06/26/22 - Freedom to Love - Westminster Presbyterian Church Westminster Presbyterian Church | Serving God and others with open mind, hands and heart - 06/26/22

06/26/22 – Freedom to Love

FREEDOM TO LOVE

June 26, 2022
Third Sunday after Pentecost
2 Kgs. 2:1-14; Ps. 77: Gal. 5: 13-25; Lk. 9: 51-62
Rev. Denise Clark-Jones

Vacations are great. It is so relaxing to get away from responsibilities, to suspend making decisions, except those that are no more taxing than where you want to eat dinner. I also don’t pay as much attention to the news when I am away from home and that adds to my sense of well-being. No news is good news, right? Ignorance is bliss, right? Re-entering reality can be a hard landing. There is laundry and grocery shopping to do. A sick dog to take to the vet. There’s a sermon to write. A democracy to defend. The news I paid less attention to hasn’t gotten any better after ignoring it, hoping for the best.

I expect Paul left the new church in Galatia full of optimism for their future, which made him all the more saddened and outraged when he got the news that the goodwill of that faith community had broken apart in petty arguments, conflicting cliques and distortions of the gospel. Paul’s letter to the congregation doesn’t have his usual long introductory passage, which praises the congregation. In this letter Paul offers a brief, “grace and peace to you,” then starts right in lambasting the congregation for “perverting the gospel.” It seems, as soon as he left them, all his hard work had been undone.

When Elijah left the children of Israel, he had Elisha to take up his mantle and lead. The people saw that he was doing what Elijah did. Like Elijah, Elisha was a prophet and a healer. He spoke God’s word with authority, having been given a double portion of Elijah’s spirit. But when Paul left the Galatian church, the leadership vacuum was soon filled with people who vied for control to create a church in their own image rather than Christ’s. The first step was undermining Paul’s authority. He was accused of not preaching Jesus’ gospel but his own invention. Of course, they were doing the same thing, which is a familiar offensive tactic.

The power-grabbers in the Galatian congregation were like the political extremists in our own society, who demand their own freedom, while taking away freedom from others. Like the Supreme Court justices that demand the American people follow rules based on their own religious beliefs and social prejudices. Justice Clarence Thomas warned banning abortions is just the first step in banning same-sex marriage, contraception and civil rights for more people who do not conform to his standards of full personhood. Fortunately, inter-racial marriage, which was illegal in the 1950’s like abortion, contraception and same-sex marriages, is safe since he is in one himself. Similarly, the Jewish-Christians in Galatia insisted that the Gentile Christians be exactly like them. To be a real Christian, they insisted, the Gentiles must follow the same Jewish laws they did. Paul had preached the message that it was not necessary to keep Jewish law to follow Jesus, so they had to undermine Paul to get their way.

We must remember that at this time the word, Christian, had yet become part of the vocabulary. What we call Christianity was still a movement within Judaism. To the Jewish followers of Christ, not following Jewish law would be like claiming church membership without baptism or pledging or even attending church. For them, not following Jewish law was tantamount to a do-it-yourself religion. We can see this is not an unusual approach to religion today. How easy it is to pervert the gospel to fit one’s own convenience.

However, there were also factions in the Galatian congregation that apparently believed that if you were circumcised and celebrated Jewish feasts, you were then free to do anything you wanted, including all the vices Paul cites in his letter. Paul dismissed that theology in no uncertain terms. Paul countered that God’s way, shown to us by Jesus and the Holy Spirit, was freedom, but not to do whatever one desired. Paul explained that freedom from external laws means we are free to follow God’s law of love rather than societal norms or political authoritarianism. We are free to love others, not free to inflict the consequences of our self-centeredness on others. Paul described this mentality as “devouring one another.” (Gal. 5:15) This is the perverted sense of freedom we witness in our society today – freedom without responsibility, freedom to hurt others. Paul preached a message of reorienting ourselves to God so that our words and actions are guided “by the Spirit.” Paul cites the summation of Jewish law Jesus provided: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Gal. 5:14) With these words, Paul defended the accusation that he made up his own gospel by asserting the gospel he preached came straight from Jesus himself.

Paul’s most effective argument was his own testimony. During the Easter season we read passages from Acts, Luke’s account of the birth of the Church. We read the account of Paul’s own conversion, which he repeatedly points to in his epistles. Paul recounts how he had been a violent persecutor of the church. He had strictly upheld Jewish purity laws. He was an avid proponent of Jewish exclusivism. He accused Jesus of being a fraud and proposed violence as the necessary measure for wiping out the Christ-followers he deemed Jewish heretics. If anyone deserved to be excluded from a Christian faith community, it was Paul! Yet, Paul testified that Jesus had accepted him, and even called him to his mission. Paul said to his detractors: ‘Look, do you think I could have made up a story like this. It sure wasn’t a story I would have chosen, let me tell you!’

Paul argued that if Christ could accept him without any conditions, what right did he have to impose conditions on someone else to be a church member. The gospel message Paul preached was based on his own experience of love and acceptance – the most effective evangelistic tool we have. Paul claimed Christ does, in fact, call sinners. He does raise people from the dead, including those that are morally and spiritually dead. Paul’s faith transformation, he claimed, was living proof of the Resurrection. Paul preached his faith as we should, by modeling it with his life.

One of the great truths of the bible is that when God blesses, chooses, or frees, God does so with a purpose in mind. Abraham was blessed to be a blessing to the world. The Israelites were freed from slavery to become a nation, Israel — a chosen people to be a nation that would be a light to all the nations. God sent Jesus Christ to free us from sin that we might be Christ’s body in the world, working for God’s kingdom on earth. We can speak with authority about the gospel if it is Christ’s gospel we are talking about and Christ’s gospel we are living. This is the freedom we are given and the freedom we are to exercise. Without love, we can never be free. Without the nourishment of love, the fruits of the Spirit wither and die. So, let’s go out into the world as free people, sharing the love God has so graciously given us.

Amen. May it be so!

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