Sixth Sunday After Pentecost Year C

A New Creation

06 Pentecost Year C 2010

July 4, 2010

2 Kings 5:1-14

Psalm 30

Galatians 6:(1-6), 7-16

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20


The Continental Congress, on July 4, 1776, formally declared the United States of America independent of Great Britain. And so it is that we celebrate every year by shooting off fireworks and having parades and cooking outdoors. Of course, one of the great themes of American history and culture is freedom.

The letter of Paul to the Galatians is also about freedom. The passage we have heard this morning is the end of the letter. After giving the Galatians all kinds of what-for, Paul encourages each one of them to be easy on the others but hard on him or herself. And he goes on to speak about, well, humility. A letter all about freedom, that ends up speaking about humility. Hmmm.

I might associate all kinds of things with freedom, but humility wouldn't be one of the first things that pops to mind. Parades are not exactly humble. Fireworks are not humble. What's the connection?

I think it may be that the whole point of Galatians is that there is no greater danger to freedom than the struggle for status or importance.

Status and importance in religious communities seems to be gained by exceptional spiritual gestures or acts of piety. For the Jews these were circumcision, dietary laws and the practice of hundreds of very particular legal restrictions. You could measure the status and importance of a Jew as a Jew by how rigorously he understood and obeyed all the restrictions God had put on the Jewish people.

Status and importance have to do with power over other people, and this is what we are really after: the capacity to make other people do what we want them to do, or not to do what we don't want them to do. Because Paul was such a perfectly observant Pharisee, when he became incensed about the Christians invading the synagogues, he was able to marshall all kinds of official power to support his mission. Status is about power over others.

It's easy to confuse status and importance with love. All of us need love, none of us need status or importance, but the latter sometimes comes to fill in for the former. Naaman was almost certainly hated by most people who knew him. Disfigured, ugly, violent and cruel; the only positive vibes he got were around his power over others. But then, from completely unexpected sources, he received the greatest gifts of all, health and acceptance, the simple gifts of God's love.

For all the great drama God has been a part of in the great story of the bible, I am learning that there is in God's very heart a kind of humility. His voice is not in the earthquake and the tornado, but in the deepest silence. He doesn't speak through Naaman or even Elijah, but through a couple of nameless slaves. He doesn't choose the most beautiful river to wash away disease, but a muddy and unremarkable stream. His power is the quiet power, the humble power, what one scholar called "lamb power."

Paul would call it the power of Christ crucified.

Christ Jesus received the Holy Spirit in such a way as to fundamentally change him into something quite different from an ordinary human being. The Holy Spirit married the flesh and blood of Jesus in such a way that he because the perfect child of God. He was liberated entirely from the powers of the world, freed to be what every human being truly wants to be, in love with God and all of God's creation. Jesus was given the mission of proclaiming the forgiveness of sins and the coming of this new creation, the kingdom of God. Those who respond to his proclamation, which we call the good news, or the gospel, by accepting the forgiveness and opening themselves up to God's Spirit, become as Jesus is, a new creation, a perfect child of God.

The cross is the center of Paul's teaching. He makes this clear in Galatians as well. God comes near to those who are the farthest from him. God's presence is most deeply felt among those who least deserve it. His power is with those who are the least powerful.

The power of God is not the power to make other people do what we want them to do. It is a much much greater power. It's the power to be free, the power to tell the truth in love and have no fear of the consequences, the power to be who you really are whether the world finds it valuable or not, the power to love God the way you really want to love God, with your whole heart and soul and mind, and to love everyone else in the world the way you really want to love them, even as you love yourself.

Pride, the bottomless longing and endless competition for status and importance and power, is the only true prison there is. No matter what government anyone lives under, no matter what oppression anyone suffers, they can be free in Christ. And no matter how free their government, no matter how liberating their society, no person is free who is filled with pride.

I read the Declaration of Independence the other day, and the thing that struck me about it was how humble it was. It is the declaration of good people who had been backed into a corner, the declaration of people trying desperately to maintain the best of their humanity in an inhuman situation.

And I remembered that moment when the first George Bush addressed the nation after the Gulf War and described an American marine's kindness to a native Iraqi. A tear rolled down his face. It took me a long time to realize what it was that Bush was so moved by. He had a vision of the American character: yes, powerful, yes, great, but also yes, generous, kind, and ready to forgive.

Barbara Brown Taylor once preached a sermon on old Naaman that happened to fall near the Fourth of July. It was called "The Cheap Cure."

“You may never hear it again on a Fourth of July weekend, but maybe the next time you are saying your prayers for this great, shaky nation of ours, you will remember that great, leprous man Naaman, whose wealth and power turned out to be useless to him in his search for health, and who was ready to trade it all in when God surprised him with a cheap cure that made him truly free.”

It's Jesus the Christ who enables us to receive the Holy Spirit, to be born anew, to awaken to God's presence. It's this gift we're after, the gift that makes all other things in our lives well and whole. With it, our names are written in heaven, and all that we pray for, since our wills are aligned with God's, is given to us. Greater miracles that Jesus himself did will be done by us, not because we are good, not because we obey God's law, not because we are nice, or well-mannered or rich, but because God has graciously given us a power not our own.

Amen.