The World Turned Upside Down i

Transcription

1 Galatians 6:7 16 Matt Mardis-LeCroy Des Moines, IA July 3, 2016 I. The World Turned Upside Down i Here is the way I would like to start my sermon this morning. I would like to be able to stand before you and say that I was into Hamilton before Hamilton was cool. I would like to say that. But that would not, strictly speaking, be true. I was into Hamilton before it won 11 Tony awards, including best musical. I got in just under the wire. Mary Beth bought the soundtrack the day before the Tonys and it took about 15 minutes to make me into an insufferable convert. In case you are just joining us, Hamilton is the smash Broadway musical that employs hip-hop to tell the life story our first Treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton. And I am here to tell you that everything you have heard is true: The musical does live up to the hype. Lin-Manuel Miranda is a genius. It is all I have listened to for the last three weeks. So, I m supposed to preach on Galatians, but my head is full of Hamilton. Let s see if I can make this work. On Monday, these United States of America turn 240 years young. And Hamilton has me seeing the struggle for our independence in a whole new light.

2 The Battle of Yorktown A decisive moment for the American revolution, when General Cornwallis and his British Army surrendered to patriot forces commanded by General George Washington. A song about this pivotal battle forms the climax of Hamilton s first act. And in composing this song about the triumph of the revolution, Miranda draws on something I must have forgotten, a little detail mentioned in Ron Chernow s Hamilton biography. ii I ll let him tell it. iii In character as Alexander Hamilton, Miranda recounts the aftermath of the battle: We negotiate the terms of surrender I see George Washington smile We escort their men out of Yorktown They stagger home single file Tens of thousands of people flood the streets There are screams and church bells ringing And as our fallen foes retreat I hear the drinking song they re singing The world turned upside down. iv That is the way that it must have seemed: the mightiest military since the days of the Roman Empire, brought to its knees by a ragtag patriot army. To those who observed Cornwallis surrender who saw it at Yorktown, who heard about it later to those who lived through the days of the American Revolution, it must have seemed that everything was changing; that the world turned upside down. And it did. But it didn t. The musical makes that paradox plain. Earlier in the same song, in the immediate aftermath of the British surrender, we hear these words: Black and white soldiers wonder alike if this really means freedom. And a grim George Washington responds: Not. Yet. v

3 When the British marched out of Yorktown, the world turned upside down; our nation was free. But it would be 82 years from the Battle of Yorktown to the Emancipation Proclamation. 173 years from the Battle of Yorktown to Brown vs. Board of Education 183 years from the Battle of Yorktown to the Civil Rights Acts of Here we are today, 235 years after Yorktown 240 years after the Declaration of Independence and we still have to fight to assert the simple truth that Black Lives Matter. My point? We are still working this thing out. The United States of America is very much a work in progress. The world turned upside down. Freedom. But...Not. Yet. II. If you think this doesn t have something to do with the Apostle Paul, you haven t been paying attention. When Jesus Christ got a hold of him, Paul s whole world turned upside down. And we are still living in the aftermath of that revolution. You and I are here to continue what he started; to keep on working this thing out. We come today to the final installment in our summer series on Paul s letter to the Galatians. And the text mostly covers familiar ground. It s Paul s closing argument, his final appeal. We have been over this a lot in the last five weeks, so let me try to recap it quickly: Paul traveled around planting churches, and his churches were mixed bodies, congregations that integrated Jew and Gentile in a way that was shocking to 1 st century sensibilities. But Paul s Gospel makes this claim: in Christ, Jew and Gentile are one. And he plants churches to prove it, to live out the reconciled relationships made possible in Christ.

4 But after Paul leaves Galatia, another group of Christian teachers comes along and they contradict Paul. They insist that, actually, Jews are closer to God then Gentiles; that Gentiles ought to convert to Judaism as a way to get closer to God. This undermines Paul s entire project. So he argues against it and he argues ferociously: We all get to God in the exact same way: through the grace of God in Christ. We all stand on the same ground. We are, all of us, equal. Never let anyone tell you any different. As we have heard this summer, that is the message of Galatians. Now, in today s text, as he ends his epistle, Paul wants to drive all of that home, just one more time. But he does add one small wrinkle, one new idea, something we have not heard from him before. Listen again to verse 15: For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything. What is this all about? New creation. vi I think Paul is trying to tell us that, in Jesus Christ, God does not nibble around the edges of our dysfunction; God does not tinker with human hatred. God starts over: new creation, a new community, a brand new way of relating to one another. In Christ, in the church, God creates something genuinely new. But the old has a way of creeping back in. As we have so often seen in this series, Paul s communities of new creation often have a least one foot in the old creation. They don t get everything right. Women are still oppressed, slaves are still enslaved. Something new has come, but something old still stubbornly lingers. The world turned upside down. Freedom. But Not. Yet. III. Alexander Hamilton famously died in a duel with Aaron Burr. In the musical, at the moment of his death, he muses about the work he has begun and the work he has left for others to do:

5 Legacy. What is a legacy? It s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see. I wrote some notes at the beginning of a song someone will sing for me. America, you great unfinished symphony, you sent for me. You let me make a difference vii On this 4 th of July weekend, on this last Sunday spent with Paul, I am struck by the similarities between the American experiment and the church of Jesus Christ. Both are the products of genius; both are our inheritance from those who came before us. Both remain unfinished. As Americans, I believe it is our privilege to perfect this union; viii to keep on in the work begun two and half centuries ago; to continue freedom s long march and carry it a little closer to completion in our time. America remains unfinished. True patriotism takes up the work of making the nation better. And as Christians, we have been claimed and we are called to be part of that great work-inprogress known as the church. This cake is not yet fully baked; there is still so much for us to do. So we gather in this place, we make covenant with each other, and together we struggle to bring this thing a little closer to completion. We try to build a church that will be more welcoming, more loving, more just than it was when we got here. And let that be our legacy. The world turned upside down. And we re still learning to live in it. Freedom? Not. Yet. But maybe soon. God s still-speaking spirit sends for you, sends for me. It is time for us to take up the song. Plymouth Congregational Church United Church of Christ 4126 Ingersoll Avenue Des Moines, Iowa Phone: (515) Fax: (515) mmardis-lecroy@plymouthchurch.com

6 Notes i This is mostly a repeat of the footnote from my June 19, 2016 sermon, but it is still pertinent: As I have indicated in other settings, I took a course on Galatians that changed my life. It was taught by Thomas G. Gillespie, President of Princeton Theological Seminary, in the Fall of Those who would like a taste of his perspective are invited to consider his commentary on this passage in The Lectionary Commentary: Theological Exegesis for Sunday s Texts. The Second Readings: Acts and the Epistles. Roger E. Van Hard, Editor. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001), pp That course served as my introduction to the seminal work of J. Louis Martyn. See Galatians. The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004). And in my work on the pistis christou debate, I was led to Richard B. Hays Emory University Ph.D. dissertation The Faith of Jesus Christ. An Investigation of the Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1-4:11. SBL Dissertation Series 56. (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983). ii Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton. (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2004). iii This line is itself an allusion to Hamilton. iv Lin-Manuel Miranda. Hamilton. Original Broadway Cast Recording. Atlantic, 2016, CD. v Ibid. vi Interestingly, Richard N. Longenecker argues that Paul here employs a traditional maxim that Paul uses here for his own purposes. And he identifies verse 15 as the nub of Paul s purpose and the focal point of his subscription. Word Biblical Commentary. Volume 41: Galatians. (Dallas, TX: Word Books, 1990), p.295. vii Miranda, Hamilton. viii I allude here to the preamble to the United States of America: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.