Boasting of the Cross

Galatians 6:11-18

Lent 6 / Palm Sunday

March 24, 2011

William G. Carter

See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand! It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh that try to compel you to be circumcised—only that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. Even the circumcised do not themselves obey the law, but they want you to be circumcised so that they may boast about your flesh. May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything! As for those who will follow this rule—peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God. From now on, let no one make trouble for me; for I carry the marks of Jesus branded on my body.  May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters. Amen.

            All the triumphant music today does not mask the truth of Holy Week. Jesus enters the holy city of Jerusalem and he comes to die. He rides down the hill in humble majesty, but he is not the King that Jerusalem wants.

            It is difficult to hold this together. We hear today’s hosannas, we anticipate the hallelujahs of next Sunday. But sometimes we forget that, in between, Somebody dies. Jesus rides a donkey into the city. The crowds cheer. They cut down leafy branches and wave them in victory. They put their cloaks on the ground, kind of a poor persons’ red carpet into the city. Jesus arrives from the Mount of Olives, the very place where the Messiah was to appear. It’s a big moment. A huge moment!

But he knows what he is going to face. Halfway down the hill, he pauses for a good view of the city, and he weeps. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You are the city that kills the prophets.” Then he rides into the city just like a prophet. He goes into the temple and drives out the flea marketeers – just like a prophet. In full sight of the Roman soldiers, he takes on the religious establishment – just like a prophet. Luke says Jesus dies like a prophet. He is innocent (23:47), he is full of God, and therefore he is condemned. He is the prophet, he is the king, and nobody wants him.

I suppose if all we had was Palm Sunday and Easter, we might miss what happens on Friday. Like that church in southern Pennsylvania. The minister is new this year. He stopped in yesterday and discovered that the people in charge of flowers have already decorated the sanctuary with hundreds of Easter flowers, including a large floral cross. They were so pleased with themselves. The minister said, “What are you doing?” “Well, the flowers are so pretty, we thought it would be nice to have them for two Sundays in a row. And it gets people in a good mood for Easter.”

Sure does. Nobody has to die. Nobody has to be betrayed, arrested, dragged to a trial, condemned, humiliated, and hammered to a cross. The flowers are too pretty for all of that.

How strange, then, to hear Paul say, “I never want to boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

            You could accuse him of being a grump. Call him Eeyore. That’s what they did in Corinth. They thought he was a downer, that he took the glad tidings of Easter and turned into a sad story of the cross. They said, “Paul, are you still preaching about the crucifixion of Jesus? That’s the same sermon that you preached last week. You’re supposed to be an apostle, Paul. Get another sermon!” And he said, “That’s the only sermon I have, the only sermon I preach. I preach Christ crucified, even if that’s a stumbling block to the Jews and silliness to the Greeks.” I guess they will never put him on the flower committee where my friend is the new minister. Paul would show up with cans of black spray paint and deface the tulips.

            Or when he heard what was happening in Philippi. It really disturbed him. Paul loved that little church, started it with his own hands. And he hears that some are squabbling with one another, and it tears him up. Some rival preachers have also come in, and they are preaching nonsense and it boils his blood. Just when he might explode, he takes a breath, and says, “Remember Jesus. Have the mind of Jesus. He was One with God, but he didn’t clutch that, hold onto that. No, he emptied himself and made himself a servant of all. He gave himself completely away … even to the cross. Remember that, and be like Jesus.”

            The cross is important to Paul. He never mentions Palm Sunday, and doesn’t spend a lot of time speculating about Easter. It’s not that he doesn’t think Jesus alive; No, he believes Jesus is alive, risen from the dead. There is no doubt in Paul about that. But what tantalizes his theological imagination is the cross. Christ, the king and Lord of all, is crucified.

            As he writes to his churches in Galatia, in central Turkey, he says, “The only thing I have to boast about is Jesus on a cross.” That’s quite an affirmation, because Jesus went to the cross, not Paul. This was the supreme act of Christ’s faith, says Paul. He gave himself on the cross to free us from the evil machinery of the world (1:4). He took all the curses of our human imperfection to the cross (3:13). All our arrogance and pride was crucified when Jesus was crucified (2:17-19). If we think God will love us if only we do all the right things and follow all the ancient rules, we are scamming ourselves and headed down a dead end.

           

            Oh no, it is all so much better than that. We boast of the cross because Jesus does on the cross what we cannot do. He sets us free from an endless trap of religious obligation. He liberates from the human obsession to prove ourselves. “All that stuff was killed off with Christ,” says Paul. “Jesus set us free to live in freedom with God (5:1).” There is nothing for anybody to boast about – except to boast of what Christ has done for all of us.

            Ever know anybody who boasts? We had a classmate in high school who could boast better than anybody. He went out for track, made the team, and told us how fast he could run, how high he could jump. He went out for football, made the starting backfield, told us how good he was, how many points he scored. He did very well in his school work, constantly at the top of the academic gene pool, telling the rest of us about his scholastic average. In fact, he decided that going to a regular college wasn’t good enough for him. He was going to West Point. He was nominated by the congressman and appointed to the military academy. Of course, he told us all about it.

            Do you know why he boasted? Because he was superior. He believed he was better than everybody else. If you were to ask him, he wouldn’t call it boasting; he would call it “telling the truth.” He really though he was better than everybody else.

            Three weeks after he left for West Point, he was knocking on my door. His countenance was pale. He had a grimace chiseled on his face. “Couldn’t cut it,” he murmured. “It wasn’t for me.” I had never seen him like that – he had actually failed at something. He was a mortal like the rest of us. He had come to me as a trusted friend to confess his failure. I was starting to feel some compassion for the guy.

            Then he said, “So you’re going to the university at Binghamton this fall?” Yes. And he said, “Well, if they can take somebody like you, I’m sure they will take me. I mean, the bar isn’t set very high.”

            Why did he boast? Because he thought he was superior. He really believed it.

            Do you remember who crucified Jesus? People who thought they were superior. Jewish religious leaders: they followed God’s Law precisely, more perfectly than everybody else. They believed that they were doing the right thing when they condemned him.  And who else? Roman officials: they were part of the strongest, fiercest, most efficient empire that the world had ever known. A standard crucifixion was all in a Friday’s work. Religious leaders and career soldiers, professionals so sure of their own competence and power that they could boast. And their signature achievement? They killed the Son of God. So much for competence and doing the right thing…

            Here’s the thing, says Paul. “When I look to the cross of Jesus, all my boasting is crucified and gone. All my expertise is killed off. I have nothing left to stand on, nothing really to brag about. There is nothing superior about me at all. It’s as if my whole world of achievements and classifications and status symbols has been killed off.” The righteous religious leaders who condemned Jesus were not righteous enough. The competent Roman politicians weren’t competent enough. If we were in the same position on the same day, any one of us would have done the same things that they did.

            Here’s the thing: neither Jew nor Roman Gentile could boast of being superior. Neither religious rule-keeper nor pagan expert is better than the other. All those categories of “success” and “failure” don’t matter before the cross. All those descriptions of “superior” or “inferior” don’t count any more. It doesn’t matter if you are Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female – in Jesus Christ, there is a new creation. The adjectives that we use to describe ourselves and other people do not matter.

All that matters is the Risen Christ took all of those distinctions to the cross and did away with them. The God who saves us from “this present age” doesn’t see any of us as superior to any other. All God sees is a multitude of children who need to be rescued. Some of them need to be rescued from thinking they are better than anybody else. Others need to be rescued from a lifetime of being treated as dirt.

“This is what I boast about,” says Paul: God’s saving love. It’s right there on the cross of Jesus. No need to impress anybody, because, frankly none of God’s children are any better than any other of God’s children. God believes we are capable of peace and worthy of mercy. That is the good news of the cross.

To the Galatians, the apostle gives his last word – which is our blessing at the start of Holy Week. “Brothers and sisters,” he says – you know he means all of us brothers and sisters. We belong to God, so we are brothers and sisters of one another. Then he gives his blessing: “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.” The last word is grace. At the end of everything else, there is grace. Divine favor – that’s grace.

And it isn’t our grace. It is the grace of Jesus, the Living One, who died to set us free. We didn’t have to do anything to earn it; he did all the heavy work for us. That’s why it is grace.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

Slave to Christ, Free in the Spirit

Galatians 4:1-5:1

March 10, 2013

Lent 4

William G. Carter

C.S. Lewis wrote a fable about heaven and hell. He called it The Great Divorce, and it’s a story about the huge separation between both patches of real estate. The poor souls in hell ride a bus on a day that is perpetually dreary. It’s a flying bus and climbs into the sky, increasing in size as it moves upward. Hell is a small place, it seems, full of small, insubstantial people who snarl at each other. And as they move toward heaven, everything gets bigger, thicker, and brighter. These small Hell-dwellers are exposed as shadowy beings who complain that the green grass of heaven is too hard for their feet.

Nevertheless, they are free to visit, perhaps in the hidden hope that something might happen to give more substance to their lives. They can go to heaven whenever they want. They can stay there if they choose to do so. But aye, there’s the problem.

One of the visitors is described as an ugly old dwarf. He snarls, but never speaks. And he comes dragging a battered old actor on a chain. The actor is old school, a melodramatic man who speaks the King’s English in self-important tones. Maybe he has been in a number of Shakespearean dramas. He certainly talks that way whenever the dwarf pulls his chain.

A woman approaches them. She shines so brightly that somebody mistakes her for Mary, the mother of Jesus. She is radiant and serene, simply aglow with the peace of heaven. She greets the twosome. The dwarf tugs the chain, and the tragic actor returns the greeting, albeit grimly. Her name is Sarah, and on earth, she was married to the man who has become the dwarf. She died before he did, and now he has come from Hell to see her – hopefully to make her miserable, just as he is.

Each time, she speaks with grace and shines all the brighter. The dwarf snarls, pulls the chain, and the tired old actor responds with self-pity. He tries to make her feel guilty that he is miserable and she is not. She reminds him that misery and self-pity are choices that we make. 

She invites him to give up that old actor, to send him away, to enjoy the beauty of heaven. He almost gives in, but then pulls the chain and the old actor howls for him. Sarah says, “Please give up this nonsense.” Once again, he yanks the chain, the actor bellows, “And now, you need me no more?” Each time the small man pulls the chain, he gets even smaller. The actor moans, “Woe is me!” as the small man nearly shrinks away.

I have always been taken by that scene. It’s a picture of someone in captivity. He can drop the chain anytime he chooses. But it might as well be shackled to his wrist. He is a captive to his own natural whims. He is a slave to his long-established customs. It is not necessary – but being half of a human who nurses his own anguish is more familiar than being free and full of light. It’s a picture that I would lay down beside the fourth chapter of Galatians.

Paul wants to talk about freedom. That is the overwhelming theme of this letter: freedom! Jesus Christ comes in freedom, and he comes to set us free. In this sprawling chapter four, he hurls Christian freedom in the backdrop of human slavery. Twelve times in this chapter, the word “slave” shows up as a noun or a verb. Twelve times, he reminds the Christians of Galatia about the human experience of slavery.

Now, I realize there is some distance between our experience and his. Slavery was a current reality in the Roman Empire. Slaves were bought and sold, mostly among the wealthy, as a way of buying laborers to do the things that the wealthy did not want to do. In the American empire, slavery was abolished in 1863. Or so our history teachers told us.

Truth is, there is plenty of slavery in our own world. There is human trafficking going on all the time. Runaway teens fall into it at truck stops or drop-in shelters. Somebody owns them, uses them, profits from them. And that’s only a small slice of what happens in our nation. Around the world, human slavery is alive and well. You can read all about it, if your stomach lets you.

And there are other kinds of slavery, too. C. S. Lewis tells that story of that small man imprisoned by his own resentment. We know those people. They are captives to anger, prisoners of bitterness, slaves to the very emotions that they keep stoked.

Others are slaves to their work. It bolts them to their desks. Or they take it wherever they go. Wherever they work, they are consumed. They are afraid of letting it rest. Or it feeds them with adrenaline and they are fearful of not getting the emotional rush.

Still others are slaves to their technology. Have you noticed that? Maybe it’s that thumb-exerciser that some many people have, that I have. I checked the household cell phone bill. One of the denizens in our home made forty-five hundred text messages last month. Four thousand five hundred. No talking with the tongue, just the thumbs. This is the addiction.

Or there are other forms of enslavement, other addictions. I saw it yesterday afternoon about 3:00. It took me almost an hour to drive home from visiting someone in Geisinger-CMC. All the way down Mulberry Street, I saw college students with green shirts, red eyes, and fuzzy tongues. It looked like they began preparing for St. Patty’s Day about two days ago. One of them gave me a descriptive gesture, weaved a bit, and yelled, “Who do you think you are, driving down the middle of our street?” I smiled in return, and prayed that when he goes back to religion class on Monday, Professor Pinches might have him write a paper on the fourth chapter of Galatians.

Human animals fall into some kind of slavery or another. Something or someone is always yanking at our chains. The season of Lent is a good time to survey our own slavery. What are the bad habits that shackle us? That prevent us from joy and grace? And where are the injustices where somebody holds unnecessary power over somebody else? Where are people exploited by the forces of destructiveness? These are important questions for the apostle Paul. Christ comes to make us free. Whatever that means, wherever it matters most, Jesus is our liberation.

It is important to keep in mind that Paul is writing this letter to two entirely different groups of people at the same time. In his energy of his fury, he seems to shift quickly from addressing one group and then another. We have heard him speak of some “antagonistic missionaries.” Those were the Super Jews who insisted that the Gentile men in Galatia had circumcised, that they had to become Jews before they could become Christians. Paul says to them, “Knock it off!”  The Jewish Law was for the Jewish people. If you remember from last week, it was our “babysitter,” our custodian, until Christian faith could come to direct our lives. Rather than follow a checklist of virtues, we are led by God’s Spirit to follow Jesus Christ. All are forgiven in cross of Jesus. All can live free from the sin that killed our Savior. That is his word to the Jews.

But he pivots and turns to the non-Jews, to the Gentiles. “You aren’t slaves to the Jewish Law,” he says, “but you are slaves to something else.” What is it? In chapter one, he says we are slaves to “the present evil age.” That is, to the whole system of abuse, destruction, anger, fury, and selfishness that gets manufactured and rebuilt in every generation.

Here in chapter four, he says it another way, “We were slaves to the elemental spirits of the world.” The elemental spirits – at their most primitive he means earth, water, fire, and air – the four primary elements of the created world.

In other words, we are creatures made from the same stuff of our planet. Earth is same stuff as skin and bones, water courses through our bodies, fire burns in our hearts and minds, and we live as long as there is air in our lungs. That’s all we are – a delicate system of chemicals. That’s all we can ever be – unless the Breath of Christ becomes our breath, unless the mind of Christ possesses our minds, unless the fire of grace consumes us and sets us free from merely existing as God’s temporary chemistry experiments.

There is a dignity to claim as God’s own children. We are adopted as God’s own offspring, thanks to the self-giving love of God’s own Son. We are not abandoned to ourselves and our whims, a theme that Paul will unpack in chapter five. Oh no, God puts Holy Breath right into our lungs, the Holy Spirit. And when we exhale our prayers and say, “Abba! Daddy! Father God,” it is the echo of saving grace that seals our inheritance.

Just take a moment and catch yourself breathing. Listen to the wind entering your lungs. Watch your chest rise and fall with each breath. Picture in your imagination that this is the Breath of God, entering you freely, giving you life to be sure; but also giving your freedom. You are Somebody’s child, regardless of whether if you are ninety-three years old, forty-two, or seven. Your life matters because it is God-in-Christ who enters to possess you, to make you his own. We are bound to Christ, we are free in Christ, all at the same time.

What does this look like? Well, that’s what chapter five will be about, when we get to it next week.

But to prime the pump, let me tell you a quick story. Up at Boston University, there is a school of theology. The day came when the development office announced that the oldest living graduate would return for homecoming. Not only that, he was invited to speak for a mandatory worship service in the chapel. The students groaned. They were young and hip, and this old guy was going to be rolled in to preach to them.

Well, he walked with a cane, and didn’t need to be rolled in. But he was old. Really old. When Noah landed the ark, this guy was already eight hundred years old. On the appointed day, he appeared. He hobbled in. They were waiting for him, and had to wait a little longer. He was in no hurry. The wrinkles in his face were like deep canyons. His steps were slow and measured. He was taking his time, and needed to.

Finally he stood in the pulpit, cleared his throat. Paused, looked at the crowd. Cleared his throat again, adjusted the microphone, gazed out at the students through his cataracts and said, “I would like to thank my alma mater for setting me free without setting me adrift.” Then he sat down.

That’s what Jesus does for us, in the power of his Holy Spirit. Sets us free, never sets us adrift.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

Something More Than Rules

Galatians 3 (3:23-39)

March 3, 2013

Lent 3

William G. Carter

Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 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. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

Poor Stephen Colbert! The late night comic was in a dither on Thursday night. As he reviewed the day’s news on his nightly Colbert Report, he noted, “The world is now in uncharted territory. As of 8:00 p.m., Central Vatican Time, we are officially Pope-Less.”

It is an awkward time for the Roman Catholic church, of which Colbert is a member. Pope Benedict has retired at age eighty-five. For whatever reason, he has decided to hang up the robe and put the big hat back on the shelf. He’s an old man leaving an impossible job. Let him kick back and catch his breath! But it is an awkward time for the Roman Church. As one Catholic friend wondered out loud, “Who’s going to tell us what to do?”

Faith would be so much easier if we could reduce it to a central authority, whether a person or a checklist, and let the authority tell us what to do and what to believe. A lot of people see the Bible as that kind of authority: as the Protestants began to say in the mid-1500’s, “We don’t need a Pope, for we have the Bible. The Bible is our rule of faith and practice.” Maybe you were taught to say those words.

But the more we read the Bible, the slipperier it becomes. There are more stories than rules in Bible, and only a handful of the stories come with punch lines. So you have to chew on them for a while to get to the caramel center. Once upon a time, God told Abraham, a man as old and childless as the former Pope, that he was going to be the father of a great multitude, and Abraham believed the Lord. So what is that story telling us to do? On the face of it, nothing. It’s a story about Abraham.

A lot of people look to the Bible for direction, but not only are there a lot of stories in the Bible, there are also a lot of poems. Poems may make a statement, like “God is king” or “Sing a New Song,” but they resist reduction. A poem refuses to be boiled down to a principle. Do you recall today’s Psalm? The poet says, “I thirst for God, the living God.” He thirsts; notice that never does he declare that God is a glass of milk; that would be silly.

And then, as I am sure you noticed, the rules that the Bible teaches can be of varying weight and importance. Here’s a big one: “Love your neighbor” (Lev. 19:18) – that is heavy! How about this: “Don’t eat the lizard or a crocodile” (Lev. 11:30). Thanks, Moses; but we have no intention of doing so. It is a lightweight commandment. It is never intended to be as important as loving the neighbor, and the thoughtful person knows this.

Now I am not saying that the commandments, the rules, the precepts and the statutes are not necessary. Oh no! Even if we don’t know the reason, every rule comes for a reason. “Thou shalt not eat pork” – that’s a Bible rule that I find easy to keep, having been forced-fed ham on many childhood occasions. When Moses gives that rule, it was understood that pigs are unclean and disgusting, and people that eat them are not holy. That was the reason for the rule.

In my first church, at the very first wedding where I presided, there were no rules. I met with the bride and groom to hear about the bride’s plans and to offer twenty minutes of pre-marital counseling to a couple that had lived together for fifteen years. There were no other rules. And on the day of the wedding, the groom showed up forty-five minutes late, so intoxicated he could hardly stand. As I stood by helplessly, his bride screamed at him and whacked him with her bouquet.

Meanwhile the ushers were so busy handing bottles of Miller Lite in the narthex that they forget to distribute the worship bulletins to the congregation. As the bridesmaids convened to march down the aisle to “Here Comes the Bride,” all the groomsmen put on dark sunglasses and hummed along loudly and out of tune. (I wish I was making all of this up!) Needless to say, the next time the church elders met, we nailed together a policy about what would never again happen at a Presbyterian wedding . . . because some people need to have the rules!

As the apostle Paul writes to the congregations that he began in central Turkey, we overhear him talking about the rules – the Bible rules. He knows the commandments. Paul was trained as a Pharisee, so he was trained to memorize all six-hundred-thirteen Old Testament commandments. And he knows that, generally speaking, the Jewish commandments were first given to help the human race flourish. “Don’t murder. Don’t tell lies in law court. Don’t cheat on your spouse. Stop wanting what other people have. And for God’s sake, take one day out of seven to rest and to welcome God’s replenishment.” Do these things and you will live abundantly.

But after he started those small churches, and after he moved on, some Antagonistic Missionaries stepped in. They made oppressive demands. They insisted that those Turks, those Galatians, most of them Gentiles, had to become Jews before they could become Christians. They said, “You people who have no covenant have to be brought into the Jewish covenant before you can profess faith in Jesus.”

Now, some of you are looking at me rather serenely, because the implications of what I just said have not yet sunken in. Specifically if I might speak to those of you who are Galatian men: “If you wish to profess that Jesus is your Lord and Savior, we will usher you into another room. A rabbi will meet you with a sharp instrument. He will ask you to loosen your tunic and then perform a small surgery on you. This will make you Jewish.” This is what the Antagonistic Missionaries were saying. Before a non-Jewish man can affirm Christ as Lord, he has to be circumcised as a Jew. Apparently a lot of Galatian men were falling for it, because the authorities told them, “A rule is a rule.”

So the apostle Paul writes in chapter three, “You stupid Galatians! You idiots! Who has cast a spell on you? A sucker is born every minute! Who has conned you into doing something with your flesh?”

Then he reminds them of his sermons: “I preached Christ crucified to you. He was crucified by the same evil age that has enslaved us all. He was crucified by people who insisted they were doing the right thing, and I was one of them! And try as I did to live by all God’s commandments, I was never good enough. God may have spoke the Torah, but I’ve never been able to keep it. None of us are good enough; only Jesus was that good. And let me tell you what the Jewish Law says about him: “Cursed is the one who hangs on a tree!”

“So here are two things that I am thinking,” says Paul. “According to the commandment, Jesus because cursed because he hangs on a cross. He takes all the curses of our lives, all our imperfections, all our anger and evil, all our inadequacies and ineffectiveness – he takes it all to the cross. When he dies, he takes it all away. And when the Father raises him from the dead, he raises us from all that deadness and gives us a new life. That’s the first thing.”

“And the second thing,” says Paul, “is as old as old Abraham. God made promises to Father Abraham, and Abraham trusted the promises. The Torah says, ‘God reckoned this as righteousness.’ Trust is the same thing as faith. Trust and faith are all we need. Trust and faith are the gifts that rectify our lives before God.[1] God says, ‘Your old life was crucified with Jesus, your new life is raised with Christ.’ Just trust this as the truth!”

But Paul, what about the rules? What about the commandments, the statutes, and the precepts? Doesn’t the Torah say, “Thou shalt be circumcised”?

Paul says, “Listen. I love the Bible. The Bible speaks a living word from a living God to a living people, and we are alive in Christ. All the old laws of Scripture – it was like having a babysitter.” (That’s his word: pedagaigos – instructor, custodian, guardian of children; I like “babysitter.”)

Paul says, “The rules of Scripture guarded us, but they never could save us. We are saved by Jesus, who welcomes all of us as children of God through our trust that this Gospel is true. And the news really is for all of us – it doesn’t matter if you are Jew or not a Jew. It doesn’t matter if you are enslaved to something or if you are not. It does not matter if you are a man or a woman, especially since circumcision is now a non-issue. All that matters is that you belong to God. Faith is your ticket, and Christ’s faith is sufficient for you. Mercy is your gate pass. Forgiveness is your free entitlement. Grace is the final expression of God’s justice.”

I wonder sometimes what it was like to open this letter and read it to the church. I bet some people were confused, because they wanted a Bible, or a Pope, or somebody in charge to tell them what to do. They wanted to get right with God; tell us what to do!

Paul says, “We tried that. It didn’t always work so well. The rules kept a lot of people in line, but they also created people who stopped thinking. The rules guarded us from a lot of evil, but we still did a good bit of evil anyway. We had holy commandments yet we killed the Son of God. Worst of all, we discovered you can put together a checklist of all the things to do, and all the things not to do, and then you really don’t need God. You don’t need a living, forgiving God – because you have a list, and your list can become far more important than God.”

I think he’s right. Not just because he is the apostle Paul. Not just because his rant to the Galatians helps to qualify all those Old Testament laws that strike us as odd, quaint, and distant.

I think he is right because we need something more than rules to direct our lives. We need a relationship. We need more than anything else to feel that God loves us so much that God adopts us into the family, that God welcomes every single one of us with the words, “The past is finished and gone; behold the new!”

More than mere rules, we need a relationship. We have that relationship already, and next Sunday we will hear about it in Galatians, chapter four.

© William G. Carter

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[1] Thanks to Richard Hayes, who believes “rectify” is a better contemporary verb than “justify” (New Interpreters Bible).

Pleased to Reveal His Son to Me

Galatians 1:1-24

Lent 1

February 17, 2013

William G. Carter

"But when 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..."

I have just introduced you to somebody unusual. Paul is the second most visible person in the New Testament after Jesus. He has written more documents in our Bible than anyone else. All of them are letters, sent to churches, as a way of closing the distance between a congregation he knew and the place where he was. We don’t know where Paul was when he wrote this letter. He was often in prison, often in trouble with the Roman Empire, or often in trouble with his fellow Jews. Or so we are led to believe.

            But Paul started congregations of Jesus followers. That was his work. He traveled to the region of Galatia, probably four cities in what now is central Turkey. And he spoke to people who had no background in the Jewish faith. It must been a stretch. Paul was a Jew, a very educated Jew. He knew the Jewish Bible. When he trained as a Pharisee, he memorized every commandment. He knew every ancient story. He goes to Turkey, where most of the people didn’t know any of it, and he told them about Jesus, whom he calls the Lord, the Christ.

            He begins the letter by signing it, “Paul, an apostle, through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.” And he reminds them of what Jesus has done for all of us: “He gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever.” Say hello to the apostle Paul.

            Something has gone wrong in his absence. The churches that he planted with his own hands have been infected by weeds. All his hard work has been compromised by different thinking. The people who were called together by God to worship, to learn, to serve are slipping away. (I wonder if they were Presbyterians. Or maybe they were Catholics. Certainly they were Galatians.) The good news that Paul had spoken, the news of Christ’s liberating death for sin, the news that Christ is the Risen Lord stronger than evil and destruction – that news was not as compelling as it once was. And it is making him angry. Very angry.

            “I am astonished you are deserting God and turning to another gospel, except there is no other gospel!” He says, “If anybody is preaching an alternative gospel, a fake gospel, then they ought to burn with the devil.” That is what he says, because he is angry. When people are angry, they say all kinds of things. Usually they amplify their point as a way of getting the point across.

            This is the letter to the Galatians. It is Paul’s angriest letter. He is going to blow his top a few times as he pens these chapters. “What has happened?” he wants to know. “Who bewitched you?” It seems that after he started the churches and moved on, some new preachers came in, and the first thing they did was to criticize everybody who came before them. It still happens. Doesn’t matter who was there, or what they did before, the person insists on “new and improved.” After Paul, the preacher who followed insisted on a “new and improved Gospel” – not that there is another Gospel, he says.

            “What happened to the love? How did we lose the affection?” Paul says in chapter four, “When I came to you, you would have plucked out your eyes for me!” But not now. Somebody insinuated he was only interested in pleasing the people. “He’s a people-pleaser,” they said when he wasn’t around. “You know all that grace that Paul preaches? It’s just a lot of mush. It’s soft. It has no backbone. He doesn’t lay down the rules and tell you what to do.” It’s amazing the criticism that comes when people are too cowardly to talk to your face, when they kick you in absentia. When they murmur, “Who does Paul think he is?”

            Well, he tells us who he is in the first three words: “Paul, an apostle.” Once his name was Saul, named after the first of Israel’s kings. He strutted around as if he had royal authority, as if he knew he was right and others were wrong. But then, you may remember the story, he met the Risen Christ. In the book of Acts, the story is told by another writer named Luke. Remember it? Paul was a Jew, hunting down those Christ-followers, trying to suffocate the church – until one day, about noon, on the road to Damascus, Jesus Christ appeared to him. The light was so bright that it took away his sight for a while. The Voice was so thunderous that it drove him to his knees. The Son of David said to the Son of Saul, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And Saul said, “Who are you, Lord?” He didn’t know, even though he knew.

            Because he started calling himself “Paul,” which means “Tiny” Christ was great, he was small.

            And he calls himself an apostle. Don’t confuse the word “apostle” with “disciple.” I know they are treated as interchangeable words, but there is a distinction. A disciple is a follower, a student, a life-long learner. “Apostle” comes from “apostolos,” a word in the realm of horticulture. When a plant sends out a “runner,” as in a spider plant, the part that goes out is the “apostolos.” An apostle is one who is sent. “Tiny Paul” encounters Christ. Then he has a growing sense that he is sent, with all his Jewish knowledge, to people who are not Jewish at all. That is his life’s mission. That is the purpose that the Risen Christ has laid upon his shoulders. “I have no choice,” he says elsewhere, “for it is ‘necessity’ that is laid upon me. I have to go to the Gentiles.” (1 Cor. 9:16)

            So this is the apostle Paul. Say hello to Paul. He is an unusual person. And perhaps the most unusual thing about him is that he is a convert. A convert. Once he was like this, but now he is like this. “Maybe you heard about my former life,” he says. “I was a Jew. I was a Super Jew. I was more zealous than all my peers. I cared about my faith. I advanced through all the chairs. I memorized all the holy words. I cared about the traditions of Abraham and Moses. I breathed Jewish air, and I exhaled Torah. I was so committed to God that I wanted to get rid of those Christians who were messing with Jewish tradition. I persecuted the church in the name of God. That was then, this is now . . .”

            I don’t know if you have ever spent much time around a convert. It’s like they divided their life into two parts – before and after. Once they were wild, crazy, hanging off the tailpipe of every motorcycle that roared through town – now they are different. Once they drank and smoked and messed around, there was marijuana in the guitar case, a different lover in every town, but now they are a new creation.

            I tell you the truth. I don’t always do well with those kind of people. They bother me.

            We had a few converts in our Bible study group in our college. Mostly we were church kids, youth group alumni. We met to learn about the Bible, pray about midterms, maybe to find a safe date. Then a couple of converts joined the group – wild-eyed, fervent, disruptive. One stopped by my dorm room to visit. He saw a stack of jazz recordings and was horrified. “I used to listen to jazz before I gave my life to Jesus,” he said. “But then I burned all those records and sent them back to hell.” I said, “Why didn’t you give them to me?” He’s a convert. I’m not comfortable around converts.

            On New Year’s Eve 2001, my saxophonist called with a gig. “I have $200 for you if you play with the Sammy Kaye Orchestra. It is in Saratoga Springs, New York. I will drive, and they have hotel rooms for us. After 9-11, they want to do a nostalgia show, lots of swing music from World War 2.” That sounded good to me. I agreed. Even though it was Saratoga Springs on December 31, about 30 degrees below zero on a windy night.

            The gig was fine. The music lifted everybody’s spirits. As the musicians say, “The bread was green.” And then I discovered that I had a roommate for the hotel. His name was Joe. He was a trombonist who traveled the world, mostly to play music on cruise ships. He had a duffle bag with a pair of underwear, a pair of socks, a toothbrush and a razor. Then I discovered: he was a convert. Once he had been a falling-down drunk, had ex-wives and kids all over the place but didn’t know where they were, he was living in a liquid haze. But one day, God shook him awake. God said, “Shape up!” And somehow Joe landed as the lead trombonist and music director for Benny Hinn, the faith-healer TV evangelist who wore white shoes.

            Apparently the bandleader of the Sammy Kaye Orchestra thought the Presbyterian preacher ought to have Benny Hinn’s lead trombonist as a roommate. Everybody in the band was snickering about it. He was a good musician, but none of them could stand to share a hotel room with him. Indeed, he kept me awake until 4:30 in the morning, quoting Bible verses, witnessing about his faith, talking about the miracles he saw every day. Finally I said, “Joe, would you shut up? It’s 4:30.” He said, “But don’t you want to hear about Jesus?”

            He’s a convert. Ever know a convert?

            Paul the Apostle – he was a convert. People make fun of converts. They shake their heads and wag their tongues. I heard about a t-shirt in California. It read, “A Born-Again Turkey is Still a Turkey.”

            Say what you want: Paul’s life had changed. He turned 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Same zeal that he had as a Pharisee, but now his zeal is speaking of Christ. Same level energy – Paul was tireless, usually on the go, often working himself until he dropped – but his energy was one-hundred-ten percent devoted to spreading the Gospel, wherever he was, with whomever he was with. “You have heard about my previous life in Judaism,” he says. “But now they say about me, ‘He is proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy,’ and they glorified God because of me.” If nothing else, the text reminds us that God can change a person. God can turn somebody in the right direction. God can come to any person with such an abundance of holy love, that the person is transformed. They leave behind “the present evil age” and live completely for Jesus.

            All of that is shared with us in this text. But here is the thing that I’ve leading up to tell you. Ready? When God changes a human life, it isn’t always done with thunder and lightning. There can be a dramatic transformation, but others around us might not even see when it happens.

            You know that story from the book of Acts: Saul is hurling threats, persecuting the church, until Christ comes in power and glory, and knocks him off his horse. That’s how Luke recounts the story in the book of Acts. Three times the story is told by Luke. It’s big, it’s noisy, it’s brash and bold.

            But here in Galatians, we have Paul’s own story of what happened to him. He says nothing about the road to Damascus. Never mentions quite what he saw. Instead, this is what he says: “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.” (1:15-16). No altar call, no pushy demand, no repeated verses of “Just As I Am, Without One Plea” to beckon you forward as the buses are waiting. Oh no.

“God … was pleased to reveal his Son to me.” That’s all he says. That’s all he ever says. In all of Paul’s own writings, this is all we get in his own words about his own conversion. Quietly he said, “It was a revelation.” Like the pulling back of a curtain, and you see who has been standing there the whole time, but your eyes could not see it until that moment. And that is enough to launch you on the trajectory of transformation.

            Others have said the same. Conversion does not have to be a big moment. It just needs to be the right moment. Like C.S. Lewis, the great Christian writer. He shrugged off belief for years. Then one day in 1929, he got on a bus. When he got on the bus, he didn’t believe. When he got off the bus, he did believe.[1] No flash of light. No booming voice. But it changed his life completely.

            Or in our own time, I think of Anne Lamott, one of the most outrageous proponents of the Christian faith. Know what she says? “I was high on drugs, wasting my life, and one night I had the nagging sense that Jesus was the annoying kitten who was meowing at the door. Finally I cursed and said, “OK, you can come in.”[2] And he never left.

            Or John Calvin, the great Christian reformer, spiritual father of the Presbyterians, back before there even were any Presbyterians. He was the brains of the Reformation, an incredible thinker. Do you know how he describes his turn toward the Christian faith? What was the great occasion of his conversion? “It happened,” he said, “in the moment when I became teachable.”[3] That’s it. Teachable, transformed. Where are the drums, the flashing lights, the sound of cymbals smashing? Not necessary. “I became teachable” – and life began anew.

            So today I introduce you to the Apostle Paul. Sometimes cranky, often forceful, sometimes troubled and annoyed – but always living completely for Jesus Christ by God’s amazing grace. It began when God was pleased to reveal his Son.

            It’s all I could ever ask God to do for you.

(c) William Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] C.S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy

[2] Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies, p. 50

[3] John Calvin, Preface, Commentary on the Book of Psalms

Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)

Psalm 51

Ash Wednesday

February 13, 2013

William G. Carter

  

The title of my brief meditation is also the title of a recent book: Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me). A friend recommended it after having some trouble with the people where he worked. They were just terrible to him, he said. Apparently the trouble got so difficult that his superiors sent him off to a counselor. After a few high-priced sessions with the counselor, he confessed, “It never occurred to me that I was part of the problem.” So the counselor suggested the book: Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me).

            It’s a revealing read, because it reminds us that all of us have our blind spots. We create stories about ourselves and then adjust the stories if necessary to feel secure. Whether it is public scandal or private tragedy, the news spin can begin in our own imagination. We tell ourselves a story as a way of handling something that has happened. And unless we stay vigilant about the truth, the story grows until it replaces what actually happened.

            In the margin of Psalm 51, the editor says this is the prayer that King David made after he stole another man’s wife. All the particular details of that theft have been sanded away from the psalm. There is no mention that the king already five or six wives, depending on which account you read. He does not confess how he spied Bathsheba bathing, how he wanted her as if she was on the cover of a magazine, how he misused his authority to get her, how he attempted to cover up the sin, or how he finally got rid of her unimaginative husband by sending him to the front line of battle.

            But the psalm does pray, “Have mercy on me, O Lord.” Cleanse me from my sin. I am guilty. Don’t cast me away. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.

            We can only pray that way if we are honest that we are the ones who make our own mistakes. Not somebody else. Not the others in the room. We take responsibility for telling the truth about what we have done or what we have not done. That is hard work and it takes courage. It also takes truthful friends who will remind us of the very things that we have pushed out of sight.

            “Against you, and you only, have I sinned.” This is how the Psalm frames it. God creates us in beauty. God calls us to goodness. We goof it up and then say, “It wasn’t me.” This creates all kinds of pain and damage in the people around us. But the initial offense is against the God who intends us to be beautiful and good.

            The psalm says, “Lord, if you want to punish me, I know I have it coming.” And it also says, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation.” Because that is the intended destination: restoration. Reconciliation. Bringing broken people back into full relationship with the God who creates us in love.

            So the invitation tonight is to return. To come home. To knock off all the invented stories and say, “Here I am, Lord. You know me. You know who I am. You want my full devotion and here I am.” The Christian life is a continuing invitation to live in complete fellowship with our Maker, Judge, and Savior. It is the invitation to come home regularly and to wean ourselves from all the distractions offered by the world and our imaginations.

            One of my friends has taken to writing hymns. Here are the stanzas that she offers for this day:

Ash Wednesday comes, and Lord, we hear
The word for which our spirits yearn;
Amid this world’s distress and fear,
We hear your loving call:  “Return!”
 
“Return to me with all your heart—
With fasting, weeping, mourning, too.”
O God, we seek a brand new start,
A new beginning here with you.
 
You call to us--- the old, the young;
You summon nations strong and weak.
When we have drifted toward the wrong,
You call us back, your way to seek.
 
O God most merciful and kind,
Your love is not a prize we earn;
Yet in our life with you we find
The joy that comes when we return.[1]

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] © 2011 by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette. All rights reserved.