Gentile Lives Matter (Gal 3:23-29)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on June 26, 2016, Proper 8)

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The Task of Reforming Paul’s Image

Jesus is an almost universally applauded figure. Even among non-Christians, he is well liked and respected.

Paul, on the other hand, draws a tepid applause from among his readers. Not everyone likes Paul. These days especially, he gets a bad rap. Some see Paul as a fiery preacher of predestination and a disciplinarian more concerned with “don’ts” than “do’s.” Others see him as a bureaucrat concerned with church hierarchy or—and this is a very common image of Paul—a sexist patriarch.

These pictures of Paul are understandable. But they’re also unfortunate. Because they’re uninformed impressions, like the impression you might get of a stranger if you happened to have a single snapshot of him but knew none of his story. Part of what I hope to do today is to help reform Paul’s image, just a bit. Because I think that once we appreciate Paul’s story and the world he lives in, we will find that he is actually nothing like those unfortunate pictures. He is instead a most incredible character, a man after Jesus’ heart, which is to say, a man with a heart for others.

Unlikely Allies: Today’s Philosophers

Curiously enough, some of Paul’s staunchest defenders today are not theologians but philosophers. In the last several decades, these philosophers have snatched Paul out from under the nose of the church and turned him into their poster boy for “universalism”—meaning that truth is universal, it’s for everyone. For these philosophers, Paul completely rewrites the story of his day, liberating truth and beauty and goodness from the grasp of a privileged few.[1]

At the time of Paul, the story according to the world is that some people are better than others, that some folks stand closer to the truth. There is a prayer among Paul’s own people that says, “Blessed are you, God, who has not made me a Gentile, a slave, or a woman.” Among the Greeks and the Romans, there is a similar prayer attributed to Socrates that thanks the God of Fortune for being born a human and not a brute, a man and not a woman, a Greek and not a barbarian.[2]

Everyone around Paul believes in this natural order of better and worse people, superior and inferior. But Paul stands up, shakes his head, and says, “You’ve got it all wrong.” In just a few words, he crosses out the entire story of the world and writes a new one. In just a couple of lines, he topples the distinctions that both the Jewish people and the Roman people were making: “There is no longer Jew or Gentile….slave or free…male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (3:28). For Paul, the truth and beauty and goodness of life are not the privilege of a few; they are not the natural property of certain groups. They are universally on offer. The truth and beauty and goodness of life are on tap at your local diner, wherever you are.

Paul and the Biggest of Bear Hugs

This is a far cry from the less-than-flattering pictures of Paul we sometimes see. This is not a picture of Paul the taskmaster, Paul the bureaucrat, or Paul the patriarch. This is a picture of Paul with his arms open wide for the biggest of bear hugs. This is a snapshot of Paul gathering everyone in for a universal embrace. This is an image of Paul that, if we’re not wearing our glasses or contact lenses, almost looks like a picture of Jesus, the Jesus who would hang out around Samaritans and centurions, children and women, tax collectors and other less-than-reputable types.

And so it’s tempting to stop reading right here, to preserve the warm fuzzy feeling that comes from Paul’s declaration of God’s universal welcome, from Paul’s “all means all.” Because isn’t that what church is all about? Welcoming everyone, red and yellow, black and white, Jew and Greek, male and female?

When All Doesn’t Mean All

Welcoming everyone is what our own tradition, the Disciples of Christ, has been about ever since it emerged in the 1800s. The early leaders of the Disciples, Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone, both opposed slavery. Even before the Civil War, our tradition could boast mixed race congregations. “No longer Jew or Greek, no longer slave or free…”

And yet, that is the history of our church told from the perspective of the church leaders, who happened to be white. Listen now to the voice of another early Disciple, Samuel Robert Cassius, who happened to be black: “Let [‘the colored man’] presume to know something beyond an occasional prayer or a short talk at some mid-week social…meeting, and he soon finds out that he is a Negro, and a relic of an inferior race, and that his presence can only be tolerated as long as he is willing to keep still.”[3] Cassius complains that although black folks could step inside the church door, they could never receive the full blessing of their fellow members. In fact, it was quite common that they were forced to sit either in the balcony or in the back pews.

We have come a long way since then. I look out on a church full of people sitting wherever they want—which, most of the time, is the same exact seat! Our bulletin proclaims, “Gayton Road Christian Church—Where everyone is welcome!” And I have trouble imagining the person whose hand Carl would not shake.

And yet…I know the story is much more complicated than this. I know that there are other Samuel Cassius’s in the world, even today, others who do not feel the full embrace of God’s universal love when they step inside the church doors. I know that there are other Samuel Cassius’s today who feel that they must segregate their own personhood, their own self, that they must keep part of themselves silent or absent, in order that they might receive the full embrace of a church. I was recently told the story of a young woman who had attended church all her life, loved it like she loved her family, and yet as she became aware of her homosexual identity, she also became aware that this integral part of who she was would never be accepted inside her church’s doors. Like Samuel Cassius’ skin color, it might be tolerated if she kept quiet. But it would never be embraced.

Universalism with a Particularist Twist

The philosophers, I believe, are onto something when they point out Paul’s universalism. But we as readers of the Bible must take it one step further. Because Paul isn’t making the simple claim that we are all the same. He is making the claim that we in our many colorful differences are all loved the same by God in Christ. And he is taking this message specifically to the people who have experienced rejection, who have never received the full embrace of fellowship.

In my mind, the most important point of today’s scripture isn’t what’s in the words themselves but what’s around them. The most important point to remember is that Paul isn’t writing these words of universal welcome to the universe. He’s writing these words to a group of Gentiles, telling them that God loves and blesses them as they are, begging them not to forfeit their freedom in Christ, not to cut off a part of themselves in order to please the people around them.

Paul, remember, identifies himself not as the apostle to everyone, but as the apostle to the Gentiles (cf. Gal 1:16; 2:8; Rom 1:5; 11:13; 1 Tim 2:7). He is a universalist, yes, but he is also a particularist. He preaches particularly to the people who need the message most, the people who have been told that their lives don’t matter. God loves everyone, Paul knows that, but Paul also sees the reality that Gentiles are still treated like second-class believers. When they go to the Temple, they are restricted to the outer chambers. When they want to join with other Christ-followers, they are told that they have to change themselves; that they have to make their body like a Jewish body, circumcised and nourished by a Jewish diet.

Paul’s brand of universalism is neither passive nor apolitical. It’s not a kum-ba-ya universalism that says “everybody’s good” in order to deflect difficult questions and avoid controversy. If anything, it’s the opposite. Paul’s universalism is passionate and political. It points fingers and names names. It believes that all lives matter, yes, but it proclaims a particular gospel to the people who feel like their lives don’t matter. It says a blessing especially for them. Not the standard blessing, “Thank God I’m not a Gentile,” but the opposite: “Gentile lives matter.” It is the cause of Christianity’s first great controversy. It is the reason that Peter and James and all the leaders of the movement convene in Jerusalem for the first “General Assembly,” if you will, to figure out what they are going to do about the Gentiles.

The Heart of Paul

And this is where I love Paul the most. Despite his patriarchal blind spots, despite his occasionally heavy-handed manner, he has a heart full of love for the least and the last and the left-out, just like Jesus. He has a heart for the people whose entire history is one of toleration at best, rejection at worst. And so he dedicates his entire life to naming them and blessing them. Just a few verses earlier, he quotes scripture from Genesis that says, “All the Gentiles shall be blessed…” (3:8; cf. Gen 12:3). And then in today’s scripture he calls them “children of God” (3:26).

Paul had a heart for the Gentiles. I’m not here to proclaim whom you have a heart for. I’m only here to point out that there are people who have been marginalized their entire lives, who have grown up with the message that their lives are not as important as others; people who do not feel or know the blessing of God’s love and welcome in their lives, who would quake with fear and worry to walk through the doors of a church—perhaps people who are sitting here today. I’m only here to point out that there are still folks who need an apostle like Paul, a messenger who will name them and bless them and tell them that God loves them.

Gayton Road is a wonderfully open and friendly and diverse church. Just look around at the different ages and energy levels and colors and life backgrounds. May the heart of faith that beats among us, continue to beat and inspire us to proclaim God’s universal love to the particular people who need it most.

Prayer

God whose embrace
We know most fully in Christ,
Who embraces us all:
Make us apostles of your love,
Messengers of your mercy,
To the people who need it most.
Amen.

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[1] For more on this move among contemporary philosophers, see St. Paul among the Philosophers (eds. John D. Caputo and Linda Martín Alcoff; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009).

[2] Yehudah Mirsky, “Three Blessings,” http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/three-blessings/#, accessed June 24, 2016.

[3] Douglas A. Foster, The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 204), 619.

The Gospel of What Is Unaccountable (Gal 2:15-21)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on June 12, 2016, Proper 6)

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Two Sides of the Same Coin

Recently I finished reading Cannery Row, a novel by John Steinbeck, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. With many books, I have trouble getting past the first fifty pages. Not with Steinbeck. He paints the setting of his stories with broad, colorful strokes, filling the canvas with contradictions, with a rich diversity of compelling characters. Over here, he introduces us to the rich and well-to-do. And opposite to them, he makes our acquaintance with the bums and the beggars. Next he leads us to the darker corners of town, where we find the local “sporting house” and other less-than-reputable places. And then afterward, he shines a light on the households of virtue and stability. Rich and poor, healthy and unhealthy, good and bad—Steinbeck fills his story with characters from both sides of life.

Many readers have remarked that Steinbeck had a better sense than most what it means to be American. And I have to agree. Drive through just about any town and you’re bound to see contradictions sitting side-by-side: a tobacco shop right next to a yoga studio, a fitness center right across from a fast food chain where you can super-size any item. Find me an adult bookstore, and within a block or two I’ll find you a church.

It’s tempting to see these many opposites as competitors. But as Steinbeck skillfully illustrates over the course of his novels, these contradictory people and places are often two sides of the same coin. The one side is necessary for the other; the one keeps the other in business. What appeal would fitness centers and yoga studios have if there were no establishments promoting the sedentary life? What else is a church for, but to clean up the folks who have slipped into less reputable habits?

The “Law”: Sin vs. Virtue 

In his own way, Steinbeck is addressing what Paul addresses in today’s scripture. When Steinbeck shows us virtuous characters and sinful characters, honorable places and places of ill repute, he is showing us a pattern of life that Paul, I think, is protesting.

Of course, Paul writes with very different words than Steinbeck. In Paul’s language, the pattern of life that he is protesting is “the law.” In today’s scripture, Paul addresses a group of Christ-followers who believe that in order to follow Christ, you must also follow “the law.” In other words, these Christ-followers believe that following Christ means doing virtuous things. For them, the world is an arena where good fights evil, and the law oversees this ethical competition.

But Paul sees things differently. Yes, he believes that the law identifies what is good and holy and from God;[1] and yes, he believes that the law distinguishes virtue from sin. But he also believes that virtue and sin are two sides of the same coin, that they turn life into nothing more than a marketplace where virtue and sin are always keeping each other in business. And for Paul, the gospel of Christ is revolutionary because it does not trade in the coin of virtue and sin. It does not live by the law. It does not find life in the law.

The Law of Our Lives

It's worth taking a moment to untangle just what “the law” is. On the surface, it would appear that Paul is talking about the Jewish law. That’s probably what the Galatians would have heard. But Paul, I think, means much more than just a single set of laws. When he refers to the law, we might imagine him referring to it as the Uppercase “L” Law. He is talking about a capital “L” Law that extends across all parts of life: economy, politics, religion, relationships. He is talking about the Law that accounts for every little thing in life. If someone borrows money from you, then they must pay you back. If someone commits a crime, then they must endure a proportionate punishment.[2] If someone treats you rudely, then there must be a reason: perhaps they underslept; perhaps they were upset by something you said.

The Law determines the order of life. It balances the accounts; it accounts for every decision, every consequence. It is the “ought” or the “should” that directs the traffic of life, whether that “ought” or “should” comes from the government or your parents or your teacher or your pride. If you think about it like a computer program, the Law is the code that ensures life will run smoothly.

Or if you think about it like a game, such as baseball or Monopoly, the Law is the rules to the game. The rules, of course, are essential to the game. Without rules, you wouldn’t have teams or time limits or out-of-bounds or goals or fouls. Without rules, there wouldn’t be a game. Just as without code, there wouldn’t be a computer program. So, without the Law, there wouldn’t be life.

But here’s where Paul jumps in so passionately. The Law may be essential for life, but according to Paul, it is also insufficient for life. To live by the Law is to miss out on life. If Paul lived today, I imagine that he would say, to live by the Law is to be nothing more than a robot. In order to live, one must actually, as Paul says, “die to the law” (2:19).

If Paul lived in the twenty-first century and had a working knowledge of modern-day sports and board games, I imagine that he would put it like this. Can you remember the last time you really enjoyed a game? When you laughed? When you forgot about the world around you because you were having so much fun? At that moment of supreme joy, you were not thinking about the rules. You were not accounting for what was what in the game. Sure, you were playing by the rules—you were taking turns, heeding the boundaries—but you were not thinking about the rules. There’s only one person on a playing field always thinking about the rules, always accounting for every move of the game, and that’s the referee or the umpire. And while these officials may enjoy what they do, it’s a safe bet that they never experience the full joy of the game. They do not know the breathless wonder of sinking a last-second shot or flawlessly executing an overhead kick. They do not know the miracle of making a move that even you didn’t know you would make before you made it.

The Unaccountable Faith of Christ

The joy of a game, the wonder and the miracle and the breathless laughter—that, Paul says, does not come about because of the Law. It comes about, rather, by “the faith of Christ” (2:16; cf. 2:20). Our translation today still reads “faith in Christ,” which implies that faith begins with us, with our trusting Christ…but the original Greek literally reads “faith of Christ,” which means that it is actually Christ’s trust in us and his affirmation of us that gives us life.

We all know the difference between prescribed, law-determined kindness and unaccountable kindness, between someone treating us nicely because they “ought” to and someone who does it unaccountably, for no other reason than us ourselves. A good deed is a good deed, and yet unaccountable goodness breathes new life into us whereas prescribed goodness leaves us feeling like an object or an opportunity for someone else. I think this is what Paul is getting at when he says that real life comes through “the faith of the son of God who loved [us] and gave himself for [us].” When someone else loves us unaccountably and gives themselves unaccountably for us, we are inspired to live in an infinitely more colorful and joyful way than the Law could ever imagine. This unaccountable love of Christ is the heart of a heartless world, the flesh and blood that invites us out of our automatic, robotic, law-determined lives into a new and strange and different life.[3]

From Law to Life

Not long ago, I was checking out at the supermarket. Even now, at an age that must surely qualify as “adult,” I still feel a tinge of anxiety when I check out. Forced into a face-to-face encounter with plenty of dead time, I debate the length of eye contact to make with this complete stranger, whether or not to venture a conversational word—and if so, what could I possibly say beyond the weather? Anyway, on this occasion, I took a survey of my cashier’s face and saw a frosty distance. Deciding to keep quiet, I looked this way and that. Checked my phone. But then when I looked up to receive my receipt, I was inexplicably confronted with a pair of eyes looking into mine, a genuine smile, and a warm, “Take it easy.”

I know that such a moment probably seems inconsequential. But I count it as something divinely unaccountable. It confounded all reason and expectation. It was a glitch that the code of life could not account for, a moment of life that the Law could not explain. It was a tiny moment, a mustard-seed moment of grace. In it I encountered the faith of Christ, the love and self-giving of Christ.

It was but a “fleeting and fragile” moment.[4] And yet, the gospel that Paul proclaims is the good news that moments such as this one, moments of love that are unaccountable by any law, are what lead us into newness and strangeness and difference—which are all words for a much simpler gospel word: Life.

Prayer

God of grace,
Incognito Christ,
Still walking in the world,
Loving us and giving yourself for us—
Point us beyond our lifeless account of the world,
Beyond debt and payment, crime and punishment, cause and effect;
Live within us;
Inspire us to a love
That is unaccountable and real and alive.
Amen.

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[1] John D. Caputo, “Postcards from Paul: Subtraction versus Grafting,” in St. Paul among the Philosophers (eds. John D. Caputo and Linda Martín Alcoff; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 5.

[2] Shame and guilt are an important part of the Law, because they are signals that the Law has been transgressed and that something must be made right.

[3] The inspiration behind the figure of “what is unaccountable” comes from Caputo’s essay, “Postcards from Paul,” which reviews Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek’s appropriation of Paul as a revolutionary. Both Badiou and Žižek treat Paul as someone who points us beyond the negative prohibitions of the law, which keep us mired within a false self, to love, which is the life-giving affirmation of the other.

[4] Caputo, “Postcards from Paul,” 11.

A Faith Untaught: The "Apocalypse" of Jesus Christ (Gal 1:11-24)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on June 5, 2016, Proper 5)

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A Faith That Jumps off the Page

When I was little, I spent a great deal of time with our neighbors across the street. They were a friendly family. And also a little bit odd. I think the kind way to put it, would be to say that their heads were in the clouds much of the time. I would regularly come home from their house with pocketfuls of coins, which concerned my parents. But I could hardly help it; loose change was practically growing on their couches and floors. I remember dinner with them one night. We had pizza, and it was piping hot. Their son, who was my age——I’ll call him Christopher—simply could not wait for it to cool off a little. And so what other choice did he have? Without a second’s hesitation, he emptied his glass of milk on his slice. And then happily began eating.

Christopher grew up with many of the same stories that I did. His parents had read him the Narnia series as well as The Hobbit. He had seen the Star Wars trilogy. And so quite naturally, when we played together, our imaginations would run wild in tandem. Sometimes we would be hobbits or elves or talking creatures fighting the White Witch. Sometimes we would create our own stories. In either case, we would take on the lead roles in a living story of universal significance, in a story that would decide the very fate of the world.

When Jesus said that the kingdom of God belonged to children and people like them, I think that part of what he was saying was that faith jumps off the page. It is not confined to what lies between two hardbound covers. It is not merely something that is taught, or something that is memorized and recited, like a multiplication table or the Declaration of Independence. It is a living story—one that we are caught up in, one that we are written into, one that we are writing.

From a Faith of the Word to a Faith of the Event

Paul, the man who writes today’s scripture, had lived almost his entire life thinking that faith was a closed book. He had treated faith like a final word. For him, faith had been the kind of thing that could be taught and passed on from generation to generation. Faith was what he had memorized and recited as a student of famous rabbis. It was the security and certainty of a word that never changes.

But then one day, Paul says, he has a “revelation” of Jesus Christ. In the Greek, he has “an apokalupsis of Jesus Christ,” or as we would say today, “apocalypse.” The word itself means unveiling or uncovering. For many of us it conjures up a dramatic event, an event of earthquakes and fires and floods. And that’s what the “apocalypse” of Jesus Christ is for Paul. Not fire or flood—but a moment of great change, a moment when everything he had read jumped off the page. Suddenly the closed hardbound covers of his faith were wrenched open. Suddenly all the words he had been taught, all the words he had memorized and recited—they were caught up in a live event, an encounter with the living God, a new twist in the story.

And so there’s this delicious irony: the Paul who grew up thinking that faith was a closed book, is the same Paul who writes another page in that very book. His letters have become a crucial part of the Bible, a book dear to our faith.

Repeating Paul’s Mistake

Of course, Paul didn’t know that his words would become a part of our scripture. At the time, his only interest was defending himself from certain opponents. Remember, he is facing criticism for suggesting that some of the old laws no longer apply to following Christ, laws like circumcision and the dietary restrictions. His defense is revolutionary. Rather than searching for justification in the precedent of scripture or what Jesus had said, he simply shares his personal experience. His defense is to say that faith is not a word but an event, not an account of God but an encounter with God, not a teaching of Christ but an “apocalypse” of the living Christ.

In the end, Paul’s words won the day. Faith was freed from its hardcover binding; it jumped off the page once more. But ironically enough, today when we read Paul’s words—words that point toward an event of faith, a personal “apocalypse”—we are tempted to shut them away between two covers of their own, to turn them into a new closed canon of faith. To do so is to make the exact mistake that Paul’s words warn against, the mistake that he had made earlier in his life. It is to treat faith as a final word rather than as a living event, as what is memorizable and recitable rather than as the “apocalypse” that reveals something new and different. Like Paul before his encounter with Christ, we treat faith as a finished story rather than as a story that jumps off the page.

The Apocalypse of Christ: 

Not a Learned Word but a Lived Event

Consider your own faith. What is its substance? If you’re like me, if you’ve grown up in the church, then it is tempting to say that our faith is what we learned, what was taught to us in Sunday School and church camps and countless sermons (like this one!). But listen again to what Paul says about his newfound faith: “I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it”!

I think we’re all a little bit like Paul. We have grown up in a tradition of faith. We have often confined our faith to the safe and secure space between the hardcover binding of a closed book. We have often confused our faith with what is familiar, so that sometimes “faith” is actually code for my understanding and my desires, what I want God to do, how I think God should act.

But the good and unsettling news of today’s message is that faith is never a closed book; it is always jumping off the page. We encounter Christ not merely in words but in the flesh of our lives. Paul’s life is a perfect example of this. He grew up thinking faith was a final word, one that conveniently matched his own understanding—and who among us has not thought the same at one time or another? But then one day his world was turned upside down. He had an apocalypse, a revelation, of Jesus Christ. Faith was no longer a learned word but a lived event, an event that changed things, complicated things, kept things alive.

In this way, faith bears a close resemblance to the inspired play of children, for whom the story does not end at the end of a book. The good and scary news of today’s scripture is that whether we grow up in the Jewish tradition like Paul, or the Christian tradition, or any other tradition, the event—the apocalypse—of God in our lives will break open the closed book of faith and invite us to write ourselves into it.

“You Have Heard, No Doubt, of My Earlier Life in Christianity…”

Bearing that gospel in mind, I invite us to explore our own lives, to listen to them, in order to discover the event—the apocalypse of Christ—that inspires our faith. With the help of Paul’s words in today’s scripture, I share with you now my own faith, which is not a word that I was taught word-for-word but rather an event. I share with you the apocalypse of Christ in my life:

“For I want you to know, sisters and brothers, that the gospel that is proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

“You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Christianity. I was going to church every Sunday and Wednesday, memorizing scripture, reading books by inspired Christian thinkers, learning how to speak the Christian language. I advanced in Christianity and gained the recognition of my peers and the approval of my elders, for I was dedicated to their traditions.

“But when I encountered Christ, it was not through my own understanding or even through the understanding of the church, but rather through an apocalypse; through the grace of God that practically threw itself at me, that uncovered Christ in the world, often in unexpected people and unfamiliar places. Christ was uncovered for me in a Burmese refugee boy in whom I heard Jesus call out to me, ‘I’m lonely, don’t leave’; Christ was revealed to me through my parents and my brother—not through their ‘Christian’ words or deeds, but through their sacrificial gifts of love that inspired me to love; and Christ showed himself to me in an unlikely, ragtag group of housemates who lifted me out of loneliness and unwittingly demonstrated a Christ-like belief in the goodness of this world and the holiness of life.”

That is part of the apocalypse of Christ in my own life. And it is my faith that such apocalypses are breaking open the closed bindings and writing a fresh faith in all our lives, in all our stories.

Prayer

Christ of apocalypse,
Who breaks open closed books of faith,
Who flusters final words of faith,
Who encounters us in the flesh:
Be known among us today
Beyond the words we learn;
Jump off the page
And sweep us into God’s living story of love.
Amen.