Sunday, June 23, 2013
You and I walk into a Wendy’s
together. I want a frosty. You’re having a fries and a Sprite. A mom with a 6-year-old and a 1-year-old is
ahead of us in line. She looks
haggard. Carrying the young one, the
6-year-old mercilessly, relentlessly pulls on her free hand and demands a kid’s
meal with toys.
The two women taking orders behind
the counter are named “Cranky” and “indifferent.” They seem annoyed that this six-year-old is
acting like a six-year-old. Really, they
seem annoyed by all customers.
Behind us we hear someone cursing a
blue streak. It is a girl yelling at her
boyfriend who is not actually there.
She’s giving the cell phone attached to her ear what-for. It might be funny, her sitting there alone,
yelling at someone not present while those who are present stare. It might be funny if it were not so sad,
foul-mouthed, inappropriate, and loud.
A man in business attire is seated
alone, going over charts, as he sips his drink.
The mom struggles through her order
as the six-year-old goes to the table in tears.
She did not cave. She did not get
that kids meal. She told him 10 times
that he already had three copies of the toy at home and he never eats his
chicken fingers. And he’s upset.
We step up to order. Cranky looks at us with dead eyes and says
nothing. “Hi.” I say.
“How are you?” She says
nothing. You smile at her. She gives no expression. She won’t crack. She is on the clock for three more
hours. She can play this game. She won’t reveal a hint of personality. She won’t affirm our humanity, not for a second. She knows we want our food and we have to get
through to get it. She’s not going
anywhere. She can wait.
In shameful surrender, we order,
pay, and slog to our seats, trying to find the joy we lost.
How could the trip to the fast food
place go differently?
Were any sins committed? Any laws of God or laws of men broken? Did faith fail?
In Galatians 3 we see law and faith
juxtaposed, set in opposition to one another.
Both are from God. We read that
before faith came, we were imprisoned under the law.
What does that mean, exactly, “before faith
came?”
Jesus changed everything for Paul. After his death and resurrection the ways
humans related to one another and to God were forever altered. This includes the law and our understanding
of the people of God. “Law” refers to
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy – the foundational
scriptures for Israel. Paul calls the
law a disciplinarian. The word he used
referred to someone in his culture that saw to the education of wealthy
children.
The disciplinarian was not actually
the teacher. Rather the disciplinarian
was the one who made sure the kids went to class. The disciplinarian was a family’s personal
truancy officer. In most cases this role
was filled by a highly trusted slave.
We humans, even the most grown up
and brilliant among us are as children before God. We’re not just any children. We’re children prone to misbehave in the
worst ways imaginable. Prior to Jesus,
we needed our disciplinarian, the law, to show us how wrong we were.
Faith does something different that
the law. Law shows sin. Faith calls us to holiness. In Jesus, Paul believed a fundamental shift
happened; life moved from law obedience to faith calling.
I remember a conversation with a friend in which
I asked him about church. He’s a
neighbor and he knows I am pastor of HillSong.
We had had 100’s of conversations about parenting, about baseball, about
his time as a swimmer at Clemson. When I
asked about church, I just wanted to continue our conversation but on another
topic. I wanted to hear more of his
story. But I am a pastor asking about church.
He had this look on his face, as if I had watched him shoplift a candy
bar from a convenience store. “I know
should be back in church” he sighed under a blanket of guilt. He was afraid of getting caught by the
truancy officer. He was raised in a
generally Christian worldview, but he still yields to the disciplinarian, the
law.
So many Christians talk about
salvation by grace through faith but then live in a good-bad, legalistic
mindset. Our actual living, which is law
bound, doesn’t match the ideology we speak, salvation by faith as a gift of
grace.
Paul says no, no. Jesus has come. Faith has come. Verse 24: “the law was our disciplinarian
until Christ came.” God always intended
Jesus, and now he has come, so we don’t live as naughty children held in check
by the strictness of the law. In Christ we
are sons and daughters of God called to the holiness of God.
We
are called by God to live out this holiness in our daily lives here and
now. This is not the end-times Kingdom
of God. We are physically in the fallen
world that has been corrupted by sin.
But with Christ in us, we are, even while here, full of the stuff of the
kingdom and all its goodness. We are to
live into and to share the grace we’ve been given. It is essential that we bid farewell to the
disciplinarian and live into the new life, the life of faith.
The law shows sin. Faith, which is a gift of God’s grace, calls
us to holiness. Law is our
disciplinarian. Faith is a joy
producer.
The law shows what makes for death. Because of sin, death is our destiny. But again, faith has come because God has
come in Jesus. Verse 27, “As many of you
as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” When we are baptized, we go under the water,
buried, dead in sin. But then we come
out of the water, clean, fresh, clothed with Christ so that our life belongs to
Him, and his resurrection becomes ours.
The disciplinarian law which reveals sin points to death. Christ our savior calls us beyond sin
avoidance to something new, something God always intended for us: holiness. Christ our Lord does not stand over us with a
thundering hand but walks beside us, grinning, laughing, making music and
giving joy. Christ our God calls us to
eternal, abundant life.
One more contrast shows we have moved from law
to life, from a disciplinarian to a relationship in which God sees us as His
daughters and sons. This was quite
important in Galatia and is equally important in church and in a Wendy’s
restaurant.
In Galatian churches, Jewish Christ
followers worshipped alongside Gentile Christ followers. In Christ, slaves were equal members – even
equal to their masters. Men and women
were adopted by God on equal terms. It is
hard to say which divide was greatest.
Jews saw non-Jews as being unclean and unfit for relationship with
God. Men saw women as reduced
humanity. Many of the ancients thanked
God above all else that they were created male and not female. And slaves were non-human. Even when slaves were treated well and given
great responsibility, they were still slaves.
These cruel categories were not
banned in the law. But they had no place
in Christ. Galatians 3:28 is one of the
defining moments of all Paul’s writings.
N.T Wright imagines this great scripture when he says, it is “like one
of those symphonic finales where the composer seems to be trying to bring a
many instruments into the action as possible, all playing different motifs but
somehow combining into a glorious paean of praise” (Justification, p.127). If
you only ever memorize one verse, maybe Galatians 3:28 ought to be it. We are baptized into Christ. We are clothed with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek. There is no longer male or female. There is no longer slave or free. In Christ we come together.
Of course we hold onto what makes us
unique. Christ calls for us to die to
self but not to forfeit the things that make us who we are. When John, in Revelation, viewed the throngs
of persons saved for eternity by Jesus, he noticed some things. There were more people than he could
count. They came from every tribe on
earth. They did not lose their
individuality. He could see that this
was a coming together of all people – joined in Jesus. Note the final sentence in Galatians
3:28. “All of you are one in
Christ.” In our glorious diversity, we
are united in Him. Women are still
women, Jews are still Jews. But we are
all free from sin and joined to one another as brothers and sisters.
Obviously there is no place in the
Kingdom of God for any kind of racial or ethnic prejudice. God has no sympathy for those who think races
should not intermarry. The notion that
people should stick to their own kind is foreign in God’s kingdom for we are
all His. Our differences are reasons to
celebrate one another and our likeness is that we are buried in sin and raised
to new life in Him.
Knowing this, does it make a
difference when you and I go into a Wendy’s restaurant?
Maybe, Cranky and Indifferent don’t know
that they are invited to come to Christ and that we are all invited to come
together as children of the new age. In
their own minds you and I are named
annoyance numbers 1 & 2. But, we
love them because Jesus has come and with him faith. Whether or not we have the chance to say they
are invited by God, we love them. By
faith we are saved, you, me, and Cranky and Indifferent. The Kingdom joy we put forth in that Wendy’s may
or may not win them over. They may never
crack that smile, but we keep on pouring out Jesus because we know He wants
these Wendy’s workers in His kingdom.
They each mean as much to him as any lawyer, pastor, doctor, or CEO. In him there is no separation between them
and us. The moment the come to him in
faith, we come together.
So, maybe we help out the mom with the
crazy toddler. We carry her tray. We say a silent prayer for the young woman
cussing her boyfriend over the cell phone.
We smile and hold the door for the lonely, rushed business man who
spilled a bit of ketchup on his white shirt.
He needs a smile and a touch of Heaven’s love. The Kingdom of God is made up of people who
used to cuss but then met Jesus. The
Kingdom is made up of tired moms who find energy to continue in Jesus. The kingdom of God is populated by frustrated
fast food cashiers who think their lives are dead-ended until meet Jesus; and
business men who discover the bottom line is not all there is; and girlfriends
and boyfriends who treat each other with respect, love, and patience. All these people belong to each other and to
us in Christ.
Carrying a tray, sharing smile, and
maintaining joy are not world-changing actions.
They are though deeds done in a spirit – the Spirit of the one who
changed the world by coming and dying and rising and then calling all people
together into His body, the church.
That’s the end game of grace and the
deepest meaning of Galatians 3:28 and the entire gospel of Jesus Christ. God calls the world together in His
love. Heaven is not a place where we
each get our own mansions and get to be with the people we like. Heaven is where we sit around one table and
like and love the people we are with because Jesus is there it could be no
other way.
We begin living Heaven the moment He
takes up residence in us. We thank God
for what the law accomplished and we acknowledged that it is finished because
Jesus has come and the age of grace and faith has dawned.
AMEN
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