Galatians 3:23-29
 
Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be reckoned as righteous by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 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. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

     In her notes on the book of Galatians, Sheila Briggs points out that while the movement to follow Jesus was still largely connected to Jewish communities by the middle of the first century CE, preachers and teachers, Paul foremost among them, were helping to increase the number of Gentiles within the movement. In fact, in the book of Galatians, Paul explicitly says that God called him to preach about Jesus to the Gentiles. Because Paul carried so much authority within his community and started so many churches, he was often consulted around thorny theological and interpersonal issues in congregations. His letters were seen as wise enough to pass around to congregations beyond the original intended audience. The book of Galatians is a letter that people found so worthwhile that it made it all the way to us, 2000 years later. In this letter, Paul uses the authority granted to him to offer a strong critique of some faith practices these churches had developed after he moved away.

     Briggs also notes that this letter was written to be passed around among the several churches in Galatia. New missionaries had begun to teach in this area. Briggs, in her commentary, points out that we don’t know much about them except what we can reconstruct from Paul’s arguments against them. It seems that they taught that these predominantly Gentile Galatian churches needed to begin adopting some Jewish practices in order to truly follow Jesus. This was a real and challenging conflict among the earliest followers of Jesus. We’ve heard about it in the book of Acts and in multiple letters from Paul. In the early days in a movement, they were still trying to figure a lot out. This question of how to be in relationship with people you were once taught to avoid sharing a table or community with would have been important to address.
If you have always built a community of faith by following a specific set of rules to reflect your understanding of God and to help define your community as a distinct people, it can be challenging to imagine living out your faith and your relationships differently. Paul knows this, even as he believes the new missionaries are wrong. In her commentary on this text, Sarah Henrich notes that Paul spoke of himself as being Jewish and being invested in the promises of the covenant. In his introduction to the New Testament, Bart Ehrman also points out that not only did his Jewish identity continue to inform his ideas about Jesus, his particular identity as a Pharisee within Judaism also shapes how he understood Jesus.

     Ehrman argues that since he had been a Pharisee, we can be pretty sure that Paul believed that God would one day intervene on behalf of God's people during what came to be known as an Apocalypse.  This Apocalypse would be a radical disruption of the sin and oppression that had developed in creation. Paul did not stop thinking that God would disrupt the world's oppressive order when he began to follow Jesus. Instead, he would come to understand his vision of Christ as a sign that he was witnessing the first part of God's radical disruption and redemption of creation. All the rest of his ministry would be shaped by his certainty that Jesus would be returning very soon and would finish the redemptive, re-creative work of the Apocalypse.

     Paul’s work, as I have said, is theologically dense and we’re really only reading a tiny bit of it. I really appreciate Ehrman’s overview of Paul in his introduction to the New Testament because he helps compile and condense a bunch of theological arguments from several letters. He makes the argument that Paul roots his idea about covenant primary in the covenant God made with Abraham. The covenant with Moses is secondary. God had said that Abraham would be a blessing to all nations. Because of that, Paul believes that Jesus, as the fulfillment of the covenant, would want to offer redemption and liberation to as many people as possible, not to just one group of people. That's why this argument over how one becomes part of the Christian community was so important to him. He didn't think God wanted to create more barriers for people to take part in God's liberation. Asking people to become Jewish in order to follow Jesus seemed like an extra unnecessary step to him.

     It must be noted that Paul never completely disavowed the religious scripture and communal practices known as “the law.” Brigitte Kahl, in her commentary on this text, reminds us that centuries of anti-Jewish understandings of Christianity have developed because people read Paul’s distinction between “law” and “faith” as a repudiation of Jewish religious law. Paul actually argues that the law has a purpose. He describes it as a “disciplinarian,” which was, according to Alicia Vargas, a term used to refer to a slave who was put in charge of children to keep them safe. He understood the value of the law in guiding the Jewish people. He just also believed that it was not the end of the guidance God would offer people. Jesus, the Word made flesh, would be God's final word. Where Paul believed the law offered guardrails, he saw Jesus as offering liberation.

     People who not been a part of the Jewish community did not need their specific guardrails because they would be adopted by Jesus not into the Mosaic covenant but the Abrahamic covenant, which was for all people. Just as Abraham was first blessed because he had faith in God, Jesus' newest Gentile followers would be blessed primarily through their faith, not through their ability to learn and follow all of the law that was developed after Abraham. I read this argument as Paul justifying two paths to Christ: one through the laws of Moses, primarily for Jewish followers of Jesus, and on through adoption into Abraham’s covenant. They would be blessed through faith in Christ by way of Abraham's covenant. This adoption is an unusual one where, as Carolyn Osiek points out, everyone with faith, regardless of gender, ethnic background, or economic background gets beloved status akin to that of the most favored son in the surrounding cultures. Paul believed Jesus made it so everyone could be Abraham's heir and inherit God's blessing, no circumcision required. 

     Because all people could become heirs to Abraham's blessing, Paul understood that the social distinctions that would have once prevented people from interacting as family would no longer prevent people from being part of Christian community. According to Paul, even the most powerful and rigorously protected social hierarchies could no longer be used to prevent you from being an heir to grace. Please do not doubt that the binaries Paul lists in our reading- Jew/Gentile, slave/free, male and female- were rigid, holding no overlap in meaning or identity. Kahl points out that these pairs being opposite and often oppositional was just basic common sense to most of the people who first read this letter. Paul completely upended everything about how people understood how to use these categories of people to organize their lives and their communities. Paul said you don’t have to be the powerful one in a binary to have access to Christ. You just have to have faith.

     The Galatians weren’t the only Christians trying to figure out how to build up the body of Christ and getting stuck on how to build relationships with people you were taught were untrustworthy. Being a part of certain social groups still gives you unearned privilege to this day. It seems that this is one of the hardest things for us as humans to learn to do differently. Particularly in our current political moment, Christian nationalists are arguing that certain kinds of people and certain nations are more deserving of protection, liberation, and access to the community of Christ. Sometimes even good-hearted attempts to live a communal religious life, where all people have access to the blessing of faith, can still be marred by unacknowledged, unconscious bias towards people who have the least amount of privilege in a society. It can be especially hard if a Christian community understands itself to be struggling, and is worried that the introduction of "new" kinds of people will change the character of their faith.

     I can’t forget hearing a member of a small church here in Maine that very much wanted to remain vital express concern about the Open and Affirming Process. She worried that if they went through it and agreed to openly and publicly affirm LGBTQ people, that they’d become “the gay church.” I still am not sure with what’s wrong with being the gay church, unless you see something negative about being LGBTQ or being seen as gay by the broader community. And yet, here was a sister in Christ still struggling with accepting someone from the less privileged side of a binary into community.

     Paul is a complex figure. He certainly has little good to say about women like me who develop romantic relationship with other women. And, yet, our reading for today contains great wisdom. "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". We would do well to regularly ask ourselves: In this time and in this place, how might we better live into Paul’s vision of a big, adopted family of God, where everyone is an equal heir to grace? How are we crafting a Body of Christ where difference in ethnicity, sexuality, religious background, and gender are no longer barriers to accessing God? Paul changed so much by finding a place for Gentiles in the churches is Galatia. What will we change by finding a place for the excluded in ours?

Resources consulted while writing this sermon:

Sheila Briggs' notes on Galatians in The New Oxford Annotated Bible: The New Revised Standard Version with Apocryphya, ed. Michael Coogan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)
Bart. D. Ehrman's The New Testament: A Historical Introduction of The Early Christian Writings, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Sarah Henrich: https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1683
​Brigitte Kahl: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-12-3/commentary-on-galatians-323-29-6
Alicia Vargas: https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2873
Carolyn Osiek, "Galatians," The Women's Bible Commentary, eds. Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998)

     I know that I’ve told this story before but I like it, so I’m going to tell it again. Rev. Dr. Fred Craddock told it first. It’s about the first church that he served as pastor. It was a small church in East Tennessee, not far from the city of Oak Ridge, which some of you may have heard of because of its connection to the atomic industry. Because the US government invested in the area to develop a nuclear program, it grew quickly, as did the small towns and rural communities around it. Lots of single people and families moved to the area. Some people even lived in tents while they worked to save enough money to get their own places, either settling in Oak Ridge or heading back home with checks in hand.

     Dr. Craddock's church was located in a community where all these new folks had moved. When he told the story first, he emphasized that this church was a lovely little church with a pump organ and kerosene lamps hung all around the walls. The congregation sat in pews that had been hand hewn from a giant poplar tree. It was a warm and inviting-feeling little church building. Dr. Craddock felt like the people in the church should be inviting some of the newcomers to help fill their lovely little building. Imagine his surprise when his congregants weren't as excited to invite new people as he was.

     He consistently heard "Oh, I don't know" and "I don't think they'd fit in here" when he raised the suggestion. Someone even objected to inviting the new folks because many of them seemed to only be there temporarily. Why spend the energy on outreach when the "construction people," as someone called them, would be leaving pretty soon. Dr. Craddock countered by encouraging the church to invite the people in and make them feel at home, even if they would only be local for a while. Craddock said that they argued round and round about it, finally, on one Sunday, saying they would vote about next steps the following week. When they sat down the next Sunday, a member of the church stood up and said, "I move that in order to be a member of this church, you must own property in the county." Someone quickly seconded it. Unfortunately, the measure passed. When the Dr. Craddock voted against the measure, he recalls being reminded that he "was just a kid preacher" and he didn't have a vote. Not long after this very inhospitable vote, Craddock left this pastorate.

     Years later, Craddock and his wife were traveling near Oak Ridge. He decided that he wanted to take her to see that church, as they weren’t yet married during that time in his life. The church ended up being difficult to find. You see, in the intervening years, the roads had changed. They eventually found their way to the little gravel road that would take them to that pretty little church with the kerosene lamps and the pump organ. As they drove down the road, he finally saw the church set back in the woods, gleaming white. Much to his surprise, the parking lot was full! He saw trucks and cars and motorcycles squeezed into every available spot.

     They drove around the building and saw that the church even had a new sign out front. The sign said, "Barbecue, all you can eat." Craddock quickly realized that the church was no longer a church. It had become a restaurant. It was packed with all kinds of people: locals, tourists, single folks, parents with little kids, construction workers, scientists, Medians, Parthians, and people from Mesopotamia. Fred looked over the crowded former sanctuary and then over at his wife, Nettie and said, "It's a good thing this is still not a church, otherwise these people couldn't be in here."

     I like this story for few reasons. For one, it mentions barbecue and I like barbecue, even though I’m not supposed to eat it anymore. I like the idea that other people can eat it though, so I’m glad these people found a good dinner. Two, it shows clearly that the Spirit of a Church matters more than look of a church. It doesn’t matter how pretty your lamps are if your people are mean. And, three, it is a reminder not to ignore opportunities for relationship when they arise. I know plenty of people who feel more welcome at barbecue joints and gay bars and books stores than churches. As a Christian, I want to listen to why they feel that way, and let that shape how I cultivate welcome at any church I’m a part of. The books of Acts is about listening to the Spirit in order to build the Body of Christ. The body of Christ, at the very least, should be as welcoming as a barbecue place.

     People talk about Pentecost as the birth of the church. If that’s true, then the church was born out of disorder, disruption, and upheaval among people who were all faithful and bewildered. All these people are together in the city for a reason. Michal Beth Dinkler reminds us in her commentary that the people are gathered for a celebration known as Pentecost, this was the end of the Jewish Festival of Weeks, which was a harvest festival. In her commentary on this text, Dr. Wil Gafney also notes that by the era in which this story would have been written, Pentecost had also become a celebration of Moses receiving the Torah, a story we know from the book of Exodus. So, the church was born in the midst of celebration of food and the relationship between God and the people.

      The people gathered in the city likely spoke Greek to each other but local dialects at home and among their most beloved people. Aramaic, Egyptian, Latin, Phrygian, and many other tongues would have filled the air in the Holy City. It is in the midst of a bustling city full of words and strangers and devotion that God appears in wind and fire. In a commentary on this text, Brian Peterson reminds us that in many Bible stories, God's presence is symbolized by wind and fire. So, we should understand the tumult before us as following God’s pattern of showing up in wild and unpredictable ways to change everything.

     The presence of the Divine is described as a violent wind that fills the house that the disciples were in. The author of Acts then describes bits of the Holy Spirit alighting and settling onto each of the disciples, looking something like divided tongues of fire. This Spirit gives the disciples the ability to speak languages that they didn't even know. The people gathered for worship were astounded. Pilgrims from all over the diaspora did not expect the people scholar Matt Skinner calls “Backwoods Galileans” to know all of these foreign languages. Some of them are amazed. Some of them assume the disciples are very drunk and getting messy in public. Peter, the apostle who had something to prove after betraying Jesus, stood up to explain what was going on as he understood it.

     As we’ve heard over the past few weeks, the Jesus movement would eventually spread beyond the Jewish community. But, that hasn’t happened yet. So, Peter addresses the people who hear the disciples as one Jewish person speaking to other Jewish people. He quotes the prophet Joel: "In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days, I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy." He then describes signs in the heavens and on earth that with help people know when God's reign of peace will break into the world.
Specifically, Peter says that at that time, when God's Reign is fully realized, everyone... all people... will have the opportunity to join God's Kin-dom. Migrant workers, townies, people who are just passing through, people who will never leave. Hondurans, Iraqis, Somalis, and French Canadians. Young, old, somewhere in between. Women, men, people in between. Enslaved and totally free... All people will be welcome and all those borders and social conventions that we have constructed to keep us separate from other humans, those walls will no longer have the power to keep someone from accessing God. In terms the church in the first part of my sermon might understand:  even if you don't own property in the county, you have a place in God's kin-dom.

     Yesterday, I sat at a very damp table at Hallowell Pride with the pastor from the UU Church in Augusta and two lay members from Old South in Hallowell. We chatted with equally damp strangers, offering them snacks, water, and stickers that said “God’s Love is Fully Inclusive” and “My God Love Everyone.”  One couple, upon snagging a couple of Marlene’s brownies, said something about our table having “food and love.” I said that that kind of describes my idea of a religious community, too. Food and love. On this Pentecost, let us remain open to the Spirit that arrives in chaos and change. May we override kneejerk reactions that lead us to feel threatened by transformation. And, in offering nourishment of all kinds, may will help God’s kin-dom come in this time and this place. Let this entire house be a place of welcome and love, and, maybe a good dinner.
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Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
Fred Craddock, "The Softer Side of Pentecost" in The Cherry Log Sermons (Westminster John Knox Press, 2001)
Michal Beth Dinkler: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/day-of-pentecost-2/commentary-on-acts-21-21-17
Wil Gafney, "Pentecost Vigil (or Early Service)," A Women's Lectionary for the Whole Church, Year B (New York: Church Publishing Incorporated, 2023)
Brian Peterson: https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1630
Matt Skinner: https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2837
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Acts 1:1-11 Jesus Taken Up Into Heaven​
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In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

     This is one of those great little readings that remind us that the Gospel of Luke and Acts are a product of inspired human creation. That is easier to remember in the letters that Paul wrote to churches. We call them Epistles (which means letters). Paul wrote his letters to churches to address issues and ask for support in ministry. There’s a purpose. Luke and its sequel Acts are written for a purpose, too. We know that because the opening part of both books says they do! In Luke, it says, “Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.”

     And, as we heard today from our reader, Acts is also written to Theophilus: “In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the Apostles who he had chosen.” Then, like any helpful storyteller, the author gives a summary of what happened in Luke. It’s like when a tv show begins with a little recap of the episode before. Sometimes, if the story is long enough or happened a while ago, it’s good to have a reminder of what happened.

     Remember, Acts is the second half of a series intended to help teach someone who wants to follow Jesus. Marion Soards, in notes on Luke, and Christopher Matthew, in notes on Acts, both point out that Theophilus may be an actual person who is a member of a church or a name that is just supposed to be a stand-in for anyone seeking to know more about God. You see, the name Theophilus means “beloved of God.” It could be a person’s name! Or, it could be that this message is written to you and me. The message- you don’t know when you’ll see Jesus again, but you will be empowered to testify to his work in this world- is certainly one useful to an ancient ancestor in the faith as well as anyone in the pews right now.

     Today is the last Sunday of the Easter season and a special Sunday where we commemorate the part of Jesus’ story called the Ascension. That story is told in Luke 24: 51 and summarized here at the beginning of Acts. The Summary says that after Jesus told them that he would empower them, “he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.” When I read that, I thought of Eeyore the donkey floating into the sky with a balloon on his tail or when the Care Bears drove through the sky in their cars made of clouds, though the author of Acts didn’t know anything about Eeyore or Care Bears. Instead, the scholar Gilberto Ruiz thinks the Ascension is probably supposed to remind us of stories from the older parts of the Bible where prophets would appoint someone to follow them in their work. In 2 Kings 2: 9-15, Elijah ascends into heaven, similarly, giving his mantle (a piece of clothing) to Elisha and also giving him his spirit. Another example is when Moses decides to appoint Joshua as the next prophet leader in Deuteronomy 34:9, Moses lays hands on Joshua and Joshua becomes “full of the spirit of wisdom."  Too bad Moses didn’t get to float in the sky like Jesus and Elijah did. The Care Bears make it look pretty fun.

     Cheryl Lindsay, in a commentary on the longer Ascension story in Luke, invites us to remember that transition is a vital part of following God. The transition from Jesus’ presence in bodily form to Jesus’ presence in Spirit opens up the opportunity for the next era of the kindom of God. She says, “Just as each era before their life eventually concluded as Moses (Law) gave way to the Psalmists’ composition (Wisdom) which led to the ministry of the Prophets, the Incarnation birthed the empowered ministry of the Church.” These transitions, releasing some from work and commissioning others to take it up, connect us to the ones who came before us and help us look forwards to the ones who will follow. Dr. Lindsay says that “The church testifies to the already-not yet reality of the reign of God on earth as it is in heaven.” The Spirit is moving right now. We are in the midst of the foundations for the reign of God. But, God’s hopes for the world are not fully realized yet. We are invited to be a part of that. That is why Jesus empowered his followers. To be a part of the not yet but will of God being done all around us.

     Two figures showed up after the Ascension, just as they had at the tomb when the women arrived to find that Jesus wasn’t there. Just as those two helped the women understand what his going on, these two help the disciples figure out what’s going on. “Galileans, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” In her commentary on this text, Mitzi Smith points out that the two figures in white seem to not want the disciples to just stand there and stare at the sky. They point the disciples back to earth, the world around them. This is where they will live out their faith. Dr. Smith says, “We are born here and given a vocation here on earth and that calling is not to be always gazing into heaven, indifferent to the injustices and needs of our neighbors, but to be busy sharing and being good news to humanity.” Jesus never asked us to sit around and wait for his return. He did ask us to continue his work of healing, compassion, and justice.

     You might have noticed one important difference from the Moses and Joshua and Elijah and Elisha stories and the Jesus and the disciples stories. Ruiz points out in his commentary, that the earlier prophets are empowering one person who will continue their work. Jesus empowers many. Ruiz offers an important question for us today: if we as a whole group of people are invited into servant leadership by Christ, how do we make sure that all parts of the Body of Christ are offered the opportunity and responsibility of leading right now? How to we train ourselves to pay attention for the ways that the Spirit is present in each other in ways that may look different from person to person and group to group? We don’t have one Joshua or one Elisha. We have all of us. May we look to the world all around us to see where this Spirit is calling us. May we recognize the Spirit working in each other. And, may we, beloveds of God, take seriously the empowerment we have been given. Now is not the time to stare into the sky waiting for something. It is time to walk forward into the “already-not yet” with the Spirit as our Guide.

Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
Marion Lloyd Soards’ notes on Luke in The New Oxford Annotated Bible: The New Revised Standard Version with Apocryphya, ed. Michael Coogan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)

Christopher R. Matthews’ notes on Acts in The New Oxford Annotated Bible: The New Revised Standard Version with Apocryphya, ed. Michael Coogan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)

Gilberto Ruiz: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ascension-of-our-lord/commentary-on-acts-11-11

Cheryl Lindsay: https://www.ucc.org/sermon-seeds/sermon-seeds-opened-minds/
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Mitzi Smith: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ascension-of-our-lord/commentary-on-acts-11-11-3