Sunday, June 16, 2013
I don’t know how you self-describe. Our family attended a YMCA event where
counselors were asked to introduce themselves.
What would you do if you were not
working with the YMCA summer camps program as a counselor? Each counselor
said his or her name, which group he led, and then this question was answered.
So how about you? What would be your ideal summer? More generally, who are you?
Recently, Russian president Vladimir
Putin’s divorce was made public and Time magazine’s website did a spoof of what
he might put for a personal column on match.com. He is described a “Russian Teddy Bear” who
wants a companion to travel the world with him and engage in some of his
favorite activities like arm-wrestling.
Imagine writing a personal column,
but not to attract romance but to show who you are. Are you a “Chapel Hill Teddy Bear” who like
arm-wrestling? You have 1000 words. What do you write so that the world knows
you?
“I have been crucified with
Christ. It is no longer I who live but
it is Christ who lives in me.”
Whoa! Would that be a part of
your self-description? Why did the first
century Christian evangelist and church starter Paul write that sentence about
himself?
I
have been crucified with Christ. It is
no longer I who live but it is Christ who lives in me.
We back up to the end of Galatians
chapter 1. It helps to read Acts
chapters 9-15 and also 1st Corinthians 15 along with Galatians 1
& 2. Reading these passages together
will not yield an accurate chronology.
My sense is neither Luke, the author of Acts, nor Paul, the author of
Galatians and 1st Corinthians were offering a detailed timeline of
events. Both shared the story of how
Paul went from persecutor of Christians to advocate of Jesus, but their
purposes in telling the story were to build up the church. Both wrote with an eye toward having their
readers live the Christian faith the way Paul did.
So I don’t think we will know exactly the
order. Did Paul go to the disciples
first or to Arabia or to Jerusalem?
Which disciples did he see first?
How did he know what he knew?
What did he do in Arabia?
Scholars spin their wheels trying to piece it all together, but the important point, which is brought out
both in Acts and in Galatians 1 is that Paul was sinning against God by
persecuting the followers of Jesus. He
was having them arrested and he assisted in their executions. Then, the resurrected Jesus overwhelmed Paul
in a dazzling display of speech and light.
After that event, Paul was the loudest mouthpiece for salvation offered
by God through Jesus.
This all happened in a Jewish context. Jesus was said to be the fulfillment of the
Law of Moses. All that the Law was meant
to accomplish was now finished in Jesus.
This meant Jews were to find their identity as the people of God in
Jesus. And it meant non-Jews, Gentiles,
were invited to become a part of the people of God without becoming
Jewish.
Of course, being Jewish meant being God’s
chosen. This new paradigm of salvation
in and from Jesus was an upsetting change that was not accepted
immediately. Paul, an early adopter,
over and over collided with more tradition-minded people who wanted to follow
Jesus but could not let go of their former practices. And Paul really did not care so long as they
did not force their tradition on new believers.
But they did.
In Antioch and then in Galatia, teachers claiming the name of Jesus and
the authority of the leader of the Jerusalem church, the half-brother of Jesus,
James, came and declared that to be of God, one must keep all Jewish
traditions. Paul retorted that such
claims negated what actually does save – the faithfulness of Jesus to die on
the cross for us.
Last week we talked about the way Paul
personalized his position of salvation by faith through the sharing of his own
story. This begins in the latter half of
Galatians 1. He continues in chapter
2.
He had a faithful ministry partner,
Barnabas. These Jews understood
salvation to be opened up to the world in Jesus. He had come, God in human skin, and he had
made a way for all people who would receive Him to become people of God. Paul and Barnabas saw this with much greater
clarity than even the original 12 disciples who led the Jerusalem church.
But, as he says, the traditionalists were
open. They had seen Jesus repeatedly
make clean what was previously unclean.
They were there when he forgave the adultress instead of sanctioning her
execution. They watched as he healed
lepers by touch. He commanded demons and
his followers knew it was true. They met
him in person in the days immediately after his resurrection. Peter, James, John – they knew everything was
different.
So when Paul came declaring a gospel in which
Gentiles could follow Jesus without becoming Jews, the Jerusalem Church
accepted it and affirmed it. When Paul
brought his gentile colleague, Titus, no one in Jerusalem demanded that Titus
be circumcised. They extended to him the
right hand of fellowship and accepted him as a brother in Christ.
I have
been crucified with Christ. It is no
longer I who live but it is Christ who lives in me.
For Paul this meant everything was
different. Whatever previously existed
to categorize and divide people, Jesus tore it down. He no longer saw the world in terms of clean
or unclean. He did not meet people and
immediately think, oh, a Gentile. I’d better keep my distance. For some reason, maybe the extreme empowering
of the Holy Spirit, he could just let go of a way of thinking that had
previously defined every element of his worldview. Now in Christ, he would meet a person and
think, Jesus died for this one. I need to figure how I can make that clear so
this other will surrender his heart to Jesus and be baptized into new life in
Christ.
This put Paul in such conflict with his Jewish
countrymen he became almost paranoid. He
says that false believers were brought in to Antioch and now Galatia with the
express purpose of spying on how he exercised his freedom in Christ. Their plan was to re-enslave all would-be
Christians. They would again set up the
law as a boundary marker. And Peter fell
for it.
He sat right with Paul and uncircumcised
Christ-followers, Gentiles. They were
all there together – Paul, Peter, Barnabas and a host of new believers who
discovered true forgiveness and eternal life in Jesus. But someone from Jerusalem showed up and went
on the attack. Under cultural pressure,
Peter and Barnabas buckled. They
caved. They got up from the table. They looked at their new friends, Gentile
Christ-followers. Hemming and hawing
with an astonished Paul watching from the table and furrow-browed emissaries
from Jerusalem glaring from the side, Peter and Barnabas rejoined the herd.
Who are you?
How do you self-describe? I am someone who, when the crowd goes in one
direction, joins the crowd. Even if I
know the majority is wrong, I so crave peer acceptance, that I go with the
crowd. I’d rather be accepted than be
right.
Who puts that on their personal ad?
No one would want this to be true of themselves,
but it is true of you or me? Do we run
with the herd because deep down that is easier than putting all our trust in
God that his grace is the best thing for us?
Do we the seek the comfort of the familiar even if the way we know is
not all that great because at least it is known and faith in God requires too
much, well, too much faith?
Peter and Paul and Barnabas and others among the
first believers had torn down the wall of separation between peoples. Actually Jesus tore it down on the
cross. Literally, the curtain hanging in
the temple that kept the world away from the holiest parts of God ripped in two
by supernatural force at the moment Jesus died for the sins of the world.
Now here is Paul in Antioch watching Barnabas and
Peter go back to the Jews-only table.
The separation Jesus crushed is re-established. And it will happen in Philippi and Rome and
everywhere that there are Jews ready to announce Jesus as Messiah but not ready
for what that means. No! Says Paul, himself the most accomplished of
first century men of Israel.
“If I build up again the very things that I once
tore down,” the wall of separation, “then I demonstrate I am a [sinner.] Through the law, I have died to the law, so
that I might live to God” (2:18-19).
Paul could see that faith is truly life in God, life defined by
God. Faith is a story about who we
are.
Who am I?
Who are you? We come together and
call ourselves HillSong Church – a family of people who are Jesus’
disciples. We are a group of Christ
followers. What does that about say
us? Paul knew with great clarity that
faith defines a person.
Paul was fighting an insidious idea, one
probably held by very few believers. I
am convinced that most of the original Jewish Christ-followers were overjoyed
to welcome Gentiles and Peter and John and Barnabas are evidence. They stepped into the new world created by
Jesus without knowing what they were doing.
Their lack of clarity became insecurity when their participation with
Christ was challenged and they did not have ready answers. How can
you eat with uncircumcised gentiles? They knew the answer was ‘we can because of
Christ.’ But the answer would not
come. They knew they were made in Him,
but the old ways prevailed.
Not so with Paul. In confronting his friends and standing by
uncircumcised Titus, Paul gave a gift.
He showed the new way that is in Christ, and he showed in a painful,
dramatic fashion. It is not fun to
confront others, especially those we love.
But when his brothers in Christ reduced the Gospel to a set of rules, he
did confront them. No, said Paul, we’ve
died to that way of thinking. We are a
people who have been born anew, free of sin’s curse, free to live as God’s
people in the world by His Kingdom standards even here and now as we await the
final inauguration of that Kingdom.
Do we understand how extensive a claim it is on
us to say that we belong to Jesus? It is
too big for a personal ad or a Facebook descriptor or an identification on an
army dog tag.
I have
been crucified with Christ. It is no
longer I who live but it is Christ who lives in me.
Salvation is a gift of grace, one that means we
are forgiven, saved from death, but also saved to life. In receiving the grace of God, we give up our
lives. We open ourselves to be filled
with the Holy Spirit so that Christ lives in us. Our lives are absolutely no longer about
ourselves. We are about Him.
With Christ living in us, a new story unfold,
one that includes hard times. We will be
tempted to retreat to models of living that feel less risky because to trust
God and give ourselves to Him and receive Christ is to be unique and at times
to speak out against the world around us.
It could not be any other way.
Those apart from Christ are fallen.
Those who claim Christ but rely on themselves, like the opponents in
Galatia relying on their own understanding, are deceived.
The best we can do is love the unlovable, speak
the truth no matter the consequences, and trust God’s provision when giving
such trust just makes no sense at all.
The God-purposed life Paul discovered in Jesus powered him through
trying circumstances. The will and
presence of God empowers us to bear witness to Him and to endure whatever
opposes us. It also enables to see God
in the world and to live in freedom; a freedom only God give. We begin to truly live when we are crucified
with Christ and he comes alive in us. It
is then that we live into the grace God has given us.
AMEN
Good thought, stay strong.
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