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Sermon - Forgiveness is the Source of New Life - 17th June 2007
St Alban’s 7:00am, 8.00 am and 10:00 am
Readings: 1 Kings 21:1-10, 15-21a, Psalm 5:1-7, Galatians 2:15-21, Luke 7:36-8:3
Paul’s angry, passionate letter to the churches of Galatia provides a glimpse of the controversy that surrounded the expansion of the Church in the ancient Mediterranean world. The identity of the newly established churches was up for grabs: Were they to be understood as branches on the tree of Judaism, or were they to be understood as belonging to a new and distinctive community, neither Jewish nor pagan? Were Gentile converts bound to accept Jewish practices and values? In what ways were they free to maintain their former ways of life? By the middle of the first century the struggle over such questions had burst into open conflict. Paul, as the apostle whose preaching had brought these communities into being, thought of himself like a mother in the throes of labour until they are fully formed according to the image of Christ.
The Letter to the Galatians is important for its theological message. Paul’s message, has exercised a powerful influence on Christian theology and preaching. Both St Augustine and Martin Luther, for example, took their bearings from Paul’s message of radical grace, apart from works of the Law. Thus Galatians is the beginning for all subsequent Christian reflection about justification by faith, the cross, the power of the Spirit, and the meaning of Christian freedom. The letter was preserved and cherished in the church because it offers a compelling model for how to think about the challenges faced in our community’s life. Galatians has much to say to us as we struggle to be the Church of the twenty-first century, not of previous centuries.
Paul had founded the churches of Galatia during his missionary travels in Asia Minor. Paul came to them unexpectedly and preached to them the message of “Jesus Christ crucified” as God’s transformative action to deliver humankind from “the present evil age”. The Galatians accepted the message joyfully, were baptized and experienced dramatic manifestations of the Holy Spirit. Paul left his fledgling churches there confident that they were “running well”.
Paul had, however, received word that his work in Galatia was being undermined by Jewish-Christian missionaries who had arrived on the scene preaching “a different gospel” and seeking to persuade the Gentile Galatians should take the next step into full covenant membership by being circumcised. Apparently these Jewish-Christian preachers were finding a receptive audience among the Galatians who were already adopting at least some aspects of Jewish Law observance. Outraged by this development, Paul fired off his letter to dissuade the Galatian churches from accepting what Paul calls as a perversion of the gospel.
The Missionaries believed Jesus to be the Messiah of Israel and saw themselves as summoning Gentiles in the name of Jesus to come under obedience to the Law revealed to Moses at Mount Sinai.
They preached the necessity of circumcision as a means of entering covenant relationship with the God of Israel. They called for observance of Jewish sabbaths and feast days and presumably advocated obedience to everything written in the Law, promising that those who kept the commandments would find life. They taught that the Law of Moses was divinely ordained to provide moral order and restrain human fleshly impulses. They claimed to represent more faithfully than Paul the teachings of the “mother” church in Jerusalem. They based their message on Scripture. In short, they represented a form of traditional Jewish teaching that called for Law observance and they sought, in the name of Jesus, to extend the good news about the Law of God to the Gentiles.
Why did Paul object so fiercely to this message? He understood that the cross, not the Law, is the basis of our relationship to God. Where God’s Spirit has been poured out on the church, Paul claims, there is no more need for a written code of Law to direct and restrain the community. We need only to follow the life-giving Spirit to resist the desires of the flesh. The reconciling power of God is to be demonstrated not by forcing Gentiles to become Jews but by bringing circumcised and uncircumcised believers together at one common table. Thus the spread of the gospel requires a Law-free mission to the Gentiles. The Missionaries act as though the death of God’s Son on the cross had not changed the world irrevocably. They think that things can go on just as before, with the Law providing the fundamental structure for the identity of the people of God. However, the gospel is the revelation of God’s action that has undone and transformed the world.
Taken together, these constitute, in Paul’s eyes, a fundamental betrayal of the gospel, a reversion to life under the Law before Christ came to set us free. That is why Paul so vehemently seeks to persuade the Galatians to reject the overtures of the Missionaries. There are still today many Christians who are restrained by the Law and not enlivened by the Spirit.
Paul restates his gospel of grace. He believed that human beings are set in right relation to God not through obeying the Law but through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us. He proclaims that we are adopted as God’s children solely as a result of Christ’s redemptive death, not because of anything we have done or could do. We are included in God’s covenant people solely by God’s gracious action in Christ for our sake.
As a result of Christ’s death on a cross, the Spirit is given to all who are in Christ. The Spirit gives us life confirms our status as God’s children and transforms the character of our community life so that we produce fruit pleasing to God, irrespective of who we are, because of the transformative power of the Spirit. God’s redemptive work necessarily includes the reshaping of our life together.
In the new community created by the Spirit, the markers that once separated insiders from outsiders have been annihilated. God’s purpose is to create a single new people who are “one in Christ Jesus”, bound together in faith and love. We may not like the sinners who gather with us as the body of Christ, but we too are sinners like them and we are loved by God as well. Let us never forget our short-comings like the woman who washed Jesus’ feet!
Those who recognize the saving work of God in Christ and live in the power of the Spirit experience freedom. They are no longer constrained, enslaved, or separated from one another. The climactic appeal of the letter, therefore, urges us to stand firm in the freedom won for them by Christ.
The gospel must be lived out in the practices of our community sharing a common life. We can betray the truth of the gospel not only by preaching false doctrine but also by engaging in false practices, particularly practices that fracture the unity of the church, especially as we judge one another The foundation of Paul’s opposition is his conviction that, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, God has brought into being a new community that embraces sinners of all sorts together as God’s people.
Wherever we see Christians trying to rebuild walls of separation in the church, walls that separate people along ethnic or cultural lines, we can be sure that the integrity of the gospel is being violated, and, like Paul, we should feel compelled to speak out against such practices. Speak out against such behaviour as expressed by Simon the Pharisee. Such people think that they have all the answers on how to be good in God’s eyes, like the Missionaries of Galatia. We are most vulnerable when we are blind to our own faults. Simon thought he was blameless. He “knew” the woman was a sinner, and he assumed she had defiled Jesus. Jesus then exposed the contrast between Simon’s distant hospitality and the woman’s sincere affection.
Does love lead to forgiveness, or is the ability to love the result of being forgiven? The question is not easily answered because the issue can be seen from both perspectives. Jesus accepted the woman’s expression of love as a sign that she had been forgiven much. Love is the natural response of the forgiven, but the capacity to love is directly related to the ability to receive grace, forgiveness, and love. Simon’s problem was not his conduct but his attitude and self-understanding. Jesus cut through social convention to Simon’s regard for himself and others and his relationship to God. Because Simon thought of himself as pious and righteous, he had no idea what it meant to be forgiven and no awareness of his own need for forgiveness. We too can think of ourselves as pious and righteous, but we are not. He loved little because he had experienced so little of God’s love. Because Simon did not recognize his need for forgiveness, he excluded himself from God’s grace, by living by the Law. We can do the same. The woman knew she was a sinner, therefore she could receive God’s forgiveness. Abiding by the Law and judging others will not save us. We depend upon God’s acceptance completely. If our lives have been changed by an experience of God’s grace, we can never get over the fact that we have been forgiven. God’s love, experienced in forgiveness, becomes the controlling force in our lives. The gratitude of the forgiven is also the source of new life. May our parish community be renown for the way we exhibit new life in the Spirit.