Phil Kniss: Why be good?

June 27, 2010

Galatians 5:1, 13-25 (and Luke 9:51-62; 1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21)

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Paul has more than one problem on his hands
at the church in Galatia.
We spent a couple Sundays now looking at one big problem.
We’re about to uncover a second big one.

Both problems stem from the fact Jewish believers in Jesus
were being asked to accept Gentile believers as full partners in faith,
without making them become Jews.
And this required a seismic shift for Jewish believers.
They had to completely change their minds about social taboos,
and now freely fellowship with Gentiles,
sit in their homes, and eat at their tables.
We have no idea how huge this was.
And they had to shift their theology.
to change their beliefs about the nature of salvation itself.
They were now being told salvation was available to all,
by God’s grace, through faith in Jesus Christ,
without being descended from Abraham
and following the practices Jewish law requires.

This led to a backlash, and problem number one—legalism.
Some Jews tolerated Gentiles joining the church,
but they insisted new converts also become Jews,
and follow the law.
So they went around preaching Jewish legalism—
the need to practice circumcision,
and follow dietary laws, and other purity rituals.
In Galatians, and elsewhere,
Paul called them out on this corruption of the gospel
and pleaded for the believers to hold fast
on salvation by grace through faith in Jesus.

But as it often goes,
when you introduce something new into a system,
reactions can go in two opposite directions.
So legalism was only one problem.
It had an opposite counterpart—libertarianism.
That’s what Paul is taking aim at in today’s text, Galatians 5,
the idea that because of God’s lavish grace, anything goes.

Preaching salvation by grace is dangerous.
Much better, if you wants things clear, and stable, and orderly,
to have an objective legal standard
by which we can measure ones level of righteousness
Grace opens up all kinds of unpleasant possibilities.

For one,
the Gentiles welcomed the fact that they could be included
without having to jump through all the Jewish hoops.
But then some took it to an excess.
They concluded there was no moral law
by which to judge right and wrong.
Their hedonistic culture still held some appeal,
so spiritual freedom meant license to behave as they wished.

And then there were Jews who for whatever reason,
were already chafing under the requirements of Moses’ law.
Maybe they were jealous of the freedoms they saw around them.
So once they learned from Paul and others that actually,
circumcision and diet and ritual purity was not what saved them,
then it wasn’t too big of a leap
to also throw away the laws of Moses that spoke to
how they treated others economically,
or how they exercised power over others,
or how they behaved sexually.
And they thought, isn’t grace grand?

For Gentiles and Jews,
the idea of freedom from old legal framework was rather . . .
intoxicating.
They could get used to this.
The problem was, as they let go of the old ethical framework
that consisted entirely of earning righteousness,
and earning God’s favor,
they had no other ethical framework to take its place.
_____________________

Which leaves a perplexing question:
“If our good conduct contributes nothing to salvation,
and if salvation is purely God’s free gift of grace . . .
why be good?”
“Why be good?”
That was what the Galatians were asking.

And there’s a fine line between legalism and libertarianism.
So Paul needed to give a careful, nuanced answer.
Which is why he wrote Galatians 5.
In our reading we skipped from verse 1 to 13 and following.
But I want to pick up a verse we missed.
Because I think his answer is summed up in verse 6:
Paul says, it’s not following the law that saves you,
nor being free from the law that saves you.
Neither one count for anything, he says.
But, (and let me quote Paul exactly) “the only thing that counts
is faith working through love.”

This one sentence completes Paul’s argument in the book of Galatians.
There is a 3-part progression in his argument.
Paul preaches grace which evokes faith that expresses itself in love.

There is an ethical framework for those who
put their faith in Jesus for their salvation.
And it’s no cake-walk.
It’s not cheap grace.
There is a rigorous ethical framework.
Christian ethics is centered on
sacrificial love patterned after Jesus Christ.
Paul quotes none other than Jesus in v. 14 when he writes,
“The whole law is summed up in a single commandment,
‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Now let’s be clear.
Paul is not promoting a new legal system here.
Love is not just a new law to replace the old.
It’s not just a different way to earn God’s saving grace.
Otherwise we’ve just created a new legalism.
No, the good new news is that salvation is God’s doing.
It’s God’s initiative. It’s God’s free gift of grace.
But it’s a gift that sets in motion a chain of events,
events made possible only by God’s grace.

God’s initiative of grace evokes in us a response of faith,
which then works itself out through love.
You see, grace draws us to trust deeply in the one
who made this gracious move toward us.
And our trust transforms us into the image
of the one in whom we put our trust.
We are drawn to love like Jesus loved.
We are drawn to express faith the way Jesus did,
by obeying God’s great love command:
“Love the Lord your God, with all you have and are.
And love your neighbor as yourself.”
_____________________

So how do we get from opening ourselves to God’s grace,
to living a life of sacrificial love of God and others,
without falling into the ditch on either side—
legalism that assumes we need to work to earn God’s grace,
or libertarianism that assumes since God’s saving grace is free,
we are also free to define our own ethics.
Well, the answer, according to Paul,
is that the path from grace to love, passes through faith.
In other words,
we get from free saving grace,
to the rigorous ethic of sacrificial love,
by responding to God’s grace with profound, radical trust—
that is, faith.

And we had two other scripture readings in today’s lectionary,
that illustrate this very kind of faith.
An Old Testament and a Gospel story,
both of which, I should warn you, are not for the faint of heart.
You may wonder, when we look at them,
why they’re even in the same Bible as Paul’s glorious words
on salvation by grace.

Let’s look at the Gospel story first.
Jesus doesn’t come across in this story as being very . . . well . . .
gracious.
In Luke 9:51ff, it says he “set his face toward Jerusalem”
and while he was on the way,
he encountered some potential disciples,
people who wanted to follow him.
One of them said, “Wherever you go, I will go.”
Jesus tried to talk him out of it, warning him of the hardships.
And another person, Jesus invited; said, “Follow me.”
And the man said, “sure, but let me first go and bury my father.”
Jesus’ response? “Let the dead bury their own dead.”
And a third said, “I’ll go with you,
but let me first go say farewell to my family.”
Jesus retorted, “No one who puts their hand to the plow
and looks back, is fit for the Kingdom of God.”

Obviously, this isn’t one of those “sweet Jesus” stories.
Although some commentators try their best to make it into one.
Scholars bend over backward trying to interpret the excuses
of these three persons,
as actually being unreasonable.
Such as, saying that, well, because of ancient burial customs,
the man who wanted to bury his father
was really asking for a one-year delay.
That may well be possible.
But it’s a moot point.
This passage isn’t even trying to illustrate
how nice and sweet and gracious Jesus is.
The point of this passage is that
the agenda of the kingdom of God is urgent.
Twice it tells us “Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem.”
And urgency requires complete—and immediate—
trust in the leader.
You know, when the fire department is racing toward
the scene of a house fire, sirens wailing,
the rookie crew member doesn’t ask the captain
to make a quick stop at 7-11
because he missed breakfast that morning.

Jesus is making clear that being his follower
demands that we give our all. Now.
The only way to do that is to trust Jesus completely,
that he knows what he’s doing,
and when it needs to be done.
There is a word for that kind of
all-out, immediate, and unqualified trust.
It’s called faith.

Read that meaning of “faith” into Paul’s words,
when he says, salvation is only by grace,
through faith in Jesus Christ.
We can read that meaning of faith into Paul’s words,
because that’s what Paul meant by faith.
That’s the kind of faith Paul demonstrated in his own life.
When he deliberately walked into situations
that resulted in him being whipped, stoned, imprisoned,
shipwrecked, homeless, and hungry.
Paul preaching cheap grace? I don’t think so.
_____________________

Then there’s the Old Testament story, from 1 Kings 19.
Also not for the faint of heart.
This is another discipleship story.
The young man Elisha was being asked
to follow the master prophet of Israel, Elijah,
and become his disciple and apprentice.

Elijah found Elisha out plowing in the family fields,
walked up beside Elisha
and threw his mantle over Elisha’s shoulder.
This was a symbolic and powerful act.
Elisha knew immediately what it meant.
It meant that Elijah, this renowned prophet,
a prophet both loved and hated throughout the land,
was choosing him to be his successor.
And Elisha dropped the reins and went after Elijah,
and told him, “Let me kiss my father and my mother,
and then I will follow you.”
And Elijah said, “Of course. Do as you please.”
A different response than Jesus gave.
So obviously we can’t say the Bible teaches us
that we always have to forsake our family obligations
in order to be faithful to God . . .
Or that it’s never okay to stop at 7-11 for an egg sandwich.

But clearly in this story,
Elisha wasn’t asking to say goodbye
because he wasn’t committed,
or because he was pulling some delay tactic.
Clearly not, because in the very next verse it tells us what he did.
Elisha slaughters his team of oxen. He butchers them.
He chops up the wood from his plowing equipment,
and builds a fire to boil the meat.
He cooks a feast, and serves it up to the people.
This is radical following.
Elisha was destroying any possibility of a Plan B.
This is even more radical than James and John
walking away from their fishing boats
when Jesus called them,
leaving their father Zebedee holding the nets.
At least James and John didn’t sink their boats
and cut up their nets.
If they changed their mind later on,
they could go back to their father and go fishing again.
But Elisha completely destroyed the very means of his livelihood,
before he began following Elijah.
What if this prophet thing didn’t work out the way he hoped?
There would be no turning back.
Elisha took Plan B, and burned it, and boiled it.

There is a word for that kind of all-out, immediate,
and unqualified trust in the one who calls us.
It’s called faith,
the very kind of faith Paul calls for in Galatians.
_____________________

Those two stories are perfect illustrations
for how we get from free grace to sacrificial love.
We trust the one who calls us.
And we do all within our power and will—
and we do have power and will—
to nurture a relationship of trust
with this one who calls us.
There are essential spiritual disciplines that grow faith,
that nurture trust.
For instance, we come together to worship
to hear the stories again,
to listen to each other’s story.
We pray for the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives.
We spend time in the scriptures,
allowing them to form us,
allowing the scriptures to read us.
We practice mutual care,
mutual admonition,
mutual discernment.
We practice giving and receiving hospitality,
so we learn to recognize and trust
the Jesus we meet in those around us.
And we practice saying “yes”
when we hear Jesus say to us, “Follow me.”

Let us practice saying yes right now, in song,
as we sing together a song of commitment,
Sing the Story #40: We will follow, we will follow Jesus
And let’s just see where it takes us.

—Phil Kniss, June 27, 2010

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Ross Erb: Haute Couture

June 20, 2010

Galatians 3:23-29

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Last week, Pastor Phil gave insight into the story
behind Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia.
He talked about the fight that Paul was having with Peter;
a struggle about how to put into practice
the decision made at the Jerusalem conference and recounted in Acts 15.
At question was just how closely, if at all,
Gentile believers need to follow the Jewish religious laws.
Phil pointed out that theory said they did not need to,
while practice was a bit more complicated than that.

The passage we heard read today, from the third chapter of Galatians, continues Paul’s treatise on being justified by faith.
Verses 23 – 25 set out how, prior to Jesus,
it was the law that governed God’s chosen.
As important as the law was to the Jews,
and to Paul with his Jewish training,
Paul says in verse 21 that the law cannot give life.
In fact, we have been locked up under the law,
in a sort of holding pattern until the coming of Jesus
and the faith we could receive through trust in Christ.
In essence, the law became a kind of disciplinarian or guard
to keep God’s children until the advent of faith in Christ.

It is through belief in Jesus that we become drawn in as children of God.
I’d like to take just a moment to say that this was not a new plan
that God cooked up because the whole law thing wasn’t working so well. From the beginning,
God’s intent was that through Israel
all the nations of the world would be drawn to worship God.
Listen to Genesis 12: 1-3.
The LORD had said to Abram,
“Go from your country, your people and your father’s household
to the land I will show you.
“I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
God gives Abram three blessings.
God promises to make of Abram a great nation,
to bless him,
and to make Abram’s name great.
Immediately following these three promises,
God says that this is happening so that Abram will be a blessing to others. Verse three ends with the phrase,
“…and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
If you read the story of Abraham carefully,
you will read how the glory of God was made apparent
to many of the nations with whom Abraham had contact.

Jump ahead to the establishment of the temple in Jerusalem.
Hear Isaiah 56: 6-7.
And foreigners who bind themselves to the LORD
to minister to him,
to love the name of the LORD,
and to be his servants,
all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it
and who hold fast to my covenant—
these I will bring to my holy mountain
and give them joy in my house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house will be called
a house of prayer for all nations.”
Foreigners will be accepted as they follow the Mosaic laws,
and the temple will be known as a house of prayer for all peoples.
Worship of God was not just for Israel,
but for all who would come to know God.

In light of this, Galatians 3:26 is not news.
All along, God has had a place for all,
Jew AND Gentile, in God’s family.
Paul is saying that faith in Jesus brings anyone fully into that family.
We become known as children of God
because when we were baptized into Christ
we have clothed ourselves with Christ.
This is the piece that I’d like us to consider closely today.
What does it mean to be clothed with Christ?

If you have any awareness of events in the world this past week,
you know that the World Cup of soccer is occurring in South Africa.
This is the most closely followed sporting event in the world.
For those who are there, or those watching the games on TV,
the teams are known by their jerseys.
When I hold up this jersey,
my guess is that some of you know immediately
which country’s players wear this.
What team is it? Argentina.
If I had other jerseys available,
I could have held them up
and likely someone would have been able to identify the team.
Anyone wearing this jersey during the World Cup
would be identified as a supporter of Argentina.
On the soccer pitch, you know that the person wearing this jersey
is playing to represent Argentina.

Clothing can identify who we are,
where we are from,
or who or what we support.
Let me give another example.
Are you familiar with the term “haute couture”?
It’s a French phrase meaning “high sewing”, or “high dressmaking”.
I found out that it is actually a controlled term
and that not just any clothier can use it.
Haute couture is made to order for a specific customer,
and it is usually made from high-quality, expensive fabric
and sewn with extreme attention to detail and finish
by the most experienced and capable seamstresses,
often using time-consuming, hand-executed techniques.
I have to say that the definition I just gave is thanks to Wikipedia.

I suppose that I don’t know what haute couture really looks like.
To be honest, and this should be no surprise to anyone,
I’m not one to pay much attention at all to fashion or clothes.
But someone who wears haute couture is making a statement.
That statement might be that they are wealthy.
It might be that they care about appearance.
And we might make assumptions about a person
based on what they wear.
They are elegant, refined, snobbish, aristocratic, powerful, important.
If the person tends more toward Thrift Shop Chic,
we may think that they are working class, middle class, poor,
common, salt of the earth, slovenly, lazy, unimportant.
All kinds of information can be inferred based on how a person dresses.

To clothe oneself with Christ must surely be the ultimate in haute couture! Can you imagine any garment that could be of higher quality than Christ?
Or created with more love and attention to detail
by a more skilled seamstress than God?
And surely we would say that it is a garment
that was designed specifically for the individual wearer!
Spiritually speaking, I am dressed in haute couture!
All of a sudden I’m feeling pretty special, and so should you!

The challenge, of course,
is to figure out what in the world it means to be clothed with Christ.
What does that look like?
There are a number of possibilities.
It might mean that we wear a cross on a chain around our neck,
or a t-shirt that has a Bible verse on it
or some phrase that proclaims a message about God.
I’m almost certain that is NOT what it means to be clothed with Christ.
In fact, I’m almost certain that it has nothing to do with what we wear,
and everything to do with our attitudes and how we behave.

If we are clothed with Christ,
I have to assume that just like with other clothing,
people can see us and make judgments about us based on that clothing.
So our attitudes, which cannot help but be manifested in our behaviors,
are our Christ-clothes.
Perhaps this is why Paul goes on to say in Galatians 3:28
“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free,
neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
These other differences fade away when we are clothed with Christ.
People will not see those differences
because they will first see Christ.
I believe that is what Paul was saying to the church in Galatia,
and that is what this letter is saying to us today.
The more fully dressed in Christ we can be,
the less our individual differences will matter.

I want to end by reading a short journal entry.
This was written by Everett Brubaker,
who just graduated from EMHS
and is in Eastern Europe with the schools Touring Choir.

June 13
The day began in our small hotel in Wroclaw. We packed up our things, had breakfast at the hotel and departed for Katowice. It was a 3-4 hour bus ride and we arrived ready to sing for a Baptist congregation. We sang 6 songs total throughout the service. We were there on a day when several members were getting baptized. It was fun singing for an energetic congregation and listening to a service that was entirely in Polish. After the service we drove to Polwice. We spent the afternoon relaxing, playing cards, playing soccer, and just enjoying each others company. It was a gorgeous day and the host church also prepared a wonderful meal for us. We sang our evening concert to a full house.

After the concert, the congregation and the choir fellowshipped outside. There was barbeque, games of soccer and volleyball (Poland vs USA). There were little children running around. I met this little 5 or 6-year-old kid who I later found out was named Naton. He was kicking a ball around so I hopped in and kicked a soccer ball with him. He was having a great time but after a half hour or so he scurried off to the playground. I went and sat in a chair to watch a volleyball game which seemed to be getting quite heated. After some time Naton came and stood next to me. He was holding a paper plate full of salad and seemed to be having some trouble holding the plate while maneuvering a fork so I put out my hands and he set his plate on them and continued to eat the salad. Upon finishing his first salad, he proceeded to go back for seconds and thirds, each time returning and using my hands for a table. He talked to me while he ate, all in Polish. I smiled and nodded and laughed when he was and looked concerned when he did. Naton eventually headed out to leave with his dad and while scampering away, turned back and yelled something in Polish. He dad turned back and yelled, “Tomorrow?” I smiled and gave him a thumbs up. Later that evening our choir was assigned to hosts. John and I are currently with a host family who speaks virtually no English. It is proving to be quite an adventure but one John and I are excited to take head on.
-Everett Brubaker

Now, you might wonder about my choice of this entry,
but to me, Everett was fully clothed in Christ on June 13.
He was showing love to Naton,
and differences of language and culture disappeared.
There was neither American nor Pole, teen nor youth, East nor West.
There was just two of God’s children,
one of whom, Everett,
was bringing glory to God through simple acts of friendship and service.
It is my prayer that we all have stories like that.
We might be like Everett,
showing God to others,
or we may be like Natan,
seeing God through the Christ-clothes that others are wearing.

The song we are going to sing, #373 in our hymnal,
uses a slightly different metaphor, that of a vine and branches,
but the words speak to this idea of being immersed in Christ.
“May we, loving one another, radiant in thy light abide; so through us, made fruitful by thee, shall our God be glorified.”
May we, who have been baptized into Christ,
clothe ourselves in Christ, to the glory of God.

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Phil Kniss: Trusting God's accomplishments

June 13, 2010

Galatians 2:15-21, Luke 7:36-8:3, Psalm 32

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We know for a fact,
that the reason today’s passage from Galatians even exists,
is because of a fight between Peter and Paul.

The epistles we’re looking at this summer,
we’re calling “Living Letters”
because they carry a message that’s still vital for us today.
They’re ancient letters, of course.
But they were written by real people,
to real church communities,
facing particular opportunities and particular threats.

In these letters, there are lots of theological discussions.
But behind almost every theological discussion is a story.
Some church was dealing with a specific situation,
that called for careful thinking,
for theological reflection.
Most of the time, we don’t know the story,
because Paul and other biblical letter writers don’t tell us.
But today we know.
We know these verses in chapter 2 of the letter to Galatia
were written because of a fight between Peter and Paul.
Paul tells us so.

If you look in your Bibles at Galatians, chapter 2,
you see that this theological treatment
of justification, and faith, and works, and law,
that we read this morning begins in verse 15.
But the four verses right before that are a story.
A story about a fight.
Not a physically violent fight, of course.
But a fight nevertheless—
a passionate and deep struggle
between two strong opposing parties.
We only get Paul’s side of the story, of course.
We have to make assumptions about the other side.
But it’s important that we pay attention to the story,
so we can make more sense out of the rest of Galatians.

As Paul tells it, when Peter (also called Cephas) came to Antioch,
they had a face-to-face confrontation.
This would have been after the Jerusalem Council, told in Acts 15,
where the church decided to allow Gentiles to join in full communion
without becoming Jews,
without following all the laws that Jewish Christians followed.
So by this time, when Paul is writing,
the official position of the church—
the position that (to quote Acts 15)
“seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us”—
was not to burden Gentiles with the demands of Jewish law,
but extend to them full fellowship as Gentiles.

But, as sometimes is the case,
what looks great in theory, and on paper,
gets complicated when it meets “real-life.”
This was especially true in Jerusalem,
the mother city of Judaism.
I reminded us last Sunday
that this Jesus movement called “The Way”
started out solidly within Judaism.
It was a Jewish reformation movement.
Until Paul’s ministry took it way beyond Judea,
all around the Mediterranean,
all over the Roman Empire,
into every major center of commerce and culture.
So while Gentiles were happily joining together with Jews
in far-flung places like Galatia and Asia Minor,
it was a whole different picture in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was not only Judaism Central,
this was during a period of growing Jewish nationalism,
and growing frustration and anger toward Rome,
and consequently, growing anti-Gentile sentiment.
So while James and the apostles in Jerusalem,
were theoretically in support of ministry to the Gentiles,
this rapid expansion of the church into Gentile territory
was creating real problems for them, and the home church.

For one thing,
in Jerusalem they didn’t have Gentiles knocking on the door
wanting to join the church.
So it wasn’t something they were passionate about, like Paul.
They didn’t have any real face-to-face experience with this issue.

And secondly,
it created a huge image problem for them as followers of Jesus.
Not to mention, a huge barrier in their witness to fellow Jews.
Already, they were marginalized by the Jewish establishment.
Now they had to suffer even more
by being associated with this renegade Paul.
Word traveled fast.
Everyone knew Paul was out looking for
relationships with Gentiles—
staying in their homes, worshiping with them,
eating with them.
It was distasteful to nearly every Jew in Jerusalem.
Jerusalem Christians were trying their best to be
respectable full participants in the Jewish community,
but Paul was making it awfully difficult.

So what happened in Antioch—
and this was just about 100 miles north of Jerusalem,
where the ministry to Gentiles really began—
was that Peter and Paul were both there,
and as you might expect they were both
enjoying fellowship with Gentile Christians, eating with them,
meaning, of course, sharing the common meal,
the Lord’s Supper.
Until some representatives of James and the Jerusalem church
came to visit Antioch.
So out of deference to the visitors from Jerusalem,
Peter withdrew from table fellowship with the Gentiles
In other words, he didn’t take communion with them,
so as not to give offense to the mother church.

And Paul, you might say, went ballistic.
Jewish piety, when there’s an offense,
generally calls for private reproof.
But Paul took it public, opposing Peter to his face,
which meant he considered this both alarming and urgent.
Peter probably didn’t see this as a big deal.
Just took a small symbolic step back to keep the peace.
But Paul saw it as a blatant repudiation of the Gospel.

To withdraw from table fellowship with Christians who were
culturally and racially different,
was to forsake them as his brothers and sisters,
make them second-class Christians.
It violated the unity of the Church.
It mocked the cross of Christ.
It challenged the heart of the Gospel.

So Paul challenged Peter, saying, in v. 14:
“If you, a Jew, live like a Gentile most of the time, not like a Jew,
how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

And then today’s passage, the theological lesson,
begins in the next verse.
But really, you can still think of this as what Paul is saying to Peter.
There weren’t quotation marks in early manuscripts, anyway.
We have to figure out by the context,
where a quote begins and ends.
These might not be the words Paul spoke to Peter,
but they well could be.

The words in v. 15 could be a general statement.
“We ourselves . . .” sounds like an editorial “we.”
“We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners.”
But I think the passage could just as well read like this:
“Peter, you and I are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners.
You and I both know that a person is justified
not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.
And you and I have both come to believe in Christ Jesus,
so that we might be justified by faith in Christ,
and not by doing the works of the law,
because no one will be justified by the works of the law.”
And v. 18:
“But if I build up again—like you did Peter—
the very things that I once tore down,
then I’m acting like a sinner . . . and Christ died for nothing.”

Maybe these weren’t the words Paul spoke to Peter,
but these words were, without a doubt,
a direct result of this heated conflict between Paul and Peter.

In this letter, Paul appeals to the church in Galatia,
not to let this spirit that Peter demonstrated take over the church,
and nullify the Gospel.
Gentiles and Jews are united by a common faith in Christ.
It is not a unity based on common ethnicity.
or on common customs and background,
or even on a common religious legal code,
but a unity based on faith in Jesus Christ.
Or in the words of German theologian Jürgen Moltmann,
the church is not called to an ethnic, social, or legal unity,
but to “an evangelical unity.”
That’s a unity that grows out of a shared trust
in God’s gracious work of salvation in Christ.
_____________________

So what do you suppose Paul really means,
in this theological argument that says we are
justified only by faith in Christ?
What does “faith in Christ” refer to, exactly?

People use the word “faith” in lots of different ways, of course.
But I think we can have a pretty clear sense
of what Paul means by it in Galatians.

I think it’s safe to say that faith is a response to God’s grace,
and that response is characterized primarily by confession.
That is, we confess, or express our faith in, our trust in,
the work of God in Jesus Christ.
We confess, or express our faith with words,
as in, a statement of faith.
We confess, or express our faith with attitudes,
as in having a posture of trust in the work of God.
We confess, or express our faith ethically,
as our trust in God transforms how we live in this world.

But always, whether expressed in words or thoughts or deeds,
our faith finds meaning
in the one being confessed—Jesus Christ.
It’s not what we do that gives faith meaning.
It’s the work God has done through this one we confess.

I was inspired this week by reading Charles Cousar’s
commentary on Galatians in the Interpretation series.
Cousar is a professor emeritus of New Testament
at Columbia Theological Seminary in Georgia.

Cousar wrote,
“Faith is never intended to be a possession people can have
to guarantee their status, like a membership card” (p54)
“Faith is God’s gift which we reappropriate.”
Despite what we like to think, faith is not something we
muster up, or master, or manipulate.
We don’t have faith so we can put God in debt to us.
We are tempted to think that if we can
manage to have sufficient faith,
then God owes us a special blessing,
or that if we just believe,
God will have to take special care of us.
No, that’s just turning faith into a kind of works.
And Paul was adamant in Galatians and elsewhere,
that faith was the opposite of works.

Faith is a response to God’s grace already given,
it’s not something we muster up to earn God’s grace.
Otherwise, Cousar suggests, we just turn faith into the
“ultimate form of self-justification which finally succeeds”
in earning God’s favor.
He says, we make faith like circumcision,
some act that people perform
to gain God’s favor and justification.

But you know,
we can miss the mark on faith in more than one direction.
We can try desperately to earn God’s favor
by jumping through all kinds of hoops,
and call it faith.
But that’s just a different kind of works.
Or we can be completely passive,
and thank God we don’t have to be a righteous do-gooder,
and feel compelled to live like we’re out to change the world,
and call that faith.
But that’s just spiritual laziness.
In fact, it’s one of the seven deadly sins: sloth.

Here’s another quote from Cousar that I think is right on.
“Faith is not a reliance on one’s accomplishments,
or one’s lack of accomplishments,
but a trust in the accomplishments of God.”

Faith is a free and generous trust that God does good work.
Or as Cousar put it,
“[Faith is] the sometimes quiet, sometimes reckless confidence
in the goodness and faithfulness of God . . .
Faith is not a way for humans to ‘get God on their side.’
[God] is already for them. In faith [people] change, not [God].
The experience of trusting God always leads
to the thorough reshaping of the believer.”

You see, a full and robust belief in salvation by grace,
through faith in Jesus Christ,
is by no means a way to get off easy in this life, ethically speaking.
Trust in God changes us.
Faith reshapes us.
It makes us obedient—
not in a superficial and formalized way,
adhering to the demands of the law for the sake of the law.
Rather, obedience as radical following of the one in whom we trust.
Faith makes us obedient to the one whose mission it is
to move among suffering humanity
carrying good news to the poor
proclaiming release to the captives
healing, restoring, reconciling.
Faith makes us obedient participants in God’s saving story.

It’s the kind of scandalous faith
we heard about in the Gospel reading today.
Where a sinful woman came into a house
and fell at the feet of Jesus weeping,
tears flowing
seeking to be made whole.
She didn’t have to earn God’s grace and salvation first.
She came as a sinner.
But her expression of shameless trust in Jesus to heal and forgive,
in other words, her faith,
resulted in her leaving that house forgiven and transformed,
set on a new path in life.

Being justified by faith is not a free pass to heaven.
The justification, the being made righteous,
is indeed, God’s marvelous work, not our work.
But faith is our confession of trust in God’s work,
a trust so deep that we forsake all
to follow and obey this one
who forgives us and justifies us.

But we do have to confess.
We confess our trust, and we confess our need, our sin.

So I invite us now to a time of confession and reflection.
I will pray a few lines of confession on all our behalf.
If you can identify with this confession,
do so, in the silence that follows.

Let us pray.

O God, before whose face
we cannot make ourselves righteous
even by being right:
free us from the need to justify ourselves
by our own anxious striving.

O God, before whose face
we are nevertheless called to account:
save us from weak resignation
to the evils we deplore in the world,
and in our own lives.

Give us courage to respond to your grace
with robust faith in your goodness,
with strong trust in your work,
and with a pulsing desire to follow you in obedience,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

[silence]

Hear these words of assurance (Psalm 32):

Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

While I kept silence, my body wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.

Then I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not hide my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
and you forgave the guilt of my sin.

Therefore let all who are faithful
offer prayer to you;
at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters
shall not reach them.
You are a hiding place for me;
you preserve me from trouble;
you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.

I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding,
whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle,
else it will not stay near you.

Many are the torments of the wicked,
but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord.
Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous,
and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

—Phil Kniss, June 13, 2010

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Phil Kniss: Held in a Grace Grasp

June 6, 2010

Galatians 1:11-24

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The epistle to the Galatians is an emergency letter.
I have no idea how it was delivered to the churches in Galatia,
or how far it had to travel,
but as far as Paul was concerned it couldn’t get there fast enough.
It was the kind of letter that, had there been the option in 55 A.D.,
Paul surely would have used email.
The subject line would have been, “URGENT!” In all caps.

Ancient letters, like Paul’s, all have a wordy beginning.
Where we put names and addresses,
and then “Dear So-and-so,”
Ancient letters take several descriptive sentences
to say who it’s from,
and several descriptive sentences to say,
“Grace to you and peace, church at Galatia.
In other words, “Dear So-and-so.”

Then, the body of the letter begins;
in our N.T., usually not until 7 or 8 verses in.
Paul’s usual pattern—after the “from me, to you, grace and peace, etc”—
is to begin the body of the letter with an extended polite introduction,
maybe reminiscing about their long and tender relationship,
or expressing thanksgiving to God
for what God is doing among them.
Even in his letter to the churches at Corinth,
who were having all kinds of bitter disputes
over worship, the role of women, sexual immorality, etc.,
even to them, he opens his letter
with tender words of thanksgiving.

Not so with his letter to the church at Galatia.
After his “from me, to you, grace and peace”
the first words out of his mouth were,
“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting
the one who called you in the grace of Christ
and are turning to a different gospel.”
There wasn’t time for polite niceties.
The very Gospel of Jesus Christ was at stake.
As was every community formed around that Gospel.
The Good News was being turned on its head, twisted,
corrupted to the point it was becoming Bad News,
at least to a large segment of the church.
By this letter, Paul was attempting
an emergency resuscitation of the Gospel,
trying to keep the Christian communities in Galatia
from having their life-breath choked out of them.

It’s really hard for us to understand what all was at stake here,
but let’s review.
Jesus was a Jew.
All his disciples were Jews.
He framed his whole message as a fulfillment of Jewish law.
His ministry was geographically centered in Judea.
After he left, the apostles in charge of the early church
set up headquarters in Jerusalem,
worshiped in the temple and synagogues,
and devoted themselves to a better practice of Judaism.
The church, sometimes called “The Way,”
was from the beginning, without question, a Jewish movement.
And despite strong hints Jesus gave pointing to a larger mission,
and even some hints in Hebrew scriptures,
nobody, but nobody, thought this would be anything
other than a Jewish reformation movement.

But things had changed by the mid-50s,
20-plus years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.
The number of Jesus’ followers were expanding exponentially,
and were forming communities
not just in the heart of Jewish country,
but in towns and cities around the Mediterranean,
even where there were no synagogues.
And Gentiles were joining these communities . . . in droves.

This set up an intense, and quite predictable, conflict in the church.
The gospel message was that salvation comes by God’s grace,
through faith in Jesus,
not by good works, and strict adherence to the law.
So some were teaching, and practicing,
full inclusion of Gentile believers,
without requiring them to become Jews.
No need for males to be circumcised,
which for thousands of years,
had been the fundamental ritual of the covenant,
the sign of belonging to God and God’s people.
But now, uncircumcised men,
and women who did not follow Jewish law,
were sitting in house churches
right next to devout Jewish believers in Jesus,
eating and drinking the Lord’s Supper with them,
with no restrictions!
When Jewish believers in Jesus were put in this situation,
it directly challenged everything they knew
about what it meant to be Jewish.
Many of them were fine with Gentiles joining the movement,
so long as they also became Jews.
So among the communities in Galatia,
influential teachers went around redefining the Gospel of Jesus,
as something for Jews only.

This conflict absolutely permeates the life of the early church,
and permeates most of the New Testament scripture,
from the book of Acts on.
It certainly permeates the book of Galatians,
and we will revisit it in the coming Sundays.
_____________________

But today we focus on a few verses in chapter 1,
where Paul reveals why he is at the center of this controversy,
why he feels so deeply about this matter,
that it merits an emergency letter
to the Christian communities in Galatia.

It goes back to one fateful day that Paul
was knocked to the ground and struck blind,
as he was on the road to Damascus.
The voice Paul heard, as he lay on the ground stunned,
said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.
I have appeared to you for one purpose,
to appoint you to serve and testify on my behalf
to the Gentiles,
so that they may turn from darkness to light.”

We often call this Damascus Road encounter
Paul’s “conversion”.
And it was a conversion, no doubt.
Paul’s whole point of view was changed.
But on that day, Paul was not “converted to Christianity,”
as much as he was called and grasped by Jesus Christ.
You might even say Paul was grasped and shook by Jesus—
and told, “You are mine!
From this point on, you are my servant, to do my bidding.”
Seems Paul didn’t have much say in the matter.

And Jesus’ bidding, as it turned out,
was for Paul to go all over the region of the Mediterranean,
into all the Greek-speaking parts of the Empire,
where Jews were already a small, persecuted minority,
and build the church of Jesus Christ
with Jews and Gentiles together,
side-by-side recipients of God’s grace.

More than any other apostle,
Paul is responsible for the spread of this movement to the Gentiles.
And it began on the day Jesus himself called him,
and held him in a grace grasp.

I use that phrase on purpose.
Because I think it highlights something about God’s grace
that’s easy to miss.
We easily and quickly spiritualize, personalize, sentimentalize,
what it means to receive God’s grace and salvation.

The great theologian Karl Barth, in his writings, asked,
What does it really mean, in concrete and practical terms,
to be a Christian?
Barth suggests that the classic answer to that question
focuses on the benefits we get from our salvation.
The Christian is a recipient of God’s grace,
and thus enjoys the benefits of reconciliation, of forgiveness,
of joy, peace, and hope found in Christ.
There is nothing untrue about that.
Many of the great hymns we sing spell out the benefits for us.
Spiritual benefits of salvation are the theme of many sermons.
The trouble with this classic answer, according to Barth,
is we are then tempted to assume that enjoying God’s gifts
is the only relevant and important reality
to which God calls us.
So my salvation, my peace, my joy,
my assurance of God’s blessing,
become my main concern.
We are tempted to make Jesus our personal spiritual genie,
at our beck and call.
When it’s actually the other way around.
We are at Jesus’ beck and call.

To receive God’s grace-filled invitation to salvation,
is to be issued a life-altering call.
It is to be commissioned, forever, as a witness to others.
We are grasped by the grace of God in Christ,
and set apart as servants of Christ,
to be persons who in word and deed
point to God and to what God is doing in the world.
Our preoccupation as Christians
is not the gifts God bestows on individual believers,
but the service of love to the world
for which we are grasped, and to which we are called.

Paul’s “conversion experience” recorded several times in scripture,
is a case in point.
Not one of these repeated accounts of Paul’s conversion
mentions anything about a new joy, or peace, or sense of security
that resulted from Paul’s encounter with Jesus.
Rather, Jesus’ revelation of himself to Paul
resulted in Paul being sent to participate in God’s mission.
Paul was ordered to sign on to God’s agenda,
and leave his own behind.

Paul lays that out quite clearly in today’s text from Galatians 1, v. 15-16,
when he describes his conversion on the Damascus Road:
He says, quote,
“God, who had set me apart before I was born,
and called me through his grace,
was pleased to reveal his Son to me,
so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles.”

Paul was grasped and called by God’s grace.
The picture we get here
is not the kind of grace that rains down on us
in gentle showers of blessing,
although we can experience God’s grace that way.
The picture here
is of God’s strong hand of grace that grasps us,
and turns us,
reorients us,
maybe even shakes some sense into us.
It’s the voice of God that says, “No! Stop going that way.
You are missing the point.
This is not about you.
This is not about what you can accomplish
through your own raw energy and zeal and devotion.”
As the voice said to Paul, “Stop kicking against the goads.
Turn around and go my way.”
_____________________

That’s a bit of a different slant on grace, isn’t it?
We’ll talk more about grace and faith in coming weeks,
but this kind of puts it in perspective.
God’s lavish and unmerited grace
is not to be confused with sweet sentimentality.
It is not be confused with permissiveness,
or blessing whatever we do,
or whatever direction we choose to go.
No, God’s grace holds us in a love grasp,
and reorients us,
directs us toward a life of love
and sacrificial service of God.

Maybe that’s a new thought to think of grace
as being held in a firm grasp.
Are we saying that God’s grace is really
God controlling and manipulating us,
pushing us here and there,
removing our free will?
No, God will always allow us
to wriggle free from the grasp if we so choose.
But because of God’s strong grace grasp,
we won’t be able to do that
without some painful consequence.

Because being held in God’s grace grasp
is the life that God created us for.
God designed us to have the fullest and richest life
when we give up our own agenda,
and orient ourselves toward God’s agenda.

When we live as one held in a grace grasp,
it means our life has both direction and purpose.
We are oriented around a reality much larger than ourselves.
So our life purpose is not dependent on our life circumstances.

We hit a snag in our thinking,
when we look for meaning
in a life that sometimes deals people a lot of garbage.
Life is sometimes downright rude, indiscriminate, senseless.
So where is meaning in life?
When we orient our lives around ourselves
and our needs and our blessings,
we are condemning ourselves to a life of disappointment.
When we attach the meaning of life, to the circumstances of life,
we lose the battle.

But when we orient around something larger
than ourselves or our circumstances,
suddenly God’s strong grace grasp
becomes a tremendous gift to us.
Our orientation becomes a faith posture.
Faith doesn’t even try to make sense out of every tragedy.
Instead, it affirms that the circumstances of life
are part of a large mosaic that we cannot see, but God sees.
It affirms that God is present and active in the places of suffering,
even when we can’t perceive it.

The God who calls us and grasps us
is the same God and Father of Jesus Christ,
who suffered and was crucified.
It is the same God who transformed that suffering into glory,
through the resurrection.
God was not detached from suffering on Good Friday,
nor is God detached from human suffering today.
But God’s grace grasp orients us toward Easter.
And what a wonderful gift of grace that is.
_____________________

Being held in a grace grasp is a gift,
in that when I come to realize that it’s not my agenda,
nor my responsibility to make everything happen,
I am relieved of a great burden.
I need not struggle with self-doubt,
did I make the right decision back there?
should I have done something differently?
We always make choices that are clouded
with some degree of uncertainty,
maybe even confusion.
But God still holds us in this grasp of love and grace.
But when we realize we are first and foremost
called and grasped by God,
to live our lives in God’s service,
it takes the burden off.
When our call and vocation is clear,
we need not even try to be self-reliant.

As the hymn-writer Fred Pratt Green wrote,
How clear is our vocation, Lord,
when once we heed your call:
to live according to your word,
and daily learn, refreshed, restored,
that you are Lord of all,
and will not let us fall.

Let’s sing that hymn together, #541.

—Phil Kniss, June 6, 2010

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