Freedom and the Christian Path
Sermon by Jamie Howison on Galatians 6:1-16 and Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
As was the case in last Sunday’s readings, there is a certain tension at work between what we read in Paul’s epistle to the Galatians and what we find in the gospel text. It comes down to the urgency of the moment in the gospel text, in contrast with the rather more long-haul nature of Paul’s counsel to the Galatian Christians.
In the gospel, Jesus has now turned his face toward Jerusalem, which means he is beginning to move toward the culmination of his ministry. This is not a time for anything but urgency, in other words, and so when he sends out the “seventy others [to go] on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go,” his counsel to them is to have their jaws set and to be determined. “Greet no one on the road,” he counsels them, which as Jeannine K. Brown notes, “communicates a hurriedness to preparation and travel, especially when heard in light of an echo from 2 Kings 4, where the prophet Elisha gives somewhat similar instructions to his servant to make haste and go ahead of him on a mission: ‘Don’t greet anyone you meet, and if anyone greets you, do not answer.’”(2 Kings 4:29).
And what if these seventy message-bearers are greeted with hostility or indifference? Again from Brown: “If rejected, they are parabolically to announce judgment by wiping the dust of the streets off their feet—a reference to the Jewish practice of removing the dust of foreign soil when returning to Israel.”
There is a clear Jewishness to Jesus’ mission, in other words, building on the stories and traditions that have been told and retold in Judaism. And yet he is already beginning to expand the boundaries of that Judaism in a way that no one in Israel could have imagined.
And this brings us rather fittingly to what Paul is dealing with in his letter to the Galatians. If you heard my sermon from last week, you’ll recall that Paul is nurturing a community there that includes both Jews and Gentiles. In the earlier section of the epistle he has challenged the Jewish Christians who have been insisting that Gentiles must become observant Jews in order to be Christian—something he does not see as necessary; not at all! In the latter section he has turned to the Gentile believers and told them that the habits, patterns, and assumptions of their pagan past need to be set aside for something altogether more life-giving. Now as he wraps up his letter, he begins by addressing something shared by both Jewish and Gentile Christians, namely the matter of what our translation calls “transgressions”. This is more simply translated by Eugene Peterson as “sin”. Here is how he renders that first verse:
Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day is out. (The Message, Galatians 6:1)
I think Peterson catches Paul’s spirit quite brilliantly here: “forgivingly restore him or her, saving your critical comments for yourself”! And then the translation continues,
Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ's law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived. Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don't be impressed with yourself. Don't compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life. (The Message, Galatians 6:2-5)
Paul is actually asking a whole lot of that community in Galatia, in that living such a path is not easy. Share the burdens of those who are in trouble. Don't get all impressed with yourself. Don't compare yourself with what others are doing. Take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.
In a sense all of these instructions are pressing them to simply live within the Spirit of God as it has been given them, and to not worry about making comparisons as to who has the Spirit in a more fulsome way. We’re all in this together—Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free (Galatians 3:28)—bound together as one in Christ Jesus… so live into reconciliation and stop worrying that someone else is doing better or—more pointedly—someone else might not be doing quite so hot a job of being a Christian as you think you are.
No, as Cousar puts it in his commentary, Paul’s message here comes down to this:
‘Look! Take seriously your life in the Spirit. If you let the Spirit direct your behaviour, you will be led to restore brothers and sisters in Christ who have fallen away. Then, as you share their burdens, you really will be fulfilling the law—the law of Christ.’
The law of Christ, which for Paul is also utter freedom. Align your life with Christ’s path, and you will be truly free. Does that mean you can do anything you feel like doing? That there are no limitations on our choices and actions? That’s one of the perennial matters Paul faces in these communities he’s planted. So now we’re free in Jesus so let the bacchanals—unfettered parties—begin, which is rather what had happened in at least some quarters of the church he’d planted in Corinth.
No folks, freedom in Jesus isn’t the same thing as licence to do anything you damn well please… and frankly doing anything you damn well please tends to be a path toward addiction, relational disaster, and self-destruction, at least for a good many of us. And so as he winds toward the conclusion of this letter, Paul has both the matter of freedom in view as well as the old conundrum of whether Gentile Christians needed to first convert to Judaism, with the men undergoing the ritual of circumcision. And so he writes,
May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything! As for those who will follow this rule—peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.
Or as Peterson translates the verse about new creation,
“Can't you see the central issue in all this? It is not what you and I do - submit to circumcision, reject circumcision. It is what God is doing, and God is creating something totally new, a free life! (The Message, Galatians 6:15)
Paul does not want people to get locked down by guilt or shame, and he doesn’t want a Gentile Christian to be thought of as second rate to a Jewish Christian, nor a woman to see herself as second class to a man or a slave to see himself as somehow inferior to a free person. He is pointing that community—and us with them—toward a deep Christian freedom which can be tasted right now and will be shared in its utter completeness in the fullness of time. It is a freedom that transcends old social and religious and ethnic and gender divisions, and a freedom that has nothing at all to do with the licence to do whatever you darned well please, because it is a freedom that seeks always to see the other as a brother or a sister. It is a freedom that can bump right up against the freedom of that brother or sister, and lose nothing. Nothing, because my freedom and your freedom and Paul’s freedom and the freedom of everyone who has ever tried to walk this Christian path are ultimately tastes of the promised freedom God holds for us all.
A Reading from Paul’s Letter to the Galatians
My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ. For if those who are nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves. All must test their own work; then that work, rather than their neighbour’s work, will become a cause for pride. For all must carry their own loads.
Those who are taught the word must share in all good things with their teacher.
Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.
See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand! It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh that try to compel you to be circumcised—only that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. Even the circumcised do not themselves obey the law, but they want you to be circumcised so that they may boast about your flesh. May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything! As for those who will follow this rule—peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.
The Word of the Lord