Difference: Diversity or Distinction

In the Luke passage we just heard, Jesus crosses into gentile country, where he meets a man in a cemetery. This is wrong on so many levels. For Jews, cemeteries were unclean places, gentile land was unclean, and pigs were unclean. Impurity heaped on impurity.

In the story I read earlier, people had stars and dots to put on other people. [You Are Special by Max Lucado] This man would have lots of grey dots – he is a gentile, he lives in a cemetery, he had demons in his life.

When asked his name, the man replies with the name of his demons.

I wonder how often we talk about people by their illness or disability.

The paraplegic, the blind woman, the alcoholic, the divorcee, the druggie, the dole bludger, the Muslim, the homosexual, the black man …..

And I wonder what demons we live with

Demons that keep us chained

Demons like fear, hate, and greed

Demons like racism, sexism, and homophobia

Demons that prevent us from living fully as the people God made us to be.

What demons do we live with?

Luke writes about demons and how Jesus healed the man, incorporated him back into society, and brought him back to full life after living amongst the dead.

And yet the villagers did not rejoice, they were afraid. Who was this man who could cast out demons, who could cause their herd of pigs to drown in the lake? What else might he do?

They urged Jesus to leave.

And the man who was healed?

He wanted to go with Jesus, but Jesus told him not to, rather “he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him”

Do we speak about what Jesus has done for us? Not only salvation through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Do we speak about our experience of Jesus, the way in which we have been changed, comforted, challenged by Jesus?

I was Dad’s girl. We had lots in common like colds and flu each winter. And Dad would read to me when I was sick – Henry Lawson short stories mainly. We are both sociable, more so than Mum and my brother. He was quick to tell me when I had done something wrong, and I felt like I never did anything right. Even after my dad died I was hoping to do something that would make him proud. In my head I could still hear him telling me how stupid and useless I was.

But one Easter that all changed. I let go of the striving to do something that would make my father proud, this was about 20 years after he died – so really how was I ever going to make him proud? J And after I let go of that sense of trying, there was a healing, and I don’t hear those words from him anymore.

We all have things from our past, and often our present, that hold us back, that stop us being the people God created us to be.

There is fear and anger and harsh words.

There is shame and guilt.

There are modern demons, demons that accentuate difference, not as diversity to be celebrated, but as distinction to be judged and ridiculed and wiped out.

Paul writes to the church in Galatia about unity in the midst of difference. While people are all different, Paul writes of Jews and Greek, men and women, slaves and free. Paul is reminding the people that those differences do not make us any more or less part of the body of Christ, we are all one in Christ.

Just as today, people are not all the same,
there are Christians, Muslims and Jews
Liberal voters and Labor voters
there are men and women
heterosexual and homosexual
Aboriginal and non-aboriginal
old and young
Korean, Tongan, Pakistani, Australians, …

Not all people are the same. In the news this week we heard about 50 people who died in a shooting in Orlando, and a British MP who was stabbed to death.  The young man who was responsible for the death and injury of so many in Orlando is also dead, so we will never know for sure what his motivation was, but it seems it may be something to do with his hatred of people who identify as LGBTQI or his concern that he may be gay that led to the shooting.

The killing of British MP Jo Cox, has shocked people in Britain. The police are still looking for a motive but in court, when asked for his name, the person replied: "Death to traitors, freedom for Britain," suggests a possible political motive.

“The Brexit vote is dividing Britain down the middle and has been whipping up emotions on both sides. But cold-blooded murder? We just don't know.

Instinctively, both campaigns, for and against Brexit, suspended all activities as the full horror of what happened was revealed.

It was as if they feared there may be a connection, and no-one wanted to be seen carrying on with those questions unanswered.”

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-17/jo-cox-murder-shocks-britain-as-political-fault-lines-deepen/7519746

It appears at present that both these events were motivated by people who could not embrace diversity, but were threatened by difference.

I wonder how we feel about difference.

Do we fear people who look different to us?

Do we want to only be with people who agree with us?
act like us?
have the same dress and behaviour standards as we do?

Do we love people as we are loved in Christ? Or do we only love those who are like is, and think and act the same as we do?

From Galatians: “It is through faith that all of you are God's children in union with Christ Jesus. You were baptized into union with Christ, and now you are clothed, so to speak, with the life of Christ himself. So there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles, between slaves and free people, between men and women; you are all one in union with Christ Jesus.”

What demons need releasing in your life?

Who do you need help loving as Christ loves you? 

I refuse to reject the grace of God.

Proclamation of the Word

The phrase that stood out to me in the Galatians passage this week is: I refuse to reject the grace of God.

I refuse to reject the grace of God.

That may sound a little strange – why would anyone reject the grace of God?

The grace of God is a gift, and like all gifts, we need to acknowledge, accept and use the gift.

This passage from Paul is focussing on the place of faith in salvation. It is easy for us to think of sin as something with grades. We talk about ‘a little sin’, or an ‘unforgivable sin’, but we know that sin is sin. We may say we are all sinners, but we act as if there is a ranking for sins, from minor to really serious.

“ … for Paul the tragedy of sin is not measured by infringements of the law but by rejecting Christ and by denying the meaning of his death as the saving act of God.” [i]

Paul writes about salvation, justification, being made right with God. The means of our salvation is faith in Christ or the faith of Christ.

While we genrally talk about faith in Christ, some scholars translate the Greek as the faith of Christ that saves us. We are justified through the faith of Jesus. [ii]

“Either we effect justification by believing in Jesus or Jesus effects justification by his own righteous obedience.” [iii]

This might all seem a bit complicated J and it is. The message Paul was trying to get across to the people of Galatia is that salvation is not about following a set of Jewish laws, but about our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. A free gift.

In the reading from Luke: Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

He said this to a woman who is named as a ’sinner’, one of those sinners, a ‘big’ sinner. But she is the one who is free. Have you ever met anyone who could be truly comfortable in their own skin, who acted as they wished because they had nothing to lose? This woman is looked down upon by the people in the community – or the people in the community who think they count. [iv]

“You cannot determine your worth to Jesus by a calculation of your sins. That is not how God works.

Because faith, you see, is also the belief that you are worthy of salvation. You are worthy to sit at the table. You are worthy of touching, and being touched by, God. You are worthy of belonging. You are worthy of being called a disciple.” [v]

Remember where I started: I refuse to reject the grace of God.

This woman is an example of someone who accepts the grace of God. She says no to those who would try and prevent her from seeing Jesus, she says no to those who try and make her shamed of her life and her actions. She says to herself and yes to Jesus.[vi]

I wonder in what ways we have rejected the grace of God.

I can remember times when I felt worthless and not good enough – as if I had to make a certain level of bible knowledge or trust or something before God’s grace would be available to me.

I have had people tell me that they are not good enough, or they have done something bad, as if we need some gold stars before God will love us.

I have had people tell me they can’t come to church because they don’t have the right clothes or they live in the wrong part of town. One place we lived a person who attended church each week told me she didn’t stay for morning tea, because if people knew she was divorced she wouldn’t be welcome. I doubt that the church involved would have cast her out, but that was a concern to this person.

Maybe it is because I am a Minister, but I find many people I speak with are ashamed about something in their life, or guilty about something they have done or not done. I understand that. But we are justified/ saved/ put right with God by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ – not by anything we do or don’t do. And with salvation comes peace and freedom.

We are then free to be ourselves, our true selves, the person God created us to be. That doesn’t mean we do whatever we want, it isn’t license to hurt or destroy people or creation.

[a box with ‘grace’ written on it, some tags attached]

See this box, for some people it has tags on it saying –
if you are good enough,
if you are bright enough,
if you pay enough money,
if you follow certain rules,
if you believe certain doctrinal statements…
[Remove tags]

The gospel, the good news, is that grace is gift from God - free of “if’s”

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a consequence to this amazing gift, a consequence of accepting that we are fully known by God, fully and completely loved, that God’s love knows no boundaries – not even the boundaries we would like to place on God’s love and grace. This grace includes everyone. I can remember an article I read years ago, and the person writing it talked of the people of God as being like a family, and just as you don’t get to choose your family members, you don’t get to choose who else is in the family with you.

I wonder in what ways we have rejected the grace of God for ourselves or for someone else.

---

[i] Cousar, Charles B., Galatians, Interpretation,1982,  p 51

[ii] Cousar, p53

[iii] Jaime Clark-Soles, working preacher; Alicia Vargas, Working Preacher

[iv] Kathryn , U.C.C. SAMUEL

[v] Karoline Lewis, Working Preacher

[vi] Karoline Lewis

an introduction to Galatians

God called me through his grace. [Audrey West]

The letter from Paul to the churches in Galatia starts with Paul introducing himself. This was standard for letters at that time. You couldn’t send of an email, or a quick postcard. A letter would take time to be delivered. Often letters were written by skilled people, at times helping with phrasing of the letter as well as the physical writing of the letter. Paul would have dictated his letters to such a person, in chapter 6 we will read where Paul puts pen to paper himself.  

A letter would start with who the letter was from, and then who it was written to, Paul would usually include a greeting, such as:

May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.

In many of Paul’s letters there is a prayer of thanksgiving, such as in Philippians 1:3

“I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, …..” [NRSV]

But no prayer of thanksgiving for the churches in Galatia, instead we get:

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ..” Gal 1:6

Paul is an interesting person in many ways. He was born in Tarsus, in what is now Turkey. Tarsus was what we might call a cosmopolitan city – there were philosophers and street preachers, mystery religious cults and it was a centre of Greek culture. [LTJ 261]

But Paul was also a Jew, with impressive credentials. His family followed the custom of circumcision on the 8^th day, and he was from the tribe of Benjamin.  As a young man he studied the Law with a school of Pharisees. [LTJ 261, 2]

And he was a Roman citizen, which means his family were likely to be socially prominent. [LTJ 261] being a Roman citizen had its advantages.

We first meet Paul in the book of Acts, he is the young man who looked after the coats of those who stoned Stephen, and Luke notes that Saul approved of the killing of Stephen. [Acts 7: 58, 8:1]

We read of his transformation on the road to Damascus in chapter 9 of Acts.  Paul would have known quite a bit about Jesus, from his time as a persecutor of the early church. [Loader]

But back to the place of letters and chapter one.

From this letter we see that Paul had met the people he was writing to, and as with other letters Paul wrote, he is responding to a particular situation. In this case it seems that someone has come after Paul has left, teaching a different ‘gospel’, though as Paul points out, there is only one gospel.

Paul is known as a missionary to the gentiles. There were many in Jerusalem who thought that to be a follower of Jesus, you needed to first become a Jew. The focus of the letter to the Galatian churches is that God acts in our lives and that the love and mercy of God are not dependent on our works, or our goodness, or our struggles, or our Jewishness, or culture, or anything else.

This letter shows Paul’s concern and anger that the people are moving away from the gospel of grace and freedom that he taught them, but as sending a letter is not a quick thing, he needs to be clear, and not hot headed, as the letter is written. He also needs to make sure he covers all the arguments that would have been made against him, such as not being one of the apostles and that he never met Jesus in the flesh.  

Paul is clear that it was God who called him, not any person; that Jesus was revealed to him so that Paul would proclaim the message to the Gentiles.

And the message he proclaims is that

“God is compassionate to all, offering a right relationship to all, Jew and Gentile, without discrimination. So Paul argues from the nature of God, from the heart of the gospel.” [Loader]

It can be hard to accept, that we are loved, that is the very nature of God, not our own doing.

“It is why we are so hard on ourselves, and insist we must keep rules: no one deserves to be given a love such as this.” [Andrew Prior]

I wonder how often we are pulled away from the gospel of grace.

It is easy to judge people, to judge ourselves.

I can remember thinking I wasn’t good enough for God, or anyone else, to love me. I thought my friends were just being nice to me because they were such good people – I mean who would want to spend time with me?

An encounter with Jesus changed that – I knew that I was a loved daughter of the living God. A person loved by God, not because I am good enough or bright enough or know enough of the bible. We are all loved by God because that is the nature of God.

Isn’t that awesome!

There are still some people who try to put limits and boundaries on God’s love and grace.  These days it isn’t about becoming a Jew before you can be a Christian, but I have been told that as a woman I shouldn’t be preaching or teaching, that this puts me outside God’s grace. At times I have heard of a whole lot of boxes that must be ticked to ensure our salvation:

• Going to church
• Not taking drugs or drinking alcohol
• Sexual purity
• Keeping the ten commandments
• And I am sure you can think of some more

Being held in God’s love and grace is about the nature of God, it isn’t about how good you are or how well you keep the rules. Paul could show what a wonderful Jew he had been, how diligent he had been at defending God.

There are signs of our freedom in Christ, but they are our response

• to being set free from shame and guilt
• to knowing, deep down, that we are loved by God

Our living is a response to God’s grace, not a pre-requisite.

Do you find it difficult to accept that you are loved by God?

Do you find it difficult to accept that all people are loved by God?

Notes:

LTJ: The Writings of the New Testament by Luke Timothy Johnson

Loader: http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/lectionaryindex.html

Audrey West: https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2883

Andrew Prior: https://onemansweb.org/theology/the-year-of-luke-2013/how-free-is-your-grace-galatians-1.html