The Fuel and the Roadmap (Galatians Part 5, June 30 2013)

Homily:  Yr C P13, June 30 2013, St. Albans

Readings: 2 Kgs 2:1-2,6-14; Ps 77.1-2,11-20; Gal 5:1,13-25; Lk 9:51-62

The Fuel and the Roadmap

Finally today, we reach the climax of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, and the final installment in this series of sermons on Galatians that we’ve been doing together over the last month.  But as was the case with my daughter’s high school commencement that I attended on Friday, this isn’t really an ending but rather a beginning, a new beginning.  Or as T.S. Eliot puts it, “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

“For freedom Christ has set us free” is the climax of the gospel of grace that Paul proclaims.  But what is this freedom that’s been gifted to us?  Are we now in a world of “anything goes”?  Of “whatever”?  Of “randomness”?

Not at all.  If there is one man living today who knows something about being set free, it is Nelson Mandela, who at this moment is in critical condition in a South African hospital.  I remember watching live on TV in 1990 when Mandela was set free from prison near Cape Town after 27 years of incarceration.  Now Mandela could have chosen to pursue vengeance against his oppressors.  Or, he could easily have retreated into private life to do whatever he wanted, he was after all already in his 70’s at the time of his release. But that’s not how he understood freedom.  “To be free,” said Mandela, “is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

You see, we’ve been given our freedom but we have not simply been given our freedom.  We have, in Paul’s words, been called to freedom.  We have become people who are capable of acting, not simply of being acted upon.  And so we are called to act.

When we talk about freedom, we need to talk both about “freedom from” and “freedom for”.  What has the grace of God freed us from?  We are free from all the voices that tell us we’re not good enough.  We are free from worrying about whether we’re going to “make it” in life.  We are free from not knowing whether we’re worthy of love, honour and respect.  We are free from rule-bound religion which tries to make us earn our relationship with God.  We are free from all the conditions, all the strings that so many try to tie us down with.  We’re free from all these things because we are children of God, good with God, justified by faith, loved by God and worthy of love, honour and respect.

That’s what we’ve been freed from.  What have we been freed for?  Why have we been called to freedom?  How shall we live?

Here I want to return to the image of the car rental that we started with a month ago.  You remember.  We arrive at the airport, we go to the car rental lot, we fill in the papers, get in the car, follow the lanes and the arrows and the direction markers, and at last we drive out the exit and over those big metal spikes embedded in the road.  Here we are at last, free to head out onto the open highway, with all those other cars whizzing past and the lane changes and intersections and we’re not even sure whether we turn left or right to get out of the rental car lot.

Sometimes freedom is terrifying.  At the very least, it can be unsettling or confusing.  Life is easier sometimes when someone just tells you what to do. 

At a very minimum, it seems to me like we need two things.  The first is fuel in our tank, cause without that we’re not going very far.  And the second is a roadmap that at least gives us the lay of the land as we head out onto the open highway.

And those are precisely the two things that Paul gives us in today’s reading from Galatians.  Well, not Paul, actually it’s God who gives them to us, but at least Paul tells us about them.  And both the fuel and the roadmap are directly related to the identity that we talked about last week, our identity as children of God.

Because you are God’s children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts.  That’s our fuel, the gas in our tanks.  Live by the Spirit, Paul says, be guided by the Spirit.  Because you are Spirit-Led.  Anyone heard that phrase before?  It’s the first part of our vision statement for this St. Albans community.  In fact, it’s even the password for our WiFi!  We are Spirit-Led, our vision is to be Spirit-Led, and that vision comes right from this passage in Galatians.  And when we are Spirit-Led, what happens?  Well, amazing stuff happens.  Love happens.  Joy happens.  Peace happens.  Patience happens.  Kindness happens.  Generosity happens.  Faithfulness happens.  Gentleness happens.  Self-control happens.  Is that the sort of stuff you want in your life?  Is that the sort of stuff we want in the life of this community? 

Yup.  Be Spirit-led.  That’s our fuel.

And the roadmap?  What’s our freedom for?  Here’s what Paul’s got in his letter to the Galatians, it’s pretty simple really.  You were called to freedom brothers and sisters so that through love you become servants to one another.  You’re asking how you should live?  Live like this:  Love your neighbor as yourself.  That pretty much sums it all up.

Now I don’t know about you, but I’d like a little more to go on.  I mean, I know Paul that you’re big on this freedom thing and you don’t want to give us a whole new rulebook cause that would kind of defeat the point of the gospel of grace.  But can’t you give us a bit more to go on?

And you know what?  I think that we weren’t the only ones to ask for a bit more to go on, few more details if you like on the roadmap.  Because two years later, in a letter that Paul wrote to the Christian community in Rome, he does give us a slightly more detailed road map.  It goes like this:

Dear Romans,

This is how you should live:

Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good.  Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.  Don't burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don't quit in hard times; pray all the harder.  Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.  Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath.  Laugh with your happy friends when they're happy; share tears when they're down.  Get along with each other; don't be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don't be the great somebody.  Don't hit back; discover beauty in everyone.  If you've got it in you, get along with everybody.  Don't insist on getting even; that's not for you to do. "I'll do the judging," says God. "I'll take care of it."  Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he's thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness.  Don't let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good.

I’ve got three things I want to say about this:

First, this roadmap flows directly from who we are, which is why we talked about identity last week.  The way of life described here flows directly from your identity and my identity as a child of God.  This is how we live in the family of God, this is what makes us who we are.  Love from the centre of who you are;  don’t fake it!

Second, none of this is a way to earn God’s love or to be justified with God, or to become a child of God.  We don’t have to do anything to be a beloved child of God, good with God for all eternity.  That’s a given.  Everything else, all the roadmap stuff, comes after.

And finally, this is what your freedom is for.  By the grace of God, you were called to freedom, so that you could live as a child of God, fueled by the Spirit, with this as your roadmap.  Bon voyage.

Amen.

Identity - Galatians part 4 (June 23 2013)

Homily.  Yr C Proper 12, June 23 2013, St. Albans Day.

Readings:  Wis 3.1-9; Ps 63.1-8; Gal 3.23-4.7; Mt 10.40-42

Identity (Galatians part 4)

Okay, so we’ve talked about this amazing gospel of grace that Paul proclaimed, about how we’ve been justified by faith, and so we’re good with God because of what Christ has done, and we’ve talked about the amazing freedom that this gives us, because we don’t have to worry about doing this or that to make ourselves good with God, and so now I’ve promised that that we’re going to talk about what all this means for how we are to live our lives, what sort of roadmap do we get as we drive on out onto the open highway of living by faith.

However.   However, before we can quite get there, there’s one more thing that we have to talk about, one more thing that Paul writes about before we get to talk about how to live our lives.  Because how we live our lives flows directly out of who we are.  And so our reading today from the letter to the Galatians is all about identity.

And the question of identity is huge.  It affects the courses we take at university.  It influences whether we get tattoos or body piercings.  It does a lot to determine what job we do and who we’re going to marry.  It is the driving question underlying 80 years of Superman comics and movies as Superman tries to figure out whether he is really Clark Kent or the Man of Steel.  Ask any psychologist and he or she will tell you that the question of identity underlies our sense of worth, the meaning and purpose of our lives and our sense of belonging.  Important stuff.

And so before Paul gets to the roadmap for our lives in this new age of freedom in Christ, he needs to talk about identity.  And so do we.  And so I want you to take a few minutes on your own, take a pencil and a piece of paper and try to answer the question, “Who am I?”  What are the things for me that factor into my identity, my own sense of who I am?  And if you have time after you have answered the “Who am I?” question, you may also want to ponder where exactly does my identity come from anyway, and who or what people or things or events have defined me that way.

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So what did you write?  How did you answer the “Who am I?” question?  There are lots of ways we can think about our own identity aren’t there.  We can start with our name, I am Mark, a unique identifier and a symbol for me of all that’s encapsulated in my life story.  We may identify with what we do, I am a priest, or a doctor or a student or unemployed.  We may identify ourselves as male or female, as gay or straight.  We may identify as Canadian or American or Jamaican.  Many of the labels that we use to identify ourselves are differentiators aren’t they?  By aligning our identity with a particular group we also say that we are not part of other groupings.  And while that may help us to develop a sense of our own uniqueness, which psychologists would tell us is good, it also creates boundaries which may not be so good.

And how about relationships?  How many people included something about being mothers, fathers, children, sisters, friends in their answers.  Identity is relational, and so our relationships are an important part about how we see ourselves.

How many of you included words about your own capabilities and accomplishments or your failings in your answers?  I’m a good hockey player.  I’m an alcoholic.  I’m smart.  I’m dumb.  I’m a college graduate.  I failed high school.   Our sense of identity is affected by our life experience and by our perception of how we measure up or compare with others.

Paul gets all this.  Remember that he started this letter by telling us who he is, an apostle, a Jew, and he told us his life story.  But even though all this stuff has certainly has shaped us, and may well describe us, it no longer defines who we are.  Now that faith has come, now that the gospel of grace has been proclaimed and made known through Christ, you are all children of God.  That’s who you are.  You are beloved children, worthy of love, honour and respect, created in the image of God, created as a unique individual with all the gifts and everything you will need to do the things that God is calling you to do in this world.  Nothing else matters.  Everything else is secondary and no longer defines who we are.

What a difference it would make if we could learn to trust in our identity as children of God.  Let me give you a specific example, and since it is St. Albans Day, let’s talk about St. Alban.

Imagine two scenarios if you will.  In the first scenario Alban identifies as a law-abiding Citizen of the Roman Empire living in England.  A man comes to his door.  That man is a criminal and a fugitive from the Law.  What happens?  Well, Alban would turn the man away and notify the Roman authorities to have him arrested.  After all, isn’t that what a law-abiding Roman citizen would do when confronted with a criminal?

But what if both men had read Paul’s letter to the Galatians and believed Paul when he proclaimed that there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer man and woman; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.  Then the story would go like this.  Alban is a child of God living in England.  One day a man comes to his door.  Alban sees that this man too is a child of God.  And so he welcomes into his home, and he feeds and shelters him. And when the Roman soldiers finally reach Alban’s doors looking for the man, Alban hides him, exchanges clothing with him and goes with the soldiers in his place, allowing him to escape.

What a difference it would make if we could really learn to trust and live into our new God-given identity as children of God, and let all those other differentiators to fade into the background, allowing us to dismantle and transcend the boundaries and divisions that those other differentiators have created in our lives and our world.

Because although our identity as children of God is meant for each one of us individually, assuring us that we are worthy of love, honour and respect, it also has a public and communal aspect.  Identity leads to belonging, and as children of God we belong to the family of God, the people of God.  And the concrete expression, the sacramental expression if you like, of the family of God in our time and place is this community that we call church.  You belong here.  No strings attached.

Now that, if you think about it, is pretty radical.  In order to belong to most communities, you need to do something.  You might need to register, you might need to pay some dues, you might need to meet certain conditions, you might need to adhere to certain standards.  But not here.  You’re already registered, your dues have been paid on your behalf, you’re welcome here, you belong.  You’re a child of God, this is your family, and nothing else matters. 

Now, we may well find that to be terrifying, because we want other things to matter.  This child of God thing is going to take a lot of trust.  And that’s where Paul’s insistence on our identity as children of God links up with his insistence on the freedom given to us by the gospel of grace.  This community, the community of the children of God, becomes a place where people are free to be who they were created to be without having to conform to standards of behavior or belief.  And we trust that by being this sort of a community, by practicing this sort of radical hospitality, we become not just a community of freedom but also a community of transformation, where as children of God, God will send the Spirit of his Son into our hearts so that we too can learn to cry, Abba, Father.

Amen.

Justification by Faith (Galatians part 3, June 16 2013)

Homily:  Yr C Proper 11, June 16 2013, St. Albans

Readings:  1 Kings 21:1-21a; Ps 5:1-8; Gal 2:15-21; Luke 7.36-8.3

Justification by Faith

Justification by faith.  It is perhaps the key theological doctrine of Christianity.  In Paul’s era, these three words propelled the Jesus movement from a small Jewish sect to a racially and ethnically inclusive faith that spread to the ends of the earth.  In Martin Luther’s era in the 16^th century, these are the words that launched the Protestant Reformation and radically reshaped the configuration of the Christian church as we know it in our time and place.

With today’s reading we have reached the heart of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, his thesis statement for the gospel of grace.  Some of you will remember that two weeks ago we talked about the various gospels on offer.  We talked about the gospel of exchange, the one that the other guys were proclaiming to the Galatians, the one that says “if you do this, then you’ll be good with God.”  And then there’s the gospel that Paul proclaimed, the one that says “You’re already good with God, now, just as you are.  Everything that needed to be done has already been done by Jesus.” And you’ll remember just how adamant and excited Paul was about leaving the gospel of exchange behind and learning to trust in the gospel of grace, about getting out of that rental car lot and out onto the open highway without going backwards.  Last week we talked about what it takes to trust in something or someone, and how Paul told his story, and appealed to experience, both his and ours in order to make his case.

And this week, in the portion of the letter we read today, just in case we’ve forgotten what’s at stake, Paul lays out once more the gospel of grace which he proclaims:

“We know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through the faith of Jesus Christ.  And we have come to trust in Christ Jesus so that we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.”

Let’s unpack this a little.  First of all, let’s notice that Paul’s gospel is Christ-Centred.  Christ is mentioned eight times in six verses.  Christ is the pivot about which this whole justification thing turns.  And what is justification?  Justification means to be made right with God.  It is about the gift of, the restoration of, our relationship with God.  Or, as I’ve put it more colloquially, to be justified is to be good with God.  And what does it take to be good with God?  It takes faith, the faith of Christ.  Not works of the law.  Not circumcision.  Not following dietary rules.  Not indulgences.  Not good behavior or moral living.  Not being part of the in group.  Not going to church or being baptized or inviting Jesus into our hearts.  No says Paul, we are justified by faith.  

Some of you may know that my daughter Michelle is finishing Grade Twelve this year, and so in a couple of weeks Guylaine and I will be attending her High School Commencement.  Last week Michelle brought home the tickets that we’ll need to attend.  And as she handed them to me she asked a good question.  Why is it called a Commencement anyways?  Commencement means, after all, “the beginning”.  And from the perspective of a high school student, high school graduation looks much more like an ending than a beginning.  So I tried to explain in my fatherly way that while it may look like an ending, graduating from high school is really a new beginning.  It’s the beginning of life as an adult, it’s the beginning of a new phase in life where you get to make choices about what you will do next, work, travel, college, university, where you’re going to live, what courses and profession you’ll pursue.  In all these ways, your commencement really is a new beginning.  And after patiently listening to what I thought was my thoughtful and inspirational response, Michelle said, “They should just call it graduation.”

We could ask a similar question about “justification”.  In a lot of Christian discourse, especially in times and places which seem to favour a “ticket to heaven” theology, justification is seen as the end game, the point of the whole Christian thing. It’s what we’re working towards.  We want to be justified, made right with God, so that we get to go to heaven.  It’s kind of like a graduation.

But for Paul, justification is much more like a Commencement.  It’s a new creation, the start of a new life.  We can see this from the images and metaphors that he uses.  Justification, Paul tells us, is being born, or adopted, as a child of God.  And birth is a new beginning, not an end in itself.  Being justified, Paul tells us, is like being released from slavery or being let out of jail.  It’s a chance to live a new life, a life of freedom.

But as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, this freedom thing that Paul is proclaiming, well that makes people nervous.  It especially makes people in positions of power or authority kind of nervous, and it makes people who like to control their own destiny and earn their own way in life a bit uncomfortable.  And so there is always the temptation to go back to the gospel of exchange, back to a conditional system in which we take back a little control, back to the familiar ways of our world.

And here’s one way we do it.

Paul says that we are justified by faith.  By whose faith?  Well by my faith I suppose.  I am justified by my faith.  My faith in what?  Well, my faith in Jesus.  And what does that mean?  Well it means that I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that he is God incarnate, fully human and fully God, the second person of the Trinity, and that he was crucified for my sins and was raised again and ascended to God’s right hand and he shall come again to judge the living and the dead.  And that I try to follow his teachings, and when I fail I confess my sins and . . .

Did you see what just happened there?  All of a sudden we went from Paul’s gospel of grace to some sort of understanding that says I will be justified if I give intellectual assent to the creeds and doctrines of the church and follow the prescribed practices.  My being good with God all of a sudden is made conditional on something that I do or don’t do.  Kind of like “If you do this, then you’ll be good with God.”  Which is exactly the gospel of exchange that Paul is fighting against in Galatia isn’t it?

You see there’s nothing wrong with doctrines and creeds and intellectual assent to theological propositions, there’s nothing wrong with ethical living or following certain practices.  These are good things, they are helpful things, in many ways.  But they can never be made conditions for our justification.  Because as Paul puts it, if justification comes through these things, then Christ died for nothing!

No, says Paul, we know that we are justified by the faith of Christ.  Now the Greek phrase that Paul uses is actually “pisteos Christou” which can be translated in two different ways.  The first translation is that we are justified by the faith of Christ.  The second is that we are justified by faith in Christ.  Both translations are equally plausible, and as you can imagine, this has been a subject of debate for theologians for centuries.  But I think that both translations are helpful and therefore it is likely that Paul actually intended the double meaning.

First, we are justified by the faith of Christ.  It was Christ’s faith, his absolute trust in God that led to the cross and in so doing opened relationship with God to all people.  It is because of Christ’s faith, not ours, that we are good with God, justified, reborn as children of God.  But this is just the beginning of our new life, and in order to start living the life that has been given to us, we have to trust it, we have to trust this gospel of grace and that is why our faith in Christ matters.  You see, Paul doesn’t just want to teach the gospel of grace, he actually wants to usher people into living it.  Justification is just the beginning.  We have been born as children of God.  So how then do we live?

Paul puts it this way:  “I now live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” 

What does it look like when we live that way?  That’s where we’ll start next week.

Amen.

During our open space, you may want to start reflecting on what life looks like when you trust in the gospel of exchange, and, conversely, what life looks like when you trust in the gospel of grace.  A good place to start would be with the story that we heard from Luke in today’s gospel reading with its contrasting portraits of Simon the Pharisee and the unnamed woman who anoints Jesus feet.

So How Do We Know What to Trust? (Galatians part 2, June 9 2013)

Homily:  Yr C Proper 10, June 9 2013, St. Albans

Readings:  1 Kings 17.8-24; Ps 146; Gal 1:11-24; Luke 7:11-17

So How Do We Know What to Trust?

Ok Galatians, you’ve got a choice now.  You’ve got two gospels, let’s call them, as we did last week, the gospel of exchange, and the gospel of grace.  Which one are you going to believe?  The gospel of exchange was preached by the guys from Jerusalem who came after Paul, and they said “I’ve got good news for you.  God is ready to love you and make you one of his people, and all you have to do is be circumcised and follow the Jewish laws and you’re good.”  Then there is the gospel of grace which Paul proclaimed when he first met the Galatians.  “I’ve got good news for you.  You’re good with God.  Now, just as you are.  Everything that needed to be done has already been done by Jesus.  God loves you and cares for you and has adopted you as a child of God, and nothing you or anyone else can do will ever separate you from the love of God.”

So which gospel are you going to believe?  Who are you going to trust, Paul or the other guys?

Now this isn’t just something that the Galatians had to deal with in the first century.  Let’s throw a couple of 21^st century gospels into the mix.  How about the Atheist Gospel which says “Hey I’ve got good news for you.  There is no God.  We live in a material universe that came together by accident and all there is is stuff like atoms and molecules that follow the laws of science.  Humans are just a particular bundle of atoms that evolved out of random processes and there is no meaning or purpose to our lives.  So stop worrying, and enjoy your life, cause when it’s over, it’s over.”  You’ve heard that gospel, in fact it was even on ads on the side of OC Transpo buses a few years ago.

Or there’s another one you might call the “Consumption Gospel” and it goes like this:  “Hey, I’ve got good news for you.  If you get an education and work hard, you can get a good job and earn lots of money, and then you can buy everything you want for yourself and your family and you’ll be happy.”  Anyone ever heard that one?

You see there are lots of gospels floating around out there.  The question for us is, which one will we believe?  How do we know which gospel to trust?  Which one are you going to build your life on?  Are we willing to put our faith in one of these gospels and make it our foundation, guiding our every decision and giving shape and meaning to our lives?

I want to look at the question of trust with you this morning.  Today’s text from Paul’s letter to the Galatians is all about trust.  We know which gospel Paul believes, which one he really wants us to believe, he’s pretty clear about that.  Today’s text is all about Paul saying, “this is why you should trust me and have faith in the gospel that I’m proclaiming”   

Our lives are based on trust, or to use another word, faith.  We trust in certain relationships, we trust in experts like doctors and scientists, we trust that we have free will and that our choices matter, we trust in certain values, we trust in particular ways of seeing and understanding the world.

How do we know what to trust?  That’s my question for you this morning.  I’d like you to turn to the people sitting near you, form groups of about 5 or 6 people and figure out what it takes for you to trust or believe something or someone.  How do we know, how do we decide what to trust?

So what did you come up with?  

Well, I want to turn back to Paul’s argument in Galatians, and let’s see how well it lines up with the sort of things we’ve been saying.  Here’s what I get from Paul about why the Galatians should trust what he’s saying and believe in the gospel of grace.

When it comes to matters of trust, the first thing that Paul lays out is that the source matters.  The gospel that he proclaims comes straight from the source, it was received by Paul as a direct revelation of Jesus Christ.  He’s not making it up, he didn’t get it from another person, it isn’t something that was invented by humans, it’s straight from God.  That’s important.  The source matters.  We as Christians believe in revelation, that God reveals Godself to us in a whole variety of ways, we believe that we can be in relationship with God, and so the most trustworthy source about God and about the gospel is God, as opposed to some human theory about God.

However that doesn’t in and of itself end the discussion, does it?  Because immediately our attention turns from the claim about the source to the credibility of the messenger.  Do we trust the messenger, the one bringing us the gospel, Paul in this case?  On what basis do you trust someone?  Do you trust them because they’re your parents?  Do you trust them based on their position?  Their education?  Their experience?  Their passion?  Their authenticity?  Their authority?  Whether they care about you or not?

Paul appeals to all of the above by telling his story.  And he puts a lot of emphasis on his own experience.  His before and after story.  You see, one of the reasons that I think Paul is credible when he talks about both the gospel of exchange and the gospel of grace is because he’s lived both of them.  He was brought up in the gospel of exchange, in fact he was a shining example of it, learned in the Law, zealous for the traditions of his ancestors, advanced beyond others his age.  The result?  Paul’s understanding led him to violently persecute the church of God.  Doesn’t sound too good!  But then he had his revelation.  He embraced the gospel of Jesus, the gospel of grace and he started living this new gospel.  And in this new life, this new gospel, he experienced new creation, he found his salvation and his calling.  And because of Paul’s experience, because he lived one gospel before and a new one after, Paul’s life testifies to the truth of the new gospel he is proclaiming and when he speaks, he speaks with authenticity because he has really lived the things he’s talking about.

That’s what we’re looking for in a messenger – someone who is authentic, someone whose message is lived out in their life, someone whose authenticity is derived from experience.  I think that’s particularly relevant to our situation in the 21^st century, when for a whole variety of reasons traditional notions of authority are being questioned and to a large extent are being replaced by the value of authenticity.  Paul, called by God to proclaim the gospel, and with real-life experience of the power of the gospel to transform lives, including his own, Paul had both authority and authenticity.

But Paul appeals not only to his own experience but also to the lived experience of the Galatians.  “Don’t you remember,” he tells them, “how when you first believed the gospel, God sent his Spirit into your hearts; how you who had been enslaved to all sorts of beliefs experienced the joy of redemption and freedom?”

Our experience matters because we tend to trust things when they help us make sense of our own experience.  We are better able to trust the gospel when it rings true, because we experience it as true in our own life.

One of my favourite theologians, Karl Rahner, a leading voice in the church in the 20^th century, once said that `unless all Christians become mystics there will be no Christianity.`  I think that what he meant is that unless we enter into a relationship with God and learn to experience God as a real presence in our own lives, Christian faith and belief will be difficult to sustain in an age where there are many voices, many gospels, and we no longer believe things just because somebody else tells us we should.  And because God is a mystery, God is something we’ll never fully comprehend, then entering into relationship with God makes all of us mystics.  Not mystics in the sense of some sort of elite or people gifted with special visions like Paul, but mystics in the sense of what Rahner calls everyday mysticism, the growing awareness and experience of God`s Spirit in the ordinary, everyday stuff of our lives.

The question of what, who and how to trust may well be the most important one that each of us faces in our lives.  Paul makes his case for the gospel of grace revealed to him through Jesus Christ.  What do you think?

Amen.

Two "Gospels" (June 2 2013)

Homily:  Yr C P9, June 2 2013, St. Albans

Readings:  1 Kings 18.20-39; Ps 96; Gal 1.1-12; Lk 7.1-10

Have you ever picked up a car from an airport car rental agency?  If you have, one of the things that you might have noticed is that just as your drive out of the rental car parking lot, there’s a set of big spikes in the road.  Have you seen them?  They’re sharp metal spikes that angle away from you, and as you exit the rental lot and drive over them, your tires push them down into the road and you can drive over top and exit the parking lot no problem.  If however, you were ever to drive into the lot going the wrong direction, then of course the spikes wouldn’t push out of the way, instead they’d go right into your car tires and tear them to shreds.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I often find that renting a car at the airport is quite confusing.  Oh it’s ok while you’re still in the rental parking lot, after all, within the lot there are lots of arrows painted on the ground and signs to tell you which way to go to the exit, and there are even some rental company employees who can direct you if you still can’t figure out which way to go.  No, the moment that I find challenging is right at the place where I’ve just exited the rental lot and I’m still getting used to the car and all of a sudden the highway is right in front of me and the cars are zipping past and I can’t figure out which way to turn or where I want to go or which lane to take.

And I know I’m not the only one who finds this a challenge.  One time I saw this guy drive out of the rental lot, right over the spikes and then stop.  He looked like didn’t know which way to turn, and he must have forgotten to take a map or get directions.  So he shifted the car into reverse, the tail lights come on, and he looks back over his shoulder and starts to back up.  And just before he gets to the spikes, this rental company employee comes running up yelling and screaming at him, “What are you doing, are you crazy, don’t back up, stop!”

That’s Paul in the letter to the Galatians that we just heard read this morning.  No “Hi, how are you, I’m fine, hope you are well”.  No, he instead he screams at them “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.”  Or, in other words, “What are you doing?  Are you crazy, what are you doing going backwards, you’re going to hit the spikes!”

So why is Paul so agitated?  What’s got him so upset that he writes in such an abrasive and rude manner?  What is this false gospel that has taken hold of the Galatians?

Well it’s this:  Someone, presumably someone from the early church, someone has come into Galatia after Paul and said to them, “Galatians, you’re not good enough, and in order to be good enough, you have to do this.”  That’s the false gospel that has Paul in a tizzy.

Have you ever been told this?  Mary, you’re not good enough, and in order to be good enough, you have to do this.”  Of course you have.  We’ve all heard those voices, there are so many of them in our society.  Just watch TV for a few hours.  All you have to do to be good enough is to drink this beer, or have cleaner clothes by using this detergent, or have fresher breathe by chewing this gum.  Or, spend a bit of time listening to what we parents, with the best of intentions, tell our children.  You need to do well in school.  You need to behave yourself.  You need to get a job.  Or, listen to so many of the other voices around us, telling us if only we dressed a bit better, or worked a little harder, or stopped doing drugs, or saved more money, well, then we’d be good.

Or, spend some time at church.  How many have ever heard voices telling you that in order to be good with God, you have to do something:  say this prayer inviting Jesus into your heart, go to confession, be baptized, attend church every week, and on and on it goes.  How often in our lives do we hear this false gospel that says “you’re not good enough yet, but I have good news for you:  in order to be good enough all you have to do is this”

The Galatians would have been familiar with this sort of gospel.  They lived after all, in a time 2000 years ago in the Roman Empire when life was pretty religious.  They believed that pretty much everything that happened was caused by the gods or the spirit world.  Illness, bad weather, earthquakes, lightning, all these things were attributable to the gods.  And as a result, in a world where life expectancy was in the 40s and infant mortality rates approached 50%, being good with God wasn’t just a nice to have, it was a matter of life and death.   One of the most important questions of anyone’s life was what he or she had to do to be good with God, to be blessed with God’s favour.  And so people did all sorts of things in an effort to be good with God, to be worthy of God’s blessing.  They offered sacrifice and prayers, they performed rituals, they visited shrines, they appealed to priests and magicians.

And then along came Paul, proclaiming a gospel that was completely different from anything they had ever heard.  Something that was incredibly good news.  According to Paul, you’re already good with God.  Everything that needs to be done has already been done by Jesus Christ.  You’ve already been made right with God through Jesus death on the cross.  And not only are you good with God, you are a child of God.  God loves you and cares for you and nothing you or anyone else can do will ever separate you from the love of God. And as a result of that, you’re free.  Free of all conditions, free from the need to please God or other people, free from all the strings that so many in society try to tie you down with, free from all the voices that tell you you’re not good enough.

That is the Gospel of Jesus Christ that Paul proclaimed, the awesome good news that the Galatians initially heard and received with amazing joy. 

The challenge for the Galatians, the challenge for us, is to hear this good news and to believe it, to trust it, to hang on to it in the midst of all the other voices that tell us that we’re not good enough, that in order to be good enough we have to do this or that.  In the case of the Galatians, not long after Paul spent time with them, other voices came along preaching a different gospel.  Well Galatians, they said, you know it’s not quite as simple as Paul was making out.  Yes, God is ready to love you, to make you his people, but in order for that to happen, you have to be circumcised, because that’s the sign of the covenant that God gave to Abraham.  And then of course you’ll have to follow these rules about food, because, you know, that’s the way we Jews have always done it.

And the Galatians fell for it, because, well, because that’s what they were used to, that’s what they expected, a kind of exchange economy if you like where I’ll do this for you if you do that for me.  After all that’s the way the world has always worked, and why should our relationship with God be any different.

You see, we’re used to living in a world of exchange, a tit for tat world where you constantly have to prove your worth and when you do you hope to get what you deserve.

We see it in today’s Gospel reading from Luke, when the Jewish elders come up to Jesus to try to convince him to help the Centurion.  “You should help him,” they tell Jesus, “because he’s worthy of having you do this for him, after all he loves our people and it is he who built our synagogue for us.”  Isn’t that the sort of argument we expect to hear, an argument we’re used to hearing?

 

We live in a world of exchange.  But Paul is calling us to live in a new world, a new creation he calls it.  A world in which there are no conditions, no tit for tat, no strings attached.  A world of grace.

But the world of grace is unfamiliar territory to many of us.  It’s like we’re moving out of the rental car parking lot, with all its signs and direction arrows and employees to help us and all of a sudden we’re confronted with an unfamiliar highway and we’re not sure what way to go.  It’s kind of unsettling, this world of freedom.

That’s why it’s so easy to return to the false gospel that tells us what we have to do to be good enough.  In a previous parish I was in, I used to visit an elderly woman who was house-bound.  She was a wonderful woman, she was devoted to her faith and her family, and she’d surmounted numerous challenges in her long life.  And near the end, as she faced death, she confided in me one day that she was afraid.  She was afraid that she hadn’t been good enough, and that as a result she didn’t know what was going to happen to her after she died.  I was surprised and I was saddened, and my only thing I could think of was to tell her the same thing that Paul proclaimed to the Galatians, the gospel of Jesus Christ.  You are good enough because everything that could possibly be needed to make you right with God and good in his sight has already been done by Jesus on the cross.  You are a child of God, God loves you and nothing that you or anyone else has done or could ever do will ever separate you from the love of God.

The letter to the Galatians has been called Paul’s freedom manifesto.  It’s a new world.  You are a new creation.  You have been born as a child of God.  The old rules don’t apply anymore.  You’re free! 

But freedom is unsettling.  Even as I was preparing this sermon I had to keep resisting the temptation to put conditions on the freedom we’ve been given in Christ.  I kept hearing these voices saying “Be careful. What if they actually believe you?  Maybe they’ll stop coming to church!”  Well, so be it.

Because we’re good enough, we’re good with God.  Just the way we are.  Nothing to be done, no conditions, no strings attached.  We are free from all that.  For freedom, Christ has set us free.  That may be unsettling.  That may be new territory for us.  We may want directions, we may want some sort of road map. We’ll talk about that in the coming weeks as we work our way through Galatians.  But for now, whatever you do, resist the temptation and ignore those voices that are telling you to put it into reverse and drive back over the spikes.

Amen.