Galatians
3:23-29
23 Now before faith came, we
were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. 24
Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be
justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to
a disciplinarian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through
faith. 27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves
with Christ. 28 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or
free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ
Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs
according to the promise.
Perhaps you’ve
heard the story about the little boy who went on his first plane ride with his
parents. The night before, he packed his bag, laid out his traveling clothes,
and even set his socks inside his shoes because he wanted to be sure to be
ready in the morning. He didn’t sleep that night; he only thought about all the
wonder and excitement there would be in his first ride in an airplane. When he
woke up in the morning, he only ate one piece of toast—no butter (he could
swear he remembered someone had told him it was better to travel without a full
stomach). He loaded his suitcase in the trunk of the car all by himself, found
his place in the backseat, and headed to the airport with his parents.
He found everything about the airport exciting. He
couldn’t get over the parking deck, how his dad drove around and around, up and
up, until he finally found an empty spot. As they unloaded the car, his dad
said to him, “Now, help me remember son: we parked on the fourth level, yellow
zone, section F4.” He lugged his bag to the elevator they took to the level for
checking in, and even there he was amazed by all the people, from everywhere,
who all had their own suitcases and places to go. Even the security line was
fascinating to him; he especially liked the whole idea of taking his shoes
off—something he always thought was frowned upon in public. When they finally
made it to their gate, he stared out the window the entire time, watching as
planes were being taxied from the landing strip to their gates, and he loved
watching them shoot down the runway as they magically lifted off the ground,
heading somewhere far away in a hurry.
It wasn’t too long before their
plane made it to the gate, and they were on their way down the jetway and onto
the plane to find their seats. He asked his dad if he could sit by the window,
because he didn’t want to miss anything. He stared out the little porthole the
entire time, watching the crew stow the checked luggage, watching the ground
begin to move after the thud of the taxi pushed the plane away from the gate.
He continued to watch as the plane was pointed down the runway, and then, as
the sound of the spooling engines roared over all other noise in his ears, he
watched as the ground moved faster…and faster…and faster, until he suddenly
felt the whole machine lift and the ground began to get farther and farther
away.
His dad watched him as he looked out
the window, but once the pilot reached cruising altitude, he noticed his son
wasn’t nearly as excited as he had been all morning. He asked him, “Son, is
something wrong?” The little boy turned away from the window, looked down at
the floor of the plane, and as he sunk into the seat he said, “There aren’t any
lines.” The boy’s father was obviously confused so he asked, “What kind of
lines aren’t there, son?” to which the boy replied, “You know, the lines that
show where the states are, and there aren’t even any words to tell me which
state is which!” I suppose when all you’ve ever seen of the country, all you’ve
ever seen of the world, is a flat map or a round globe with lines drawn on it
and words labeling one state or country from the next, you might come to expect
to see those lines and labels from the window of an airplane.
Isn’t it something, though, that
once we get high enough, once we’ve reach a certain altitude in our own
atmosphere, that the lines we’ve drawn and the labels we’ve made disappear? Or,
perhaps it’s better to understand the fact that they were never really there in
the first place. Of course, the reality is that we’ve drawn those lines; we’ve
created those labels: lines to separate ourselves, labels to clearly tell who’s
who and what’s what. Some of the lines we draw are ancient ones, lines first
drawn by our ancestors centuries ago, lines drawn around ideologies, religion,
and ethnicity. Some of the labels we use are also ancient, created in a time
when we thought it beneficial to identify differences, to highlight possible
threats.
Usually, when we draw such lines, it is so we can erect walls, put up
fences, keep other people out, to say, “This in here is mine, and you aren’t
allowed any part of it, at least not without my permission.” We tend to label
people for the same reason: “These
people are like me, while those
people aren’t.” I’m afraid it’s a habit as old as humankind itself, and it’s
one that, unfortunately, didn’t end even with the first generation of
Christians—not even with some of those who actually heard Jesus “live and in
person.” We know, because the apostle Paul had to deal with this sort of
“line-drawing” and “label-making” in much of his ministry, particularly in his
dealings with the church at Galatia.
You see, it was there in Galatia that Paul had to deal with a group of
legalistic Christians some call “Judaizers.” While they were followers of
Christ, they believed that every believer had to first become a practicing Jew
before they could really be called a “follower of Jesus.” This meant a strict
adherence to the law (the Torah) of the Hebrew Bible, including dietary laws,
laws about the Sabbath, and laws concerning the cultic practices of the temple
and ritual purity. They also believed that in order to be a true follower of
Christ, every man had to be circumcised (now you can imagine the men just
lining up to take part in that particular aspect of the law!). For Paul, this
was ludicrous. The whole of Paul’s theology, his understanding of God in Christ
was founded in the grace of God, the unmerited, unearned salvation of Christ,
the freely given, eternal love of God. To ascribe to the law, to be enslaved to
the ancient practices of ritual sacrifice and laws covering everything from the
clothes you wear to the food you eat, flies in the face of grace according to
Paul. To the apostle, the demand to be a “Jew first, then a Christian” seemed
absolutely absurd—and I happen to think so too.
But to tell you truth, I can understand it—really I can. After all, how
many of us would want to be a part of some organization our whole lives, having
worked to reach a certain level of respect and recognition, only to have a crop
of new folks come in and expect to be treated as equals? I can understand it,
drawing lines, labeling things, saying this is how it has to be if you want to
be a part of this. I remember when my step brothers first moved in: I went from
one boy in one bed in one room, to four boys in one bed in one room. You better
believe there was some line-drawing and label-making going on! “You can’t play
with this; it’s only for Thomas’s…this is my side of the room and if you want
to use anything over here you better ask me first.” I can understand the need
to draw lines, to clearly point out the old rules to someone who wants to join
in an established movement. I think that may have been part of what was going
on with Paul’s opponents in Galatia: they were life-long Jews (most of them
anyway) or Gentile converts who had obeyed the Law (including circumcision),
and it just didn’t seem fair for others to join the Jesus movement without
having to go through all that they had gone through. It didn’t seem fair that
those folks got the same benefits they got. But, you know, that’s grace, after
all.
That’s grace, to give one a “pass,” to forget about credentials and
certificates of authenticity. Grace says, “I may have been at this longer than
you, and I may have earned this more than you, but come on in anyway—in fact,
have more than me.” Grace says there’s no distinction based on age, experience,
tenure, or history: anyone who comes is welcome. That’s grace, but grace…well,
if we’re honest, we don’t like grace, at least not when it’s extended to
others. Grace for me is fine—“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a
wretch like me—but grace for
you…well, let me get to know you a little first. Grace peels back the labels,
erases the lines we’ve attempted to draw separating the “worthy” from the
“unworthy,” the “good” from the “bad,” and the “sinner” from the “saint.”
However, when we start talking about the grace of God, the love of Christ, like
that…when we start talking about how God has erased those labels we’ve
made…when we start quoting verse 28 of
our text this morning, “There is no longer Jew or
Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female;
for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” especially in a day when folks get awful caught up in
trying to label people one way or another…well, folks start squirming a bit.
After all, those labels exist for a reason; those lines were drawn for a
reason, weren’t they?
I’m sure Paul’s
opponents in Galatia made that argument, that in order to be heirs to Abraham’s
promise, followers of Jesus had to follow the same covenant of Abraham, the
same laws his descendants had been following for centuries. I’m also pretty
sure that at the heart of their insistence on becoming “Jews first” there was a
hope that maybe, just maybe, these Gentile converts, these slaves, these women,
these sinners, these not-like-them-at-all kind of folks would just give up and
not want to be a part of the movement, because, you know, if you don’t want
someone in your group, if you don’t want someone around you, in your circles, in
your community, all you have to do is make a few laws they’ll never be able to
keep—you know, like voting tests and poll taxes. If you want to keep someone
out, someone you don’t want in, just make it really hard for them, or better
yet, if you’re a religious person, use religion. At least you’ll feel a bit
better about yourself. You could stand on street corners with signs printed
with obscure biblical references, calling out the sins in a community of
people. Perhaps you could make a list of all the things, all the practices, all
the required church services one has to attend, the proper way to be baptized,
the right translation of the Bible to read, the proper percentage of your gross
income to tithe…maybe you could set down a list of all of those things you find
in scripture that “good, godly people” are supposed to do, and then, when
others can’t live up to them, pat them on the head and tell them you’ll pray
for them. That’ll keep them out.
Or you could
revert back to that most ancient practice, the one which Paul decries so
directly in the text before us this morning; you could just label folks. It’s
not that hard really, just find a flaw, a characteristic, an orientation, an
identity that another person has that you find unsavory, unfit, or just down
right unbearable and call it out. Call it out and name those who claim it to be
unworthy of Christ’s love, unworthy of God’ grace, unworthy of the salvation
which you have so freely and unconditionally been given. That’s what we do, you
know: we label folks with words and titles and then we say they aren’t worthy,
that the Bible says they’re bound for hell. But can I tell you something? We
can create whatever labels we want, we can conjure them up from the very pages
of our King James Bibles and we can place them on the heads of those we’d like
to see left outside of God’s kingdom, but every single time we do, God’s grace
peels the label right off. Every single time we try to limit the love of God by
labeling someone as “unworthy,” “heathen,” “abomination,” “reprobate,”
“sinner,”—every single time the unconditional grace of God rips that label off
to show us that beneath every label we make for ourselves and for one another,
under every attempt we’ve made to raise ourselves above someone else or to
bring other below us, under every label there is but one truth: each and every
one of us is a child of God, called to a life of faith in love through Jesus
Christ. God’s grace peels off the labels and clothes us with Christ, and in
Christ, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free,
there is no longer male and female; [there is no longer black or white,
there is no longer rich or poor, there is no longer ‘normal’ or ‘different,’
there is no longer gay or straight, there is no longer democrat or republican,
there is no longer ‘us’ or ‘them’] for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
The labels have been peeled off. Thanks be to God. Amen.
