Pastor Karen Karpow
June 20, 2010
Baptism of Margaret Mary McAllister, Jodi Morales
New members: Mark Baxter, Jodi Morales, Jeanne Moran
Growing Up
V V V
Pray
also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known
with boldness the mystery of the gospel. Ephesians 6.19
V V V
[Call up in front of the
congregation: a black man, a white
man, a white boy, and a white woman.]
Back when my kids were little, I loved
Sesame Street, at least as much as the kids did. They used to play a game there, a logic game, figuring out
how things are the same, and how they are different. I hear they have changed it now, because it’s politically
incorrect to suggest that someone or something “doesn’t belong.” But bear with me—let’s play it the old
school way.
Sing:
One of these
people is not like the others
One of these
people just doesn’t belong (sorry!)
Can you guess
which person is not like the others
Before I finish
my song?
So, which one of these people is not like
the others? Any ideas?
· The black man is the only black person
· The boy is the only child.
· The white woman is the only female
We could probably go on and on with this
game. We are very good at figuring
out what divides us, aren’t we?
This is the topic that occupies Paul in
the letter he writes to the church at Galatia. They have been very concerned with who’s in and who’s
out—taking great care to draw the lines to make sure that they are in. They are setting up hurdles that people
have to clear before they can be allowed into the Christian fellowship. And this is driving Paul crazy.
In this passage Paul lists the biggest
chasms between people that he can think of. There are no wider gaps in his society than that between men
and women—because men have all the rights, and women have none, unless they are
attached to men. Then there’s the
gap between free men and slaves—people who own people, and the people who are
their property. And for a
well-brought-up Jew, there was no social gulf wider than that between Jews and
gentiles—and the Greeks were all gentiles.
Paul makes the very radical statement that
none of that matters—not any more—because everything has changed since Jesus
died and was resurrected.
Paul divides history into three
periods. First was the time before
God chose the Jews to be God’s special people, set apart and guided by
God. God made all of creation, and
creation was definitely not living up to God’s hopes. So God chose a couple, Abraham and Sarah, and made a covenant
with them and their descendents, who became the Jews. God loves everyone, but God was working with the Jews in a
special way. When they were slaves
in Egypt, God set them free and, through Moses, gave them the law—hundreds of
rules and regulations about how people were to live, as individuals and as a
community. There are laws about
every facet of life: food, money,
sex, marriage, children, clothes, animals, farmland, sacrifices, worship,
charity, you name it.
But that is not
the end of the story. The law
could do a lot—it corrected a lot of bad behavior, and told people what God
expects. But the law could not
make people good—it simply exposed where people were bad. In God-talk, the law could not make
people holy. The law is kind of
like an x-ray: it can reveal what
is broken, but it can’t heal it.
The cure for all those broken
things comes only from one place.
It takes God’s action on our behalf. It takes Jesus. Jesus died for us, and his resurrection
proves that it worked. We are
alive, truly alive, in Jesus! We
are set free, healed, made right with God. All we have to do is accept that. And once we accept it, and move into a life of faith, says
Paul, the law doesn’t matter any more.
Here it is in Paul’s own words:
23 Now
before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith
would be revealed. 24 Therefore the law was our
disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. 25
But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a
disciplinarian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all
children of God through faith.
Jesus does for us
what we cannot do ourselves—he makes us holy. And once we are holy, we have God in us, and we become more
like God all the time—if we cooperate.
That’s what it means to grow in the faith, to become more mature as
Christians. As we receive those
Father’s Day gifts from God, like I talked about with the kids [gifts of the
Spirit: love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control], we
become more like God, and we don’t need the specifics of the law any more.
Paul thinks the church in Galatia is stuck
in the old time period—the one where keeping the laws matters. What is at stake here is huge: they are arguing about what is required
to be a Christian. The leaders of
the church in Galatia, to whom Paul writes this letter, have decided that
gentiles who want to be Christians need to keep certain provisions of the
Jewish law—specifically, to be circumcised, and keep some of the purity
laws.
But that undermines the
foundational gospel claim the human righteousness is the result of divine
action, not human obedience. To
keep one part of the law opens the door to the idea that Christians must keep the
whole thing.
It’s an odd
paradox: it is when we accept the
fact that we can’t make ourselves holy on our own, that we cannot stand before
God on our own, that we begin to become grown-up in our faith.
When we realize
that no matter how good we are, how many impressive sacrifices we make, or how
well we follow the rules, we will never be holy enough for God—then we’re on the right path. We can let go and let God begin to work
in us. That’s when we begin to make progress toward
becoming more like God.
But if none of us can stand
on our own, then we’re all the same, in a very essential way. All the divisions between us break
down. Even basic
distinctions of race, class, and gender—the ones that Paul lists:
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.
It’s not that we shed all our
group identifiers—but we discover that being a member of the family of Christ
is our true identifier.
Distinctions do not disappear—but they cease to matter.
It was settled long ago that
we don’t have to become Jews before we can become Christians. But there are other divisions among us
that take up enormous amounts of time and energy.
·
Immigration is an
especially hot topic right now, both in the national news—thanks to Arizona—and
in Danbury. Some of you will not
like my saying this, but if we apply Paul’s reasoning to this controversy,
there is neither native born nor illegal immigrant. We are all one in Christ Jesus.
·
In a society
dramatically divided by income, there is neither wealthy professional nor
blue-collar worker nor working poor nor welfare mother. We are all one in Christ Jesus.
·
In a society polarized
by race, there are neither people of color nor people of no color. We are all one in Christ Jesus.
·
As we prepare for the
November mid-term elections, there are neither Democrats nor Republicans nor
Tea Partiers. We are all one in
Christ Jesus.
·
In a church obsessed
with other people’s sex lives, there is neither gay nor straight. We are all one in Christ Jesus, and we
are all entitled to the same access to the church’s ministries, including
marriage and ordination.
This is a struggle for the
soul of the church. What are we
about: how good we are, or how
good God is? We need to come out
as saved by grace, jubilantly filled with Christ, new creations from the inside
out.
Today we’re
baptizing and making new members, and that changes everything! Paul writes,
As
many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
All of us who are baptized
are clothed with Christ—not just the people we like, not just the people we
approve of.
…[A]ll
of you are one in Christ Jesus.
God’s act of grace through Jesus has broken through all the barriers that Paul—or we—can think of, barriers which foster inequality and injustice. God has done a new thing. Our lives and relationships cannot go on as before. God has created a new family where all of God’s children are at home.
May it be so in this
church. Amen.
23
Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until
faith would be revealed. 24 Therefore the law was
our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. 25
But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a
disciplinarian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all
children of God through faith. 27 As many of you as
were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28
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. 29
And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs
according to the promise.