Snakes and Angels (Lent 4B0

 

Michelangelo's Moses and the Brazen Serpent, Sistine Chapel Ceiling Fresco

 

Snakes and Angels

Fourth Sunday of Lent (Year B)
18th March 2012

Laetare Sunday
8 am Spoken Mass; 10 am Sung Mass
Homily Delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church, Ashland, Oregon

   The Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson, homilist  

Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21

From Mount Hor the Israelites set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food." Then the LORD sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD to take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said to Moses, "Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live." So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.  (Numbers 21:4-9) 

God, Take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen.

When I was about 8 years old, I first heard in Sunday School the story from the book of Numbers we read today.  It was a scary story, not the least because of the snakes raining down from the sky, “fiery serpents” in the translation my teacher used.  The people of Israel had been “murmuring” against God and their religious leader, Moses, and so God punishes them.  The lesson my teacher drew from the story was clear:  don’t complain about things at Church, don’t disagree with your hierarchy, or God will rain fiery snakes down on you!   That approach to Church polity in the Church in which I was raised was one of the things that lead me into the Episcopal Church.    Of course, this was before there was any discussion about an Anglican Covenant! 

The Hebrew text here says Yahweh sent saraph snakes upon the Israelites.  This is probably a name for a type of poisonous snake.  Saraph means “burning one,” and that presumably was the effect of the snake’s venomous bite.  The word shows up in Isaiah as a name for a light-filled heavenly being hovering on six wings around the throne of God and singing Qadosh, Qadosh, Qadosh (Holy, Holy, Holy).  It is this from kind of burning one that we get the name seraphim for one of the orders of angels.

But it is not an image of a seraph angel that Moses places on the pole as a wonder-working anti-venom.  The copper figure is plainly identified as a snake in the text. 

When I heard the story as a boy, even then I knew that something was the matter in this story.  You don’t cure snakebite by looking at magic talismans.  And the angry, nasty Deity who sends flying snakes to punish you for bad-mouthing your Sunday School teacher seemed far, far away from the loving father of Jesus’s parables.  I expressed this to my teacher, but she got very upset, saying that we needed to accept God’s word without question, otherwise we’d end up like the children of Israel, buried in flying, fiery serpents.

When I told my father about this, he said that the story was indeed strange, but that the bronze snake on a pole was actually a prefiguring of Christ.  He pulled out the New Testament and read the passage from St. John we read today as the Gospel.  He added that the snake on a pole image was also known in the pagan world, and had been a symbol for the Greek god of healing, Asclepius, and that’s why it showed up on hospital and doctor offices signs.  “So not all snakes are bad,” he said, and then added, thinking of my run-in with the Sunday School teacher, “and not all so-called good things are good.”    Since the word seraph means an angel as well as a poisonous snake, I would rephrase my father’s idea a little more succinctly, “Not all snakes are bad, and not all angels are good.” 

I later ran into the story again many years later as a graduate student in Biblical Studies.  There I learned that the story had its origins in a Canaanite snake cult that was fostered in early Israel along with Yahwism until the great reforms of King Hezekiah in the eighth century B.C.E. associated with the promulgation of the Book of Deuteronomy.   There is ample archeological evidence of such a cult, associated with fertility and the cure of snake-bites.  We read in 2 Kings 18:4 that Hezekiah, “demolished local shrines, shattered the pillars” honoring Baal, “cut down the poles” honoring Asherah, and “smashed the copper serpent called Nehushtan that Moses had made, because up to that time the Israelites were burning incense to it.”    2 Kings and Numbers both have apparently taken an object of earlier Israelite snake worship, stripped it of it cultic associations, and placed it squarely in the context of the worship of Yahweh by giving it a founding myth of Moses healing the recalcitrant Hebrews with the copper snake on a pole.   

“Not all snakes are bad, and not all angels are good.”

Here was a pagan, idolatrous image that had been “baptized,” as it were, by the scriptural writers at the time of Hezekiah.  By pulling out the snake’s pagan fangs, they had made it a symbol of Yahweh’s healing power.   God approaches us where we are, and can redeem seeming bad things. 

We have seen such “baptism” of so called bad things often through the centuries.  Modern Christian hymnody started when, in the early years of the Protestant Reformation in Germany, Martin Luther and his followers created a new style of religious song, sometimes drawing on Gregorian chant tunes, but more often from folk songs and popular melodies.  These previously profane tunes were baptized and became the Lutheran chorales like "A Mighty Fortress" and Genevan psalter tunes like "Old Hundredth," still sung as hymns in churches today.  The style was so infectious that the style was adopted in part by the Catholic Reformation.

Yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day.  The historic Patrick did not drive snakes from the Emerald Isle, despite the legends.  Most scholars agree that a large part of Patrick’s success in bringing pagan Ireland into Christianity was his willingness to Christianize the old pagan Celtic religion rather than stamp it out:  carve crosses on old druidic pillars instead of pulling them down, build Christian churches and monasteries on Celtic holy places, recognized by the people as the “thin places” between this world and the spirit world.  Not all snakes are bad, and Patrick if anything probably turned them Christian instead of driving them away.  Elsewhere, even the great Christian celebrations of Easter and Christmas were originally pagan celebrations of the seasons that were baptized by Christian missionaries like Patrick as Christian feasts. 

So pagan practices can be redeemed, and snakes be turned into symbols of healing.  Not all snakes are bad.  The bronze serpent lifted up on a pole thus became a symbol of Yahweh’s healing presence.  It is this image that is taken by the Gospel of John and applied to Jesus lifted up on the cross.

If bad things can be redeemed, and turned into good things, what about good things?  If not all snakes are bad, are all angels good? 

Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, 

author of the first Book of Common Prayer

The preface of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer begins with these words, “There was never any thing by the wit of man so well devised, or so surely established, which (in continuance of time) hath not been corrupted.”  Cranmer was referring to the corrupted liturgy of the Roman Church in his day, and the need to reform it.  But the words, I think, have a broader application and also can be seen as speaking to the corruption of good ideals by any group.  Much of Jesus’ announcement of the arrival of the Reign of God was aimed at denouncing the corruption of the religion and faith of his age. 

Not all angels are good.  Buddhist darhma teaching gives this concept a very clear form when it discusses emotions that reflect God, what we would call virtues.  Each is seen as having a polar opposite, as well as an opposite that mimics but falsifies the virtue.  The polar opposite is called a “Far Enemy” of the virtue, while the distortion that mimics the virtue is called its “Near Enemies.” 

In mainstream dharma teaching, there are four principal divine emotions:  Loving-kindness, Compassion, Joy with others, and Equanimity. Loving-kindness is selfless good will and love for others.  Its polar opposite, obviously, is hatred or ill-will.  Its near enemy looks like love, but is distorted and sick:  it is selfish attachment or the so-called “love” that seeks to control and establish dependence.  Compassion is empathy and sympathy for others.  Its far enemy is cruelty.  Its near enemy is pity.  Where compassion looks on a suffering person as an equal, pity looks down on the sufferers, sees them as inferiors.  Joy in others is opposed by resentment or envy, while its near enemy is mere exuberance in social settings.  Equanimity is the ability to see and feel about yourself as you see and feel about others, and is what I would call humility.  It polar opposite is envy or jealousy while its near enemy is simple indifference, not caring about yourself or others. 

       

 The Fall of the Rebel Angels; right hand panel of

 Hieronymus Bosch's The Haywain Triptych, c. 1500

The Book of Revelation puts this idea of distorted goods into a mythical form when it talks about a war in heaven, when rebel angels fight against St. Michael the Archangel and his host, lose, and are thrown down upon the earth to become the Devil and demons (Rev. 12:7-9).  Not all angels are good.  

We are in the season of Lent, when we talk about repentance.   Repentance too has its near enemy.  Not all angels are good.  Jesuit theologian Gerard W. Hughes, in his gem of spiritual direction, The God of Surprises, says the following:

“True repentance frees us from self-pre-occupation because our trust is in God’s goodness working in us.  In his light we see our darkness.  False repentance immerses us in self-preoccupation.  We delight in what we consider our virtue but are irritated at our vice, refuse to acknowledge it and project it on others.” 

True repentance brings joy and inner freedom.  False, anxiety and defensiveness.  True, it welcomes and learns from criticism. False, it is touchy about and learns nothing from criticism. True repentance brings understanding, tolerance, and hope.  False, … a rigidity of mind and heart, dogmatism, intolerance, and a condemnatory attitude.  True, it shares God’s laughter and frees the mind to see the humor of all situations; false, it is overly serious and cannot laugh at itself.  In true repentance, a person feels drawn to God.  In false repentance, a person feels driven from God. (adapted)

Fr. Hughes applies this to the Church and nation as well: 

A Church with the spirit of true repentance will be concerned primarily with its mission, not its maintenance.  It will encourage the critical and mystical gifts as well as the institutional gifts of its members.  A Church with a spirit of false repentance will be primarily concerned with its own maintenance, whether of its own doctrinal or moral orthodoxy, or its prestige in society, and will emphasize the institutional at the expense of the critical and mystical. 

A nation with a spirit of true repentance will pay attention to the quality of life of all its members compatible with the quality of life of other nations.  It will abhor narrow nationalism.  A nation with the spirit of false repentance will be chiefly concerned with its own wealth, power, and international status.  And it will compromise religion to confirm its national security policies.   (adapted)

Sisters and brothers of Trinity, not all snakes are bad, and not all angels are good.  We need discernment to sort out where God’s grace can apply, and where we imaginatively and joyously expand the scope of holiness and grace.  We need discernment to distinguish between the divine and its near enemies as well.   Jesus, lifted up on the cross like that snake on a pole, stands ready to help us. May we seek God’s will in how we may best show God’s grace to others, and make the common holy, creatively redeeming the various snakes we might encounter in life.  And may we seek to sort out our angels, good from bad, and follow the better angels that guide us.  

 
In the name of God, Amen.

A Dog Named Hoover (Proper 15A)

 

A Dog named Hoover

14 August 2011

Proper 15A

Beijing, China

Genesis 45:1-15; Psalm 133  Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28

Jesus left Gennesaret and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon." But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us." He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me." He answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed instantly. (Matt, 15:21-28; || Mark 7:24-30)

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Amen

I once had a friend who was facing a pretty horrible situation tell me that he did not feel he could pray and ask for God’s intervention or even sustenance because, as he said, “I’m just too rotten a person.  I’m not even sure there is a God, and if there is, I definitely am not the kind of person he would be interested in helping or listening to.” 

The fact that society at large and religions in particular create and define themselves by establishing boundaries can be a real burden to those who find themselves outside of those boundaries.  My friend had a hard time believing in God, and clearly rejected many of the rules and moral strictures he thought were taught by the Church, but curiously had let these seep into his heart and sprout into a sense of guilt and shame that made it hard for him to approach God in prayer. 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus encounters a person who by all standards is outside the boundaries of the right and proper—he is traveling near the primarily Gentile territory of what is now Southern Lebanon, and a woman approaches.  Strike One—women were not supposed to directly engage with strangers who were men.  She is a Canaanite.  Matthew’s use of the Old Testament word Canaanite is deliberate, and against the common usage of the period:  she is thus portrayed as an unclean pagan who might be engaging in idolatrous worship possibly involving sexual rites or child sacrifice.  Strike Two.   In Mark’s version of the story, she is a Greek, of mixed Syrian and Phoenician heritage.  A half-breed pagan to boot, coming from the two great oppressors of the Jewish people before the Romans arrived.  Strike Three.  In the telling of the story, she might as well be wearing a bell and calling out before her, unclean, unclean. 

But this gentile woman is worried about her daughter, whose abnormal behavior appears to result from possession by something or someone outside of herself.  The woman has heard that this Jewish wonder-worker Jesus can expel such spirits.  So she approaches and loudly begs him to heal her daughter, using language that is more Jewish than pagan, “O Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me and my daughter.”  The reference is probably to an inter-testamental belief that King Solomon, literally the “Son of David,” could heal the ill and cure such possession.  She has heard that Jesus is perhaps a descendant of David and has some of Solomon’s legendary power to heal. 

Now the way Jesus reacts is quite offensive to us of modern sensibilities.  It was also offensive to ancient sensibilities, and that is the reason that Luke drops this story from those he borrows from Mark’s Gospel. 

Jesus ignores her.  It is almost like he cannot hear her.  

She only gets louder. 

In the Creed, we say that we believe that God became incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became truly human in the person of Jesus.  But we usually don’t like to see Jesus as quite this human.  Here he seems to be cold and unfeeling. As she gets louder, he ignores her all the more.  

His reaction is strange, given the fact that he has already in this Gospel healed a gentile in gentile territory,  that the verses preceding this story tell of Jesus breaking down barriers of clean and unclean in Jewish Law, and that the gist of many of his parables seems to be the overflowing abundance of God's goodness and grace.  But he remains silent. 

When the disciples just can’t bear the commotion any longer and ask Jesus to break his silence and just send the woman away, his reply is that is he is focused on his work in calling his fellow Jews to change their hearts and ways, and can’t take the time for this woman.  She begs him directly, “Lord, help me.” 

His reply here is no longer simply cold and unfeeling: “I can’t take food set aside for the children and throw it away for dogs to eat.”  The slur implied by the word dogs, seems downright racist and rooted in religious bigotry.  

Christians have tried to explain away the slur, or take it off of Jesus’ lips ever since:  As I said before, Luke simply deletes the story and does not include it in his Gospel.  Some of the Church Fathers say that Jesus was simply testing the woman’s faith by using the slur ironically to see if she would persist (as if this makes the slur all that less offensive!)  Others have tried to take the sting out of the phrase by noting that the Greek word used in the text is a diminutive kynarios “little dog,” instead of the more common kynos “dog.”   So Jesus presumably would be saying,  “It’s wrong to take babies’ food and give it to puppies.”   But again, I don’t think this necessarily makes the slur less offensive.  

Again, Jesus' talk here about the economy of divine blessing almost as if it were a zero sum game is strange.  In his previous feeding of the crowd (including children), there was a ridiculous overabundance of leftovers.  But the point appears to be that Jesus is so focused on his mission to fellow Jews that he cannot hear the woman.  Matthew, with his concern for keeping Jewish Law and portraying Jesus as the new Moses, does not appear to notice the ugliness of the scene as it unfolds.  

My friend, with his fear to pray to God because he was somehow unworthy, or beyond the bounds of grace, would feel right at home with this portrayal of a Jesus wholly consumed by boundaries and limits. 

But the Canaanite woman persists. She takes Jesus’ harsh word and turns it on its head with a bit of wit and chutzpah:  “Oh, but dogs under the table can eat the crumbs that fall, can’t they?”  It is as if he had said, "this food is too good for you, you dogs," and she had replied, "So I'm a dog.  Don't call me Rover, call me Hoover.  'Cuz I can hoover up all those scraps just as they fall from your table!"   This kind of “battle of the wits” exchange is seen in Middle Eastern and Arab literature regularly, and is akin to the Rap world’s commonplace of a contest of insult and replying insult (“Yo’ momma is so fat that…..” “Oh yeah?  Well yo’ momma…”)

Jesus’ reply is amazing.  “Great is your faith, woman!”  The rhetoric and word order stresses GREAT.  “You are a GIANT in faith, lady.  Finally, I find someone who gets it, and surprise, surprise, she’s a gentile!  She’s a Canaanite! She’s a she!”

The exorcism is performed at a distance, almost by divine remote control, just like in the two other stories of  Jesus healing at a distance, the healing of the centurion’s servant (Matt. 8:5-13) and of the royal official’s son (John 4:46-54).   Note in all cases, the healing at a distance is done for people seen as beyond the pale.  These are stories about the far reach of Jesus’ grace, not about the worthiness or lack thereof of the recipients. 

Reading this story as if the Canaanite woman is a model of faith for us to follow misses the point:  this is not a story trying to say that if only your faith were great enough, God will hear your prayers and grant you your wishes.  Faith here is not a magic trick.   In such magical thinking lies only pain—because when bad things happen to people, whether they are good people or bad people, this way of thinking chalks it up as the fault of those who did not get their way with God.  And if good things happen, then it is the result of the successful use of the trick.  Such a view reduces the Lord’s Book of Blessings to simply a Book of Spells.  

Put bluntly, this story isn’t about you, and about whether you are worthy or faithful enough for God’s blessings.  The focus of the story is Jesus, not the woman.   In this scene, Jesus, who loves  a good joke and regularly tells parables with brutally witty edges, is bested in a contest of wit by the wise-cracking woman who is desperate for her child’s health.  She takes the callous slur Jesus has unthinkingly adopted from his upbringing and how he has been taught about what is right, and turns it on its head.  Jesus in response, instead of glowering and shouting  “BLASHPEMY, OFF WITH YOU, PAGAN WOMAN!” and blasting her right then and there, he laughs out loud, sees he has been had, and recognizes the faith, the trust, in the woman’s heart that drives her persistence and audacity. 

And so he turns back from—repents, as it were—of the casual callousness that his focus on his mission and on the boundaries his religion has set.  To be sure, we believe that Jesus was like us in all things but sin.  He is not so much turning from sin here as he is opening himself further to the unexplored country to which God is leading him.  This scene anticipates the great shift in the Christian faith from mission only to Jews to mission to all.  It anticipates the great vision of St. Paul where “In Christ, there is no Jew nor Gentile, no slave nor free, no woman nor man.”

To me it is very comforting to think that Jesus could be shamed by a joke into changing his view and learn thereby to spread God’s grace more widely than he previously had thought appropriate. 

To me it is very comforting to think that a Canaanite half-breed pushy woman talking out of turn and beyond the bounds of propriety could get the best of Jesus and as a result Jesus would bless her simply because of who and what he was, and would bless her despite, not because of, who and what she was. 

None of us should feel like my friend, afraid and ashamed to approach God when we need God.  Maybe a little bit of pushy persistence on our part is in order, a bit more witty and humorous audacity.    The woman was desperate and willing to go all out on the off chance that what she heard about Jesus as a healer was true.  When God appears forbidding and unwelcoming to us, that is precisely the time we need to remember the words of the prayer, “O God, whose nature is always to have mercy” and that, despite whatever it may be we think separates us from his grace.  That is precisely the time that we, like this Canaanite woman, this dog named Hoover, need to focus on the Mercy of God rather than on the boundaries that exclude us, or what people say about God's judgment. 

In the name of God, Amen

 

Set Free to Love (Proper 8 Year C; epistle)

Set Free to Love

Homily delivered Fifth Sunday of Pentecost (Proper 8; Year C RCL)
27th June 2010; 8:00 a.m. Said Eucharist
Parish Church of St. John the Baptist, Seattle Washington
Readings: 2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14; Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20;
or 1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21; Psalm 16;
Galatians 5:1, 13-25; Luke 9:51-62

For freedom Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery...     For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.
Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. (Gal. 5:1, 13-25)

God, take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

In today’s epistle reading from his letter to the Galatians, Paul uses the image of liberation, or setting free from captivity or slavery, to describe what Jesus Christ has done for us. “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

He is defending what he calls the “freedom we have in Christ” from co-religionists who argue that those who claim to follow God should follow God’s commandments found in Holy Scripture.   Today I won’t go into the whole sorry story of the Judaizers and their conflict with Paul.   Suffice it to say that Paul’s opponents want his gentile converts to follow the commandments of God as found in the only Bible they or Paul knew, the Hebrew Scriptures.   For them, following God meant following the Law, or at least making the effort.   They have told people Paul has brought into the Church that what he has told them about Christ and living in the Spirit isn’t enough.  They need a fuller view of God’s plans for them, and they need to do more. 

It is an understandable position: how can people claim to join a religion and then flaunt its basic boundary markers?   And how can people claim that they are getting close to God when they are unwilling to submit to the clear rules God has given? 

Clearly, the people in Galatia just want to do the right thing.   The appeal to “do more” and “get with the true program” of the Church is one that is with us in every age.   When our spiritual life gets a bit stale, we feel the need to do something more to get some of the fire back, to recapture the excitement and thrill of when God first spoke to us individually.  Haven’t we all wanted on occasion to be just a little closer to God through some technique or discipline that some religious authority has pointed out to us? 

That’s actually what religion is all about.  The Latin word, “religio” comes from the root “to rebind,” or “to bind tightly.”  It is from the same root where get the word "ligatures."  It also related to the root of the Latin word for Law, “lex, legis” where we also get our word "legislature."  Religion is all about rules, about limiting freedom so that we can be closer to God.  It’s about following rules so we can feel closer to God, right?

To judge from the way the verses were selected for today’s Lectionary, you might think that Paul is arguing a similar position.  Immediately after the phrase “for freedom Christ has set us free; do not then fall back into slavery,” the lectionary skips several verses and then has “only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence . . . ,” and sins like “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. . . those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:20-21).  

That skip in the Lectionary gives the impression that Paul is arguing against a relapse into the slavery of sinful behavior.    And to be quite honest, it is not a bad impression to have.  Most sin does have the character of addiction or compulsion about it.  If we persist in it, we become enslaved to it.  We lose our free will in regards to it.  That’s just the nature of sin. 

Such experience of slavery is the reason that Twelve Step recovery programs take as their starting point the need for an admission of powerlessness against the addiction, whatever it is.  An addict, whether it be to alcohol, drugs, overeating, sexual compulsions, or vicious behavior, has lost his or her freedom.  Step One, “we admitted we were powerless over (fill in the blank) and that our lives had become unmanageable” is the starting point in recovery. 

But Paul’s argument about freedom and the need to not relapse into slavery is not about relapse into sinful behavior.   It’s about relapse into religion.  It’s about trying to make yourself feel better about yourself by piling on new behavioral standards that we think will make us right before God.   It’s about mistaking rules for God, and mistaking the feeling of closeness to God we get from keeping rules with actually being close to God. 

In the verses the Lectionary skipped over, we find the heart of Paul’s argument.  Let me paraphrase it here generic terms apart from the specifics of the circumcision debate:

Again I declare to everyone who wants to sign up for religious rules, that they then must keep all of the rules, all the time. When you try in this way to prove to yourself, to others, or to God that you’re a good person, you have by that very fact alienated yourself from Christ; you have fallen away from his grace.  But in contrast to this, it is by faith or trusting in God that we Christians eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. For when it comes to Jesus Christ, keeping rules or breaking them is irrelevant. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. (Gal. 5: 3-6)

Paul’s argument lies behind much of the theology of Saint Augustine.  It later was a turning point for Martin Luther, and thus became the major point of argument in the Protestant reformation, prompting Rome at one point to formally define that it was St. Peter, and not St. Peter and St. Paul together, who led the Church after Jesus’ death.  As a result of this later way Paul has been used, we often read St. Paul as if “faith” and “belief” are themselves acts of following religious rules, and lose the whole import of Paul’s meaning.

Near the beginning of his letter, he says to the Galatians who have been persuaded by this desire for more, “I am astonished that you are so deserting quickly me, the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to some other gospel—no that’s not right, because what you are turning to is not really a gospel—it’s not ‘good news’—at all” (Gal 1:6-7). 

The tone throughout the letter is shrill.  Like an email written all in capital letters, he is fairly shouting.  (In fact, near the end of the letter, he even takes up the scribe’s pen and says, “SEE HOW LARGE LETTERS I AM WRITING THIS IN,WITH MY OWN HAND?”) 

He is arguing here passionately what he cautiously and rationally develops in the more leisurely letter to the Romans.  He contrasts right conceived as obeying rules (the Law) with right conceived as a loving response to overwhelming and unmerited love (grace).  He says Law condemns while grace approves.  Law hardens hearts while grace brings the Spirit.  Law kills, the Spirit gives life.  Law points out our failings, grace gives us the power to change. 

The freedom Paul talks about is not the absence of compulsion, but rather the ability to do what God wants us to do, and to do what our heart truly desires—our true heart, the heart God intended when he created us. 

He is talking from personal experience, as he notes in the opening of the letter (Gal. 1:11-24; cf. Acts 7:58; 9:1-19).  He had been a deeply religious man who tried to keep all the rules and spent a lot of time arguing about what the rules were.  He persecuted his co-religionists who had gone after the Jesus doctrine because they were too lax when it came to keeping the rules. 

Conversion of St. Paul

But in a wholly unexpected turn of events, Jesus found him, and loved him despite all.  And so he realized that this Jesus had indeed been raised by God from the dead.  In his life, death, and coming forth, he had freed us from the hopelessness of chasing after rules, of finding ourselves addicted, of being unable to be the kind of people we want to be.   He heard stories about Jesus’ deliberately breaking purity laws in order to help others, of deliberately seeking out the sinners, drunks, traitors, and prostitutes.  He heard stories about Jesus saying God’s feast was for all people, not just for law-abiding Jews.  And so he realized that God had acted in a new way, and gone beyond nation, beyond rules of good and bad, beyond religion.    Overwhelmed by the love of the one who had sought him out and changed his heart, he became a messenger to the gentiles he had previously seen as beyond God’s grace.  He preached to them the story of grace, calling it his “good news.”  

So he was very, very upset when some of the people he had shared this grace with started talking about “getting a little extra” into their religious lives by following an added discipline that would set them apart as God’s own.  That is why he writes the letter to the Galatians.

In the process, he ends up turning many images from Hebrew Scriptures on their heads.  For him, a gentile Christian accepting circumcision is a relapse into slavery like that of paganism, not entry into the chosen people once freed by the Exodus (Gal. 5:1).  For him, the slave Hagar in the Abraham story represents the Jewish people while Sarah represents Gentile Christians who have not become Jews (Gal. 4:21-31). 

He says that freedom in Christ is in fact like slavery in one sense.  Because it is based in love, it involves constraints, though these are not reducible to mere rules. "In love, be like slaves to one another," he says (Gal. 5:13). 

Francoise Sagan, author of Bonjour Tristesse

Francoise Sagan, the French novelist, was brutally honest about how love limits freedom in an interview she gave to Le Monde.  She said she was satisfied with the way she had lived her life and had no regrets.  The interviewer said, “ Then you have had the freedom you wanted.”  Sagan replied: “Yes… I was obviously less free when I was in love with someone . . . But one’s not in love all the time.  Apart from that, … I’m free.” 

For Paul, love by definition places constraints on our freedom, and involves risk.  That’s why he says we must be like slaves in our love to each other.  Paul knows that love is risk, and that love is costly.  That is why he argues against not only those who make rules of right and wrong into a god, but also against those who ignore right and wrong when they they make their own wills, passions and drives into a god.

Paul contrasts the disordered works of the self-absorbed with what his calls the “the fruit of the Spirit”: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  

With a sly smile, he adds, “there are no rules against these things.” 

For St. Paul, it all boils down to this:  Jesus died on the Cross to save us from everything that enslaves us.   The Spirit is his gift that empowers us to actually be the kind of people God wants us to be.  Maybe not right now completely, but enough of a taste so that we have hope for what is in store. 

Let us not heed the siren call of trying to feel better about ourselves by keeping rules.   Let us keep our faith firmly rooted in the Love of Christ as shone on the cross.  We need to respond in gratitude, nailing to his cross our selfishness and persistent desire to find anything other than God to make us feel better about ourselves.

In the name of God,  Amen.