Dearest Siblings,
If you hear nothing else in this letter I write to you, hear this, you are God’s Children.
Do you know my story? I was a zealous Jew—a fundamentalist you might call me… a violent extremist even. You see, I had heard that some Jews had declared that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah—the Chosen One of God sent to make all things right. This Jesus, who was crucified on a cross, who his disciples claimed was raised from the dead and ascended to God’s right hand—they declared “Jesus is Lord.”
Now, I’d read my bible, and knew Deuteronomy—there it is written, “All who hang upon a tree are accursed.” I had my proof text, so I knew they were lying about God.
So, being a violent extremist, I did the logical thing, I rallied around the stoning of Stephen, harassed and harried the church in Jerusalem until they fled; I did all I could to oppose these so called “people of the way.”
And then I met him—their resurrected Lord.
I was wrong—the Blessed One received the curse of the cross, and in so doing short circuited all curses, so that all may be blessed, so that all may be God’s Children.
After this shock, I went back home for three years and looked at everything in light of the earliest Christian creed, “Jesus is Lord.” Then, Jesus’ disciples called me to preach that Gospel to the non-Jewish world. All went well, until, a disaster occurred at my home congregation in Antioch.
While I was away, strangers came, and sewed division between the Jewish Christians and Non-Jewish Christians there—the central point of this conflict was at the meal table—they became dis-united at the com-union table. The interlopers claimed the non-Jewish Christians were outsiders to the Gospel, that they were of a different family, who God only partially embraced. By the time they got done with the community Christians were treating one another like strangers, instead of fellow Children of God.
The reason I wrote this letter to the Galatians is that the same thing was happening among them, divisions, divisiveness, and disowning one another. May it never happen among you!
The root of this division was that they preached a different Gospel. A False Gospel. They preached a Jesus Plus Gospel… but the Gospel is Just Jesus.
They preached a False Gospel, that claimed that the Kingdom of God has second class citizens… That there are multiple tiers to trusting Jesus.
(For example, if you look at the pietism movement within Lutheranism, it is a reaction to the idea that the clergy are above lay people—that’s why the ELCA defines their clergy as set apart or aside, not set above)
They preached a False Gospel, that claimed that before you put on Christ as your baptismal garment, you have to put on other cultural or religious garb… That before God can save you, you gotta save yourself.
(For example, this was part of St. Augustine’s big question in his book City of God do you have to be a good Roman before you can be a good Christian?)
So hear this: Jesus Christ plus anything is less than Jesus Christ.
-Jesus plus the Law is less than Jesus Christ.
-Jesus plus circumcision is less than Jesus Christ.
-Jesus plus hierarchy is less than Jesus Christ.
Here’s the Gospel, the True Gospel.
The True Gospel is that God shows no partiality, the Promise of Jesus is meant for all. You’re a Child of God.
The True Gospel is that if God sets you free, you’re free! You’re a Child of God.
What God did in Jesus Christ, wasn’t window dressing, it was substantial.
The Gospel is not a renegotiation of some rules; it’s God’s invasion of an enslaved world, the overthrow of all wickedness, the emancipation of all who are captured by sin, adopting us as Children of God.
The Gospel is the promise that God is transforming the entire cosmos through his Son, Jesus. God is recreating everything, and the Church gets to be part of that!
So, don’t get twisted up in the type of games that they were playing in Antioch. If God is recreating everything, those easy categories we use to make sense of the world, become stumbling blocks for embracing Jesus and being his body in the world together with your fellow believers.
In fact, in my days, it was assumed the universe was created and held together by something called antimonies—pairs of opposites “Air and Earth, Fire and Water, Flesh and Spirit, Slavery and Freedom” and so on. So, most people believed that these divisions were REAL, were the actual bricks used to create the world… but God’s making all things news—recreating the world, and the only category that truly matters is belonging to God.
Gender, indebtedness, criminal records, social status, race, country, and culture and all that comes with those categories…These dividing lines, these categories we use to construct our world, melt in the waters of Baptism. You are God’s Children.
I write this letter leaning on a single question that I pray that Christianity will continue to wrestle with, even long after I, Paul, am dead. “Who occupies you?”
In case I’m being obtuse, or a certain level of rugged individualism has clogged your ears to what I’m asking, let me try to state my question a little more clearly—Who occupies y’all? Or maybe, “you’se” or “You’uns” or “you folk” or even just “the congregation?”
While every individual is precious, and that truth must not be lost—our life together as Christians, as the body of Christ, is of utmost importance to my question today “Who occupies you?”
I pray that the ages will not neuter my question, tame it, make it into a question of private morality or some sort of spiritual hobby.
Because this is about all of us, how we live as freed people, how we are Christ for one another. “Who occupies you?”
Have you noticed there is a vicious, silent, enslaving, invasion going on? In the seeming plainness of our lives there is a war going on. This power holds us down, has occupied the lives of so many, has enslaved so much of the world.
In my letter to the Galatians, I called this occupying power, this enemy, “The Flesh.”
It saddens me to hear that many have taken this word to deal with human bodies, and has led some people to feel great shame for being an embodied human being. This was not my intent, in fact if you read my letters carefully you will note I make a distinction between The Flesh, this thing that has pulled one over on us and has captured us, and The Body, which is part of the good human thing we’ve been created to be…
So, perhaps I could come up with a way to re-name this power, for all your sakes, so that you might more easily understand what I’m saying,
What then shall I call it?... This occupying power is Sin. This occupying power is Self-obsession. This occupying power is Neighbor-Destruction… You get my point now, don’t you? We are occupied by, self, by being turned away from our neighbor and fixated on MEEEE!
That’s what I mean when I say “we are occupied by The Flesh.” That’s what I mean when I say that The Flesh is at war against us, intends to take us prisoner, and enslave us. “Who occupies you?”
Like any occupation, there are those who resist. Those brave groups of people who fight back, who escape, who will not cooperate with the enemy, no matter what.
One way of resisting, a force used to combat the occupation, a good one, a godly one even, is The Law. Yes, The Law, a set of rules we can follow to stop hurting our neighbors, to quit seeking after selfish things, to resist Sin, resist the Flesh.
The 10 commandments, the stories of God’s acts for God’s people, community rules, at their best basic, the rules governing society, are put in place to restrain evil and make good neighbors.
I repeat, The Law is a good solution, even one given by God. Yet it, like us, has been enslaved by the Flesh, infected even, not allowed to act as it ought.
It’s proper use is to help us love our neighbor, but it can be made to be exclusive and can keep us immature. The Law creates insiders and outsiders, those who follow it, and those who do not, and that separation has a way of coming back at you like a boomerang. You start defining yourself as not a lawbreaker, and soon enough you are defining yourself as not like your neighbor—soon enough you build a wall between you and your neighbor and you start to care about only those on your side of the fence of the Law.
Isn’t that wild, the very thing that is supposed to help you love your neighbor, can be tricked into making you hate him!
Think of those disciples of Jesus who enter into a Samaritan village, the village of a people who keep a different law than they do—and these disciples, people who’ve been toddling after Jesus like a flock of ducklings behind a mamma duck, even they wonder if they should ask God to destroy the village! After all it’s not theirvillage, it’s not their people! Not their laws…
Yes, The Law, both scriptural and secular, transformed by The Flesh, can create exclusion. It can also keep us immature, it’s like a helicopter parent who won’t let us grow up.
Think of it, there are many ways to love your neighbor, fixating on a single way, because it’s the rules, can make you miss out on all kinds of good ways to show God’s love to people.
Take something as simple as tying your shoe. When you first learn the rules to tying a shoe you learn the rhyme:
Over, Under, Around and through, Meet Mr. Bunny Rabbit, pull and through.
But if you repeated that song every time you tie your shoes for the rest of your life… you’d get funny looks at the office, and for that matter, you’d never learn a double knot, or that knots can hold together hammocks and sails and many other things, not just shoes. So too, learning from The Law is wonderful, and regular refresher courses are great reminders of how to love our neighbor, but if it is the beginning and end of the way we love other people, we’re missing out!
“Who occupies you?” The good news is that there is another way to fight the Flesh. Christ has freed us, and we hold onto this freedom and resist the power of the Flesh, by being captured by one another.
Get that?
We’re going to be captured by something, so it is imperative that we are captured by each other, captured by the love we share with one another. Every other option ends up with us eradicating each other.
This loving way—bound to one another in liberty—is the way of the Spirit, the way Jesus continues to move us into freedom. The Spirit liberates us and puts us to the work of loving one another. We can be occupied by The Spirit, instead of The Flesh.
“Who occupies you?” When we look at our life together, do we see the Spirit or the Flesh? We’ll know, at least in part, by the fruits that we produce. Are we as a community: sexually exploitative, spiritually suspect, a public embarrassment, and a fractured family? Or, are we as a community filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faith, gentleness, and self-control?
Together we struggle against sinful-selfish-neighbor-hate—the Flesh. We resist it with The Law, but find it wanting. We cling to the freedom given to us by Christ by clinging to one another in the Spirit of love. Let us live in the Spirit, let us carry out our life together under the guidance of the Spirit.
By way of closing this letter, let me remind you of the two things I’ve written to you previously. 1. Keep living in the Spirit. 2. The Gospel is just Jesus.
Because we live in the Spirit, let us carry out our daily lives under the Holy Spirit’s guidance. We’ve been freed from the Flesh—unhealthy self-interest—and we’ve been freed by the Spirit for our neighbor. Everyone needs to be occupied by something, so let us be occupied by the Holy Spirit, occupied by love of each other.
What’s that look like—living in the Spirit?
-Well, if someone falls, restore them with gentleness (that’s a fruit of the Spirit, isn’t it?), after all, you too could just as easily be tempted as they were.
-Bear one another’s burdens—that’s how the Spirit’s gift of patience is lived out in community… that’s how you lovetoo—and love fulfills the Law of Christ.
-Give your neighbor the benefit of the doubt, while taking responsibility for your own actions—that’s the essence of the Spiritual gift of self-control. Think about it, while we human know our own innermost thoughts and intentions, we don’t know those of the person next to us.
-Embrace generosity, by working for the good of all, especially those who are members of the Family of God.
That’s a few examples of the fruits of the Spirit lived out in concrete reality
—I think you are hearing what I’m saying…
Those Fruit of the Spirit, and sadly, the Works of the Flesh that you as a community are planting… they will come to bloom—that’s both a warning and a promise; so, in this planting season, let’s plant pleasant seeds of community, not wicked seeds of selfishness. Keep living in the Spirit.
As I come to a close, I write one final time, in big ol’ letters, about the main issue in the community in Galatia
You are members of the family of God because of Jesus, whether you’ve been marked in the flesh by circumcision or not.
Do not boast in the flesh, boast only in the Cross of Jesus.
As I wrote previously, Jesus Plus anything, is less than Jesus alone… for he alone is the one who is transforming all things…
the message about him saving us, is the only thing that is Gospel, the only thing worth boasting about.
Remember my story—I was so sure that the early church was wrong, I had proof texts and everything, “Everyone who dies on a tree is accursed.” The cross was the ultimate dividing line between me and them; a division worth killing over, certainly worth boasting about…
But now I say to you: Boast because the Blessed One was crucified, on a cursed cross—and that changed everything! All the divisions of this world are scattered, every distinction that separates the blessed from the cursed, is now gone—because a new creation, a new world, is here! That alone matters!
Trust that this is true, dear friends! It is a blessing of peace and mercy! It is the grace of our Lord Jesus, the anointed of God, saturating our spirit, making us siblings. Thanks be to God. Amen!
