The Marks of Jesus

This morning’s scripture reading is Galatians 6: 11-18 and can be found on page 826 of your pew Bible.

I invite you to listen for the word of God.

See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand!
Those who want to make a good impression outwardly are trying to compel you to be circumcised.
The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ. Not even those who are circumcised obey the law, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your flesh.
May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.
Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation. Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule, even to the Israel of God.
Finally, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen.
-The word of the Lord
-Thanks be to God
Sermon
The cross is a symbol we see so often, that I wonder if we are not sometimes dulled to its harsh meaning.
We wear this symbol on necklaces, see it tattooed, painted on buildings, on bumper stickers and t-shirts; we see the cross all over.
So it’s hard to be shocked to the roots of this symbol.
For many Christians, we look to the cross for comfort, for support, for it is to many a tangible and constant symbol of God’s love.
However, it is also a constant and tangible symbol of our sinfulness; for it is by this cross that we executed God.
Not unlike the electric chair of old prisons, the plank of a pirate ship, or a guillotine from the French Revolution, this cross is a symbol of capital punishment, as this symbol has everything to do with death and violence.
In a time where executions are not public spectacle, a time where we put our prisoners to sleep peacefully rather than as painfully as possible as was the intention of the Roman Empire, we must strive to remember what this cross is all about.
Paul – unlike us – can’t seem to forget the pain of it all though, as this passage tells us that he wears the marks of Christ on his very body.
This statement is the most captivating of the whole letter of Galatians for me, for it makes me wonder, what is it that he is really talking about. Is he speaking literally, as through he bears the marks of the stigmata – the real and physical holes in his hands and feet – or is Paul speaking figuratively?
Regardless, we can be sure that for Paul the cross is a symbol that strikes pain in him somehow – the brutality of it all does not seem to pass far from his thoughts.
For in the cross Paul sees not only his own faults, but in the cross, in the marks of Christ, Paul sees the faults of the World.
Paul, now at the end of Galatians, seems to know these marks personally, for the world now judges Paul just as the world judged Christ.
Paul – like Christ – became a traitor to his tradition.
Those who oppose him accuse him of acting and speaking in a way contrary to what is in the Bible, just as they accused Jesus.
In this letter to the Galatians Paul’s most obvious charge is Genesis 17: 9-14, but most especially vs. 14 which says, “Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”
It is based on such a command from God in the book of Genesis, that those who accuse Paul find the ground of their argument, for how can Paul say, “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision” matter, for such a statement clearly goes against what the Bible says. And not only against what the Bible says but what tradition says, what people grew up hearing and believing.
It was blasphemy; his teachers and his parents must have been very disappointed.
But Paul had seen the flaw in living his life according to such laws, living his life attempting to make himself pure before God, trying to earn his salvation. For Paul saw that life could not be based on such laws alone - when Paul saw the cross and some how realized that God was on that cross.
That God had been charged with breaking the laws canonized in our Bibles; that God had been found guilty by those judges that were to stand for righteousness so that people might come closer to God, that God had been executed by the Law.
So if the Law is God’s, how can God be guilty, Paul had to ask?
While Paul is charged with breaking one Law of Genesis, Jesus, God in human form, is charged with breaking even more.
For Christ did not live his life abiding completely by what was written in the Bible, for God was compelled to live beyond those regulations.
Christ was charged with breaking the Sabbath codes, laws created to emphasize the importance of abiding by this commandment, but God found it more just to heal the sick than to serve this law, he decided that loving his neighbor as himself is more important than loving the Sabbath, saying, “the Sabbath was created for man not man for the Sabbath!”
Just as Christ was compelled to serve those who were left out by the tradition founded on this Law rather than the tradition itself, so Paul calls us to serve God, not tradition, who convicted Jesus Christ.
It may sound easy – to live by obedience to our brothers and sisters rather than living in obedience to tradition, but for Paul this was no easy task.
Paul was faced with a very hard decision. He had the rules for his life, plain as day, just as we have. He knew what he should eat, how he should live, and what things to do to best serve God.
There are some who say that Paul, if he would have just stuck to the Law, that he would have been a made man – living an easy life in a high office, his future was set – but how could he go on serving God through tradition when he realized that tradition had sentenced God to the Cross?
That tradition had marked Christ a sinner, a Law breaker, for they would rather boast in those rules that they were not guilty of than see the sinfulness that Christ’s life made so apparent.
Standing for the truth marked Christ a sinner, and now standing for the truth has marked Paul with the marks of Christ.
These marks that Paul speaks of – I believe he could feel them, and they weren’t only the marks of a loving God, they were also the marks left by a family disappointed, the marks left by a good job he had to leave behind, the marks left by turning his back on what everyone expected him to do so that he could do what he believed was right. They were the marks left by those who attacked him, accusing him of ignoring the Bible, ignoring his culture and tradition, falling away from the right and just path.
In this last passage of Galatians, Paul does not sound as though the marks of Christ are something that he is proud of, that he boasts in, for he asks that no one cause him any more trouble, as though he has had enough, as though he doesn’t want to put up with it anymore. He is tiered, and maybe he even wants to go back to the life he had before, those days when life was easier, all you had to do was follow the rules and you would know that God loves you. All you have to do is be proud that you have been circumcised, and don’t worry about those who fall short of this standard. Boast in the marks that prove your innocence and God will love you, all you have to do is eat right and you will be healthy and happy.
But how could Paul go back, knowing that those rules had put God on the cross?
He could not, and neither should we, but we do. We look to the Bible to tell us that we are good, and that they are bad, that we are right and they are wrong, forgetting that doing so is not so unlike those who charged Jesus with braking the Sabbath, and those who accused Paul of breaking the circumcision codes.
For by using the Bible this way we may feel as though we are holy, as though we are just, as though we are righteous, but by doing so are we not just like those who Paul accuses of boasting in the flesh.
And if we use the Bible this way, do we not assume that God’s love is some how contingent on human behavior.
As we look to the cross, we must see the violence and self-righteousness that put God there, but we must also see a God who loved us any way.
For hear is a symbol of death, but because of the Love of God, the love of God for us that would not die though we tried to kill it, we see a love that we cannot win, cannot deserve, and cannot deny to anyone, lest we risk denying it to ourselves.
-Amen