Galatians 3:1-9,23-29
Why are you here? That may sound like a strange question, but I often wonder what it is that brings us together as God’s people. Presbyterians don’t tend to put as much stock into moments of personal revelation as others do, but my bet is that there have been moments in your life in which you have experienced some sense of God’s activity.Whether it was a parent or grandparent that brought you to church when you were little or some other experience along the way, something in your heart tugged at you to come to church today. Maybe it’s the ritual of worship that gives meaning and order to your life. Maybe you are hoping for a break from the chaos in the world. Maybe you are just hoping for a reason to be hopeful.
Maybe this is the place where everyone knows your name and they’re always glad you came. Maybe this is the place where you experience a more common union with others because you get to be a part of something bigger than yourself. Maybe this is the place and these are the people that remind you that there is a God, and God loves you and wants to include in what God is doing.
Yes. Maybe it is all of these things and more. These are all aspects of the way God reveals God’s active presence and God’s character as we worship and as we live worshipful lives. God does this all the time, and always has, although there are some moments and days that make us more aware of it.
As many of you know, the past few weeks have been filled with these moments of revelation for Melanie Schoeffler and her family as they experienced a tragic loss and the embrace of their community coming together to care for them. Members of this church have been a big part of that response – but by no means the only part of it – and her faith in the midst of it all has been nothing short of inspirational. In fact, I would even call it revelatory.
You see, the God that we know through experiences of tragedy and triumph is the God who is revealed in scripture, again and again, as the source of grace and mercy and redemptive promise. Sometimes we get a little hung up on the different ways in which God is described and the differences in our traditions around these scriptures, but God is still God and somehow we all come around to the same idea – God loves us, wants to be known, and is always active in creation.
Our reading today from Paul’s letter to the Galatians tells us about the revelatory nature of God by starting out in a tone that I just can’t imagine using with any congregation I’ve ever served when he says, “You foolish Galatians!”
Look, I might have thought it, but I would never say it! Mostly that’s because I generally set the bar for being foolish around here, and I know how quickly that would turn on me! Paul did not seem to have that issue, and it really is tough to say how serious his tone was – though it seemed pretty serious. Compared with the rest of the letter, it seems this was more than calling them a “bunch of Silly Billies.” No, this was a deep, parental reprimand over the fact that they were becoming confused over a basic article of faith. Jesus did not come to tell everyone who was not Jewish that they should be, nor was he telling those who were Jewish that they needed to do it better. He came to help everyone, Jewish or not, understand the purpose of the law of love.
Now, this is where it can get dicey if we don’t pay close attention to the limitation of our words. Here is one way to look at it. Paul was essentially talking about the law of Moses as though it were training wheels for a bike. Once you know how to ride the bike, a new world of mobility opens up! Why would you go back to training wheels?!
There is a lot of truth in that simple analogy, but it also runs the risk of claiming superiority in the eyes of God and ditching the Old Testament (not to mention some basic antisemitism) when neither Paul nor Jesus wanted any of that to happen. That’s why Paul went all the way back to Abraham in v6. He wanted to go back to the original covenant that God made with Abraham and acknowledge the role of faith.
God promised Abraham that he would be the source of blessings, not just for one nation but for all people everywhere – and Abraham had the audacity to believe it, so God reckoned; God accepted; God received Abraham’s faith as righteous.
I wonder if you’ve had an experience like that. I wonder how many of us have given something over to God hoping for our faith to be reckoned as right and good only to receive no answer, or worse. I’m not trying to compare a prayer about a lost job, or a medical diagnosis, or a lottery ticket to the faith of Abraham, but I have heard it said that every prayer – even the most selfish and self-centered wish of a prayer – is an attempt to be faithful in some small way.
The difference with Abraham is that God was the one who acted first. God was the one who took the initiative, and so Abraham’s faith was good and right because he simply agreed to what God said that God would do. I don’t know about you, but this is the point in the story that I tend to think, “Wouldn’t that be nice.”
Wouldn’t it be nice to get a burning bush or a billboard sign or maybe just a text message from God that we could just agree to and be “reckoned as righteous” like Abraham? It would be, but then again, the point that Paul is making to these “foolish Galatians” is that God has already acted in a way that reveals God’s heart once and for all through Jesus Christ!
The question he is asking them is not, “Why are you following the law?” It’s really more like, “Why are you expecting the law to save you?” Then in verses 23-25 he goes on to describe the law like a disciplinarian and faith like the ability to become self-disciplined.
More than being self-disciplined, though, our faith moves us to understand one another differently. Our faith moves us to see one another as siblings in the household of God and as the ones who will receive a share of everything that Jesus has. We’ll share in his suffering and redemption. We’ll share in the siblinghood of all creation, and the newness of life that is promised and yet to come!
We don’t really know what that’s going to be like, but we get a glimpse of it in v28, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
That sounds great, doesn’t it? All the binary identifiers that keep people apart are broken down to remind us how God sees us. The real challenge is the fact that all of those divisions still existed for the church then, just as they do today. We can apply this to all of the binary choices that keep us apart, too – Red and Blue; Brown-skinned and Pink; Citizen and Immigrant – and the list could go on and on.
The issue of the day is not about becoming blind to those differences. It is about being defined by our common belief in the active presence of God, and living into our differences as people who are all headed to the same end – a life lived in God’s presence and in response to God’s grace.
The thing is (and this applies to people in the church as well as those outside of it) we can live moral lives and follow the example of Jesus as individuals, but that’s not really a whole lot different than expecting the law to offer us salvation. Christian faith is an “all y’all” kind of faith, which is why the unity Paul describes is connected to baptism in v.27.
“As many of you are baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” was an early baptism liturgy used by the church, and new Christians were actually dressed in a new robe after they were baptized. Telling us to “clothe ourselves with Christ” was a way to say, “Don’t let this just be a ritual. You can take of this robe, but you must put on the example of Christ.”
The example of Christ that we “put on” as followers of Jesus is not really something that we can “take off” when it’s convenient, but it is something that we can help one another learn to wear a well as we are able. That’s why we’ve been given one another as God’s people. That’s really why we’re here.
And you will know that Christ has been revealed in this place, too, when we are able to see past our divisions and still love each other as God’s people. Now you know that when you see others out in the world who may be different from you, maybe even people that you don’t understand or might have been afraid of, the essential observation need not be the thing that separates. Instead, it must be the recognition that our baptism unites us, and our faith in Christ reveals the active presence of God in the space between us.
As we move forward in faith, may it be that we become more and more aware of the way God reveals Godself and the Kin-dom in which we see one another as siblings with all of creation, and all to God’s glory. Now and always, Amen.
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