God's Approval
01 Pentecost C 10
May 30, 2010
1 Kings 18:20-21, (22-29), 30-39
Psalm 96
Galatians 1:1-12
Luke 7:1-10
The opening of Galatians lets us know that it is a letter. It wasn't written as a theological treatise for the centuries. It's a letter to a particular congregation at a particular juncture in its life. Nevertheless, this letter was saved, copied, circulated to other churches at other times. Eventually, teachers in the church decided that it contained such truth about the gospel of Jesus Christ that it needed to be called holy scripture for all time.
We have quite a few letters written by Paul. All of them follow a certain pattern. Usually, right after the greeting, Paul writes a thanksgiving section. He finds those things about the congregation he's writing to that he loves or admires and he gives thanks to God for them. Here, however, we have no thanksgiving section. This is the only letter of Paul without one. It begins instead with an accusation. The Galatians have turned to a different gospel, which of course is no gospel. What that false gospel is, we don't yet know.
Paul goes on to curse anyone who teaches the Galatians a different gospel from the one he taught them. Now, we have lots of stories of Paul's power over supernatural beings. He encountered his share of demons and so on, and he had the authority to command them. So this would have been no small thing. He lays out a curse that's provisional, only to go into action if someone, even him or an angel from heaven, ever teaches a false gospel.
People pleasing is the theme of this line, and I have to say I struggle with this temptation all the time. Now we might ask ourselves, what's the matter with pleasing people? Don't we all want to please people? Well, first let's do a little bible detective work here and ask ourselves, why is Paul asking this question? Well, at least one speculation we could make, I think, is that someone has accused him of people pleasing. That is, someone has said, "That Paul is not teaching a true message. He's watered it down to make it easy for people to buy into it. He's pleasing people, not God." Now I think it's also interesting that he uses the phrase, "If I were still pleasing people." Does this mean that there was a time when he was still pleasing people, before he became a servant of Christ? Could he be referring to his career as a Pharisee and persecutor of the church?
Then it seems that Paul has either changed the subject or he is making some kind of case. He is no longer talking about pleasing people or pleasing God. He's now talking about the source of the gospel he preaches. Why is he doing this? Perhaps he is making his case. In other words, "I couldn't be guilty of pleasing people because my gospel didn't come from people. It comes from God."
I feel led to preach Galatians over the next few weeks. And it seems fitting to begin this preaching on Memorial Day, when we remember those who lost their lives in the defense of the United States. We often say that they were killed defending our freedom. The opening passage of Galatians doesn't tell us the main theme of the letter, but we will discover in the coming weeks that its theme is freedom.
Memorial Day is a National Holiday, and the church is not a national institution. Nevertheless, we are mindful of those who lost their lives in the various wars our nation has been involved in. And some are thankful to God for them. Personally, I celebrate Memorial Day not as a happy day to have a party, but as a day to mourn. To me, war is a tragedy.
Be that as it may, the word freedom certainly comes up a lot on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, doesn't it? It's a lot of what the US stands for. And this is indeed the theme of Paul's letter to the Galatians, which has been called the Magna Carta of Christian Freedom.
But Paul hasn't mentioned freedom yet in today's passage. The first thing we know about the letter is that Paul is not at all happy with the Galatians. The second thing we know is that he believes they have turned to a different and very false gospel. The third thing we know is that Paul feels the need to defend himself. And the overall theme of the letter seems to be about the simple question of real versus false gospel.
I model my ministry very much on Paul's. Paul's primary methods involved persuasion and encouragement. But there were also times when Paul admonished and scolded. There is a long history of Jewish and Christian religious leaders admonishing and scolding their congregations, both before Paul and after Paul. I agree that it can get out of hand, but I also observe that in our commodified culture, admonishment is not a dish anyone wants to be fed, and so if a pastor admonishes a congregation, he or she will often find himself or herself without a congregation. This is a part of freedom we enjoy in our country. The freedom to walk away. It does however make the traditional role of the prophet rather difficult. In our society, the minister is supposed to be a "people person," as Ethel Wiley often reminds me, friendly, warm and accepting to all. Paul is obviously not being friendly, warm or accepting here.
But the accusation being leveled against Paul is not that he had been too hard on the Galatians, but that he'd been too easy. We don't know yet what the false gospel was, but at least a part of it was that Paul's gospel was somehow too easy, somehow not hard enough. The claim was being made by leaders in Galatia that Paul was a people-pleaser, that he'd built his church by proclaiming a false, easy, popular gospel in order to fill up the pews.
This is a common accusation against the big mega-churches springing up all over the country, that they kow-tow to the masses, feed them the religious product they want to buy, whereas all us little churches are much more faithful, since we make Christianity really, really hard.
Because we all know, don't we, that when it comes to God, it's got to be really, really hard.
The funny thing is, if you study the churches the way I do, you quickly find out that the message of many of the biggest of the mega-churches, though certainly not all of them, is a lot harder than the message of the small churches. It seems the more popular message, the most attractive gospel out there, is the one with all the rules. Check out the belief statements on the websites of the country's biggest churches. Check out their requirements for membership.
The revelation from God in the crucified and risen Jesus is just that, a revelation. You know, let's take a moment with this shall we? Jesus is really of no interest to anyone if he didn't rise from the dead. Let's just admit that right now, shall we? This supernatural event is the center of the whole thing. Everything we are as Christians and as the church radiates out from the main point: Jesus was executed by the most powerful government in the world, but he rose from the dead, and rules over God's kingdom forever. He didn't defend his freedom. God defended his freedom. He died without raising his hand to anyone. And God raised him from the dead.
The revelation of God is so hard to take simply because it proposes something rather easy. It's so easy it couldn't come from people. It is to stand aside, do nothing, and let God rule. That's it. That's the whole moral equation. God makes righteous. God makes holy. God makes free. Period.
This is from God, not from people. If it were from people, it would be a list of difficult rules you must always follow. It would be a bunch of magical incantations that you have to say just right. It would be a lot of sacrifice and self-injury. It would be a lot of fighting and dying and violence and bloodshed. But it's from God, and it's strangely easy. God says, "Let me do it."
What's hard about the gospel is not that it's full of impossible rules. What's hard about it is that isn't.
What do we have to do to gain God's approval?
Perhaps we just have to accept it.
Amen.
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