Galatians 6:14-18

Galatians 6:14-18The Message (MSG)

For my part, I am going to boast about nothing but the Cross of our Master, Jesus Christ. Because of that Cross, I have been crucified in relation to the world, set free from the stifling atmosphere of pleasing others and fitting into the little patterns that they dictate. Can’t you see the central issue in all this? It is not what you and I do—submit to circumcision, reject circumcision. It is what God is doing, and he is creating something totally new, a free life! All who walk by this standard are the true Israel of God—his chosen people. Peace and mercy on them!

Quite frankly, I don’t want to be bothered anymore by these disputes. I have far more important things to do—the serious living of this faith. I bear in my body scars from my service to Jesus.

May what our Master Jesus Christ gives freely be deeply and personally yours, my friends. Oh, yes!

It bears repeating over and over again:

It is not what you and I do.  It is what God IS doing...creating a totally new, free life.

How would you live if every day you were reminded that God was doing something new in you that day?

The tense of the verb is important here. 

What God IS doing.

Not just what God did. Not what God will do.

What God IS doing.

God - active in our world.

Active in our lives.

Active in our churches and homes and families.

Even when we aren't paying attention.

Even when we are too caught up in our actions. Our worship. Our time and our talents. Our meetings. Our stewardship drives. Our budgets. Our long-range planning. Our curriculum.

Paul reminds us that God's activity is what keeps everything going. 

And because of that we are free.

So what are you going to do with all that freedom?

Free at last, free at last. Thank you God that we are free at last. Open my eyes today to see all the ways you are making my life new so that I may fully grasp my freedom! Amen

Galatians 6:11-13

Galatians 6:11-13The Message (MSG)

Now, in these last sentences, I want to emphasize in the bold scrawls of my personal handwriting the immense importance of what I have written to you. These people who are attempting to force the ways of circumcision on you have only one motive: They want an easy way to look good before others, lacking the courage to live by a faith that shares Christ’s suffering and death. All their talk about the law is gas. They themselves don’t keep the law! And they are highly selective in the laws they do observe. They only want you to be circumcised so they can boast of their success in recruiting you to their side. That is contemptible

And Paul makes it back full circle.

"All their talk about the law is gas!" Do you ever feel that way? That sometimes rules are just piled on just to make someone sound important?

What makes us important?

Being one in Christ.

And trusting in that.

That's it. 

Now, I think that we've come full circle it is important to remember that - at least for our benefit - we shouldn't always confuse "law" with "works." It may seem as if Paul often conflated the two in his writing, but Paul - and Luther later - knew that faith bears good fruit. Faith, trust...throws us into gear. And yes, good works come out of that. 

But make a law about it, and really, you miss the point. 

It's easy to tell someone to get circumcised. Or not to drink. Or not to dance. Or swear. Or wear certain clothing.

Those things are easy to make laws about. And even easier to be selective about.

But faith...faith pushes us toward love. Pushes us toward our neighbor. There's nothing selective about love. 

Love just is.

And love just does. 

Faith just is.

Faith just does.

Faithful God, let me fall trusting into your arms and then reach out in love to my neighbor. Amen.

Galatians 6:7-10

Galatians 6:7-10The Message (MSG)

Don’t be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others—ignoring God!—harvests a crop of weeds. All he’ll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God’s Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life.

So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit. Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work for the benefit of all, starting with the people closest to us in the community of faith.

I have to admit that gardening metaphors are sometimes lost on me.  I've never been a gardener.

But whether you are a gardener or not, you know something about weeds. Even I know something about weeds.  The unspectacular garden in the front of my house boasts a bunch of them, and I know enough to know I don't want them to hang around!

So for those of you who do garden - and all of you who know something about weeds - it's pretty clear which you want, right? A full harvest or weeds?

I've gotten excited when I got one flower to bloom and not die on me, so I can imagine the sheer joy felt with a full harvest.

An abundant harvest!

And that's what God wants for us.  Sheer joy.

Because the truth is, when our life is bearing fruit, it doesn't just bring joy to those around us, it brings joy to us as well. 

Good Gardener: make of me a full harvest. Amen!

Galatians 6:1-6

Galatians 6:1-6The Message (MSG)

Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day’s out. Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived.

Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.

Be very sure now, you who have been trained to a self-sufficient maturity, that you enter into a generous common life with those who have trained you, sharing all the good things that you have and experience.

Sav(e) your critical comments for yourself. Because you might be needing forgiving before the day is over.

Those might be some of the hardest words to hear and obey in scripture.

Forgiveness is a practice. It's a practice because it takes practice.  And it's something that isn't done simply once, but over and over again.

There are people I have to forgive over and over. Sometimes the hurt has been so deep that I have to practice forgiving them again. In my sermon on Sunday, I mentioned the Biehls, who forgave the South African men who killed their daughter and now work side by side with them.  Recently I read a book by Desmond Tutu on forgiveness, and he talked about how they said that some days that had to forgive the men again. Sometimes the pain of missing their daughter is so hard, that they need to remind themselves of the forgiveness they willingly gave.

Forgiveness is complicated. Please don't let anyone tell you it isn't.  It takes work. It takes practice. And it takes support.  It isn't simply accepting an apology with a "that's OK, no problem," and it does mean that sometimes some kind of restitution has to be made. If someone committed a crime against you, forgiving them doesn't mean they don't have to still face their day in court.

It is something many people have problems doing, and that's OK! Because it's a practice, you aren't expected to get it perfectly every time.

I highly recommend Tutu's book (that he wrote with his daughter): The Book of Forgiving.  (You can find it here:http://smile.amazon.com/Book-Forgiving-Fourfold-Healing-Ourselves-ebook/dp/B00DB32SR6/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1441144874&sr=1-1&keywords=desmond+tutu). It's a wonderful book on how to heal and forgive.

Lord, teach me to forgive as you forgive. Help me especially when it seems so hard. Amen 

Galatians 5:22-26

Galatians 5:22-26The Message (MSG)

But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.

Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified.

Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original.

So what happens when we live God's way?.....

Paul gets to the heart of the question we all have.  Just what DOES God's way look like? Can you feel it, reading his reply? Can you believe that affection for others, exuberance about life and serenity ARE gifts worth having?

When we truly belong to Christ, we don't need to force our own way. We automatically open our hearts to the other. We don't need to mindlessly serve. We BECOME service.

And then for me the crux. The thing I think that 21st religion still gets mired in:

Faith in Christ is not a idea (or dogma) in our head. And it is not sentimental, Hallmark faith either.

It takes over us like that mustard plant.

It infects and grows in us like the yeast in bread.

It is deep and rich and abiding and complex and messy and exhausting...

...and enlivening.

What happens when we live God's way?

Life happens. Real, abundant, full life.

God of life, fill us to the brim with your perfect way so that we may perfectly and wonderfully live! Amen

Galatians 5:16-21

Galatians 5:16-21The Message (MSG)

My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don’t you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?

It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.

This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom.

It's true, you know.

The kind of life that develops out of trying to get our own way all the time, isn't the kind of life that is fulfilling, affirming, or joyful.  Instead, it does rather have that erratic quality that Paul talks about here.  It is a life that is doomed be be not satisfied.

Because honestly, I'm pretty sure that most of the time, I've got it wrong about what's best for me.  I know I'm wrong when I push for my own way, because that rarely works out the way I hope.

That's quite a list Paul leaves as the outcome of seeking your own way. I can identify with many of those. I've seen them. Been caught up in some of them and see them all around me daily in this society that seems focused on "me, the individual."

God offers another way. A way of freedom. "Let Go and Let God," says the bumper sticker on the car of someone following the Twelve Step Program.  In the program, they are reminded every time and at every meeting when they recite the Twelve Steps.  Maybe we aren't powerless over alcohol, but sometimes I wonder if we all wouldn't benefit from the program nonetheless.

I've turned the first five steps into a prayer I say each day as a reminder that going my own way, isn't the way to go.

Good and gracious God, I am powerless over sin (and ____________), and when I forget that, my life becomes unmanageable.  Only you can restore me to sanity, to wholeness, to health, and to hope. Help me this day to turn my life over to your care and walk in your ways and with your Holy Spirit. Amen

Galatians 5:7-15

Galatians 5:7-15The Message (MSG)

You were running superbly! Who cut in on you, deflecting you from the true course of obedience? This detour doesn’t come from the One who called you into the race in the first place. And please don’t toss this off as insignificant. It only takes a minute amount of yeast, you know, to permeate an entire loaf of bread. Deep down, the Master has given me confidence that you will not defect. But the one who is upsetting you, whoever he is, will bear the divine judgment.

As for the rumor that I continue to preach the ways of circumcision (as I did in those pre-Damascus Road days), that is absurd. Why would I still be persecuted, then? If I were preaching that old message, no one would be offended if I mentioned the Cross now and then—it would be so watered-down it wouldn’t matter one way or the other. Why don’t these agitators, obsessive as they are about circumcision, go all the way and castrate themselves!

It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?

Here we get to the whole crux of the difference between Christian freedom and worldly freedom.

You hear a lot about worldly freedom.  American freedom even. Freedom for the individual. Freedom to do what you want, go where you will, own whatever property - or weapon! - the law says you can.  

But Paul reminds us that Christian freedom isn't anything of that kind at all.

Rather than being about each of us as individuals, Christian freedom is about the community.  It is about our neighbor.

It is about loving others as we love ourself.

I love that last line.  Love is the true freedom because without it, we'd annihilate each other (which sometimes in the news it seems to me we are doing).  And where will our precious freedom be then?

It seems paradoxical perhaps. That love - service to our neighbor - is true freedom. That's because we are used to hearing of freedom being about ourselves.

But Paul lives contently in the paradox, just as Jesus did.  

As Luther said, we are free from all, and a slave to all. Both. And.

At the same time.

That's what true freedom is.  

The freedom to need each other and love each other.

Lord, help me serve my neighbor and love as I would be loved. Amen.