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.