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.