5/14/23 Sermon
Galatians 1: 1-12
From Paul, an apostle who is not sent from human authority or commissioned through human agency but sent through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead; and from all the brothers and sisters with me.
To the churches in Galatia.
Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. He gave himself for our sins, so he could deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father. To God be the glory forever and always! Amen.
I’m amazed that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ to follow another gospel. It’s not really another gospel, but certain people are confusing you and they want to change the gospel of Christ. However, even if we ourselves or a heavenly angel should ever preach anything different from what we preached to you, they should be under a curse. I’m repeating what we’ve said before: if anyone preaches something different from what you received, they should be under a curse!
Am I trying to win over human beings or God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I wouldn’t be Christ’s slave. Brothers and sisters, I want you to know that the gospel I preached isn’t human in origin. I didn’t receive it or learn it from a human. It came through a revelation from Jesus Christ.
WORD OF LORD
I had a rough time growing up. I really did. To this day, I don’t think my parents - nor do I really- understand why. They gave me every chance and afforded me every opportunity to succeed. They blessed me with just about anything I would need and still I had a rough go of it. I think the problem is that I never really felt like I belonged anywhere. Not even with my family. My Dad’s family, and all my cousins on his side are all freaks of nature. They’re all ridiculously good looking, all of them athletic, and they’re all really smart and live terribly interesting lives now. My mom’s side of the family may be more like me -not as good-looking and more nerdy than athletic, but my mom is the only sister out of 3 kids. So, I had a different last name. And that meant instant exclusion according to my cousins. I “wasn’t one of them” growing up. Add to it that I’m adopted, and no one looks anything remotely like me and, well... I just didn’t fit in.
In school I never fit in. I tried to like all the same things as everyone else, but to be honest I didn’t like any of it. I found Punk Rock and those kids seemed like they didn’t fit in either. But, in order to fit in with not fitting in with them you had to dress a certain way, and listen to a certain music, and do certain things. It was maddening. I couldn’t believe you had to fit in with the kids that didn’t fit in.
College was a bit different because if you decided to go to school on top of a mountain in Vermont... well, you didn’t fit in anywhere else either. So, we all gathered at Marlboro College. Freaks, outcasts, nerds, dorks, and people who still wanted to live in the Middle Ages and pretended to do so at every chance they could get. There weren’t rules about how to be there. You didn’t have to “be somebody”. It was the first place where I ever felt I could truly just be myself. It took me awhile to figure out what that even meant, but I did. But, as with anything, my time there came to an end, and I had to go back to the real world.
At Seminary, I REALLY didn’t fit in. I thought I was going to. We all had the same goal in mind, I thought. We were brought together by a common purpose and a single mission. But I clearly wasn’t cut from the same cloth as many of the upper-middle class southern kids I went to seminary with. I still hold the record for the most tattooed student in the entire history of Union Seminary. I’m not saying I’m better than them or that they’re better than me.
We were just different. And I just didn’t fit in. After all, most of them lived on the nice seminary campus surrounded by big houses and nice neighborhoods and I lived a mile and a half down the road in one of the worst ghettos of Richmond, Virginia. I went to sleep among yells and gunshots and sirens every night. Bev and I became friends with prostitutes and drug dealers. I was harassed by police because being the only white guy in my neighborhood was suspicious enough. The cops thought I was dangerous. My neighbors thought I was a cop because as one of them put it, “No white boy would be crazy enough to live down here unless he was a cop trying to find things out.”
And where most of the students at seminary went straight from nice, good universities into seminary, I was just a few years older, and our life experiences were vastly different. By the time I’d gotten to seminary I’d been homeless and jailed. Half the friends I did have growing up were dead or in jail. I’d struggled with addiction myself. And at this point I was living with my wife and two small step kids who I worried about constantly in this ghetto and how we were going to feed them and keep them safe. I was different than the other students. Not better or worse, just different. And I didn’t fit in. And it would keep me up at night because I would look at them, and our understandings of life and the gospel could be so radically different, and I would wonder if God called them and they are so different from me, had God really called me too?
And then something happened at Seminary. Something powerful and unexpected and scary and joyous. Beverly became pregnant. When she told me I couldn’t stop laughing. When I tried to tell my mother, I was laughing too hard to get the words out. I laughed. And so, when we found out this baby was going to be a boy, we named him Isaac. It means laughter in Hebrew. And the night he was born, after all the chaos had settled, I looked at this little baby, this little newborn boy and realized that I was looking at the very first genetic link to me I’d ever seen. The very first person that was in a very physical sense, a part of me, and that I was a part of as well. And for the very first moment in my life, I felt that feeling that I think all of us are truly searching for. I felt like I belonged. I felt a part of something. I felt a deep, abiding, lasting connection with another person that wasn’t built around requirements or what I dressed like, or what I’d done previously, or anything else. I looked into his little face, and I felt completely free.
I loved him from first glance without condition, without qualifiers, without standards, without limits, without expectation, without him doing anything at all to deserve that love. He was a part of me and I a part of him and we would be inextricably bound together forever. I love him unconditionally. As I love all my children. And that love, that unconditional love, is the single most liberating thing that has ever happened to me in my life. It meant that I could be free to be me and know that somehow, I am loved anyways.
And see, what it did was allow me to realize then, that even though I’m adopted, that’s the way my parents love me. And even though they aren’t my biological kids, that’s the way I love Samantha and Andrew, my step-kids. And even though I may have never realized it before that moment, that’s the way I’ve been loved my entire life. And I could be more open to that love. I could receive that love more fully and I could love others that way more deeply. And after that moment, whenever I heard this talk of God loving us like a parent loves their child, I suddenly understood what a powerful, powerful, powerful message that is to us. I can’t imagine a love that goes more deeply than that.
Here, in Galatians, right off the bat Paul is upset. And you can tell he’s upset because usually when he starts off a letter, he tells the people he’s writing to that he gives thanks for them, and he prays for them and he usually flatters them a little bit. Not here in Galatians. He announces who he is like he normally does and then says, what in the world are you people thinking? What are you doing?
You know what he’s mad about? He’s mad because They tried to put requirements on who earns God’s love. Someone came around and sold them a bill of goods about how you’re supposed to fit in with God. Back then, it was to be more Jew”ish”. The Galatians were mostly Gentiles, and some Jewish Christian missionaries came by and said you got to start acting more like us if you want to fit in with God. And it’s one of the only times that we see Paul getting really angry with some people.
It isn’t really anything Paul says here when he admonishes them that strikes me. I do like his question about whether he is seeking God’s approval or human approval; a question we all need to ask ourselves more from time to time. But it’s actually up in the greeting that Paul catches me. It shouldn’t seem like a surprising line, but it is for some reason. He’s giving them the Grace and Peace from God and Jesus, and then he says in most translations, “who gave of himself for our sins to SET US FREE... And then he slams them for putting requirements on that freedom. God has set you free through unconditional love, so why are you trying to make it conditional?
So, if you’re sitting out there today and wondering if you’ve done enough, or if you deserve it, or if you’re doing the right things, or dressing the part, or if you’re involved enough or give enough or believe the right things. I want you to sit back a second and take a deep breath. This isn’t a country club. They probably wouldn’t let me in if it was. So, Take a deep breath. You’re good enough. You’re doing ok. This isn’t about any of that. Church isn’t about doing or saying the right things. Being Christian isn’t about dressing or looking a certain way or even believing all the right things. Relax. Just be you. God’s here to set you free. God loves you unconditionally and deeply and fully. You don’t need to worry about that. And if you’re thinking maybe you don’t fit in here, Trust me you do. Just be yourself and I promise you that at least God’ll love you. That’s a joke. I will too.
Listen, it was the moment I looked down at my baby son. and I looked into his eyes, and I realized that this love, this overwhelming and deep love I felt for him is the same love, the same way God feels about me. It was then I realized that I was good enough for God. Not because I earned it. Not because of anything I had done, was doing, or would do in the future. But it’s because to God we’re all precious children. It was at that moment; it didn’t matter if I was like anyone else at seminary. It didn’t matter what I looked like or where I lived. It didn’t matter if I understood things the same way anyone else did. I was free to love God the best way I could and to serve God the best way I was able. No one else’s requirements really mattered. Once I realized how deeply God loves me, I could begin to live into my calling.
And that’s what I think Paul is telling us this morning. Stop worrying about how you live up to whatever requirements you think God has. We all fall short of them. So, stop worrying about God’s requirements. And start worrying about God’s will. It isn’t about living up to some expectation you think God has. It’s about living into the love and the life God’s already called you in to. Church shouldn’t be about what anyone else thinks it is or isn’t. Church is about a group of people struggling to become a family and responding to God’s deep and unconditional love that’s been poured out into our hearts. And there’s room for everyone and anyone here. It doesn’t matter how you hold up to some requirements. It only matters how you respond to God’s love.