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.

All you have to do is watch the news or browse the internet and you will soon find that
someone somewhere has taken a bit from the Bible – out of context – and is using it spread a message of hatred or a message of exclusion or a message of condemnation.

These folks are the other hearers at the party. They hear the things that my friend says and they take them as reinforcing their own prejudices. They run off and are reinforced in hating the people they hate and excluding the people that they don't like.

I appreciated the quote that Mark shared in one of his sermons this summer.
A quote from Ann Lamott where she says, “You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

So I think it is with good reason that we are sensitive to public readings of the Bible. We've been hurt or others we love have been hurt enough by the misuse of the Bible that it makes sense that certain words or verses will hit a nerve, or a push a bruise that we have.

And it makes me sad that this is true of a book which contains for me one of the most powerful and profound messages of grace and liberation. But it is true. And so we must recognize it.

In fact, it was in my own private reading of the next part of Paul's letter to the Galatians that I felt an old bruise pushed and it was painful.

“But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed!”

the less literal translation of our pew Bible translates the emotional content of these words when it reads, “if anyone preaches to you a gospel that is different from the one you accepted, may he be condemned to hell!”

This is judgment. This is anger and frustration. And for many of us, our first reaction upon hearing it is anger and frustration. It rubs us the wrong way.

It reminds me of when I first heard this passage. I was still in high school and a counselor at Camp Good News and one of the older counselors, who was attending Bible college
shared it with me and the message was clear. If someone's version of Christianity was not like the one that he believed – it was from hell.

Now that's not just ignorant, that's abusive.

And so when I read this passage from Galatians, I have a hard time not feeling that bruise – remembering experiencing from him and from many others like him
a Christianity of exclusion.

These words snipped right out of the letter – with no regard for the rest of the letter – can have a very hurtful and powerfully exclusionary message.

Especially if you believe as this person did that each and every single word in the Bible is God's own. And Paul's emotional fits become God's emotional fits. Moses's anger becomes God's anger.

But why is Paul – a self-identified minister of the good news of the grace of God – why is Paul writing with such judgment and anger?

Paul himself had an incredible experience of God's grace when he was blinded by light on the road to Damascus and heard the voice of Christ speaking to him to stop abusing and persecuting the new Christian movement as he had been doing and was on the road to Damascus to continue doing. Paul's life was subsequently changed and he became one of the most radical and intense proclaimers of the good news of God's grace – and he was so powerfully convinced of the grace of God for all people – including those who were not Jewish like himself.

But there was such a deep-seated prejudice against the non-Jewish people – the ones called “Gentiles” which is a word that means “nations” – there was a long-standing cultural bias that these “others” who are not circumcised, who do not follow the kosher dietary guidelines, who do not take seriously the laws of purity found in the books of Moses – these “others” are cut-off, anathema, from the promise, from the love and grace of God and therefore not allowed into fellowship in the community that God has blessed.

And this deep-seated prejudice was not necessarily one borne out of active hatred. It was just the way things had always been.

But Paul believed that he had been called by God in Christ to break down these dividing walls. Paul believed that God was reconciling all people to God and to one another – creating a new community founded by a common faith and lived out in grace and love by the power of God's spirit working in all.

Paul preached this to Gentiles all throughout the Roman empire. And his zeal to spread his message got him in trouble on both sides – at times being imprisoned by the Romans and other times being ridiculed and libeled by more conservative followers of Christ who believed that part of what it meant to live the life that God intended for humanity is to follow the laws of purity in the Torah.

And so Paul became a lone ranger and went to churches proclaiming his message of salvation by grace and he would stay for a while in that town and teach what he saw as the message of the gospel from the scriptures and then he would move on to another town.

Much to his dismay and frustration, others would follow his tracks and “clean up” after him. They would go to the same people and tell them that Paul's “gospel” was not the “true gospel” – that in order to complete their identity as believers in Christ, they must be circumcised and follow the rules of Moses. If these new believers didn't do that they were still in danger of being cut off, of being condemned to hell, of being accursed.

And this is what had happened in Galatia.

I can imagine that for many people who had not grown up in the Jewish community, this would be a dismaying “good news” – especially for the adult males.

This was adopting a whole new culture –

For Paul, it made sense for the Jewish community to continue their traditions as they followed Christ. But it made no sense and was an unnecessary stumbling block for the good news of God's grace to go to the Gentiles with the small print of the law of Moses.

And so behind his back these teachers dismissed Paul and Paul's message, and used fear of being excluded from the community and fear of being excluded from God's love in order to rouse the Galatians to conform to the laws of Moses.

Some people eagerly followed these new teachers and their version of the gospel while others remained confused and distressed. Where was the freedom of God's love?

And so maybe Paul needed to take a few deep breaths before he began dictating this letter. And he certainly was far from perfect himself – at times very egotistical at other times very offensive in his words.
(When reading the Bible it is important to distinguish between prophecy and personality.)
Maybe Paul could have benefited from some calming meditation.

But even if you cannot condone Paul's words – you can at least understand the emotion which provoked them. It's a love of the Galatians – a protective love wanting them to know “the God who called them in the 'grace of Christ” and not embrace this new gospel 2.0 which promises certainty but loses unconditional grace.

It is out of a deep longing for the message of grace to not be disfigured by extra requirements for acceptance in the community and acceptance by God that Paul writes this.

And I imagine he's using their own words back at them.
I can imagine the fear brought to the new believers in Galatia as they are told that if they don't complete their new identity by following the law then they are liable to be cut off from God – literally the Greek word “anathema”

And that's the word that Paul uses.

“If anyone proclaims to you a gospel that is not founded upon grace and grace alone and if they tell you that unless you do this that and the other thing you will be cut-off, accursed, anathema.... if anyone gives you that gospel – may they and their message be cut off.

Again I'm not saying that Paul should use such angry words. But I know that in some way I find it convicting. I am often too afraid to stand up against people who make Christianity all about conforming to their cultural ways of doing things.
When someone starts the business of excluding others from the gospel by their outward appearance or their cultural lifestyle – I do get angry and while I might not say what Paul says, I will certainly feel the same kind of frustration.

Because grace is grace is grace. And that's the whole point. And when Christianity is distorted and twisted away from grace, it is tragic. And honestly sometimes I wish all such distortions would be anathema.

For grace is as the great Christian writer Frederick Buechner puts it:

“...something you can never get but can only be given. There’s no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth. A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace. Have you ever tried to love somebody?

A crucial eccentricity of Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace. There’s nothing you have to do. There’s nothing you have to do. There’s nothing you have to do. The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you." (Frederick Buechner in Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABCs)

This sermon was given at the United Church of Acworth, NH on September 1, 2013.