What is Paul Talking About?

This morning’s scripture reading is Galatians’ 5: 1-11.
I invite you to listen for the word of God.
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor un-circumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is throwing you into confusion will pay the penalty, whoever he may be. Brothers, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished.
The word of the Lord
Thanks be to God.
Sermon
I can’t say that I intended to preach about circumcision on Children’s Sunday, that’s just the way the preaching schedule worked out, but the good thing is, Paul wasn’t really preaching about circumcision either.
Paul, in this section of Galatians, was talking about human attempts to earn salvation; a task that Paul knows is impossible – and, ironic, especially as we Christians confess to believe that salvation has already been won by Christ’s crucifixion. That is the meaning behind this symbol which is our main symbol of Christianity, that by Jesus’ death, we have been saved, not through our own works, but through the work of God.
However, like the Galatians, we sometimes forget, and try to earn salvation ourselves, or at least order our society in a way that denies the power of the cross.
You see, because Christ earned salvation for us, there is no longer any reason to order society the way we always have. We like to order society by thinking about who is cool and who is not, who is good and who is bad, who is righteous and who is sinful, but Paul doesn’t seem to think we should be allowed to do that if we acknowledge that we are given salvation, not because we are good but because God is good.
We can be a lot like a bunch of yellow birds that Dr. Seuss told a story about. There was this group of big yellow birds who lived happily on an island. At least, they were all happy, until a man came around with a machine that could put green stars on their yellow bodies. Once one of the birds had a green star, all the birds had to have a green star to be like the bird who looked so special with that green star, but once every bird had a green star the man with the star machine had to figure out a way to keep selling stars so he convinced some of the birds that it would be better to have two stars on their yellow bodies. The birds with two stars walked around like they were better than everyone else, so the birds with one star naturally wanted to get two stars, so they paid the man to get two. Then some of the birds wanted three stars so they could feel like they were better or more special than the birds with two stars, but then all the birds with two stars wanted three, so some of the birds got three stars, and then four and then five, and on and on they went until some of those birds were covered in green stars, looking like they were more green than yellow.
Today, none of us have green stars on our chests, but we still do things to make ourselves feel special, to make ourselves feel like we are better than someone else. Sometimes we buy up the nicest things, the best shoes, the coolest cars, the biggest houses, the best video games, but once we get the thing that we think is so cool it’s not long before there is something else that we have to have, just like the birds with one star thought one star would be enough, but soon they wanted two and then three, and then on and on and on.
Here at the church we are sometimes guilty of doing the same kind of thing, just as this morning’s scripture passage tells us about. We all want to feel special - like we are special to God – so we buy things, or we do things to make ourselves feel more special. Maybe we buy something new, maybe we give something up, maybe we stand up for something that we really believe in - maybe we don’t put green stars on our chests, but we certainly take pride in ourselves for doing things that make us feel special.
But the problem is that we can’t depend on anything to make ourselves better than anyone else – because the fact is that we all mess up, we are all sinners. And when we try to make ourselves more holy than we are we end up just like those birds, with stars all over ourselves, looking less like the yellow birds that God created us to be.
For if we could make ourselves feel special, that God would not have had to offer us Jesus on the cross. Paul wrote that, “You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen from grace.” In trying to make ourselves feel special, we deny the power of the cross, because it is this cross that is the ultimate sign of God’s love, the source of what makes us special, the reason we can all call ourselves God’s children.
Of course, just because God’s love comes for free, that doesn’t mean we can do whatever we want, because we all know that if we did whatever we felt like doing without respecting each other and ourselves we would not be as happy as God would want us to be.
The point of the story about the yellow birds though, and Paul’s point in this passage from Galatians, is that rather than rely on our own ability to make us feel special, we have a God who has made us feel special. We are not special because of what we wear or because of what we do or don’t do, what we have done or haven’t done; we are special because God loves us. Because God knows who we are, God doesn’t expect us to earn God’s love; God just gives it to us for free – So that all people may know that they are equal in God’s eyes, as they should be in our eyes.
We are a long way from the kind of equality that Paul hopes for, that Paul believes is the necessary result of Christ’s death on the cross, but each time we come to this table I believe we know what it would be like if for only a second.
Because we are not invited to this table because we are good, we cannot earn our way up here. We are only allowed to come to this table because God has made it so.
But – we are invited to pray and live in a way that the truth of this table and the power of the crucifixion might be known throughout the earth.
-Amen.