Pleasing People is Not Our Task– Loving Them is.

Pleasing People is Not Our Task– Loving Them is.

a sermon based on Galatians 1:1-12

given at Palm Bay, FL on June 2, 2013

by Rev. Scott Elliott

Every once in a while, I preach a sermon that is biographical; that is, I try to discuss in a general fashion a person in the Bible. This summer I plan to do a few biographic sermons summarizing bits of the Bible. I even had this idea that I will summarize the entire Bible later this month . . .We’ll see how that goes.

In researching the summarizing of things in the Bible, I actually found a writing called “The Bible in Fifty Words.” The happy news for you all is that I found it in a resource book called, “World’s Greatest Collection of Church Jokes”1. It’s pretty cool. It actually covers more of the Bible than most people probably know. It goes like this:

God made; Adam bit; Noah arked; Abraham split; Jacob fooled; Joseph ruled; Bush talked; Moses balked; Pharaoh plagued; People walked; Sea divided; Tablets guided; Promise landed; Saul freaked;  David peeked; Prophets warned; Jesus born; God walked; Love talked; Anger crucified; Hoped died; Love rose; Spirit flamed; Word spread; God remained. 1

If finding that was the happy news, the sad news is that I have not reduced my summary of the Bible person I chose for today down to fifty words. So Bob Evan’s and Applebee’s will still have to wait.

My subject today is Paul and I feel fortunate I was able to get the sermon  under twenty minutes.

On our last day of Bible Study we were to select a person in the Bible (other than Jesus) that we thought we’d like to be or who was like us. I picked Paul in part because of what he says in today’s reading “Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people. If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

See, given the somewhat . . .ummm, colorful responses I get to the progressive Christianity this church stands for and I preach and write about, I can relate to Paul’s reminder that a mark of Christianity is that not all people will not be pleased with you when you serve Christ boldly.

Jesus got in trouble for proclaiming love for all, and so did Paul. Why wouldn’t we expect the same when we follow Christ’s call?

Paul’s a hero of mine for hanging in there at a time when opponents to Jesus’ loving Way did more that just make ugly comments. They could, and did, hang you on a cross for it.

I like Paul for other reasons than he plowed forward knowing the message of Christ’s love for all would not please people and be of risk to life and limb. Paul is also passionate in his belief, bold in his service and open in his thinking.

Hear how Paul matches up to our vision statement? He is fearless for Christ’s unconditional love and takes Jesus’ message of good news to the ends of the earth regardless of the consequences.

We don’t know a lot about Paul’s life. We are pretty sure he was born early in the first century in a bustling crossroads city called Tarsus.

Although we don’t know exactly when Paul or Jesus, were born, Paul was probably a few years younger than Jesus but it is thought that they lived at the same time for twenty or thirty years.

Although Paul did not meet Jesus before the resurrection, Paul was alive when Jesus did all that he did in the Gospels.

Paul lived so close in time to Jesus that his letters are the oldest writings in the New Testament. He wrote about a generation before the first  Gospel was written.

We know Paul as a great Apostle and prophetic teacher and Saint of the church, but before he was a Jesus follower Paul was known as Saul and he vehemently opposed what at the time was Jesus centered  Judaism.

We get our knowledge about Paul from two sources, the letters he wrote and the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, but neither of those sources make it clear why Saul opposed the early post-Easter Jesus movement.

It is actually quite possible he opposed the inclusion of non-Jews into the Jesus sect of Judaism. See there was a sense in the movement that Jesus’ promised non-violent world was breaking-in so – as John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg put it– a belief developed that  “Gentiles could now become full members of the people of God without following Jewish conversion requirements, for example circumcision for males.” 2 (69).

This means Saul’s likely to have opposed the inclusion of Gentiles, an exclusionary stance he would have taken zealously, because we know that Saul was persecuting Jesus followers, and violently so.

Keep in mind that Saul’s persecution was not an example of mainstream Judaism; it was an example of religious zealousness. As we know there are religious zealots around today . . . well, Saul was akin to one of those . . . until he had a transforming experience.

One day, while in zealous pursuit of the persecution of the Jewish Jesus Followers, Saul had a profoundly mystical encounter that changed his life and eventually changed the Jesus movement itself. On the road to Damascus, where he was going to persecute Jesus followers, The Book of Acts reports:

[Saul] was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” 5 He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. (Act 9:3-5 NRS)

The light blinded Saul for a number of days until “something like scales fell from his eyes” (Acts 9:18) and his sight returned.

Paul experienced a theophany, a God appearance.

Here is how Paul himself puts it in the texts that follow today’s reading:

I received [the gospel] through a revelation of Jesus Christ. You have heard, no doubt . . . I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it . . . when God . . . was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles . . .. (Gal 1:12-16 NRSV)

The Book of Acts claims that Saul heard Christ, but Paul claims he saw Christ. “It is that sight that makes him an apostle.” 3.

Saul is so profoundly struck by this sight that he does a “180,” and becomes not only a Jesus Follower and an Apostle, but he dedicates his life to bringing the Good News that all are included in the wide embrace of the God of Jesus.

If all of what I’ve mentioned so far happened, then we can hear that Saul, who persecuted to uphold exclusion, becomes Paul who champions inclusion.

Oddly much of  Christianity has claimed Paul teaches exclusion. And when I came back to church, I discovered that this exclusive theology is more like Saul-the-persecutors’s idea of an exclusionary way to an exclusionary God, than Paul the Apostle’s idea of a theology of inclusion, where all are included into God’s love. Where – like Jesus’ table – all-all-ALL- are welcome.

Paul’s letter to the Galatians that we are considering in the Lectionary reading today contains some of the most beautiful inclusionary language in the Bible. In the third chapter Paul wrote the famous lines I referred to last week: “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.” (Gal 3:28 NRS).

Although it’s been claimed Paul supported slavery and misogamy, he actually wrote against slavery and wrote and worked for the fair treatment of everyone, women as well as men. The New Testament records that Paul treated women as equal partners and sisters in Christ. And as we heard in the sermon last week Paul considered slaves as equal brothers entitle to love and freedom.

A big part of the problem is that Paul gets blamed for a lot of words he didn’t write. Of the thirteen letters assigned to Paul in the Bible, most scholars conclude only seven appear to be genuinely Paul’s (though even some of those may have been altered in part). The genuine Pauline letters are Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, 1st Thessalonians, Philippians, Philemon and Galatians.

And even those letters are often misunderstood when we fail to consider the context he wrote in. Paul did not write as a modern American Protestant. Paul wrote as a first century Jewish follower of Jesus in the Roman Empire; and he did not write with all the Christian doctrine and traditions that come to us layered on top of everything. 4

Modern Christians tend to come to Paul’s writing thinking he had in mind individual sinners being saved, that’s stuff later theologians layered onto Paul.

When Paul speaks of sin it is his understanding of the transgressions of Israel as a people, not as individuals that he has in mind. 5. For Paul Torah, Scripture, had not helped Israel, which was, as Paul wrote: “as guilty as the Gentiles.” 6 The only grace that counted for Paul was that available – equally to Gentiles and Jews – through Christ Jesus.

And Paul never thought he had been converted to Christianity, he considered himself a Jewish apostle of Christ’s working among the Gentiles, trying to claim and define a place for Gentiles in the Jewish Jesus sect.

Paul’s concern was basically fourfold. First of all, Paul trusted that the Messiah had come in the form of Jesus Christ who offered the  Grace that counted.

Second, Paul believed that the Gentiles needed to be allowed to come into the fold of those who are to be saved by the faith of Jesus, and the resulting grace of God.

Third, Paul understood that a prime barrier to Gentiles coming into the fold to be saved is the Jewish initiation rite of circumcision.

Fourth, Paul also understood that he had to lift the barrier of circumcision in order to open the floodgates of Gentile converts and he does this by arguing a way around Torah.

Specifically Paul argues in Galatians that Abraham who was un-circumcised was blessed by God, and it was through faith–that is trust– in God, not by circumcision that the blessing occurs. Putting it simply, Paul argued that since the founder of the Judaism, Abraham, was not circumcised Gentiles didn’t need to be circumcised either.

Essentially Paul hangs his hat on “faith” as the end run around Torah’s kosher laws for Gentiles. As a seminary professor of mine put it, “[J]ustification by faith is the good news to the Jews first, and also to the Greek. ‘For the just shall live by faith’” 7.

Paul’s argument is that if a person trusts in God as Abraham did, as Christ did, they can be justified, which means saved. Basically Paul sees Torah as a temporary guardian given by God to hold things in place until Jesus showed up. Torah was not faulty, rather sin and flesh were to blame for Israel’s inability to comply with it.

It is not until later that Augustine and his progeny skew Paul’s writings to appear anti-Jewish, but Paul was no such thing. Indeed, if Paul saw our churches today he would ask “Hey, where are all the Jews?” He would also no doubt point out that he and Jesus were both Jewish!

Paul was bringing Gentiles to the God of the Jews, the God of Jesus, through the promise given to Abraham and the trust he and Jesus had in God.

Paul’s primary mission was to figure out and teach how Gentiles could be included in the community of the Jesus movement, and he worked tirelessly toward that end.

Reading through Paul’s intended lens of bringing Gentiles to the God of Judaism spins Paul’s efforts within his churches differently than our notion of Jesus dying to atone individual sin.

Reading through Paul’s lens we see him as working to build up community making God’s table inclusive. Everyone gets to come to it and into Jesus’ community.

In this way Paul’s efforts are similar to what Jesus is remembered as having done. Instead of seeing Paul’s message as focusing on saving individual sinners, he can be seen as including, like Jesus, those the culture considered unclean. And for Paul, the unclean niche he focuses on is Gentiles.

Understanding Paul’s message as an extension of Jesus’ inclusive community makes Paul’s efforts much more cohesive with Jesus’ teachings.

By the time he writes Galatians Paul is defending his apostleship. As the letter unfolds it becomes clear that the primary issue is whether circumcision is to be required in the Jesus Movement or not.

Paul is accused of trying to gain favor with Gentiles by (pardon the pun) cutting out circumcision.

And the issue was not (for Paul anyway) at its heart a question about being law observant in general, but about circumcision, and the existence or non-existence of effective mission work among the Gentiles.

If circumcision was required, the Gentiles would leave or not join the movement and the separation between the Jews and Gentiles would continue. Paul dedicates his life to end that separation.

The Jesus’ followers had continued to include all Jews at the table regardless of their status. Paul takes this inclusiveness to its next logical step by adding to the movement a concerted effort to include all Gentiles at the table as well.

In Paul’s day the city of Antioch reeled from race riots between Jews and Gentiles. Paul’s mission to unite them through Christ was inhibited by the tension and differences.

Paul needed to find a way around the Jewish tradition of strict compliance with the law as the way to Judaism’s God, to Jesus and Paul’s God, to our God, to everyone’s God . . . to the God of love.

In order to get around the tradition, Paul first holds fast to his argument in his letter to those Galatians who began opposing Paul’s teachings.

Paul argues that he taught them Christ’s gospel not to please Gentiles who don’t want to be circumcised, but rather to follow, as he notes in the reading, a direct revelation from Christ (1:11).

Once Paul’s established his authority, the crux of Paul’s argument becomes that justification – salvation – before God comes through the faith (and by faith he means the trust) of Jesus, the trust of Jesus, in God.

It is not trust in circumcision.

It is  not trust in Scripture.

It is trust in God’s Spirit that we – you and me; all of us – are saved by God’s unfettered grace; loved just as we are. And that we are saved from our lesser self and a lesser world when we turn to love through new life in Christ.

Paul’s a pioneer blazing a trail for what later becomes Christianity, the religion of Jesus’ Way, of God’s Way, of unconditional love and inclusivity.

That Way, truly followed, has always been hard.

Unconditional love does not please a lot of people.

But pleasing people is not our task, loving them is.

That was Paul’s way, that is Jesus’ Way and that is our way to the God of love and to salvation for us all.

AMEN.

 

END NOTES:

1. World’s Greatest Collection of Church Jokes, (Barbour Publishing 2003), 208.

2 Borg, Marcus, Crossan, John Dominic, The First Paul, (2009), 69. This book and the Stephen Patterson’s course Biblical Studies III at Eden Theological Seminary (Fall 2005) greatly influenced this sermon and much of it’s factual contents are drawn from those sources as well as Paul’s letters and The Book of Acts.

3. Borg and Crossan,  71.

4 Ibid., 17.

5 Ibid., 81.

6. Ibid.

7. Patterson, Stephen, Biblical Studies Course, Eden Theological Seminary, December 5, 2005.

COPYRIGHT   Scott Elliott © 2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED