Grace and Peace to you from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Hello! And welcome to the weekly Fallston gathering of bigots, prejudiced people, racists and the “my-group-is-better-and-more-deserving-than-your-group-people-anonymous. My name is John and I am a grateful recovering all-of-the-above.
Before you put on your “what-in-the-world-is-he-up-to-now” looks, let me explain. Today’s sermon is taken from Galatians. In Galatians, Paul is addressing the divisions of his community along racial and ethnic lines. In Galatia, like most of Paul’s church, Paul preached the Good News in the synagogues. He proclaimed Jesus, the crucified risen savior, the Messiah, to startled Hebrew men, women and children, He told them that the Messiah had come, his name was Jesus, he preached for 3 years and authenticated his Messiahship with mighty acts, healing lepers, restoring sight and hearing to the blind and deaf. He made those crippled from birth well so that they could walk, run and dance. He even raised dead people back to life.
Many Jewish Galatians believed, yet many rejected his message. Paul then welcomed non-Jews into the church’s fellowship. He said the message of Jesus, the Good News of salvation by grace through faith in Christ was for all people. He said you didn’t have to become a Jew first to belong to the church and this frankly, disturbed the Jewish community profoundly. They had been taught all their lives that in order to belong to the God of Israel you had to be circumcised which was an essential part of being Jewish. It was the Jewish equivalent of baptism – an outward sign and act of an inner faith. Circumcision was essential they believed, and now Paul was totally “blowing away” “their understanding of faithfulness.
These Jews needed what modern folks call cultural markers. If you behave this way, speak this language, wear these clothes, keep these customs, relish this particular national food then you are one of us. If not, you are in the “not us” category. You are a “them”. Cultures are always setting up markers or boundaries.
In very recent history, the French have determined that wearing a burka or a veil – cultural signs of being a Moslem – will keep you from going to a French school or having a job with the French government. The French are afraid that their Moslem citizens are identifying more as Moslems than as French citizens. They have observed with shock what happens when Islamic fundamentalism happens and vividly recall the attacks of 9-11 in New York and the subway bombings in London and Madrid. They are in effect saying “burka’s and veils” are “them” behavior; they are “other” behavior. You cannot be one of “us” and behave like “them”.
It is very hard to transcend the “us/them” chasm that exists between cultures. We have it here of course too. We have a legacy of racial hatred and suspicion that has centuries deep roots. If you are a Lutheran in South Dakota, you fight stereotypes about Native Americans and their cultural inferiority all the time. If you live in Arizona or New Mexico, you have suspicions about dark-skinned, Spanish speaking people. It takes work, real work to let go of these deep rooted prejudices. It will take generations for us to see each other as not “us and them” but as brothers and sisters. Today’s lesson reminds us that we are not uniquely sinful because these prejudices are found in every culture and in every age. That they do, however, does not give us an excuse to stop fighting our prejudices and suspicions.
St. Paul says in Ephesians “for you are not fighting against human beings but against the wicked spiritual forces in the heavenly realms, the rulers, the authorities, and the cosmic powers of this dark age”. Our fight is against the devil and all his minions.
These have been conquered by the way. Jesus in his cross, death and resurrection has taken away the sins of the world. Jesus life and ministry gave us new vision of life together. All categories of otherness have been destroyed in the body of Christ Jesus says it this way: “Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you”. Again Jesus says “You cannot claim to love the God you cannot see and hate the brother you can see”.
Jesus gives us a new vision of family. There is no longer us and them, Jews or Gentiles, slaves or free, men and women. We are all one in Christ Jesus.
Is this unity limited to Christians, to those in the church? In one respect it is. Paul is writing to the church about the church. Does the principle of unity extend beyond the church? Absolutely! Absolutely.
Israel believed that when the Messiah came and the end times were ushered in, all nations would come to Jerusalem to worship God. The prophet Isaiah said it this way, “Even the coastlands wait for your law, O God”.
That vision of what God will do serves as a goal and as a direction for us in the present. The book of Revelation says that all nations will enter the Gates of Pearl. We are to work for that vision. In our personal lives, when we have those knee jerk reactions when someone cuts us off on the beltway or route 24,we don’t look at their race or ethnicity first, but calmly, or as calmly as we can, explain that neighbor’s behavior in the kindest way, as Luther enjoins us to do in his explanation to the eighth commandment in his Small Catechism.
The other thing is to say to yourself “that person is made in God’s image, just as I am. She is precious to God. Dear Lord, let her be precious to me”.
Hello!
And welcome to the weekly Fallston gathering of bgots, prejudiced people, racists and the “my-group-is-better-and-more-deserving-than-your-group-people-anonymous. My name is John and I am a grateful recovering all-of-the-above.
By the grace of God may we grow in tolerance, peace and love, and see the face of Christ in our neighbor – whomever our neighbor may be. Amen.
Who We Are