A New Family

Galatians 2:11-21

Reconciliation is an awkward thing.
Sometimes it's that morning-after the fight when you wake up and remember that things aren't quite right with you and your spouse.
And you are making coffee and she's making cooking eggs,
and there's a silence that lies like a blanket over the whole room.


Sometimes it's that friend you haven't seen in ages,
and you know that they've changed or they know that you've changed
and for one or the both of you,
that really makes the friendship as it was in the past very difficult to keep going.


And there's something that can happen.
Some kind of grace that can get you both over that initial awkwardness
and into a kind of new fellowship, a new community
but that first step is steep one and sometimes we're just not feeling up to it.

Ongoing Conversation

Galatians 2:1-10


The Christian faith is and always has been an ongoing conversation.
The central question at the heart of the conversation is how do we live in light of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth? How do we live in light of the coming of the Holy Spirit upon men and women of every class and culture.
The New Testament begins this conversation.
As Rob Bell phrases it in his book Velvet Elvis,
“God has spoken and everything else is commentary” (52).
And for early Christians, God had spoken definitively to the world in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
One of the early Christian writings puts it this way:
“In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe” (Hebrews 1:1)
Christians of the first century believed that they were living after the end of the world.
They looked for a final judgment to come, but lived as if God had definitively spoken and appeared on the stage of human history and made all things new.
And this was the experience of the early Christians when they were suddenly given joy, courage, faith, and hope and love to a degree they had never experienced before on the day of Pentecost, the feast of the first fruits.
What do we make of this sudden outbreak of spirit?

Good News That Isn't Good News

Galatians 1:1-9

Sometimes reading the Bible in public is like taking a friend to a party.
A friend that you don't quite know what he will say next.
And while you may know the context, why the friend is saying the things that the friend is saying.
And you may understand that the offensive and embarrassing statement just made was only offensive and embarrassing because the hearers didn't understand the person speaking, their background, the context, etc.
And if the hearers are compassionate listeners, they will seek to understand better what the friend is saying.
But if they don't really care as I can imagine being the case in many parties, they will just take the words at face value and go off and have an inside joke about my friend.

Sometimes reading the Bible in public is like that.
We'll read words that on their surface sound harsh or rude, or offensive.
And instead of asking more questions – trying to understand better what's going on,
we close the book and close our minds.

Now I think a lot of this impatience with the Bible has good reasons.