Sermon, Proper 6, "Roman law and order co-opts what it means to be faithful"

 I want to make it clear I would never preach this sermon.  One of my cardinal rules for sermon-giving is that I should never appear as hero within my own sermon.  And this one reeks of just how good I am.  Whether that is true, I don't think congregations learn much when the pastor is "the hero."  Though the statements within the sermon are true, I am including this sermon only because it helps me with my systematic theology.

I believe Galatians is a window toward understanding the whole of the New Testament.  

C Proper 6

Galatians 2:11-21

Many of us know what it is like to be the person who does not belong, who is excluded and not part of the in-crowd.  As finding your people or developing a group of friends is an important part of life in adolescence, we see this as a common theme in movies that feature teens.  Who is in?  Who is out?  What are the markers for who is in or out?  Bandos, jocks, cheerleaders, burnouts, geeks, nerds, everyone seems to come with a ready-made label for their group or who belongs and who does not as we make our way through Junior High and High School.

Because that in-group, out-group dynamic is an almost universal story, movies about teens, teen spirit and angst, are regularly made.  In the 1980s, the years I grew up in, there were a series of movies made by teen stars named the “Brat Pack.”  Many of those movies were exactly about what it means to be part of “the club”—“Sixteen Candles,” “The Outsiders,”  “Pretty in Pink,” and

probably the most famous, “The Breakfast Club,” where a group of high schoolers in detention break out of their categories for just a moment to really hear each other’s stories and realize that all of them and their stories are bigger and broader than their high school cliques or labels.

Hard to believe those movies were forty years ago.  Twenty years ago, adolescent angst about who is in and who is out was portrayed in the movie “Mean Girls” and how even teen evangelical Christianity had become the “in group” in the movie “Saved.”

In all honesty, I’m not really sure we ever get out of that mindset of insider/outsider.  I know some of the most toxic churches I have pastored often have an “in group” that they invite the pastor and their family to join.  Come be a part of our special group, trade in the insider knowledge we have, and see our local church and the wider world as we do.  Regularly attend the social gatherings we post and maybe overlook some of the ways we exclude the other, not so civilized members or friends of the church.  Within that group the clergy family becomes aware that we will be protected from the in-group’s church gossip and backwater conversations.  We are even subtly warned that comes with a trade-off if we do not accept.  If we do not accept the invitation to be part of the “in-group,” we run the risk of being talked about ourselves.  And excluded from the next big social event.  And talked about much more often like, I’m not so sure about “that” sermon, or the pastor seems to be spending quite a bit of time with “that” family.  Or what would happen if “that” crowd the pastor is talking about started to come to “our” church?

I remember Tracy and I having conversations in our kitchen about whether we accept the invitation to let other people in the church know we had made the insider choice.  We had walled them off, even as their pastors.   Or do we make it clear that we will move with freedom in other circles to embrace a wider community? I’ve stated that in a way which makes the value choice seem simple.  At the time, it did not feel that way.  And it was painful, really painful, as we made mistakes, tried our best to navigate what love means in the everyday world, where our choice would cost not only us as a couple but also cost our kids.

Paul and a disciple named Cephas--some New Testament writers identify Cephas as Peter, but for here we’re going to stick with the name Cephas--Paul and Cephas had a confrontation.  While Cephas was in Antioch, he would eat with the Gentiles, in some Jewish circles at the time, a break of Jewish kosher practice.   Cephas seemed to be ok doing that, Paul said, until two people who believed in the insider/outsider story of circumcision arrived in Antioch.  When those of the circumcision faction arrived, Cephas drew back from the gentiles.  And his behavior encouraged Barnabas to draw back as well.   Cephas seemed to be willing to break bread with Gentiles until the “in crowd” rolled around.  And when they did, Cephas broke communion with the Gentiles, would not break bread with them.  “Is keeping this kosher practice more like Roman law or Jewish faith?” Paul seems to be asking.

Now for centuries Christian scholars have pointed at this Scripture as a difference between the legalism of Judaism verses the freedom Christ provides.  But looking closer, that’s not how Paul tells it.  In verse 14, Paul says he confronted Cephas and said, “If you, though a Jew, live like a gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the gentiles to live like Jews?”  Paul does not believe that Jewish Law is about an insider/outsider story—where some are acceptable and some are not, some are worthy and others are not.  In fact, what Paul seems to be saying throughout his letter to the Galatians is that too often Roman law has appropriated Jewish Law and they have become conflated.  Roman law is about domination, who is in and who is out.  It is the gentiles, Paul writes, who tell us to look at the gentile and not see our neighbor but to see someone who should be less than, excluded, and not worthy at the table. 

In fact, Paul says, I used to be like the gentiles, up on my high horse, not remembering that the whole of the Jewish Law is summed up in loving our neighbor.  “So,” Paul says, confronting Cephas, “are you a Jew, Cephas, or just like any other Roman gentile, seeing those whom you dined with in Antioch as less than, unworthy, or sub-human?”

Now those teenage dramas of who is in and who is out, who belongs and who does not, who has worth and who does not, can be incredibly painful and devastating for a young person. 

But, as people largely of privilege within our church membership, I don’t know if we can really comprehend the magnitude, the devastation of what that means for a whole people.  And what that means when the most ruthless military power on the planet can justify preemptively slaughtering 40,000 of your people because you are considered the barbarians, the terrorists, the universal enemies of law, order, and all that is right with the world. 

When we killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq based on phony evidence, we used this Roman gospel.  When Black folk are killed by police for wearing a hoodie, during a traffic stop, or to serve a no-knock warrant, this is the Roman gospel we use.  When Jordan Neely, an unhoused Black man, is choked out on a subway because he is having a mental health episode, is it because all the facts conspire to show that he is sub-human, less than, not worthy?

The Roman gods justify their children’s violence over and against the Galatians by seeing them as the people of terror and tumult, the perpetual threat, the security risk.  If justice comes through this kind of violence, Paul writes, then Christ died for nothing. 

The Christ Paul preaches is Christ crucified, the vanquished, the one considered the security risk.  Roman violence did not make things right.  God makes things right by choosing to be in solidarity with the conquered, the defeated, the vanquished.  Not unlike how God chose to be in solidarity with the Children of Israel as they lay in bondage in Egypt, God’s love is revealed in solidarity with the crucified Christ. 

That is why it is impossible to avoid politics in talking about authentic Christian faith.  Because although we may want to believe that politics and religion were fused in the ancient world when talking about the Seleucid, the Romans, the Galatians, and the Jews, we cannot talk about who gets food and who does not, who gets housing and who does not, who gets health care and who does not, who gets human rights and who does not, who gets driver’s licenses and who does not, who gets public education and who does not , who gets police protection and who gets suspicion and brutality . . . without talking about politics.

When religious faith chooses to ignore a needed response to the civic religion of Roman law and order, we consent to that law and order.  We say this is the macro-narrative that holds value for us.  Religious faith, or religious faith’s failure to act, chooses to ordain and bless those decisions. 

Should not religious faith, as Paul’s religious faith did, call us to say, “This is wrong.  This is not God’s will”  God is actively working against systems and structures which oppress, dominate, or divide to destroy.   The Roman macro-narrative says that you, as the daughters and sons of God, siblings and cousins of God, you belong, while you, you we have identified as barbarians, terrorists, Galatians, do not belong.   In fact, we’ll create a whole media story to tell you why shock and awe had to be performed, why the drone had to be used against your wedding party, or why your land had to be confiscated.  We, we are doing the work of God.  You, you are the merciless savages.  In fact, if you have a media story that shows us as the merciless savages, we’ll confiscate the film and put you in prison.

Paul wants to make it clear.  Christ’s gospel sides with the vanquished, the defeated, the destroyed, those done violence against, and no Orwellian doublespeak is going to change that. 

Paul uses his confrontation with Cephas to open up a dialog about the need to distinguish Jewish faith and Roman law, between the Great Altar of Pergamon and Christ’s table.  And throughout Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he is exhorting his readers and listeners to choose values that are more than just skimming the surface, more profound than skin-deep.  These are the values that are at the heart of the Mosaic covenant, reflect the extended width of Christ’s table, and question every division that does not see the person in all their glorious difference from who we are, standing, sitting, or praying across from us as a Beloved Child of God. 

I cannot tell you what a difference this has made in my life, how this drains my life of fear, and opens me up to incredible friendships I would never have imagined possible.  For, in the end, that is one of the ultimate goals of spiritual practice in prayer, that we might become friends of God as Christ prayed that his disciples might be known as his friends.  Rabbi Binah Wing, the first-ever rabbi in Rockford, Illinois, became one of my best friends.  African-American pastor Jesse Waters was the one who could see when I was boiling over in seminary class and take me to the basement of our seminary dormitory and whip my butt in ping-pong until I settled down.  Rabbi Uri Barnea became one of my greatest colleagues on the Montana Interfaith Network mission and ministry and we became great dishwashers together.  I have spoken of great Native leaders in Billings, Montana, Josiah Hugs, Philene Whiteman, Nell Game Counter Eby, and Lita Pepion as great leaders for their own people who are rightly suspicious of Christianity and have been the greatest of friends.  Barb Wenger, out lesbian woman, risked her life every darn day for Guatemalan refugees and saved my life on a fateful early morning at the Mexican border. 

All of these friendships crossed traditional lines.  If I had any responsibility for them, they happened because my Christian faith, in humility, made my heart open for the possibility of being changed and transformed.  They did not happen, my life was not saved, because these friends became Christian.  On the contrary, my life was saved because of who they were as non-Christians.  God is forever tearing down walls, breaking apart altars to violence, and bending implements of war into tools for gardening.  These friendships make me a better friend of God.  Imagine if I had forbid them in all of my arrogance and righteous indignation as a person of the true white, straight, male Christianity that affords me all the benefits and entitlements of my superiority.  Pffffft.  I would be so much lesser of a person, poorer in spirit, and fail as a friend of God.  That does not make me heroic in any way.  It means I just paused long enough to let God’s love wash over me.

Friends.  Sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins, these are the possibilities that await us when we get off of our high horse and we are convicted by Christ who meets us on the ground to know ourselves in solidarity with the people who are forever named the barbarians, the terrorists, the outsiders.  Pay attention to a macro-narrative that calls people or the good earth less-than--not based on behavior but because those labels benefit those who seek to enslave, dominate, and make a profit from those divisions.  Do not let it happen!  Do not consent to values that are surface or skin-deep!  By Christ’s cross, join Paul as he invites us to something richer, deeper, and fuller as friends of God.  As friends of people who bear gifts and salvation we could not have imagined possible.  Amen.