Texts: 2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14; Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20; Galatians 5:1, 13-25; Luke 9:51-62
My friends: during the last few weeks, we have been reading through Saint Paul’s Letter to the Galatians in the Sunday lectionary. Next Sunday we will finish with this letter and move on to another. But I cannot leave it this morning without exploring in more detail with you the absolutely stunning pronouncements made by the apostle in this remarkable text.
This entire letter from Paul to the church in Galatia is a spirited and angry defense of his vision for an entirely different kind of religion, one which the world had never before seen. It is not that Paul’s Gospel is a competitive one. He does NOT argue how much better following Christ is than obeying the commands of other gods or the law of Moses. Rather, Paul contends that living in Christ is as vastly different from other ways of living as the sea is from land, as death is from life, as slavery is from freedom. There is no competition here in Paul’s vision, but rather there is an entirely new model for human life.
Law versus grace is how he words it, but be careful not to assume too quickly that you know what he means by these words. Both of those words here actually symbolize an attitude, an approach, a culture – if you will – which stand in sharp contrast with each other.
For Paul, the law stands not only for the Law of Moses but for all of the various human forms of religion that are restrictive and prescriptive. For Paul, these forms are in fact destructive to God’s will and intention for humanity.
I am certain that all of you have seen the damaging effects that religion can have upon people. Surely you’ve known someone who has been psychologically or emotionally damaged by the teachings and practices of certain law-based forms of religion.
Unfortunately, it’s all too common even in the church. This damage comes because here in church we are tapping into forces with enormous power: power in the spiritual world, and power within the human psyche. The religious impulse is so deeply embedded with human beings and it is so easily abused or misused. It is very common for me to speak with folks who have grown up under Roman Catholicism and who have felt crushed by it. They say things to me like, “You know, I don’t understand why I HAVE to confess my sins to some man.”
Then I have to apologize to them for the failures of the church over the years, and explain that these kinds of requirements are in fact contrary to the entire spirit of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. “For freedom Christ has set us free.” In Christ, we are free from these kind of requirements to offer sacrifice or to meet the divine demands. This kind of religion is what Paul denounces as the yoke of slavery. What Christ offers us is something entirely different.
In seeking to understand this matter, it is helpful to turn to the great Martin Luther. His commentary on the Letter to the Galatians remains a standard text in church libraries, even though it was written 500 years ago! As a monk and a priest and a professor of theology, Luther struggled for years as he tried to please God with fasting, confessions, and all kinds of penance. But the more he did, the more he felt that he was falling short, and the more he feared the wrath of God. Luther was slaving away under the law, the yoke of slavery, until finally, after much study of the New Testament, his eyes were opened. Listen to how he stated it: “…a totally other face of the entire Scripture showed itself to me.” An entirely new world of grace was opened to him by the Holy Spirit and he began to understand what it means to receive and to live by the Spirit.
Luther dealt with this question at length in his work titled, “The Freedom on the Christian.” His opening sentence of this work is a classic; it sets the paradox of the Christian life in perfect context. This is what Luther wrote:
“A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to no one. [AND] A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”
Let me repeat that for you so that you can try to wrap your minds around it…It is a paradox, without question. Two opposites which exist together, side-by-side, neither one canceling the other. But, you see, it is BECAUSE we are finally free in the grace of God that we can choose to be a servant of others. We choose to follow Christ; we choose to live within the fellowship of the church; we choose to give ourselves away as the servants of others.
Luther expressed his understanding of this freedom when he said: “God has taken care of my salvation. I am therefore free to take care of my neighbor… [And] My neighbor is every person, especially those who need my help.”
What we have here in this Letter to the Galatians is really quite radical, and it remains difficult for us human beings to grasp it and to accept it. Do you see how drastic Paul is here with his insight? He is suggesting that the requirements of Judaism, which the Galatians seem to be embracing when Paul writes to them because of these rival Missionaries from Jerusalem, is the same kind of slavery as their pagan religious past, with its various required sacrifices and rituals. He is saying that pagan religion and orthodox Judaism both, in essence, represent the same attitude, the same approach, the same mindset toward life and toward God, and that both of these stand in stark contrast to the Gospel.
This is remarkable, coming from Paul, who was himself an orthodox Jew, a Pharisee, one who spent his entire life, before his conversion, seeking to live in faithful obedience to the law. But in Christ, all such striving ends and an entirely different kind of life, springing from a different source, begins and continues for ever.
This reading from Galatians ends with a famous passage about the fruit of the Spirit. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. There is no law against such things” (Galatians 5:22-23).
This passage is beautiful, and if you have not put it firmly in your memory, let me encourage you to do so. Memorize it; it will help you. But remember, please, that this is descriptive, not prescriptive. Like the Beatitudes, this passage describes the reality of your life in Christ; it does not provide a list of requirements that you must meet. Rather, it describes the natural outcome of a life led by the Spirit.
One way that this passage has helped me for years now is, in the mornings as I leave my home and go out into the world, as a reminder of who I am. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” As I recite the list, it reminds me that this describes accurately who I am because of the FACT that Christ lives in me. Use it to remind yourself of who you are because Christ lives in you. It makes no difference whether we FEEL like these things or not. We belong to Christ. The Spirit abides in us. We have only to embrace the reality of this new life and live into it, to make it real in our daily lives.
May the Holy Spirit continue to guide us as we live into the newness of this life of grace in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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