(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on July 3, 2016, Proper 9)
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“Paul Takes on the Law”
Some stories in the Bible lend themselves to the big screen. The story of Joseph and his brothers, as we have seen in the wonderfully animated The Prince of Egypt. Moses and the great exodus, as we have sees in the now-timeless classic, The Ten Commandments. The life and death and resurrection of Jesus, as we have seen in countless renditions.
Galatians, on the other hand, does very little to suggest that it could ever make the big screen. But if a producer were ever to get the idea—and that’s a huge “if”—then the first thing she would need to do is to settle on a much more riveting movie title than Galatians. If it were up to me, I’d suggest something simple and concise, something that communicates the letter’s drama in a single sentence. Something like Paul Takes on the Law.
Because for nearly the entire letter, Paul takes the law to task. The law has us under an inescapable “curse,” he says (3:10-13). He charges the law with keeping us “imprisoned” (3:23). The law, he warns us, ultimately means death (cf. 2:19).
For Paul, what gives us life is not a bunch of “do’s” and “don’t’s.” What gives us life is God in Christ. If you ask a theologian what the letter to the Galatians is really about, he would probably answer you in stately theological language. “Galatians,” he would say, “is all about the doctrine of justification by faith alone.” Which is really just a fancy way of saying, Galatians is about life: not the life we can make for ourselves, not the life that results from following the rules like a robot follows its programmed maneuvers—but the life that is inspired by Jesus. For Paul, what gives us life is God in Christ, who says, “I believe in you, I have faith in you—in fact, I’m declaring you righteous right now” (cf. 2:16, 20).[1]
Consider for a moment a teacher or a parent who was or has been a particular inspiration for you. What was most inspiring about them? Was it the rules they imposed on you, or a program of reward and punishment? Or was it simply the fact that beyond all of that, they believed in you; they hoped the best for you; they trusted in their heart of hearts that you really would do great things?
Take that belief, that trust, and amplify it to a divine level, and you will have what Paul is talking about in Galatians. The faith of Christ is nothing other than this divine declaration that we are good and righteous and that God wants the world for us. That is what gives us life. Not the law.
What Rule, Paul?
And that is also why today’s scripture initially puzzled me. As Paul is concluding his case against the law and his proclamation of life through the faith of Christ, he writes these words: “As for those who will follow this rule—peace be upon them, and mercy” (6:16). “This rule”? What rule, Paul? Forgive me if I’ve misheard, but aren’t rules the very thing you’ve been railing against this entire letter? I thought you were against the law, not for it. I thought you said that living by rules alone sucks the life out of life.
If Paul could respond to my question, I imagine he would impatiently shake his head and point me back a verse, where he writes, “A new creation is everything.” I imagine he would excitedly exclaim to me, “This is a different kind of a rule. It is an unruly rule, a lawless law.”
Beyond a Paint-by-Numbers World
I’ve heard it said by someone here in our congregation that if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. And I think that’s a perfect summary of how Paul views the law and order of this world. The law is like a paint-by-numbers picture. If you do it perfectly, you’ll have a pretty picture. But if that’s all you ever do, then that generic, paint-by-numbers picture is all you’ll ever get.
And Paul has his heart set on something much greater than a paint-by-numbers picture of the world. Paul knows full well the story of creation—how everything was good. But when he looks out on the best that the law and order of his day can do, he sees a creation that is not always good: sick bodies, broken relationships, oppressive social systems. Rules will not fix this. Merely coloring inside the lines will not fix this. Only new life can renew creation. And Paul is so excited because he’s felt this new life, he’s been inspired by no doing of his own, and all through Christ. For Paul, the way of Christ is a way beyond the law. It is the way of new creation.
And indeed, the way of Christ is no simple paint-by-numbers picture. Painting-by-numbers will only get the world what it’s always got, and Jesus wants more, so much more. The rule of new creation that he embodies is a rule that sometimes goes outside the lines. It is a rule that stands up to the rules of the world in hope of renewing the world. Jesus continually challenges the social, religious, and political authorities of his day. He does not obey the social order that puts men above women, masters above slaves, or Jews above Samaritans and Gentiles. He confronts the religious order, calling it to task for knowing the law so well and yet so rarely living it out. He even upsets the order of the ruling empire. He baffles the Romans with the proclamation of a kingdom where Caesar is not Lord, a kingdom that operates in an entirely different way, where somehow the other is more important than the self. Whereas the Roman empire would say, “If you want peace, get ready for war,” Jesus would say things like, “Turn the other cheek,” and, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:39, 44).
New Creation by Way of the Cross
If Paul had to summarize the unruly rule of new creation that Christ lives for us, he would choose one word, as he does in today’s scripture: “May I never boast of anything except the cross” (6:14). The cross. The word does not sound so strange to us today, for whom the cross is as casual as a sports player’s gesture or an item of jewelry. But in the time of Jesus and Paul, the cross was an unspeakable thing. Literally. Cicero once wrote: Let “the very word ‘cross’….be far removed from not only the bodies of Roman citizens but even from their thoughts, their eyes, and their ears.”[2] For Paul to keep saying the word—much less for him to claim that the cross is the very thing that will heal our broken world—was absolutely ludicrous in his time. Baptist minister Clarence Jordan, who lived much of his life seeking racial reconciliation in the South, tried to recapture the craziness of a gospel of the cross. In his mind, here’s what Paul would have said had he grown up in the American South: “God forbid that I should ever take pride in anything, except the lynching of our Lord Jesus Christ.”[3]
And the crazy thing is, the lynching tree of our Lord does not mean death but life. It means “a new creation.” The lynching tree is the unruly rule of God’s love, which colors outside the lines, which cares not for our world’s conventions and classifications but for justice and mercy, forgiveness and hope, for everything that blesses and renews a broken world. The lynching tree of our Lord shows just how far this unruly rule of God’s love will go. No law can stand in its way.
The unruly rule of our Lord’s love, which we see in its fullest form on the lynching tree, restores every broken thing in creation. It does not color by number, which is to say, it is not deterred by the boundaries of law and order, threat and punishment, preconception and prejudice. Instead, it is doing something very different than what we’ve been doing, and getting us far more than we’ve got. It embraces every enemy, it lifts up the least and the littlest, it welcomes every stranger, it forgives every offense, it sanctifies every sorrow and suffering, it reconciles every division.
By the unruly rule of love, everything becomes a new creation. And in the ecstatic words of Paul, “A new creation is everything!”
Prayer
Christ of the cross,
Lord of the lynching tree—
Lead us beyond the law,
Beyond expectations and judgments,
Beyond prejudice and preconception
That keep getting us what we’ve got.
May we live into your love,
Where all things are being made new.
Amen.
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[1] This imagined declaration is based on the more literal translation of pistis christou as “faith of Christ.” This little phrase, in other words, centers faith not on us, not on something we do—which would ultimately subsume faith under the law—but rather on what Christ does for us. Christ has faith in us, even as we are, and so inspires in us a life of which it can be said, “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”
[2] Cicero, Pro Rabirio Postump 16.
[3] Clarence Jordan, The Cotton Patch Gospel: Paul’s Epistles (repr.; Macon, GA: Smith & Helwys, 2004), 101.
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