Galatians 3:26-4:7
(Read Galatians 3:26-29)
In verses 24 and 25, which we talked about last week, we learned that the Law was given as a sort of guardian, or babysitter until Christ came. We ended with Paul asserting that “Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.” In other words, we’ve grown up. Faith, that most child-like of entities, is the actually the sign of maturity, the sign that we no longer need a babysitter. (NT Wright) (more…)
Galatians 3:15-25
So we pick up the story in Galatians right where we left off. And at this point in the letter the ideas and the themes are really building on each other so I would suggest that if you’ve missed the previous week that you find a copy and try to catch up because Paul kind of gets on a roll here and doesn’t really pause for a breath anytime in the near future. (more…)
Galatians 3:6-14
We pick up this week, right where we left off. Paul is trying various ways to get through to the Galatians who are obviously confused – “bewitched” is the word Paul uses. (more…)
Galatians 3:1-5
Before I left on vacation, we had worked our way through two chapters of Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Maybe it’s time for a quick review. If you’ll remember, the letter started off with none of Paul’s usual pleasantries. He opened with fire, saying, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting what you know to be true and instead are embracing lies. That kind of gets your attention. The people in Galatia were giving up the freedom they had been given in Christ and instead thought it might be better to just follow a bunch of rules instead. Frankly, that shocks Paul and he tells them so. Then Paul told his own story, in part to demonstrate the workings of grace in his own life, and in part to defend himself against the false charges and accusations his opponents in Galatia were making against him. At the end of chapter two he concludes that story by telling about his confrontation with Peter in Antioch, a confrontation over whether or not the gospel was really about grace, or if grace was just a fancy word that covered up the fact that the way to God was really still about being good enough, or religious enough, or moral enough, or successful enough, or something enough to deserve to be part of the family. (more…)
Galatians 2:15-21
When I was a kid I collected comic books. I know – it’s incredibly nerdy. But judging from the box office success of some of this summer’s movies, I’m not the only one who likes superheroes. There’s just something cool about them. And so some of my friends and I collected comics. And I remember that my friend Billy had one comic that I really envied. He had this story where Superman and Batman fought each other. I mean, they’re both good guys, so for them to get in a fight was really something. I don’t remember the exact circumstances, but there was a disagreement of some sort and the fate of the world hung in the balance so they didn’t have time to work it out as adults and found it necessary to engage in a little hand to hand combat. And on the surface you think, Superman wins, right? He’s an alien with real superpowers and Batman’s just a well trained rich guy with gadgets and a sidekick. But not so fast. Batman was trained by the world’s best martial artists, including people like Ra’s al Ghul, and has ways of using your own strength against you so he is largely able to nullify Superman’s advantage. As I recall, Batman actually gets the upper hand. Anyway, none is this is really pertinent today except to say that as a kid this stuff was fascinating: Two superheroes, both of whom are trying to do the right thing, going toe-to-toe, and we get to quietly observe by turning the pages of a comic book in the comfort of our own home. (more…)
Galatians 2:11-14
So far in this letter that Paul writes to his protégés in the Galatian churches he has greeted them, expressed his astonishment that they would trade in the good news he gave them for bad news somebody else gave them, and then he suddenly switched into storytelling mode. He started by telling them the story of his conversion and then in what we read last week he told them the story of how after fourteen years of preaching he went to Jerusalem to establish that his gospel to the Gentiles was one and the same as the Gospel the Jerusalem apostles were preaching to the Jews. He left Jerusalem with the understanding that they were all one church, with one gospel, and one purpose under Jesus.
And now we come to the next installment of the story. Let’s pick it up right where we left off and read Galatians 2:11-14. (Read)
After the Jerusalem trip Paul goes back to his home church in Antioch. We might need a little refresher in history here. You’ll remember that Antioch was a church started following the persecution in Jerusalem that was kicked off when Stephen was stoned to death. Paul was there at that stoning, at that time still acting as one of the conspirators against the church. As the members of the church fled Jerusalem, some of them settled in Antioch and told the people there about Jesus. Antioch was unique for a few reasons. First of all, it was the place where followers of Jesus were first called “Christians.” Second, it was a place, maybe the first place, where Jews and Gentiles were all together in the same church. If Jerusalem could be seen as the mother church, Antioch could be seen as the model church. It showed far better than Jerusalem what the inclusive nature of God’s family would be.
When Antioch was first started the leaders in Jerusalem heard about this “Jews and Gentiles together thing” and sent Barnabas up there to check it all out. Barnabas took a look around, saw that God’s grace was at work, and then thought, “By the grace of God these people have started this incredible grassroots movement of Jesus here. I don’t want to mess it up. They need leaders and teachers, but not from Jerusalem. There’s something special going on here and we don’t want to turn it into a cookie cutter Jerusalem church. We need someone from the outside.” And then he thinks of Paul. Paul’s an outsider. He’s not completely trusted by Jerusalem, mostly because they remember him as Saul, the persecutor of the Jerusalem church. So Barnabas goes and finds Paul in Tarsus and brings him back to Antioch to give him his first teaching gig. This is all water under the bridge that Paul doesn’t get into in his letter to the Galatians. It’s the very start of Paul’s ministry. The point is that Antioch became Paul’s home church and the staging ground for his missionary journeys. This is the church that sent him out as an apostle to the Gentiles. This is the church that sent him off to the province of Galatia in the first place. So in our story as told to the Galatians, this is the church that Paul and Barnabas and presumably Titus return to after the Jerusalem visit we read about last week. They go back to their home church after receiving the right hand of fellowship from Jerusalem.
And then one day Peter comes for a visit. Peter and Paul know each other well by now. As we read in chapter one, before Paul ever started preaching, likely before Barnabas even brought him to Antioch, he visited with Peter and they swapped stories and shot the breeze. He’s just been with Peter in Jerusalem under more official conditions, and Peter and the others gave him the right hand of fellowship and heartily endorsed Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles. So it’s only natural that Peter takes a little vacation to Antioch to hang with his old buddy Paul.
And it goes great. They all hang out, fellowshipping, worshipping, eating together. The stories fly around and a good time is had by all. And then one day these other guys from Jerusalem show up. It says that came from James, but that doesn’t mean he sent them. It could be like if you went to visit another church in our conference and the pastors there were like, “They’re from Brose’s church.” You could act like total jerks and I suppose it would reflect on me, but it’s another matter to assume that I sent you there to act that way.
These are guys that are from James’ circle and if they’re the same guys James refers to in Acts 15, they went out without authorization. James seems to regret the unfortunate association they have with him. But in any case, Peter sees these guys and the party ends. All of a sudden he’s a different guy. He pulls back from the Gentiles. He won’t eat with them even though he had been previously. And then the other Jews start noticing Peter’s behavior. And they figure since Peter is universally seen as one of the leaders, if not the leader in the church, then he must be on to something and so they start distancing themselves. Even Barnabas, who’s been a fixture in Antioch for some time, pulls back from the Gentiles. In Antioch, where they’ve always just assumed that it was normal and natural to be part of one big happy family gathered around the dinner table, suddenly there are two separate tables.
Imagine a high school with no cliques or social distinctions. In the cafeteria nerds eat with jocks. Stoners eat with band geeks. And then one day an all-district quarterback transfers to this school. Everybody knows he’s special, and his talent has people whispering about a state championship. He walks in to the cafeteria and sneers at the freshman from the drama club who has his retainer sitting beside the fruit snacks on his tray. The freshman scurries off and the QB sits down. Pretty soon a running back comes and sits beside him. A sophomore from the audio visual club joins them and then a linebacker comes up behind him and informs him that this seat is taken and unless you want to spend third period stuffed in a locker you’ll have to sit over there. Football players only. Meanwhile the captain of the cheerleading squad notices this rapidly developing social order and thinks, “Hey, it’s not just the football players that are special. We’re special too. Pretty girls shouldn’t have to sit with the plain ones.” And so she begins her own table. And so it goes, and you can see how one person of influence can radically de-construct a community that was previously functioning just fine. In high school it always plays out around the table or in the cafeteria, because it’s the place where you’re most free. You can’t always choose your classmates or your lab partner, but you can always choose who to eat lunch with and so the pretty girl who just flirted so she could cheat off the geek in chemistry class won’t even look at him in the lunchroom. Meals are socially defining.
Now, once we get out of high school it’s not quite the same so it’s hard for us to grasp how serious a matter table-fellowship was in the early church. That’s because the way we eat has changed so radically. Our modern approach to meals is more mechanical than social. We tend to view them as necessary and functional. In Bible times, they were social and political – like in high school. In those days there was no such thing as fast food or “convenience” stores. Meals were always inconvenient in that they took time and therefore they took on significance and purpose. Meals needed to be prepared, shared over conversation, and cleaned up communally. That’s not longer the case. We live in an age when meals are often pre-prepared; less than a third of all meals in the home are made from scratch. I’m convinced that nobody has ever shared a meaningful conversation over a Hot Pocket. And that’s if we even eat at home. Nineteen percent of all food eaten in America is consumed in a car. Back at home the number of meals eaten in front of a television is shocking, and the number of families who share meals around a table is shrinking every year. The link between the breakdown of the family and of communities to the breakdown in the significance of meals and of table-fellowship is astoundingly clear and direct. Sociologists, nutritionists, anthropologists, and anyone else who cares to look into these things are almost in universal agreement on this. There may be no better way for Christians today to become counter-cultural than recovering the practice of table-fellowship. We forget that every major Christian holiday began as a feast. There may be no more holy and subversive act for a Christian family today than to say, “We don’t care what practices, classes, or events are scheduled, we are sitting down around this table and sharing a meal together.” Intentional meals bind us together, and in ancient times even more so. They were wild acts of rebellion against the dominant culture and social order.
So who you ate with was everything. Nearly every gospel story of Jesus where people were scandalized by his behavior revolves around a meal. The parables and stories he told that troubled people the most involved meals. The best and clearest way Jesus could show the world that he was inaugurating a new kind of kingdom, a new social, political, and spiritual order was to subvert the way in which people ate their meals. Following his lead, the early church found that the very place to define who they were was around a table. They conceived of Agape Meals or Love Feasts because they knew that nothing could make a finer statement to the world that “this is who we are” than the sharing of a meal between people who ordinarily would not be seated across a table from one another. We eat with one another because we love one another. So what Peter is doing here is not just rude and annoyingly inconsistent- it cuts to the very heart of the gospel. In Paul’s words, “he was clearly in the wrong.” Also in Paul’s words, “they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel.” The gospel says that you are free to just be; to love, to be part of a family, a social order that is new and inclusive and based upon grace and love. Saying, “I’m not eating with you” is not true to that.
Now this little story brings up a lot of questions in my mind. The first and most obvious question is, “Why is Peter such a schmuck?” This is Peter – the Rock that Jesus said he would build his church upon. As we review the book of Acts we remember that this is the guy who fearlessly preached the first Christian sermon at Pentecost to thousands of people. This is the guy who was dragged before the Sanhedrin and dazzled them with his courage even in the face of prison or bodily harm. This is the guy who oversaw the punishment for Ananias and Sapphira – for what? For being insincere and acting as though they were something they weren’t. What does Paul accuse him of? Being insincere and acting like something he isn’t. Clearly he knows better.
Most pertinently to this situation, this is Peter, the guy who received a vision from God which led him to believe that nothing God made could be considered unclean. This vision led him to the house of Cornelius the Gentile, where he witnessed the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the uncircumcised. When he gets back to Jerusalem, the first question the church asks him is, “What are you doing in the home of a Gentile, and why would you eat with him?” Peter is the guy who first boldly said to the church, “God wants Gentiles in his family and who am I to oppose?”
So why now, after all of that, does he fear these men from James? The only answer I can come up with is this: Even leaders forget who they are sometimes. We all do. Peter has spent his whole life believing Jews are from Mars and Gentiles are from Venus. There is just nothing the two have in common. He was raised to disregard, distrust, and dislike Gentiles. Even the name Gentile speaks to the Jewish attitude. The word just means “nations” as in, there are Jews and then there are the nations, or everybody else. What they are doesn’t matter – that they’re not Jews is all we care about. When it comes to Gentiles, his world has conditioned him to feel, think, and react in a certain way, and that way is revulsion and withdrawal. Like the cheerleader being asked to the prom by a Goth kid in eyeliner and a trench coat. They just don’t associate.
But Peter had a conversion experience in which he learned to start seeing the world in a different way. It started when he met Jesus but it didn’t end there. He continued to be converted and even after Jesus had ascended the process went on. And so when he has his moment of epiphany about clean and unclean it is revolutionary to him. And he didn’t just believe it in his head, he acted on it. He ate with Cornelius, and the meal certainly wasn’t kosher. And then flush with the exhilaration of a new worldview, he stood up for what he now knew as the truth. He led others into the truth. But here’s the problem: Peter’s life changed. The world didn’t. And Peter’s world was still one which emphasized at every turn that Jews and Gentiles could not co-exist as equals. Peter’s world was still one which told him at every turn that right and wrong, in and out, good and bad, the Sharks and the Jets the Montagues and the Capulets was based upon human circumstance and behavior rather than the grace and love of God. Jesus called Peter to live in the kingdom while the rest of the world still lived in the world, and didn’t believe in the kingdom. He did so and he was genuinely changed – it’s just that the way of Jesus is so countercultural that to truly be in Christ is to be constantly swimming upstream against the cultural currents. And the minute we rely on human effort rather than grace we’re in trouble. Those currents are powerful – Paul calls them “the principalities and powers of this dark world” – and they sweep us away back into the mainstream and we forget who we are in Christ.
It happens when we least expect it. It happens in moments of surprise, or tension, or potential embarrassment. It happens when things are going well and when we’re barely scraping by. These guys showed up just as Peter was sitting at the table with a bunch of Gentiles. He was laughing and joking around and he just about to plop a nice juicy bit of ham into his mouth when suddenly the table got real quiet. He looked up and saw three old-school, ultra-conservative, dyed-in-the-wool disciples of James who were horrified at what they saw. And suddenly Peter felt like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar ten minutes before dinner.
Suddenly he forgot all about the fellowship and community he had been experiencing and grew instantly self-conscious and insecure instead. Self-consciousness and insecurity have always been Peter’s problems. This was the guy who kept his eyes on Jesus and walked on water till he started thinking about the wind and the personal danger and started to sink. He started thinking, “Wait a minute. I’m like everybody else. I can’t walk on water. It doesn’t matter that Jesus says I can. It doesn’t matter that I actually have done it and am currently doing it. Humans can’t walk on water.” And so he sank.
And in Antioch he sinks back into hardened, pre-conversion categories. He gives up his freedom. It happened the minute he grew self-conscious instead of God conscious and insecure instead of secure in grace. And that’s how it happens for all of us. Before we even know its happening, we trade in our grace given freedom for a way of looking at the world we know is inferior and incomplete. One person looks at us funny, one comment is relayed to us, one eyebrow is raised and we forget who we and what we’ve done and what has been done for us to grant us a new life in a new world. Instead we just fall back and accept the world we’ve always known. (more…)
Galatians 2:1-10
We’re in our fourth week of Galatians, so how about a quick review of the facts? (more…)
Galatians 1:13-24
In the book of John when Jesus stands before Pilate he tells him, “My kingdom is not of this world” and then again that “my kingdom is from another place” (John 18:36) and Pilate has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. But Paul understood. The last two verses we read in Galatians last week said, “I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.” (more…)
Galatians 1:6-12
Uh oh. Guys, I think Paul’s getting mad. This is not good. Here we are in our Galatian church finally getting a letter from Paul and I think he’s downright angry. Remember when he was here? I mean it wasn’t that long ago. He was all grace and good news and salvation and whatnot. But now we get this letter and I’ll be darned if he doesn’t sound irate. I’ve read the letters to the other churches he started. They all follow a pretty tight pattern. He introduces himself as Paul the apostle, and then he states his greeting of grace and peace and then he gives thanks for the people he’s writing to. It’s always greeting and then gratitude. But not our letter. Don’t believe me? (more…)
Galatians 1:1-5
In the movie, The Shawshank Redemption, there is an elderly prisoner who has been incarcerated his entire adult life. Brooks Hatlen is his name and he’s been in the Shawshank Penitentiary for 52 years when he finally gets his parole. That same day his friends find him in the library, holding a knife to a fellow prisoner’s throat. See, Brooks is so accustomed to life in prison that he fears the freedom of the outside world. He’s willing to kill a friend just to remain in his safe world of bars and walls. Eventually he’s talked into putting down the knife and since no guards witnessed the incident, his parole goes forward and he is released. On the outside he finds nothing but loneliness and isolation and he has absolutely no idea how to live in his newfound freedom. He writes a letter back to his friends in prison, in which he says, “I’m tired of being afraid all the time” and dreams of robbing a grocery store in order to be sent back. He concludes that he’s a little “too old for that nonsense” and then he stands on a chair in his halfway house, carves “Brooks was here” into a wooden beam, and hangs himself with a rope off that same beam.
He wasn’t ready for freedom. He didn’t want freedom. He had become institutionalized and nobody ever taught him how to live in freedom. The book of Galatians was written for people like Brooks. (more…)
