Sermon Series on Paul s Letter to the Galatians Introduction This month we will be following the Letter of Paul to the Galatians at both our Sunday services. Paul of Tarsus was a religious genius. He had an incredible intellect and he was a formidable person who could argue persuasively. Paul was capable of taking on anyone who thought that he had strayed from the truth of the Gospel. Such was the force of Paul s personality that he has remained somewhat of a divisive figure even today. Some people have labeled him a misogynist and a bigot unfairly I think. Paul was a man of his times yet he could pen one of the most inclusive verses in the Bible to the people of Galatia: There is no longer Jew and Gentile, there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Jesus Christ. Paul s genius lay in his ability to take the message of Jesus from its Jewish beginnings in Palestine and interpret its meaning beyond the Jewish faith for the Roman world of his day. He challenged the world of pagan deities and the might of the Roman Empire itself by sowing the seeds of a radical, new faith that would one day become the dominant religion of the Mediterranean world and then reach the ends of the earth. Described in one ancient document (Acts of Paul and Thecla) as a bald-headed, bow legged, strongly built man small in size, with meeting eyebrows and a rather large nose, Paul indicated to the Corinthians that he had a thorn in the flesh given to him by God to keep me from being too elated. We don t know what it was. People have speculated that this thorn could have been epilepsy or a speech impediment or even a problem with anger management. Others have speculated that Paul may have had a persistent opponent who shadowed him to undermine his work. Whatever it was, Paul criss-crossed the Mediterranean world on three occasions. He walked some 16,000 kilometers on foot and travelled many more by boat. Paul became the most prominent Christian of all time as he actually defined Christianity. Much of what we understand about our faith today was shaped by Paul. Central to Paul s interpretation of the Gospel is the message that salvation is offered to all humankind whoever they are through Jesus Christ. This is justification by faith which we will hear more about later in the series.
Paul is a fascinating figure and I will digress to put in a plug for the seminars Which Gospel? that Rev Dr Dean Drayton will lead on two Saturday mornings here at Roseville on July 27 and August 17 when Dean will explore Paul and then the Gospels with us. There is no certain date for when the Letter to the Galatians was written perhaps between 53 and 55 in the Common Era. The Galatians themselves were either descendants of Celtic tribes whose major city was Ancyra in modern day Turkey. This was traditional Galatia. They could have been communities who lived in the Roman province of Galatia whose cities were Iconium, Lystra and Derbe in southern Turkey all evangelized by Paul and Barnabas. Something has happened in the churches of Galatia that has greatly distressed Paul and his opening words to the Galatians are feisty and angry. Galatians 1:1-12 The Gospel from God Paul is stirred up isn t he? He is frustrated. He is angry! As he writes to the Galatians Paul is also extremely defensive. Paul has been attacked and even more importantly the credibility of the Gospel he preaches has been challenged by missionaries who have come to Galatia to clean up a mess which they believe Paul has created. They have come questioning Paul s connection to Jesus and they have come implying that Paul has indulged in popularism by watering down the Gospel to make it more palatable to Gentiles. Paul is accused of picking and choosing parts of scripture by ignoring what the scripture says about what non-jews or Gentiles had to do in order to join the people of God. The arguments of these missionaries would have been perfectly plausible to the Galatians. They were absolutely biblical *. The Galatians had only to look up Genesis Chapter 17 for a start. The new teaching then was that to follow the Jewish Messiah Jesus the Galatians must become Jews. All are welcome but to enter into the promises of God they had to go through the process that includes circumcision for males. For Paul to have preached anything else, these missionaries claimed, was offering cheap grace without cost to make himself look good. Paul is beside himself: Let them be cursed may seem a bit over the top but this has hit a nerve. Such teaching is attacking something really important to Paul. Why? Because for Paul, it undermines the heart of the Gospel. It undermines the very truth of the Gospel. And Paul was always absolutely consistent about this it would even bring him into conflict with Peter and Barnabas when they succumbed to pressure and reverted to practices of Jews and Gentiles eating separately. Is Paul being unbiblical?
When the risen Jesus Christ whom Paul knew to have been crucified appeared to him on that road to Damascus it was a moment of revelation. Paul recognized what it meant. It changed his whole life. It changed him from a persecutor of Jesus Christ to a follower of Jesus Christ and then to an apostle sent by Jesus Christ to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles. When Paul met the resurrected Jesus as a Pharisee steeped in the Jewish scriptures and traditions, he immediately recognized that God was doing the new thing promised by the prophets. He knew that when God raised Jesus from the dead, the age of the Messiah had finally arrived. This was the age when everyone Jew and Gentile would recognize the God of Israel as the God of all nations. This was the age when there was no longer any need for distinction between people s and the idea of the circumcised and the uncircumcised no longer had any meaning. To raise circumcision was a backward step. Everything had moved on. And Paul claimed his authority for this teaching not from letters of recommendation from anyone in Jerusalem or anyone else but from Jesus Christ - God. And so he claims the Gospel did not originate from human wisdom but from God. From now on Paul will argue his case from this starting point. As we go through this letter this month Paul will argue that everything flows from a God who is gracious and compassionate and who offers a relationship to both Jew and Gentile without discrimination. That s the heart of the Gospel for Paul: It springs out of the very nature of God and what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. Paul does not seek an academic debate and it is not about personal power. In fact it cost him dearly to preach this gospel. At the centre of everything for Paul is trust in the very nature of God.* And to add any extra hurdles besides this before anyone is welcomed into the community of God is to undermine the very grace and inclusive love of God. I like Mary Hinkle Shore s image: Have you ever returned a rental car and driven over those spikes that are made to ensure that the rental cars are not stolen out of the yard. The spikes collapse when you drive in over them but if you were to go back the other way they stay up and cause severe tyre damage! Grace, Faith, Inclusion, Freedom, hope, Love are the gifts of Jesus Christ who lived our life and died our death and was raised to life. To add conditions is to bring back the old divisions. Why would the Galatians who embraced the Gospel so enthusiastically now deny their experience and adopt practices that could crush their freedom? They were backing the car up and Paul is waving his arms and shouting No! Don t go there Don t go back! Friends how do we consciously or unconsciously add things to the Gospel so that people feel excluded?
It s very interesting but when people have gone back and read Paul afresh there has very often been a revival in the church. In Martin Luther s time it was the politics of Rome and the church s use of power and fear including the sale of indulgences for the forgiveness of their sins that put a barrier between the people and God. When Luther reread Paul he rediscovered the grace of God and salvation through faith and it spawned the Reformation. And it was while reading Luther s Preface to Paul s Letter to the Romans that John Wesley s heart was strangely warmed and it led to his preaching of the Gospel of grace to miners and labourers in eighteenth century England and the Methodist revival as they felt included and empowered as never before. Much later in the twentieth century Douglas John Hall (Bound and Free- A Theologian s Journey, Fortress Press, p.34), a Canadian theologian stumbled onto the writings of Luther. As a young person Christianity had seemed dry and moralistic to Hall. But Hall writes: Luther - splendid, bombastic, impulsive, and deeply honest was not heroic nor saintly. He didn t ask me to be a nice boy. He asked me to be truthful, to be myself, to accept myself despite all that was truly unacceptable about me - to trust! And at the end of the Second World War when the German people were mired in the deepest darkness verging on despair, Jurgen Moltmann wrote of the God who comes calling to us from the future a God who is doing a new thing. He wrote of God in Jesus graciously freeing people from the weight of the past and offering hope in the future God had for them. It spoke to a whole new generation. And in our national debate on racism this past week I remembered a friend I knew in Armidale. As an aboriginal person she had spent her youth trying to scrub her skin to become white but when she encountered Jesus Christ and she knew that she was loved and accepted just as she is it was a moment of revelation that stripped away years of feeling excluded and second-rate. What is it in our culture our times our attitudes - even in the church that holds people at length? What layers do we add to the Gospel even for ourselves? Paul takes us back to what really matters - to the nature of God. And here at the communion table we encounter God s grace and love reaching out to us whatever our race our culture our age our gender - our sexuality however good or bad we feel about ourselves. We do not have to become someone else to have a relationship with the living God. That centurion in our Gospel Story (Luke 7:1-10) was an outsider among the Jews yet something about Jesus resonated and he embraced Jesus word. Spirit spoke to spirit and they understood
each other. The Centurion trusted the power of Jesus word to give hope and healing to his sick slave as no-one else could. Jesus reached out to the Roman across all the human barriers and he responded by trusting Jesus: Faith is trust. And at this communion table today this same Jesus Christ invites us to eat. There is a space for each one of us and we take our place in the circle as equals. When everything is said about grace and love and inclusiveness and hope and freedom, all that is left is for us is to trust. For Paul it was all about trusting in God s grace and love and not in processes that are added and which only divide people and create more barriers. And for both Paul and Luke it is about trusting Jesus as we step into the new thing God is doing among us. Any talk about God any knowing God begins with faith or trust. Today I invite you as you eat the bread to trust the One who loves you and did not take a backward step even though it cost him his life and as you drink from the cup of God s mercy and forgiveness to trust God s grace and be thankful. Rev Laurel Barr Preached at 9.30am Sunday June 2 *William Loader, First Thoughts on Year C Epistle Passages from the Lectionary, Pentecost 2, http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au