Sermon: "Notes from Underground (Railroad), or, How Slaves Teach Us Freedom from Being Inclusive"

"Notes from Underground (Railroad), or, How Slaves Teach Us Freedom from Being Inclusive"

For South Wedge Mission
Rochester, New York
23 June 2013
Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Day Text: Galatians 3.5-29

Note: The sermon came out a disaster on Sunday night.  This manuscript represents the proclamation as I intended it.  I am glad to share it more broadly in a more fully realized form.  Thanks for your patience, as always. 

~

-Last week, it rained in Rochester.  I know, shocking right?  

-So we decided to take the kids to the Rochester Museum and Science Center.  Now, I’ve been going to camps and field trips there to see the Mastodons and the Iroquois longhouses ever since I was five years old.  So its always pretty special to go back, not just to see my progeny following in my footsteps of discovery and wonder, but also, to get to take my own trip down Nostalgia Street.  

-And to discover new things myself.  When we made it to the third floor, I was drawn to the fantastic exhibit telling the story of Rochester’s role in the Underground Railroad.  Which, as it took me awhile to learn, was not actually a steam-engine-driven subway from the deep south to Canada, but a network of houses, churches, tunnels, hollowed out trees, and folks willing to risk the vulnerability of radical hospitality in order to help others reach a place where their humanity was no longer placed in doubt.

-And it was particularly cool to see a map charting out the various routes folks took through the area.  To find out that some of the routes that ran through my hometown of Fairport actually closely mirrored my running routes in high school.  Or that, when I often drive to Honeoye Falls to supply preach at the Episcopal Church there, I am following in the footsteps of midnight travelers on the star light express.  And, of course, there was Frederick Douglass’ house - literally two blocks from here, where School 12 now stands, right here in our own neighborhood.

-Not only does Rochester boast a rich history of radical inclusivity on many fronts - but that, just like the railroad, it’s always been there, running underground, in the roots and soil of the places of my own life.  Hidden in plain sight.  Whispering from the past, like a family of nervous pilgrims, singing softer than a breath the lyrics to “Wade in the Water” from a hollowed out tree.

-But see, if I’m honest, I think the history, this amazing story, remains hidden from me for another reason.  Because as a Yankee who’s spent extensive time in the South, I’ve had to learn the hard truth - that in so many ways, we’re no more free of slavery than 150 years ago, when on Juneteenth, the Emancipation Proclamation finally reached the entire country.  

-It’s written in the story the statistics tell about Rochester.  Only 44% of high school seniors graduate here.  We also boast the 8th highest rate of child poverty, and despite being the richest county in New York State, over 20% of our population lives in poverty.  The great way-station of the Underground Railroad is, today, one of the most segregated cities in the country.   

-And yet, we continue to applaud ourselves on our progressive history.  My chest swells with pride, not just at what I saw at the RMSC, but also every time I walk by School 12 and think of Freddy D.  We name our bridges and our streets after him, and Susan B Anthony.  And yet, just a few weeks ago, a highly qualified candidate was denied appointment as school superintendent because he was openly gay.  

-And see, it kind of exposes the seem in our so-called “inclusivity.”  Because if you’re like me, than you like to be the Includer.  The one who knows better than those close-minded conservatives and so benevolently works to welcome everyone.  I haven’t seen a church yet that does not include the word “welcoming” or “affirming” in their mission statement.  You see, we’re blind, not only to the depth of our history, but also to the dreadful reality of the present, because of how we see ourselves.  As magnanimous progressives.  As good people who mean well.  As if that erases the color line drawn in red around the southeast quadrant of the city.  As if good intentions erases the problem of our privilege.

-Which is why, I think, it’s crucial to pay attention to what St. Paul is doing in today’s reading.  Because while it might seem like all this talk about Israel, and Abraham’s seed, and being heirs to the promise, and all that messy circumcision talk, has nothing to do with us - that it’s culturally irrelevant, that we should just get to the good ethical stuff so we can keep being “good people” - it’s actually quite vital to our transformation.

-Because, see, the great blow to our ego that white people in particular have gone to great lengths throughout history to avoid, is that we aren’t, and have never really been, the Includers.  Or, if we’ve been in that role, we are Includers more in the cast of Pharaoh, seeking to enslave others.  Or like Columbus, using religion and the rhetoric of progress to subjugate and subdue.  Or like the Nazis, who like us were well-intentioned Lutherans - they even founded a peace corp! - and yet, had to have a scapegoat.

-We are quick to use our self-proclaimed status as Includers to place the requirement of a certain circumcision - a mutilation of colored bodies and souls - for inclusion.  Except that inclusion is most often made in our own image.  Stacked in our favor.  A benefit to our own power and privilege.

-And, at the heart of it, is a basic forgetfulness of a Gospel truth that Israel’s story tells us.  That we are not, and never have been, the Includers.  That’s a role we give ourselves, and we are not good at it.  What Israel’s story tells us is that we are, in fact, already always the Included.  

-And here we are, back in our study of Galatians at our themes of idolatry and Gospel, of identity before action, of promises centered on the black hole of our egos, rather than pouring forth from the burning star of the cross of Christ.  Because guess what - like the Judaizers, our privilege makes us quite skilled at manipulating the promises of God to suit our own ends.  And it is always at cost to the community.

-See, the story of Israel is definitely about inclusivity.  But it’s always about being Included.  I don’t think its coincidence that here, precisely here when he is hammering his point home, Paul invokes the most fundamental family story of the descendants of Abraham.  That’s when God promises Abe that his descendants would be more numerous than the stars, and called him to become an illegal immigrant to a foreign land, all on the basis of trust in God’s promise.  And as a sign of the covenant of love between God and God’s people, circumcision was given.  Not as a requirement, but as a sign, a reflection of an Inclusion already accomplished.  A mark, like a brutal wedding ring, sealing the Chosen People as Chosen.  As Included, called to proclaim to the nations the story of the Creator as the great Includer of all nations in the blessings of the good world.  

-Incidentally, circumcision is a lot like baptism.  A sacrament, often done to us, before were even aware or able to act out of our privilege, marking in our flesh and hearts that we are claimed and loved by the Including God.  Pretty sweet, I think.  And thank God we drew the water card, rather than the moil!

-But see, Paul pulls one over on his readers.  Because he claims that in fact, the heir to the promise, the one who is to become the true Includer, is not the Judaizers, who have taken that mantle on themselves.  It’s not even the Jews, who as the Old Testament makes clear, are not unlike us in their repeated failures to include, turning inclusion into exclusion and warfare and genocide.  

-No, the true Includer is the One Jew, Jesus Christ, who on the cross, fulfills the mission of Israel in reconciling and gathering to the God of Israel all nations and peoples.  See, the basis of inclusion in Israel’s story is always the action of God.  It is always God, first through Israel, and ultimately, Incarnate in Christ Jesus, who shows us what Inclusion looks like.  It looks like becoming nothing.  Letting go of the privilege of being the Creator of the Universe.  In order to take on the form of a slave.  Dying.  Being emptied of power.  Being utterly excluded by self-proclaimed Includers.  For the sake of making the Excluders into the Included.

-And see, in both circumcision, and in the other Jewish sacrament, the Passover, the Jewish people remember themselves again and again as the Included.  Frequently in the telling of stories around the sharing of a meal that tastes of the freedom of liberation from slavery in Egypt, they remember that “a wandering Aramean was our father,” and remember God as “the one who called us out of Egypt.”  Their fundamental identities?  As former aliens and slaves whom God, and not humans, Included and blessed.

-What I’m trying to say is this: in remembering that it is in Christ that the Including God is making us the Included, we must remember, with our Jewish brothers and sisters, the hard fact that we are always already included by a power greater than ourselves.  A power and a love that makes nonsense of our delusions of progress and our myths of magnanimity.  Because Christians didn’t invent this thing.  Neither did Jews.  Through Christ, we outsiders, we gentiles, we sinners, are Included into Israel’s song - and Israel in turn has been Included in that song by God.  

-And we are made the Included for the sake, not merely of including others, but of witnessing to the story of the God who has always already included others.  That’s one reason why, in the Mission’s inclusivity statement, we tried to put the emphasis on God’s action: God’s family already includes people of all races, genders, sexualities, ethnicities, classes, ages, etc.  We’re just trying to catch up.  Because the emphasis in our witness is never on what we do or how good we think we are.  It’s on the objective and indisputable goodness of who God is and what GOD has done.  

-And see, when Paul writes that beautiful declaration of freedom - that “there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female, for all are one in Christ Jesus” - it is not an option.  It’s not a choice.  Not something dependent on our slave-making other-excluding privileged inclusivity.  It is not arbitrary, and people’s identities are not up for a vote or tied to our level of enlightenment.  They are hidden in Christ.  No election, referendum, court decision or prejudice can change this truth.  

-We are free because, like the Hebrew slaves led out of Egypt and like Father Abraham, an alien called home, God has acted for us.  We are children of God.  That is who we are.  And nothing, nothing in all of creation can altar that fact.  It is a promise and a covenant from the Creator of the Universe, signed with the mark of a cross in the blood of Jesus.  We are all named as the Included.  Or Christ died for nothing.

-Which, I think, means a very different stance on the very practical issue of inclusivity.  Because I wonder what the church would look like that writes in its mission statement: “we are the Included, and so are you,” rather than “we are inclusive and welcoming,” when we aren’t.  What it would look like to declare, not the beauty of our own inclusivity or the generosity of our own benevolence, but rather, to proclaim, again and again without apology, the Gospel of God’s grace, love and God’s claiming of God’s children, through God’s own Exclusion from us.  If the focus was, in other words, on the promises and the actions of God, rather than on our own promises and failures.

-It might look a lot like having way fewer words and ideals and phrases.  It might change where we live, who our friends are, and who befriends us.  It might upset us and our pride.  It might reduce us to fear and awe.  It might just lead us to get in trouble with the powers as we testify to the basic humanity of ourselves and others.  Because in affirming this truth in them, we must also affirm it in ourselves.  

-But it also does this: because the story of Israel is our story, hidden underneath our well-trodden paths of Christianity and social gospel and good intentions, just as the Underground Railroad was hidden from me at home.  It’s always been there.  And I’d wager that those who risked their lives as conductors on that railroad, I like to think that while they welcomed the stranger and the slave with radical hospitality, that they were also blessed.  Blessed by the songs that the slaves sang, of Abraham, and of Moses, and of the Exodus, and of freedom.  

-And I like to think that, it wasn’t so much Includers saving the outcasts.  Maybe it was more like a people who, freshly aware of the freedom of being Included by a God of Justice and Love, sharing this Good News in spirituals and in their very bodies, a reminder to the privileged that they too were Included.  They too could remember the stories of Israel.  Their story.  They too were slaves who were freed.  They were being liberated by the Gospel witness of colored bodies they had once tried to hide.  That on the Underground Railroad, freedom worked both ways.  Because, bound by chains of privilege and ego, we were slaves too.  

-And I wonder if, letting go of the idols of our own need to feel inclusive, might allow the church in Rochester to reclaim both histories.  To become Gentiles included into the story of the freed slaves of Israel.  And so, to allow our communities to become Underground Railroad stations once more, on the Gospel line of grace, guided by the North Star of the Magi towards a new freedom and a new happiness.  Where we seek, not to be Includers, but simply allow ourselves to be, as Included.  Singing the songs of the slaves, from Israel to the United States.  Running an underground movement of joy and liberation ready to share with others the path to a new creation.  And, in welcoming them, to be reminded of this path ourselves.  

-There’s a freedom train a-comin’.  Get on board, get on board.  That’s underground.  That’s radical.  That’s the promise of God in Christ to us.  Let’s sing it.   

-Amen.  

Sermon: "Justification on a Spaceship! or, St. Paul Comes to Call (A Homiletic Drama)"

"Justification on a Spaceship!  or, St. Paul Comes to Call (A Homiletic Drama)"

-St. Paul and the Very Foolish Galatians Part 3/6-

Preached/Performed at South Wedge Mission

Rochester, New York

16 June 2013

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Text: Galatians 2.15-3.1

CAST OF CHARACTERS:

Regular Text: Pastor Matthew, portrayed on Sunday by Pastor Matthew

Bold Text: St. Paul, portrayed on Sunday by Alex Koroleski

~

-Grace, mercy and peace is yours from the Triune God (amen).

OK, so as those of you who’ve been following along at home know, we’ve been doing a “sermon series” on St. Paul and his letter to the Galatians. This week. we’re going to hit up a topic much beloved to Lutherans: Justification by faith.  Now, it’s pretty complicated, so...

(wooshing TARDIS sound)

What the...what’s going on?

(St. Paul walks on stage via the sacristy)

-Grace and peace brothers and sisters in Christ.  

-Um, holy s-h-i-t.  You’re...

-Paul (bracket saint apparently!), prisoner of the Lord, proclaimer of the Gospel, et cetera et cetera.  At your service.

-Um, right.  But you’re...St. Paul.  What exactly are you doing here in Rochester of all places?  Aren’t you supposed to be, well, two thousand years ago?

-Well, yes.  I was getting ready to write a particularly scathing third letter to some obstinate Corinthians, when suddenly, I heard a whooshing, and out of thin air, why, a blue box appeared!  A man stepped out, wearing what he called a “bowtie,” which he said was “cool.”  Then he told me I was needed somewhere.  We went inside the box (it was much bigger on the inside!), and next thing I knew, here I am.  

-A blue box.  A bow-tie wearing man.  And what was his name?

-He just said “the Doctor.”

-Doctor?  Doctor Who?

-Exactly.  But that’s besides the point.  Look, he told me this sermon’s only supposed to be 13 minutes or so, so let’s not waste time on petty details.  I’m here now, and we’ve got work to do.  

-Um, ok, I was just introducing the sermon.  It’s on your letter to the Galatians.  Chapter 2, on justification by faith!  

-Let me guess: you’re going to say some version of how no matter what we try to do, we end up being self-deceived sinners who can’t escape their own idolatry.  But luckily, Jesus loves us anyway and does for us what we cannot do for ourselves.  And then end with some vague ethical precept about what we get to do now that we are under grace.  Sound right?

-Wow, you’re good.  How’d you guess?

-You’re a Lutheran.  What else would you preach on?

-How do you know what a Lutheran is?  And anyway, what’s wrong with that sermon?  Isn’t that what the Gospel’s all about?  Isn’t that justification?

-Well, sure.  It’s good stuff.  But sometimes, I get really concerned for all of you people.  Sometimes, you’re not much better than those foolish Galatians.  You make it all so...complicated.

-Complicated?  What do you mean?

-Well, first off, how exactly were you going to explain the whole justification by faith thing?

-Well, I wanted to share with them how your Greek was pretty ambiguous.  That no one’s really sure if you meant to write “by faith in Christ,” or “by the faithfulness of Christ,” or even “by faith, comma, in Christ.”  No offense, but between the five-page long run on sentences, your poor use of the genitive, and your generally cantankerous tone, it’s not exactly like reading the Gospels.

-Oh, and I suppose you never ramble aimlessly in your stuff?  But again, we digress.  Look, that’s all really interesting.  I’m sure some seminarians somewhere are spending their lives writing dissertations on it, along with commentary on my use of the comma.  Really interesting stuff.  But it’s also a lesson in missing the point.  Let me explain.

-OK, go for it.  

-Well, first, regarding justification, y’all western Christians have really made way too much of all it.  “How do I find a gracious God,” “how am I saved,” “how do I know if I’m a good person or not,” etc.  It’s all so...German.  Existential.  Self-obsessed.  Which, by the way, is exactly what sin is really all about.  Self-obsession.  Taking perfectly wonderful things like the Gospel, or food, or sex, or whatever, and making it all about yourself.  As if you’re God or something.  

Oh, we’re good at that too.  Making God all about us.  As if every line in Scripture was about us and our own personal story and salvation.  No offense, but it’s kind of narcissistic.

-Totally!  Like all those people who spend all their lives on Facebook trying to get people to notice what they ate for breakfast, or how smart they are, or how cute their son is, or what a great hiking trip they just took.  Our whole culture feels like its geared towards, well, ourselves.!  

-Sure.  And it’s just all those “other people” Matthew?

-Er, right...touche.  Please continue.

-The way I see it, culture and context change all the time.  But sin, far from being something “original,” is actually quite constant.  Narcissism this.  All about me that.  Look how good I am.  Look at the god I made today.  I’m still waiting for some actual original sin.  So much of it is really just “unoriginal.” 

And look, that whole line about “justification by faith in Christ,” that was just the set up line here.  Seriously.  It’s like, throughout the history of Christianity, people keep stopping at verse 16, hear an opportunity to be self-obsessed, and stop reading what comes after.

-OK.  What does come after Mr. Smarty Pants?

-A lot.  Skip ahead a few verses.  To 19 and 20.  Listen up: 

“I have been crucified with Christ;  and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.  I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.   You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?”

Dang I’m good!  That’s one of my favorite things I ever wrote.  And probably most important too.  

-OK, it is really powerful.  I’ll bite.  Say more.

-Well, check it.  First off, it’s not all about us.  It’s about Jesus.  What Jesus has done.  The faithfulness of God in Jesus to us.  Not about our faith, or what we do or didn’t do or how sinful we are or aren’t.  It’s basically just a description of what Jesus is doing for us in the cross.

-But it does mention us a lot in there...

-OK, sure.  But back it up.  This is really important for all of you to get right.  See, most of the time, with God, we start from ourselves.  Our own experience.  Our own opinions.  And work our way forward to the scripture.  Like when we say, “man, something’s not right, I need a gracious God, who can make me feel better?”

But in reality, we need to start with the cross.  See, we wouldn’t even know we were sinners without Jesus having died first.  It’s not, “we had this problem with sin, and so therefore, logically, Jesus had to die.”  That’s an us-centered logic.  

No, it’s more insulting to our pride than that.  More like, “whoa.  God died on the cross for sin.  Which means, regardless of what we think, we must have needed the cross.  Which means, regardless of how we understand sin, we were in a bad place.  We can’t do this ourselves.  God said so.”  See how we start with God, rather than us?  You don’t even really get to choose your own sin!

-OK, sure.  I mean, it does set the whole thing up differently...

-Sure.  But see, here’s the rub.  Because not only do we set up sin starting with us.  We also set up “salvation” in the same way.  Starting with us.  What we think we need to be whole.  And so, inevitably, we almost always end up with a smaller picture of the Gospel, of Good News, than what God intends.

-You’re saying there’s a bigger Gospel here.  Not just “Jesus died for our sins and we get to go to heaven?”

-Definitely.  First off, it’s way more difficult than you thought.  Being “crucified with Jesus.”  That’s the first part of the Good News.

-Um...what?

-Yes.  Work with me here.  See, as much as we love our sin, it’s actually - newsflash - not good for us.  Our hearts are made in the image of God.  We have this infinite capacity for desire, to desire God and to be in loving communion with all creation.  That’s good.  But our hearts are like collapsed stars, like black holes.  They are damaged.  Sucking all of the goodness in the world into themselves, trying to make everything about us.  And then crushing and compressing them into coal.  Idols.  It’s this eternal itch that as mortal creatures, we can’t help but scratch.  But can never satisfy.

-That’s grim.

-Yes.  So when we are crucified with Christ, it means that on the cross, Jesus took our human nature, and the black hole and all that, and destroyed it.  Sealed it up.  Closed the gap.  Reversed the flow.  It’s not so much a payment for sin as it is a repairing of the breach.  Jesus’ life and death literally destroy the sin.

-Sounds like Doctor Who talking.

-Right.  See, we do people a serious disservice when we tell them that becoming Christian is this easy happy thing.  It’s painful as hell.  A crucifixion.  Because we have to have our the black hole, the ego, systematically destroyed and removed.

-That’s good news?

-Yes! God in Christ does for us what we cannot do for ourselves, but long to have done.  Ask an alcoholic or an addict; they can explain it better to you than I can.  But it’s God’s gift to us.  

-So Jesus saves me, only to put me through an excruciating journey of self-deconstruction and self-recovery?  

-Partly.  That mess is our contribution to things.  And don’t say it’s not there ruining our life, and the Gospel.  It is.   And we know it needs to get gone.  And it’s hard.  But God is doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

-So is that the Good News then?  

-No.  Read the next part: “it’s not longer me but Christ who lives in me!” I meant that literally, believe it or not.  It’s something that Western Christians seem to have grossly neglected.  The gift of salvation is not just getting saved or going to heaven.  The gift of salvation is: Jesus.  Living.  In your heart.  Indwelling us.  Alive in us.  Making us new.

-Jesus living in our hearts? Isn’t that kind of...supernatural?  

-Bingo homes.  It’s not just some mythological existentialism.  How else do you think you’re able to actually go about having faith - being faithful to God - in the first place?

-I just believe, right?  I mean, that’s what they always told me.  “Believe in Jesus and accept him into your heart” and all that?  It’s free will to choose Jesus.

-And I thought you were a Lutheran!  It’s not free will.  It’s GOD’S WILL.  It’s NOT ABOUT US!  God literally gives us God’s will in our hearts.  Makes us into new creations, new creatures.  God doesn’t just put a stint in the black hole of our heart to keep it from getting worse.  God puts God’s own Spirit in there.  Like installing a brand new star, a supernova, a new source of power and life, right in our very souls!

-Dude, kind of like in Iron Man, when Tony Stark gets that new heart core energy thing, and then he can fly and power his ironman suit and fight crime and all that!

-And you watch too much television.  But yes.  God’s not just trying to polish us up, tell us we’re ok and accepted just as we are.  That’s what WE want God to say.  It’s so much easier on us.  

But God wants to do radical heart surgery on us.  Take out all the cancer of sin, remove the black hole.  Make us healthy and whole.  Salvation, after all, comes from the word “salve,” which means “health.”  And then, God wants to make us new.  Give us a new heart.  A heart capable of really loving God, and loving each other.  A heart that we were given when we were created.  The heart we destroyed by turning it into a black-hole of self-centeredness and violence.  

-That sounds trippy.  Is that what Orthodox people mean when they say we are “divinized?”

-Yes!  See, that’s a Gospel!  That God loves us so much that God sent God’s Son to die, to repair the breach that has disrupted relationships and ruined the image of God in us.  And God isn’t just “saying” we are good.  God is making us good.  Making us even better than good.  Making us God’s.  Transfiguring us.  And giving us this intimate, divine union with Christ in our hearts.  It’s about this deep relationship with God that’s now made possible.  We are literally made one with Jesus.  With God.  With the source of all being and light and love and grace.

-Whoa.  That’s pretty huge.  Like you said, it’s a much bigger Gospel when we stop making it about us.  Like that blue box you flew in on.  Much bigger on the inside if we just let go of our preconceptions and step inside.

-There you go.  That’s why I’m so ticked at these foolish Galatians!  Not because of what they are doing wrong, necessarily.  But because they are not seeing just how big and how awesome and how beautiful this picture of Jesus’ salvation is!  They’re limiting God, and so limiting their community too!  

-Right.  So there’s that word salvation again.  Are you saying there’s nothing “personal” about it?  Since, you know, it’s not about us?

-Um, no.  Like I said, we START with Jesus and God.  But THEN, we absolutely need to claim this for ourselves.  Look at what I wrote.  It’s Christ who lives IN ME.  Christ died FOR ME.  Christ loved ME.  

-And how exactly is that not narcissistic?

-It’s not narcissistic or selfish to accept a gift.  In fact, it’s more prideful NOT to accept it.  To only want it on our own terms.  But that’s a huge part of the gift.  It is communal AND personal.  It’s not just a theory.  It’s something God is giving to particular, individual people.  God is not far off.  God is so close to us, as St. Augustine once wrote, closer to us than we are to ourselves! We can’t pass this gift off. 

-I can anticipate my people (who are here, by the way, listening to us) wondering: that’s all great and good, but how does knowing all this good stuff about God actually matter for us?  How is supernatural divination actually practical?

-Fair question.  I think you started to hit the nail on the head when you were talking about the iron man.  We’re given the gift to use it, to live into it, to experience a full and abundant life.  It’s first and foremost about living in freedom, and in service to others. 

-Freedom AND service?  I’m lost.

-OK, look.  The rest of the letter is about the practical stuff.  What it looks like.  How to live it.  There’s plenty of “to-dos” coming up.  But for now, I think the practical application is this: ITS NOT ABOUT YOU.  CHRIST IS DOING FOR YOU WHAT YOU CANNOT DO FOR YOURSELF.  I think most times, we need to start with being reminded about who God is and who we are in God, before turning on to being instructed in what to DO or BELIEVE.  

See, the Gospel, I think it’s a lens to look at our selves and our reality and to ask: am I making this about me?  Or am I seeing it through this Good News in Christ?  As a paranoid and prideful narcissist?  Or as a beloved, divinized co-creator?  Which power will we choose? Whose promises will we trust?

-Power?  Choice?  Wait, isn’t that just getting back into, you know, doing stuff?

-Look, if you’re not using it, you’re losing it.  Like playing an instrument and never practicing.  You can’t get better at something if you don’t play.  The difference is, you’re no longer self-obsessed.  No longer required to look at whether you get it right, or how you look doing it, or whether other people like it.  You are free from having to justify yourself.  You don’t have to make salvation happen!  

-What if I don’t feel free?

-You are.  You are perfectly and completely free.  It’s not an option.  The challenge now is, do we live like free people, empowered and indwellt and intimately loved by the God of the universe?  Or do we continue to live under the tyranny of our own way of doing things?  Of us at the middle?

-Got a metaphor or something?  I’m still lost.   

OK, look, it’s kind of like this.  Let’s say you’re in a sailboat, in the middle of a lake.  You can’t move it on your own, but you know it’s supposed to be sailing.  It’s no fun without the movement.  Suddenly, a wind blows.  You can still sit there and say, “oo, a wind, what does it have to do with me?”  Or, you can raise your sail, man the rudder, and let the wind move you on to adventure.  You aren’t the one powering or moving the boat - but because of the wind, you’re able to start practicing your skills.  So it is with the indwelling of Christ’s faithfulness, giving life to our faith.  It can be intimate and gentle, like a soft breeze brushing our cheek.  Or it can be terrifying, like a tsumani kicking up waves that just begs us to risk a thrill ride on a surfboard.  

-Dang, you’re good.  I like that.  

-Good.  So, I think a better question is: where do you sense the Spirit blowing in your own life?  Where do YOU feel it crucifying pride and self-centeredness?  Where do you see it leading you into new creation, even at great risk and uncertainty, calling you to cling to the promises of the Spirit?

-Wow, that’s a great question.  Maybe I should ponder it during our Open Space time.  I mean, I have so many places I put myself first.  So many places I make excuses to try to justify myself, or put myself above others...

-Good idea.  Especially since I think we’re out of time.  But before I go, can you tell me what you heard me say today?  

-Right.  Um, so I think I heard you saying that if all we do is obsess about us (how we are saved, justified, what faith looks like, etc), we end up falling into the trap of narcissism, making it all about us.  Which is bad, since we don’t actually have the capacity to satisfy our infinite cravings and desires.  But, if we start with God in Christ, we discover that not only is God offering the gift of removing our defects - God is also giving us a Tony Stark heart, which is actually Christ, the lover, coming to live in our hearts.  And so we’re free to use this power in faith, clinging to God and depending on Christ.  Sailboat analogy to close.

-My work here is done.  Now it’s up to you to figure out what it means in your own life.  I’ve gotta get back to the blue box before, what did the Doctor say. before all of space and time collapses...

-Um, ok, but, you know, could you maybe come back next week? It’s kind of a doosy - you talk about how there’s neither male nor female, slave for free, Greek nor Jew...it’s kind of intimidating.

-Believe it or not, this is supposed to BE next week.  But he landed us wrong.  If I come again, like I said, space and time collapsing and all.

-Sure, I get it.  Well, Paul, er, St. Paul...thanks.  This is all pretty confusing to me still.  I know it’s meant to be as simple as clinging to Jesus.  And I appreciate hearing just how much Jesus is offering us and all.  I guess it’s us who complicate things.

-Yeah.  It’s really as simple as keeping the focus on Christ.  Not listening to idols or any voice other than the one that is dwelling in you and making you new.  It’s the other voices - especially our own - that make it complicated.  But all of them, they’re just trying to justify themselves too.  And we already know how that ends.

-Right.  Sure you can’t stay for Open Space?

-Bye Matthew.

-Bye Paul.  And thanks.

(Paul exits, wooshing sound re-commences).

Introducing southwedgemission.org!

Hi friends!  As many of you may know, we've been back in Rochester, New York since September trying to gather folks to bake a neighborhood church from scratch in the South Wedge area here.  We're really excited to launch our webpage, which was assembled via volunteer efforts and collaborations.

Here's the link:
www.southwedgemission.org 

If you know anyone interested in emergent church, new monasticism, mission, or especially someone who lives in or near Rochester and is looking for a community, please please please share it with them. We'd also deeply appreciate any shout outs on your blogs, whether in the links section or in a post!

Thanks for your prayers, support, and of course, for reading the stuff I post here.  Grace and peace, and happy missioning!

Sermon: "Story, Gospel, Art, Mission: Introducing St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians" (Part 1/6 - St. Paul and the Very Foolish Galatians)

"Story, Gospel, Art, Mission: Introducing St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians"

Preached at South Wedge Mission
Rochester, New York
2 June 2013
Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Text: Galatians 1.1-24

Note: For the next six weeks, SWM will be using the lectionary's second lesson focus on Galatians as an opportunity to engage in a study of the epistle.  Because we are a new community, and a weekly Bible study is not possible at this time, I have modified the readings to include more of Galatians, and will be posting on this blog and in our SWM facebook group.  

The first in this series is longer, being an overall introduction to a basic hermeneutic of the epistle, basic historical background, and Luther's discerned theme of Gospel contra idolatry.  I've added artificial section headers to help guide intrepid readers.  Thanks to Saby Davis for transcribing this manuscript from the live audio (I had my hand smashed in a window and was unable to do further editing).  

~

-Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God our father, and from our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.

-That opening invocation that we use every week is actually the same wording that St. Paul uses either to open his letters or close his letters. Ah, St. Paul.  To some, an ass kicker.  To others, a major asshole.   

I. Why Paul? Letters as Story

-Now, since we’ve begun as a community, we’ve been focusing almost exclusively on Jesus -- his life, his death, and resurrection -- and now, post-Easter, he’s gone. And we’re kind of left, as the Church, trying to figure out what the heck to do. 

-And see, one of the main records we have of what the Church did -- and, unfortunately, what the church did wasn’t always great -- is through these letters, these epistles, of Paul.  I and the letters of Paul are really great, I think, but only when we read them, not as rulebooks, as they’re often cited, or as absolute statements of eternal doctrine, where, because he wrote this to one community, every community in every place and every time has to follow exactly what he’s saying. I don’t find that a very helpful approach. 

-Because, while Paul’s message is always constant about the gospel of Jesus Christ, he faces all these different situations between the Corinthians and the Romans and the Galatians and the Thessalonians and the Ephesians and the Colossians and all sorts of other people. And he has to tailor his message and responses to their particular issues, their particular gifts, and their particular questions.

-And so it’s helpful to see the Letters of Paul not so much as individual statements of theology, but as snapshots. As a whole, almost like a book written in letter form. If you’ve ever read Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther or Gilead by Marilyn Robinson, the Letters of Paul are written in a similar diary/letter form of storytelling. So you can think of them as stories within The Story. 

-Of course, it’s kind of frustrating because we only get the one side of the story. We get to see what Paul’s telling them -- well, basically, what they should do. But we don’t get to see what they wrote to him initially, and we don’t necessarily get to see what they wrote back to him.

-My favorite interpretation of this comes from a comedian named Eddie Izzard who does a schtick where the Corinthians write back to Paul and tell him to piss off. Because they’re so tired of him telling them what to do and giving them all these rules. It’s so arrogant, they say, that he thinks he should write to the entire town, and ‘who decided to be his penpal anyway?’ I would show you the video, but unfortunately the language prevents me from doing so. But you should definitely YouTube it. It’s really good -- and, I think, pretty accurate. 

-So the point is, Paul is not necessarily always a nice guy. Sometimes he gets really mad. In the Letter to the Galatians, especially, it’s kind of like you can envision Paul’s ‘angry dance’ like in the movie Footloose. This is his angry letter. He’s really mad. He calls them “foolish Galatians.” At one point, he says, “I wish that the people preaching you a different gospel would just castrate themselves. The ones trying to tell you to circumcise should just circumcise themselves.” Ouch all around.

-And it would very easy to see Paul as a big a-hole as a result. He says that “I wish you would become like me, and therefore follow the Gospel.” It sounds like he’s trying to promote himself and his way of seeing things. Certainly, lots of interpreters -- modern ones especially -- want to spin Paul as the creator of Christianity, where it’s really Paul imposing all this doctrine on top of Jesus. And maybe that’s kind of true. 

II. The Centrality of the Gospel

-But I think a charitable reading of Paul -- actually reading what Paul said and what Paul’s all about, especially when taking the letter as a whole -- yields a very different picture. Sure, Paul’s claiming divine revelation, as we heard today. He’s claiming that he didn’t learn this gospel from tradition. He’s like a hipster saying “I knew the gospel way back in the day, before I talked to Peter.” And then he goes to talk to Peter, James and John just to make sure they have the same story. He presents himself as if he’s got this original knowledge, this deep, fiery conviction that this is the truth. 

-But notice what the truth is that he proclaims, almost from the start of the letter: the good news of Jesus Christ, who was given as a sacrifice for our sins, and has redeemed us into a new creation.  All of reality is different -- it’s a new state of being. That’s what “gospel” meant in the ancient world: the gospel was this proclamation of good news. Like when the emperor conquered someplace, the herald would ride into town and say “Announcing the Gospel of Caesar: you are now under Roman control. Yaaaaay!” And everyone was (unenthused), like “Oh... yay.”
  
-So what Paul is essentially doing is being the herald for Jesus.  He walks right into Galatia, which is a big region in Northern Turkey, shouting “God has claimed you. The Kingdom of God is here. You are now under control of the Spirit. You are no longer slaves to the elemental powers of the world, to the Pagan deities, to yourselves, or to any other human authority. But you are slaves of Christ -- and therefore free before the world. You’ve been liberated. You’ve been liberated for a new life because of God’s action, because of what God has done for you.”

-So everything that Paul does, in fact, points back to Christ, and to this new creation, the destruction of the old Matrix of sin and death.  Of course, sometimes Paul gets in the way of his own revolution, because Paul can be a big personality. He’s charismatic, he’s obviously very fiery and sure of himself in that way that converts and zealous people often are. But he’s trying to use that, even in spite of himself, to point back to the reality of Jesus -- not to point back to himself. He even says, “if we preach a different gospel to you that’s different than that original message of salvation through Christ by the Cross, then you should not listen to us -- you shouldn’t even listen to an angel who says something different to you.” It’s pretty strong language. But Paul’s central concern is not the Gospel of Paul but the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

III. The Art of Law and Gospel

-One of the reasons that Martin Luther was so big on the Book of Galatians back in the day was that he thought it was one of the most useful books for learning to discern between what he called “law” and “gospel.” He said, “The whole art of reading scripture is really about discerning the law from the gospel -- finding the good news in every passage and distinguishing it from the law.” 

-We’ll get into a little bit more in the coming weeks, about what law and gospel actually are as we go through this.  But I want to say from the beginning that “law” is not necessarily rules. It can be, but it’s more a referral to the way we use things for ourselves - for our own selfish gain.  Or -- as a good Jew might say -- it’s another term for the dynamics of idolatry.  Saint Paul, as Luther observed, is more concerned about discovering the ways that we deceive each other in ourselves. By putting things -- whether it’s actions, beliefs, systems or objects -- and putting them in the place of God and making them all about ourselves: self-serving, self-promoting, self-justifying. 

-So Paul is very concerned that we see our human efforts to try to reach God, or to try to talk for God, or to try to somehow understand God on our own terms and understand that that will always end up as idolatry. Or -- as another Reformational guy that Lutherans don’t like very much, John Calvin, once said: “The heart is an idol factory.” It’s always finding things to use for its own aims, to stack the deck in its own favor, and then to use those same things to control other people in an effort to make safe its own delusions.   

-Calvin saw the Gospel as a set of spectacles that you put on to see creation rightly.  But see, Paul is trying to teach these Galatians the art of seeing rightly, sinking it deep into their flesh and bones, once and for all.  As if to say, "here is the Gospel. Learn how to recognize the truth -- the truth that will set you free, the truth that has liberated you, the truth of how things really are -- and distinguish the truth from these false teachings of these people who really just want to use you or try to get you to use yourself, to make yourself the center instead of Christ.  Oh, and its an art - not an equation."  

IV. Idol Jealousy

-Now, that’s kind of a tall order from some guy who for the most part spends the first chapter of his letter talking about himself, right? I mean, most of this chapter is a story, and it’s about Paul and how he got this original revelation. And -- again, like I said -- he has this tone of “even Peter and James, the original Apostles, agree with me!” And so it would be very easy to say, again, that Paul is a self-centered, arrogant jerk. But Paul is very intent on putting his story in the message because, for him, this is not just a theory. It’s not just some knowledge he picked up out of a book. It’s not something he bought at Barnes & Noble.  

-But it’s deeper than that.  Paul is in love with God.  He has zeal for God.  And see, “Zeal” in the Bible actually means jealousy. When God says “I am jealous for my people,” it means He’s passionately in love with them and doesn’t want anybody else to have a go at them.  Likewise, Paul wants to make sure that the name of God is glorified. And, as any good Jew knows, the most problematic thing in terms of trying to know God -- throughout the history of Judaism and the whole world -- is the temptation of idolatry. The temptation to set up other gods other than the one who the Israelites called YHWH - a name so holy you shouldn’t even dare to pronounce it.  

-But that’s the point: the creator, the one who claimed Israel and said “You are my people. Now tell everybody how I created the world. And how I intended good for the world, and how I am a god for all nations.” Versus, say, the Pagan gods, who often were not the creators and were very fickle and were arguing with each other and required all these sacrifices -- sometimes child sacrifices -- and required you to do all sorts of embarrassing things in order to maybe win their favor. Paul, in his letter later, calls them “the elemental powers of the world.” 

-In Galatia in particular, idolatry was a huge problem, because Galatia was a conquered province. The Galatians really wanted to show the Romans that they were cool, that they weren’t rebelling, that they were all-in. And so they worshipped the emperor hardcore there. Emperor worship was huge. Every time you went into the marketplace, you sprinkled a little incense by the statue of the emperor in order to gain entrance; all the coinage had the emperor’s picture on it; and you were pretty much required to give a pledge of allegiance to the Gospel of the Emperor. 

-So, to become a Christian in this environment, to oppose this kind of nationalistic idolatry, meant that you put yourself at risk. It meant that you identified as someone who not only couldn’t participate in the regular economy and commerce of the life and culture around you, but you were also seen as a threat. Because, as much as the emperor wants to seem like he loves everyone, he actually wants to kill anybody who doesn’t listen to him. So, when you say “Jesus is God and Caesar is not” it’s kind of like saying “I’m not gonna pay my taxes to the IRS. I’m not gonna listen to the mayor. I’m not going to pay into the power grid, like the Amish.” It was really setting yourself apart and setting yourself up -- not for happiness and prosperity, but for a lot of pain. And a lot of conflict. 

-And so, when this new faction comes along - these Judaizers, these Jewish Christians who want to teach people to get circumcised -- it was a pretty convenient thing for the people of Galatia. Because it meant that if they got circumcised, they got in on the Jewish exemption.  Because Jews were allowed to not worship the emperor - because the emperor kind of liked them. They were this kind of quirky, quaint little people on the margins. 

-So what’s really going on here is not this idea that ‘circumcision is really good’; instead, it’s actually more just a case of using doctrine in the service of another kind of idolatry and compromise. And Paul is saying to them: “Look, it might seem really easy.  But I birthed you” -- throughout the letter, Paul uses this very feminine language of childbirth and cultivating -- “I brought you up; I formed you; I created you.” You’d think Paul would want to protect them and say “Yeah, go ahead and get circumcized. I’m a good Jew. Be like me, and at the same time spare yourself from getting killed.” 

-But Paul is more concerned about defending and promoting and preaching the true Gospel -- even it costs him and his followers so much culturally. He’s concerned that they know this, because if you start worshipping the emperor, if you start believing that it’s your own action that somehow wins you favor with God, then it not only puts you in a tough bind -- because as soon as the emperor doesn’t like you anymore, then you’re dead; or, if you stop being obedient, then you’re in trouble. But also, if you follow one of these idols and you follow their ‘idol promises,’ you’re going to get let down. Because a piece of wood can’t keep its promise. And neither does an emperor. Paul wants you to follow the one true God, the one who created the world, who has the power to save you, and who has acted on your behalf through Jesus Christ -- very different gospels. One is completely capricious and dependent on human endeavor and human promises that can be broken. The other comes from God.

V. Broken Lives Trump Pretty Lies

-Paul uses his story to drive this home.  His story of having gone from being very zealous and very religious and very convicted -- he had everything right, in his eyes --  and using that power and that conviction to kill and destroy the Church.  As a good Jew, he sees somebody and says “He thinks he’s God; that’s no good; I’m gonna kill him.” But Paul tells the story of how he was wrong, how he got it wrong because he was more concerned with protecting traditions than discovering the revelation of the living God entering into his midst and liberating him. 

-And it’s striking to me that when Paul tells the story of trying to counteract idolatry, he tells the story of his biggest character flaw: “I murdered people; I systematically tried to destroy the Church; I was a bad dude. And that -- that transformation that God worked in me, that liberation from being a murderous person, that liberation from being a jerk -- that’s how God is using me to spread the Gospel.” 

-See, God destroys idolatry not by giving us a better theory or a new practice, but by transforming our lives by entering into our midst and destroying the idols that keep us from God. And by opening us up to this whole new way of being. And he does it, not by teaching us things that we can hold over other people, but by leveling us, so that we may no longer think that we are God or have any claim to set up idols in God’s place. 

-It’s kind of a raw deal, right? I mean, let’s say that becoming Christian means you don’t get to shop at the mall anymore, you get persecuted and potentially killed, and you have to have all of your self-delusions and self-importance and idols and everything else you care about destroyed too boot. That’s not exactly a promise of prosperity, power and hope! And yet, that’s the Gospel -- that’s why Paul is so convicted about it. That’s why he gets so angry. Because as our Message translation says, “They’re selling you a non-Gospel, an empty lie about God” -- the lie that God doesn’t demand everything of us, that God doesn’t want our whole being, our whole heart, mind, and soul; and that God’s okay when we kind of take time for ourselves and start acting more selfishly towards one another. Or when we start giving all of our time and attention to the Facebook gods or to the TV gods or to our own ideas of justice or of what being progressive or being conservative means to us. 

-Or even being a good Lutheran. God does not care about that as much as God cares about the heart. And God will continue to demolish idols and calls us to be people who are willing to demolish idols -- not with violence, not with force, not even with argument and convincing, but by looking within our own hearts, our own story. By talking about our own struggles and proclaiming and testifying to the ways that God has made us a new creation too. 

VI. So What?

-Now maybe some of us -- myself included -- have not yet fully lived into what it means to be a new creation. Maybe you’re here thinking “What’s all this Jesus-Gospel-exclusive stuff? I thought we were going to talk about God.” Or “I’m spiritual but not religious.” And that’s totally cool.  I’m responsible for what you hear, not what you believe.  

-But one of the things that I think Paul is concerned with, and one of the things that I want to be exploring during this time of studying Galatians, is how we can see where God might be trying to be break into our lives in our own stories -- sometimes in beautiful ways. Maybe there’s this moment of epiphany, where the world is gorgeous and you’re just so convicted of the presence of a God. And it leads you to ask the question, “Who is this God who has created me and is doing amazing things?” 

-Or, maybe you’ve been a Christian for a long time like me, and God has kind of become something you take for granted, a kind of rote tradition. And you’re wondering, “How can I go deeper into this story and make it my own and start living out of it? Maybe I can start taking some risks by withdrawing from some of the idols and cultural practices and things that ensnare me or lead me astray.” 

-Or maybe you just don’t know what to think. And you’re just going to fall on your knees and say, “God, show me my next step. I need a higher power because I can’t do this on my own.” But regardless, what gives me comfort in this scripture about Paul’s letters is not just that Paul is a badass and kind of an asshole who became a badass, but also that the very letter itself is included in the Bible -- the fact that the Bible includes these letters where Paul is wrestling and arguing with people... It’s not perfect. He doesn’t just say, “Let me tell you how perfect you are, and here’s all the good things you did,” which would put us sinners in quite a bind. 

-But the Bible itself is the testimony of people wrestling together, asking questions, making mistakes, seeking God -- sometimes compromising, sometimes doing a great job -- but always wrestling with this central gospel: this central claim that there is one God, that this God is the creator, and that -- to us -- God has acted in the person of Christ in order to liberate us, to liberate all people, and to bring us into a new creation where we can live fully and -- most importantly -- live as free children of God who are liberated to love one another. 

VII. Story, Art, Gospel, Mission

-So, over the next couple of weeks, we’re going to unpack that. We’re going to slow it down and go through some of the aspects of this story that I’ve spun out today. Again, we always take a little longer at the beginning to kind of set the table. 

-But, again and again, I think the point of studying and wrestling with scripture and with one another is less to come to some sort of rational knowledge of facts and doctrines. It’s more like listening to music.  Learning to know the sound and the style of the truth.  So much that we can recognize it being played, not just in Scripture, but in the world around us, in others’ stories, and in our own.  

-This art, this way of listening to the music of the Gospel, is to continually ask of the scripture and let the scripture teach us: what is really the Gospel? What are ways I’m using the world, using people -- maybe even using the Bible -- as an idol to justify myself? How do we discern God’s work in the world? How do we see where the Gospel is breaking through? How do we discover where God is happening? How can we tell the story of reality correctly - and our own stories too?  And how do we recognize where we and other people are ensnared in systems that say “Somehow, you need to do something to be valuable to God,” when in actuality God has already made you infinitely valuable, and has called you, claimed you, and is leading you into this mission that we share. 

-I was thinking that it would be good to do a study on mission or something, but what I realize with the South Wedge Mission is that, to be a mission, we need to understand who we are in God, who God is for us, and what God is calling us to do around the Gospel. The mission will follow. But for now, it’s enough to continue to ask ourselves, “Where is God happening? Where do we see idolatry? Where do we see signs of God exploding all of our preconceptions?”  

-Because mission, in the end, may just be this kind of learning - learning the art of seeing and hearing the Gospel in the world around us, and witnessing to what it's up to in the stories and lives and vocations and arts all around us.  

-And, if we follow humbly and with much trust and faith, we will find mystery and magic and adventure and mission -- and the unbreakable, undying eternal promise of God in Christ Jesus.  St. Paul would have been pleased with nothing less.   

-Amen.