Galatians

Galatians

Galatians 6:2

Sometime early in Paul’s ministry, he spent time planting a number of churches in what is now known as Turkey.  The people in these churches were Celtic immigrants—gentiles who had never converted to Judaism.  This must have been a real twist for Paul, given that his expertise in his previous life had been in Jewish law.   These people knew nothing of the law of Moses, of the call to fulfill the law and earn God’s love.  “What a relief,” Paul must have thought, “these people won’t be haunted by the drive to justify themselves.”  So, he taught them about grace and love and justification by faith.  Then, convinced that he had successfully planted some churches, Paul moved on.

Things changed, though.  Things always change, right?  Paul got word that the churches in Galatia were wandering from his teachings.  Someone was teaching them that they had to become Jews in order to be followers of Christ.  Someone was teaching them that they had to fulfill the law in order to be loved.  Someone was teaching them that their job was to earn salvation.  When Paul heard this news, when he realized how easily these people could be swayed, he was furious.

So, Paul sits down and writes the Galatians one seriously angry letter.  Maybe you’ve impulsively written such a letter or, more likely, an email, that is just dripping with venom:  “How could you do this to me?  How could you believe these things?  How could you make such terrible choices?”  If you’re lucky, maybe you had a spouse or a friend who made the case for how therapeutic it can be to write such words and then how wise it can be to not send them.  Maybe, if you were having a really good day, you managed to stop yourself.  Or, maybe you popped a stamp on that letter and dropped it in the slot or just hit “send” on your computer.  You felt pretty self-righteous for the first few seconds right?  Then, you thought to yourself, “Oh shoot…I think I just opened a whole can of worms.”

Let’s start with an acknowledgment.  Paul sends the letter.  As soon as he does, he enters this seriously contradictory space.  So, he’s mad at the Galatians for choosing to listen to spiritual guidance that leads them into a life of self-righteousness.  And how does he do this?  He self-righteously defends his own understanding of the Gospel.  In other words, he’s criticizing these people for giving into a faith that promises that they will be right and everyone else will be wrong by saying that he’s right and everyone else is wrong.  Paul is at times completely convinced that he’s 100 percent right even as he tells his followers that no one gets to be 100 percent right.  Sometimes, Paul is not an altogether gracious defender of grace.  (Of course, this could be an invitation for us all to take a good, long look in the mirror.)

Granting this struggle for Paul and knowing that Paul has inspired many Christians throughout history to be not all that gracious defenders of grace ourselves, the other problem Paul has is that he assumes that the problem for the Galatians is somehow a Jewish problem.  It was absolutely the case for Paul that his own life included a lot of time spent devoted to being right and proving that he was right by making use of the law of Moses.  However, remember, most of these folks in Galatia had never been Jewish.  What Paul failed to see and really appreciate was that it is human nature to find any way that we can to prove that we are right, to show the world that we are not just right in this present concern, we are the living embodiment of righteousness, and that we will go anywhere and do whatever it takes to achieve this status.  There are self-righteous Christians and Jews and Muslims and non-believers.  There are self-righteous capitalists and socialists and communists.  The great human need is to confidently prove that we have not wasted the life that we’ve been given:  “There must be something that I can say or think or do that will put this uncertainty about my worth and purpose to rest.”  Only in our very best moments  are able to even entertain the thought, “I might be wrong,” or, “My understanding might be limited,” or simply, “I don’t know.”

The problem with self-righteousness in all its forms is that no matter what the particular ideological foundation might be, self-righteousness is fundamentally selfish.  After all the rules and regulations are laid out, after all the right words are said and done, after everyone conforms to the one true path, the unifying fact is that the followers’ concerns (whatever they are following) are all about themselves.  The truth is that the ten commandments had a lot to do with teaching former slaves how to live in community with each other with some sense of harmony.  In human experience though, that easily slides into ways to prove that I’m “better” than my neighbor.  The truth is that a Christian faith that is focused on personal salvation ultimately is a simple appeal to the most basic human question, “What’s in it for me?”  Most really “successful" ideas or spiritualities have “succeeded” by mutating into an appeal to self-interest:  “Give this, do this, think this, and here’s what you’ll get in return.”  Over time, appealing to people to do the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do loses its appeal.  (People end up getting the vaccine now because there’s a lottery!)

So, the Galatians aren’t wandering from the path that Paul taught them because some Jewish person distracted them.  They are not believing what they’re believing to stick it to Paul.  No, the Galatians have moved away from grace and justification by faith because it’s a challenge to sustain such beliefs.  It’s a pretty seductive thing when you are surrounded every day by people who seem to have ways to prove their worth to themselves and everyone around them.  It’s a huge challenge as a human being to live a life where the central concern isn’t myself, my interests, my well-being and my tribe.  Such concerns are so “natural." 

In between venting his anger at the Galatians, Paul does an amazing job, once again, of laying out the good news that we are loved not because of who we are but because of who God is.  Even when he’s seething with rage and perhaps a little blinded by that rage, Paul’s mind is amazing.  If you’re interested, read the letter. It’s only a few pages long, after all. 

However, this morning, I don’t want us to “get lost in the weeds” of that argument.  Instead, I want you to see this.  For Paul, there is the law of Moses.  This law wasn’t at odds with Christ.  Human beings simply weren’t able to fulfill that law.  The law might have been enough to allow one person to look at another and think, “We’ll at least I”m better than him or better than her!”  The law created a hierarchy which is always appealing to human beings as long as there’s a real chance that I’m further up the hierarchy than someone else.  Everyone loves a pecking order, right? “Where do you live?  What’s your house like?  What do you drive?  What do you do for a living?  How much do you volunteer?”  For as long as human beings have existed, we have gathered “big data” like this to place ourselves and place each other.  What counts as evidence might change from culture to culture or from faith to faith.  However, if you don’t think there are always human beings tracking such things, then maybe you don’t know human beings!  

For Paul, it is this desire for justification to prove ourselves and our worth, which enslaves us.  Christ sets us free.  To turn from the message of justification as God’s gift, to look away from the loving and gracious God, is to choose to be enslaved again.  (I remember the advertising exec who told me how much he loved his lifestyle at first but how, over time, he realized that he was just, “feeding the dragon.”  He suspected, too, that those who loved him might only love him as long as he kept feeding that dragon.) I suspect every one of us here knows what that kind of enslavement might feel like.  Am I right?

Again, let me say this clearly, the problem here is not a Jewish problem.  The problem is a human problem.  We are so much more comfortable being able to say that we earned something than that it was given, right?  If we earned it, then who can take it away?  If we were given what is most essential in life, then can’t it be taken away just as easily?  To accept what we’ve been given is to have to humble ourselves.  To accept what we’ve been given is to have to trust in something beyond ourselves.  To accept what we’ve been given is to have to ask ourselves, seriously, how we will ever find a way to express our gratitude for such an amazing gift.

If I feel like I have earned everything that I have, then I can lord it over others.  If they’ve got a problem with that, then they should just work harder!  By contrast, if the most important thing about my life is that I am loved by God as an act of pure grace, then my way of being in the world will be different.  Paul tells the Galatians that the gifts of the sprit are:  “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”  How many people in our society—really successful people, the kind of people we lionize—how many of those people are marked by characteristics like that.  We like our successful people brash and bold, right? We like strivers and pushers, not peaceful, patient, humble types.  According to Paul, receiving God’s love as a gift and taking that gift to heart changes us and re-orders everything.

Ultimately, this is the honest, truthful place from which Paul writes.  He might be a bit too angry.  He might be a little blinded by his own history with Jewish law to see the truth about human beings.  However, what he knows is that really opening one’s self to God’s love is the kind of thing that can radically re-order a life.  He knows this because that love totally re-ordered his.  When he asks the Galatians why they would ever want to be slaves again, I suspect the question comes straight out of his own struggles.  He, himself, had felt the power and pull of justifying  himself.  Maybe every now and then he still did.  Is there anyone more indignant than a recent ex-smoker talking to a person who still smokes?

That’s why the single verse that we read this morning matters so much.  The difference between the law of Moses and the law of Christ for Paul boils down to this:  we are here not to prove something about ourselves but to bear one another’s burdens.   Our purpose doesn’t rest in living a life of self-interest.  No…the reason that we are here is to help each other.  Rather than being enslaved in worrying about how we are doing we are invited to shed those shackles and look instead for someone to help, not to prove something but simply because they need help. 

Think about this.  Jesus taught that if someone needs our help then we should go the extra mile.  We should give them the coat off our back.  As Jesus carried his own cross, someone stepped forward to carry that cross a bit of the way for him, to carry his burden.  As he died on the cross, Jesus offered his tormenters the forgiveness that they didn’t even yet know they needed and asked his friend, Peter, to care for his mother’s needs.  With no need to prove a thing about himself, Jesus set out to prove the worth and dignity of every person.  He looked those in need straight in the eye and said, “Let’s deal with this together!” What if that is the highest calling for us all?