenge that Christians faced was twofold. The first was: how do people of different cultures unite and live together in community now that they share faith in Jesus as their binding thing? And the second was: how do you live in a world that fundamentally disagrees with you, mocks you, and will persecute you?
Throughout Galatians, Paul has been contrasting two themes — life in the flesh and life in the Spirit. In Paul's thought, life in the flesh is another way of describing a life of sin, or a life that inevitably leads to death. For Paul, and I'd say for the Bible actually, human sin has resulted in the fracturing of creation itself. Our decisions alienate us from God, who is good, and who is life by definition. If you remove yourself from good and life by definition, you inevitably get death. In biblical thought, death is inevitable for everybody, but in Jesus, eternity breaks in and offers a way into life through the defeat of death.
Slightly complex idea. But for those who know the prodigal son story — have you ever noticed that bit where at the very end the father says, "My son was dead and now he's alive"? Hold up — he wasn't dead though. He was very clearly physically alive. That's not the point. The argument is that you are spiritually dead, living in a life of death that will lead to physical death. But now that he has come home, he is now alive. Christians then receive the gift of the Spirit, who dwells within them, who marks them out as a new creation, filled with life in the midst of a dying world. So the journey for a Christian is a gradual growth of living externally what is true of you internally and spiritually. And this is how we get to the fruit of the Spirit — the inevitable results of a life that is rooted in Jesus' grace and love.
Welcome to Fruit of the Spirit Month
Finn Chirnside: So, with all that's going on in the world in mind, welcome to Fruit of the Spirit Month. I would love to give it more time, but we've got one month, so we're going to gun it. Today, completely juxtaposing to my personality, we're going to do three at once. We're going to do love, joy, and peace, and we're going to rattle them off, and hopefully it'll be helpful.
Love: Agape and What It Actually Means
Finn Chirnside: Love. With all of these things, but particularly with love, the first thing to do is to check an assumption. When we seek to learn about the fruit of the Spirit, we can't imprint our own understanding of a word onto it. We've got to seek how the word was used in context, and then let it inform our actions and beliefs. This is a trap for anybody — the idea that, "I believe this about this word, so therefore that's what Jesus meant." That's a thing we can all do.
To make two massive generalisations — and I'm aware what I'm about to say is massively reducing the ideas, but just to convey the point — we seem to have two main definitions of love in our culture. Both have good motives, but I'd suggest they're both kind of missing something. One side pairs love with an uncritical acceptance, so to love someone is to accept someone as they are, no matter what they believe or do. The other side would use love as a way to justify criticism, critique, and high standards. The problem is that that can then be abusive, and nothing will ever be enough, and you'll never actually earn the love that's tantalisingly dangled in front of you.
The tension here is that people can be selective about who they have this kind of love with, and this gets complex. You can have an uncritical love towards one person even though they're a terrible person, and then one person says one thing you don't like and suddenly they're just the worst person who's ever lived. Come on — I'm like that. Are you kidding me? We're all like that. But the question we must ask is: what does love actually mean in the Bible?
The Greek word used in this verse is agape, and in the Bible there are quite a few different words for love, but this is probably the most important one. Paul in particular really likes this word. He uses it whenever he wants to describe the love of God. So 1 Corinthians 13, the famous wedding passage — "Love is patient, love is kind" — it's agape is patient, agape is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Agape does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Agape never fails.
Do you see the tension — the acceptance, but also rejoicing with truth, not delighting in evil? There's a tension there, and that's what agape is like. Or when John the Apostle concludes that God is love — in that famous verse, he says that God is agape. We love because God loves, and how God loves is best revealed in a bloke called Jesus.
He loved his enemies and he prayed for them when they were in the middle of killing him. He reached out to the poor and welcomed in the lowest of the low, and he was willing to face public disgrace from the elite in order to bring honour to people who meant nothing. When he met the woman at the well — if you know the story, and if you don't, I'm so sorry, I don't have time — she had multiple husbands, massive scandal. He honoured her and spoke to her and gave her dignity as an image of God. He wept over Jerusalem. He called his followers to a creative form of nonviolence. But at the same time, he told the woman caught in adultery, whom he had mercy on, "Go and sin no more." He rebuked the Pharisees and called them vipers. He said that the desire for justice is good, but it must come from God himself, because he's the one who understands the complexity of the human situation. In Revelation, Jesus says, "I rebuke those who I love." Very clear.
Jesus welcomes all, but does not affirm sin. He meets you where you are at, but calls you to something better, something that will transform you into a new creation. Because sin — things that do not line up with the true nature of the world and how it has been designed — inevitably brings death. And Jesus wants you to live. His love caused him to lay down his life for his friends and for his enemies, and to offer his enemies the opportunity to become his friends, to belong where you were always meant to be, and to be with who you were always meant to be.
His love doesn't mean that he coerces or forces, but instead he woos and he calls and he tugs at your heart through the Spirit and does demand your attention. But it's attention you must give, because it is good for you. It's the way that creation has been wired.
Jesus' love is welcoming and accepting, and then from that place, in the timing of the Spirit — I'm not saying the moment you flip the Jesus switch, you magically have to sort it all out. It's in the Spirit's timing that you are called to a life of holiness and to abandon the works of the flesh and to live more and more in the life of the Spirit.
Joy: Different from Pleasure
Finn Chirnside: The second fruit is joy. So much of our culture is orientated around the pursuit of pleasure. This is a pretty well-documented phenomenon, but the basic idea is that the true purpose of human life is maximising enjoyment, because from that sense of enjoyment or pleasure, we derive a sense of worth. This is a development of Freud's idea of the pleasure principle. I'm not super great on Freud, but I know enough to know this basic thing — and anyone who reads Freud, I'm so sorry in advance, I'm about to butcher it. But Freud's basic thing was that humans inherently reach for basic instant gratification. An affair, a new T-shirt — different things, but what's going to bring me maximal pleasure in the moment? And he said, because he had a godless worldview, this is the best way to live. It's the obvious way to live, the way we should live and do live. That was his argument.
And then what we've got now is a development on that general idea. The mantra that goes alongside this is "you do you" or "look after number one" or "do what you need to do" — which can be genuinely good. I'm not knocking it. There are moments where you need to get out of something, where you need to prioritise yourself. But it also can be a justification for things that most people throughout history would have just gone, "Why are you doing that?"
Here's the problem. Pleasure is fleeting, or at least how we understand it now. It requires a new hit — basically another dopamine hit. You always need more. Pleasure, as we now understand it, puts you at the centre of the universe. In Freud's thought, there is no God, so you are the centre. If ultimately you are all that matters, then of course your priorities and desires come first, which then justifies the actions you take in the pursuit of that pleasure. If nothing matters, then I can do what I want. That's basically the idea.
But here's the thing. Pleasure cannot withstand the onslaught of a world that doesn't make sense. When the world is falling apart, you don't look at the pleasure principle and go, "Well, this makes perfect sense." It doesn't. It may feel good for a time, but it just becomes numb.
On the other hand, joy is different. Joy is multifaceted. Joy can be found in moments of goodness or beauty, and it can be available to anybody. You're out for a walk, or you're doing something you love. We beat a rival yesterday in football — I felt pretty good about that. I felt satisfaction. This kind of joy is a gift from God to all people. It's a common grace of God. And joy, for anybody who experiences it, shouldn't be something we just dismiss. It should be something that makes us go, "Oh gosh, I'm feeling something transcendent. Maybe there's someone who is the source of the transcendent."
But then the Spirit's joy is something that is given to Christians at all times. It's different. It's not dependent on circumstance. It is an ever-growing, deep sense of delight in the world and the story that the Spirit of God is writing within you. And there is hope for the world that is grounded in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. If he actually died and rose — which is what Christians claim — you have every reason to be joyful, even if life is hard, because the resurrection tells a different story.
"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, when you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work in you so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."
Peace: Shalom and the Non-Anxious Presence
Finn Chirnside: And finally, peace. The Greek word for peace used here and a lot in the New Testament is a word called eirene or something like that. But the Hebrew word that the biblical authors are drawing on is this idea of shalom. Shalom is more than just how we might understand peace — like, "Oh, there's a ceasefire, that's nice." Shalom is not just about the cessation of fighting. It's about a robust, complete sense of wholeness, flourishing, or completeness.
Here's a perfect example of shalom. I'm drawing a circle — I'm drawing a circle — oh, I'm 90% done. We are not in shalom. Oh, I just completed the circle. It's complete. The circle is shalom. Do you understand? A good way to describe it would be "as-it-should-be-ness." The circle should be a circle. Same kind of idea.
And this is the fruit that is offered to us in Jesus. It's not just a sense of feeling pretty chill, because that's down to temperament. Some people are really chill but they're not very nice people. They're not filled with peace — they might just be calm. This is different. A sense of shalom constantly grows within people who follow Jesus. And this makes sense, because in biblical thought, Christians are new creations. The best way of looking at shalom is to go back to the Garden of Eden, where things were as they should be before it fell apart. If Christians are new creations, then the kingdom of God — which the Garden of Eden represented — is dwelling within you. Therefore it makes sense that shalom should be growing within you. Garden, kingdom of God, inside the person, kingdom of God coming — it starts here. That's the idea. We have been given a new nature, we are spiritually a new person, and we have hope that at the end of the story there is a renewed earth, and it brings a sense of peace into the present.
And think about it — this is exactly what the world needs. We don't need another Marx to come along and tell us, "Well, if we just seize the means of production six more times, it'll all work out one day." No.
Jesus says it like this: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God." The word for peacemakers in Greek is eirēnopoios, which means "makers of as-it-should-be-ness." That's the kind of idea, because you're evoking the shalom thing and going back to that — makers of as-it-should-be-ness.
The peace on offer through the Spirit of Jesus is what comes to be called a non-anxious presence. This is an idea that probably came about in the 70s and 80s, and it's really driven up lately because everyone's anxious. Let's be honest — I've got a little tick in my foot that doesn't really stop. It's a thing, right? You've got your phone, you've got the news constantly hurtling at you. But the life that Jesus calls you into is a non-anxious presence. Everybody else is worried, but you aren't. You have a trust in God that comes from following him for years and experiencing his presence and his provision. You have a mindset of abundance in a world of scarcity. It doesn't mean you stand off and do nothing, but all of your actions are rooted in this assurance that no matter what happens to you, you belong to another world.
Now, this is a hard truth to live. I'm not great at it, but I can tell you one thing — my wife will agree. 2016 Finn and 2026 Finn, drastically different. I had a meltdown in my studies in 2016. My marks were horrific. And then 2026 Finn, pretty good. Even the difference between 2020 Finn and 2026 Finn is drastic. And my wife will agree to that 100%. And it's not because I'm special — because Jesus is.
Leslie Newbigin, the great 20th century theologian, said it like this: the most effective hermeneutic of the gospel is the people who actually believe it. Take the jargon away. What he's saying is this: people will take the message of Jesus seriously if the people who claim to be his people actually live how he called you to live.
The Offer Is Real — But It Requires a Response
Finn Chirnside: The offer is there. He doesn't just say, "I want to make your person love, joy, peace," and you go, "Oh, cool, that's cool, bro, awesome." It's not this ethereal thing that just kind of floats around the ether. It's a legitimate offer. The offer is: will you take it?
If you've been a Christian for 20 years but feel like you aren't growing, the offer is actually there. And let me just say it like this — even everything we do as Christians must be rooted first in the love that comes from God. It's not trying to earn God's love. It's coming from a place of being deeply loved. But that doesn't mean we sit passively and expect that he changes us. If we're not taking God seriously, do you think he's actually going to go, "Man, this person really wants to be transformed into a person of love, joy, and peace"? I don't think so.
What seems to be the expectation is that you respond to God's love — so you meet him in practising the presence of God, spending time in scripture, spending time in prayer, spending time in generosity. If your whole life is orientated around your phone and the news cycle, do you really think you'll become a person of love, joy, and peace? Is that seriously going to be good for your soul? Is that the route to love, joy, and peace?
Jesus. Your priority actually has to be on engaging with Jesus, and then he'll transform you. Want to be like Jesus? Want to be the type of person who is radiating with him? Listen to him. He called you to obey the things that he commanded you to do. Following Jesus is not a chore. It is a delight. But it's not passive. It's an active rhythm and a way of life that orientates your whole being around the presence of God.
And you will find, as you engage with that way — where you read your Bible first thing in the morning, even if it's for 10 seconds or for one psalm or whatever, instead of reading the news; or when you pray in the car instead of listening to a true crime podcast; or when you cap your spending for the sake of generosity — you'll experience a deeper satisfaction than you could have possibly imagined.
The Monks of the Dark Ages: A Model for Today
Finn Chirnside: Remember that first worst year in human history that I mentioned? One more thing was happening at the time. A man called Benedict was in the middle of building little communities that were seeking to follow the way of Jesus in the middle of a declining world. And he came up with a rule that came to be called the Rule of St. Benedict. What were they called? They were called monasteries.
Any good historian will tell you that one of the reasons — maybe even the primary reason — we got out of the Dark Ages was the monks and nuns. One of the things they did was give their lives to follow the call of Benedict, who in turn was following the call of Jesus. They cared for the poor. They ran hospitals. They ran education systems. They preserved knowledge and copied manuscripts so that Greek and Roman classics like Plato's Republic and the Iliad survived the Dark Ages — because of the Christians. It wasn't the Christians who pulled us into the Dark Ages. I would actually argue it was the Christians who were the ones who got us out. They were a shining light of hope in the Dark Ages. They were filled with the fruit of the Spirit.
And that is the call now — in your own way, to be like that. Yes, the world is falling apart, but there is a clear mandate on how and why you should live in response to that.
A Final Word for Non-Christians
Finn Chirnside: Finally, just one final thought. For those of you in the room who wouldn't call yourselves Christians, I just want to say this.
The world has laid upon you heavy burdens. Can you feel it? The world is stirring up your anxiety. Can you feel it? If I'm being honest, if you're not a Christian, you probably don't have a reason to have hope. Can you feel it?
And I want to offer you the words of Jesus and the testimony of 2,000 years of church history as an invitation to something different — but something so much better. And it's this. These are the words of Jesus from my lectionary today:
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, for I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."