(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on December 31, 2017, Christmas I)
Reading Beyond Rules
Reading begins with rules. First you must know the letters and the
sounds they make alone. Then you
need to know how the letters sound when they go together. A “p” by itself sounds like p, but if you add an “h” to it, the
sound transforms to f. Longtime readers take these rules for
granted, but if you stop to reflect on what it was like to learn them for the
first time, you’ll remember just how crazy and complicated our language is. The letter “g” makes the g sound, as in the word “go,” but it can
also make the j sound, as in the word
“gem,” or it can be silent as in the word “night” (“gh”) or “gnat” (the word
that stumped me in the Spelling Bee once), or
it can help make the f sound like in
the word “laugh.”
A number of years ago, I
volunteered in the morning as a reading tutor at Carver Elementary School. I remember my time with Ariana, a girl
in the first grade. At first,
reading was something Ariana dreaded.
The rules were too complex and demanding. Reading was work.
A chore, a burden. All
sweat, no smiles.
But one day something
clicked. Suddenly she didn’t want
to throw the book away. She wanted
to turn the page. What was the
difference? What had changed? Certainly she was still making
mistakes. She still didn’t know
all the rules of reading, and she still needed my help. But whereas before she was fearful of
the rules, of mistaking a pronunciation or getting a word wrong, now she had
discovered a world beyond the rules.
She had discovered the joy of stories. Now she
cared more about what happened on the next page than about getting a word wrong
here or there. Sure, she still
followed the rules of reading—that’s how you make out the right sounds, the
right words. But instead of
worrying about the rules, she was relishing the twists and turns of the story.
Jesus and Our Coming-of-Age: Living Beyond
Rules
In today’s scripture, Paul
addresses the Galatians, a community of Christ-followers who have a
problem. Their problem is that
they’re becoming a bit too rigid with rules. In particular, they feel that to follow Christ, who was
Jewish, you have to become Jewish, too, and follow all the Jewish laws.
But according to Paul, this
misses the point. Jesus came not
to give us rules but to give us life. Jesus came not so that we might be
perfectly programmed robots, following a set of unchanging rules, but so that
we might have abundant life, in all its unpredictable and messy glory. Paul explains this to the Galatians
with two different metaphors.
First, Paul says that Jesus
ushers us into our coming-of-age moment, where we move from being “minors”
under a “disciplinarian” to being adults.[1] This is the moment when we move beyond
the rules. Not against them, but
beyond them. In my mind, it’s like
the moment when Ariana started reading not because she was concerned about all
those crazy and complicated rules about letters and sounds, but because she had
discovered the joy of words and stories and what happens next. It’s like the moment when she stopped
wanting to put the book down, and instead wanted to turn the page. After Jesus is born into our world and
into our lives, we begin to see things differently. He shows us that life is a canvas for love, an opportunity
for goodness. Whereas before, we
may have seen things like conflict and interruptions as a test or a challenge,
where we must follow the rules or else, now we see these things as the material
for new life. We forgive old
grudges and open the door to strangers not because of some rules,[2]
but because we trust and hope that what happens next, when we turn the page,
will be more life, not less.
Jesus and Our Adoption: Living Beyond
Resolutions
Next, Paul says that Jesus is our
moment of adoption. In other
words, Jesus means that we belong. I have a hunch that the reason the
Galatians cared so much about rules in the first place is that they wanted to
belong. They wanted to prove
themselves. They wanted to fit in
with the religious crowd, with all the Jewish followers of Christ.
I wonder if resolutions are not a
little bit like rules. Here’s a
list of the top five resolutions from 2017: exercise more; lose weight; eat
more healthily; take a more active approach to health; learn a new skill or
hobby.[3] Basically, do more and eat less. But why? Certainly for good reasons, such as our health. But in my experience, resolutions are
also a way of proving myself. They
are a way to fit in. They are a
way to belong. One of my perennial
resolutions is to read more books.
Why? Not for the joy of
reading, which is a joy I genuinely feel, but so that I may prove to myself
that I am the reader I say I am, that I fit in with the literary world, that I
belong there.
But this kind of resolution gets
it backward. I do in order to
belong. But when Jesus joined us,
he gathered us with himself to become children of God. Which means we already belong. There’s nothing we need to do. Just as God looked upon Jesus and said,
“You are my beloved, in whom I am well pleased,” so God embraces us and calls
us God’s beloved too.
Resolutions suggest to us that we
should do something in order to belong. But according to Paul, it’s the other way around. We belong, and therefore we do! In other words, we are not slaves to
rules and resolutions, always trying to prove ourselves, to win the love of
others. We have the love of God,
our Father and Mother in heaven, and so we live freely out of that love. We live not out of human-made resolutions
but out of divine inspiration.
I remember how whenever one of my
former neighbors would mow the lawn, I would also see his son out with a toy
lawn mower, mowing too. I wonder
if that’s sort of how our coming-of-age and our adoption through Jesus works. We belong to God as sons and
daughters. And so we live like
sons and daughters who revel in their parents’ love, who do what they do not
out of fear or in order to prove themselves, but out of joy and inspiration
from their parents.
Paul’s “Christmas” Story
Paul never tells the Christmas
story in its traditional form, with Mary and Joseph and a manger. Instead he tells it as a story of our
own coming-of-age, where Jesus leads us into a world beyond rules, and as a
story of our adoption, where Jesus gathers us into his family as children of
God. Perhaps these are the stories
we need to hear as we step into a new year.
Resolutions and rules are not a
bad thing. But they will not save
us. What will save us is the love
that we already have. What will
save us is learning to say, “Abba!
Father!” What will save us
is living not in fear or self-striving, but in the freedom and inspiration of
love, which leads us to live like our Father and to expect even greater things
on the next page.
Prayer
Loving Father,
Tender Mother,
Whose heart aches for all the world:
Thank you for sending Jesus
Into our lives.
May he lead us
Beyond self-serving resolutions
To the inspiring call of your love.
May all that we do
Reflect the unchangeable truth
That we are yours. Amen.
[1] Cf. Gal
4:1-4, where Paul sets up the metaphor of a minor who does not live fully in
the world. This metaphor draws
further strength from the imagery in 3:24-26 of the law as a paidagagos, “teacher,” who was our
guardian “until Christ came.”
[2] Cf. Gal
5:22-23.
[3] From a
ComRes poll cited in Juliet Eysenck, “The Most Common New Year’s
Resolutions—and How to Stick to Them,” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/common-new-years-resolutions-stick/,
accessed December 28, 2017.
