by Rev. Bob Thompson
Galatians: 3: 23-29
When Paul had his conversion experience on the road to Damascus, he said it included a vision in which Jesus came to him, and called him to be the apostle to the Gentiles. And that is what he became.
It caused him a lot of grief in the small developing community of Jesus’ followers. Again and again, he had confrontations with the church leaders in Jerusalem. They argued that to become part of the community of believers, Gentiles needed to become children of the law of Moses – they needed to be circumcised and keep all of the Jewish restrictions. Paul countered that Jesus was calling the Gentiles to enter the community as Gentiles – Jews and Gentiles could co-exist in the community as Jews and Gentiles. It was Jesus, and not the law that brought the community together and made them one.
Around the year 48 C.E., a church council was called in Jerusalem to deal with this question, and Paul won the day – the Council decided that Gentile converts to Christianity were not obligated to keep most of the rules prescribed to the Jews by the Mosaic Law. However, his opponents called the Judaizers did not give up easily, and around 48 to 50 C.E. Paul got word that some of them were traveling through Asia Minor, visiting the churches that he had formed there, and telling the believers that if they wanted to continue to be part of the fellowship, they needed to be circumcised and to keep the Mosaic law. And some in the community were being persuaded by their arguments.
Paul sent a response to these churches, what was preserved in our New Testament as the Letter to the Galatians. It was an angry, aggressive, snarky missive, addressed to the leaders who were preaching what was clearly contrary to decision of the Jerusalem Council, and also to the members of the church who were believing them. Even though this letter was probably the earliest piece of writing in the New Testament, we don’t turn to it so much now, because the problem it was dealing with is really a historic problem – before long, the Gentiles numbers overwhelmed the Jews in the community and Jewish leadership quickly disappeared.
But last year my attention was drawn back to Galatians, by a book written by Stephen Patterson, an American Professor of Religious and Ethical Studies, specializing in the origins of Christianity. The book was called “The Forgotten Creed: Christianity’s Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery and Sexism”.
Patterson drew our attention to this forgotten creed which John read this morning, as part of our scripture reading. In the midst of arguing with the Judaizers and their Gentile followers, Paul reminds the readers of the words that were said at their baptism: “All of you who are baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. And so, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The creed is affirming that in Christ, all of the things that we have used to divide ourselves up into us and them, to the advantage of us – no longer exist. There is no us. There is no them. We are all children of God through our baptism into the community.
So, think about it. The letter to the Galatians is one of the first, if not the first writing in the New Testament written around 48 to 50 C.E., less than 20 years after Jesus died. In it, Paul quotes this baptismal creed, which is obviously earlier than that, because Paul says “For all of you who were baptized,” gave assent to this creed. Less than 20 years after the death of Jesus, the kin-dom community was denying the divisions based on race: there is neither Jew nor Gentile; the divisions based on class: there is neither slave nor free; the divisions based on gender: there is no male and female – all those divisions have disappeared because we have been made one in Christ Jesus.
It is amazing to me then in the Roman Empire as we have read and studied it -- that in that empire, this community had formed and jelled in this way in less than twenty years. It is also amazing that we have missed all of that! I titled this reflection “Hidden in Plain Sight”, to draw attention to the fact that we have all read this passage, or had it read to us, numerous times, without recognizing the impact of it. Reasons for that? First of all, Paul is not drawing our attention to it. His main argument is about the divisions between Jew and Gentile, and he simply throws in this creed, known to his readers, to bolster his argument. Second, when we read it, it doesn’t sound so radical to us. Of course, the community in Christ is like this. Paul is just stating the obvious. But when we think about it, we can’t help but be awed by how radically different this community is from the dominant community of that day, or even of our day. And thirdly, we don’t see it, because of the church which developed is the same one that suppressed it and
reintroduced the divisions of race, class and gender in the church, up to and including
this day.
Why does this all matter to me? I heard about this book when we were working on the Inclusion Statement for our Affirm proposal. As I have been talking about this Baptismal Creed, you will probably have noticed the similar ways in which the two statements unfold. I thought that we were crafting something new in our inclusion statement – new and rather controversial in some parts of the church today. I was shocked to realize that, in the ideas we were trying to express in our inclusion statement, we are only reflecting ideas contained in the very first creed of the church! We are not building a new community. We are simply resurrecting the first kin-dom community.
It may surprise you to hear that traditions are very important to me. A lot of the reading I have done in church history and theology throughout my ministry, have been a search to see where I belong in the tradition. I always want to know where I am grounded – to understand what my beliefs and actions grow out of. And I have discovered that when you search the traditions you may find them taking you to places and conclusions you hadn’t expected. This was one of those kinds of searches.
When we started working on the Inclusion statement that would describe our congregation, I felt we were working on a brand-new expression of kin-dom community
for a brand-new age. And now I find that we are only re-discovering the earliest expression of the community that Jesus was calling us to. A lot of church has happened in the meantime.
A lot of history has taken place. Much of it has been good – the sick have been ministered to, the hungry have been fed and the naked have been clothed. Some of it has been bad – theology and actions that make us deeply ashamed of what we have done, down through the ages, in the name of Jesus.
It seems to me that the mystery and the deep spirit of the church has often been that the Spirit that Jesus instilled in those first followers of him, seems continue through all of that history. Time and again, it seems to get lost and buried, and then rises to the surface again in new ways, lived out by new disciples. And I have to wonder whether we are some of those new disciples seeking to form again, that kin-dom community that Jesus was calling us to. Perhaps we can meditate on that, in this period of quiet, reflective music.
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