You have heard me say before that when I find a passage from Scripture that I want to avoid I find that it is better for my spiritual health to throw myself into it than to avoid it.
I realized recently that I am not applying this discipline in all circumstances—I avoid Paul’s letters like the plague.
Most of the time these letters are so incomprehensible and/or infuriating to me that I stay far away from them.
It occurred to me that perhaps I need to dig deeper.
And well, since I am the preacher you listen to most, you get to take the journey with me.
I do promise though that I won’t preach about Paul every week of the new year.
I will this though.
So, this week, we have Paul’s letter to the Galatians.
This letter is small in size but mighty in its impact on Christian theology throughout the ages.
In the early church, Galatians played a major role in the momentous shift in Christianity from being a messianic sect within Judaism to becoming a Gentile-dominated religious movement that would eventually come to be seen as a legitimate alternative to Judaism and paganism.
Its language of “justification” and the contrast between “grace” and “law” and “faith” and “works” were central to Martin Luther’s thought in the 16th century and has been important for Protestants ever since.
And unfortunately, many have used this letter to justify antisemitism, as it has been wrongly interpreted as saying that Christianity is superior to Judaism.
The question is this, “Is this really fair?”
Was Paul really anti Judaism?
Was that really the point of this letter?
As I began to dig deeper, I discovered that a lot of modern scholars of the Pauline epistles have come to read this letter differently.
I began to see that this letter from Paul might still have something to say to us today that doesn’t require that we become anti-Jewish.
And as I read modern scholarship about Paul’s letter to the Galatians, I discovered that Paul was not preaching a 16th century Lutheran sermon either, because Paul was not in a fight with late medieval Roman Catholicism.
So, what is this letter about then?
Well let’s start with the context.
Galatians is the only letter to be addressed to a group of communities rather than a particular community or individual.
It was sent to the “churches of Galatia” somewhere between the late 40’s and mid-50’s.
It is unclear exactly where these communities were, but there is agreement that they were somewhere in the region we know today as Turkey, and that the people he is addressing were Gentile Christian converts living in communities founded by him.
Paul is angry and passionate as he writes this letter.
He cares about these communities that he founded, and he is upset that other missionary teachers are leading them in a direction that he feels is not good for their faith development, relationship with God, or Christian community.
It seems likely that Paul had taught them that they did not need to be circumcised or observe Jewish laws and that these new teachers were telling them something different.
Most likely they were telling the Galatian Gentile Christians that since the Jesus movement began within Judaism, they too must become Jewish if they are to be true followers of Jesus.
This would mean the men would need to be circumcised and all would need to follow the food laws.
The Galatian Gentile Christians are finding the teachings of these new teachers to be compelling, and they are greatly confused.
Now it is important to state here that Second-Temple Judaism did not teach that following the law would enable those who followed it to gain God’s blessings.
Every Jewish person learned at their mother’s knee that it was only through God’s grace that God made a covenant with the Jewish people.
There was nothing that Abraham, or Moses, or any Jewish person did to compel God to give them the Divine blessing.
God made a covenant with them and kept this covenant because God loves what God created.
God wants to be in relationship with those made in the Divine Image.
The law was given to them by God so that they could learn how to respond to this grace.
The grace was never in question.
Roman paganism taught something quite different.
Paganism taught that you could do things to compel the gods to give you their blessings.
If you made the right sacrifices, followed the laws of the Empire, ordered your family in the way the Empire told you to order it, and participated in the correct rituals and festivals then you would make the gods happy and you would gain the blessings of the gods for yourself, your family, and the Roman empire.
In other words, follow the rules and you can control the future.
Paul is writing to formerly pagan Gentiles.
He has taught them that there is nothing that they can do to earn God’s grace, to earn God’s love.
God loves them period.
Grace is not a “thing” that God gives.
Rather it describes the manner in which God gives themselves.
It describes the personal relationship God establishes with all people.
It describes the unmerited and unconditional way in which God has made and continues to move toward humanity, even when humanity continues to move in directions away from God.
And when a person comes to even a small understanding of this grace, the only response is faith, and it is this faith that changes everything.
When you understand that that we are only here living, and moving, and having our being because of God’s love, and that this is true for every other living thing as well, then the only response is faith.
And this faith leads to love and this love transforms individuals and communities.
The Spirit is found in this love, moves through this love, works through this love, transforms through this love.
And why is it so important to Paul that these Galatian Christians understand this?
Well, Paul understands that these formerly pagan Galatians can easily fall back into their pagan ways.
Paul understands that becoming Jews and in particular becoming Torah-observant would likely push them back into their old ways and stop the transformation that was occurring in them and in their communities.
Paul knew that they would see circumcision and the food laws as a way to earn God’s blessings.
He doesn’t want to see them go backward.
They had lived too long thinking they needed to earn God’s love.
Their religious muscle memory would snap them right back into their old ways.
So, what difference does any of this make for us today?
We are not formerly pagan people converted to Christianity.
We are not living in a community made up of Torah-observant Jewish followers of Christ and pagan converts to the Jesus way seeking to find a way to be in community with one another.
Is there something in this letter for us today?
For me the answer is yes.
We are more pagan in our way of living than we might like to admit.
We may say that we know that nothing we do will earn God’s blessings and that God’s grace is a free gift, but we don’t behave this way.
We too are part of systems and structures that encourage us to believe that if we do the right things, live the right way, we will have a blessed life.
We too live as though who we are and what we have is totally and completely a result of our own hard work.
Isn’t this the primary lesson of capitalism and the myth of meritocracy?
If you are a successful adult who has a good career, many possessions, a family, good health, and any other blessings you might name, this is because you earned it by doing the right things and living the right way.
Those who don’t have those same blessings must not have worked hard enough, tried hard enough.
They must deserve the “curses” that have come their way.
But what happens when in spite of all your hard work something bad comes your way—a layoff, cancer, death of a child, divorce, natural disaster, a market downturn.
Does this mean you did something wrong?
Does this mean that you didn’t do the right things to make God love you?
Does this mean God doesn’t love you?
I can’t tell you how many times I have sat with individuals who found themselves in a crisis of faith because something bad had happened in their lives and they just can’t believe God would do this to them.
They had lived a good life and done everything right.
They should be rewarded not punished.
In other words, they believed that their works could control their future.
And they have judged people whose lives were not as blessed as theirs and now they are judging themselves, or God.
In their time of cursedness, they simply did not know what to do or how to have a relationship with God.
This way of seeing the world causes great individual and communal suffering.
We suffer individually because we fail to see that good and bad happen to all and God loves us and is with us no matter what.
There is nothing we have to do to earn this love.
And we suffer communally because in our judgment we fail to support others during their bad times as we believe they are the cause of their own suffering.
We create false divisions through this way of thinking—male is superior to female.
White skin is superior to black skin.
Heterosexuality is superior to other sexual identities.
Educated is superior to uneducated.
Rich is superior to poor.
Christian is superior to Jew.
Fit is superior to unfit.
Thin is superior to fat.
Healthy is superior to unhealthy
I could go on and on.
When we understand that God loves us no matter what we do or who we are, we understand that God loves everyone this same way and the divisions no longer matter.
We accept that good and bad happen to everyone and through God’s eyes no category of people is superior to any other category of people.
When we understand that God loves everyone all the time, when we are experiencing good we help those who are experiencing bad and when we are experiencing bad we accept the help of those experiencing good.
When we take the truth that all are one in God into our hearts, how we treat others, how we pray, how we worship, how we use the resources we have been given, what we do with our time and talents, the causes we get behind, how we vote—everything in our lives will be transformed.
When we know this, and only when we know this will we be truly free.
I leave you with some words from Paul found in Chapters 5 and 6 of his letter to the Galatians:
For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. . . . The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. . . .If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. . . . Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. For if those who are nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves. (5:13-15; 22-23; 6:2-3)
