Galatians 6:7-16; Psalm 30; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
One thing that we cannot miss in any of the writings bearing Paul’s signature is that he is passionate about Jesus Christ. There is nothing lukewarm about his devotion to the man who illuminated his world and changed his life. He is fired up. We know that he can be very persuasive and he relates the gospel in a gentle but compelling way so that people sit up and take notice. He is able to be pastoral with those who need to be comforted and he can be rhetorical with those who insist on debating. In all situations, though, he is firm in his faith.
His passion for Jesus goes up like 4th of July fireworks when people who should know better try to con new believers into going back to old ways of doing things and being shackled by Jewish ritual practices that Jesus superceded with his commands to love God and neighbor, to forgive as one receives forgiveness, and to take his name and his healing power to the ends of the earth.
Paul is finishing up his personal letter to the believers in Galatia, believers whom he had gathered and taught and blessed and commissioned to live out Christ’s embracing grace. Unfortunately he has received reports that the Galatian believers have increasingly come under the sway other teachers who are convincing them that they have to be circumcised and have to observe other parts of the Jewish ritual law in order to be proper Christians. Paul is so angry that he has worked himself up into a frenzy, pacing back and forth, barely containing his composure as he dictates his message to his amanuensis. We get a sense that Paul is, in a phrase my mother used to use, spitting nails. I suspect that he is so worked up that he is sputtering and spitting.
How can the Galatian church people be so gullible that they believe the theological trash that they are being given by people who themselves ought to know better? Paul is so worked up that if he were there with the Galatians and the wrong-headed teachers, he would be right in those teachers’ faces demanding that they wise up and think again about what the gospel means and what the gospel teaches.
Paul thunders: “God is not mocked!” A chapter earlier Paul had said to his readers, “Christ has set us free for freedom. Therefore, stand firm and don’t submit to the bondage of slavery again” (Galatians 5:1). In other words, live into the freedom which Christ has so richly lavished on you and for which he endured the utter ravishes of death in order to rise triumphantly to accomplish life for us.
You and I face the Galatian dilemma every day. Either we find that we must meet certain expectations in order to accepted as true God-fearers, Christ-lovers, and Spirit-bearers. Or we are on the other side, setting impossible standards for people to meet before we accept them as true disciples.
Each of the first three gospels note that Jesus said, “It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble” (Matthew 18:6, Mark 9:42, Luke 17:2). Paul tells the Galatian readers that the false teachers are hanging millstones around their necks. As Paul understands the gospel, followers of Christ are not obligated to wear the millstones that others impose. Their only obedience is to Christ: “Love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other” (John 13:34).
What are the millstones which are hanging on us? What are the millstones we consciously or unconsciously hang around others so that their faith meets our expectations? We don’t have to deal with circumcision issues today. And for the most part dietary issues don’t come into play. There are still a lot of millstones around. Who of us hasn’t experienced someone else’s distress that we haven’t used the right words or images when discussing our faith? Who hasn’t been put off when someone finds out that we don’t use the right translation of scripture, the one Jesus himself used?
None of us are perfect. None of us, myself included, have an encyclopedic knowledge of scripture to make Bible quotes on any and every subject. None of us, myself included, read scripture enough devotionally. But there are those who look down their noses at us because they read through the entire Bible every six months or every year. Like a gunslinger out of the old west, they have notches in their Bibles for every time they have completed the reading.
Or are we the millstone providers? Do we say to other Christians to validate their belief, “Your experience must mirror mine”?
Or “You must be born again”?
Or “You must wear a coat and tie or a dress”?
Or “You must give away all that you possess”?
Or “You must be heterosexual”?
Or “You must sing hundred year old four-part hymns”?
Or “You must vote Republican or Democrat”?
Or “You must believe everything you hear on Fox News, and nothing you hear on NPR”? Or vice versa?
Paul breathes down our necks. Don’t do it, he says. Don’t limit the gospel. Don’t tell God what is right or wrong. It is so tempting to make our experience of God’s truth the quintessential and only valid experience of God’s truth. Sometimes it is conscious, but often it is unconscious. We don’t think about it, it is how we grew up. It is the most human—in Paul’s terms, the most “fleshly”—tendency in the world. A. J. Conyers notes: “All religion, and every practice of religion, and in fact all of human life is in danger of being marshaled into the service of the human ego.”(1)
Paul has had a long-running theological feud with Peter. While Peter did have the dream from God that all are acceptable to God for the gospel, he has been fence-sitting about it. Yes, maybe. Perhaps thinking about Peter’s indecision (or is it hypocrisy?) Paul makes his final point. He’s red in the face, hoarse from ranting, and sore from pounding his fist on the table. “What matters is the new creation.”
For Paul, the true gospel creates a church in which unity exists with remarkable diversity. Paul models radical freedom. God isn’t interested in a cookie-cutter Christian. God wants each of us to be the sister or brother Christ has called us to be. We have one Lord. The one Lord has many different relationships.
And also for Paul, the true gospel produces a church of miraculous unity. You remember a few years ago when a man went into the Nickel Mines Amish school where he killed five girls and wounded seven more. The Amish community responded to the horrific event with love and forgiveness, embracing the man’s family with a Christ-like presence. Do we have to give up cars and electricity in order to live out faith? Paul says we don’t. The trappings of culture – whatever culture it might be – can be the millstones that hang on our necks or that we hang on the necks of others.
“Let’s not get tired of doing good, because in time we’ll have a harvest if we don’t give up,” is Paul’s response. “What matters is the new creation.” We will attain the new creation when we know Jesus Christ as Lord and when we know that the power of his resurrection was for each and every one of us. Jesus invites us to be with him in his new creation. No baggage, no secret handshakes, no coded mottoes. Just knowing, believing, living the earliest of creeds: “Jesus is Lord.”
(1) A. J. Conyers, The Loss of Transcendence and Its Effect on Modern Life (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 1999), 131.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
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