Psalm 42
Galatians 3:23-29
Sometimes, maybe even often, the problem with writing sermons is not having enough to say, but having too much to say.
It’s very tempting as a preacher to look at the texts and think, “ooh, I want to say this and this and this and this!” and to go galloping off in all directions until the congregation thinks, “where is she going with all this? What do all these things have in common?”
To use a gardening metaphor, since it’s that time of year, sermons grow like weeds, or better, like the dozens of little tree shoots that pop up in our garden each year.
Each spring, from some common root structure that we have yet to dig out, the beginnings of many little trees pop up in the cultivated parts of our garden surrounding and choking roses and irises alike. (I suspect that, if I were a really serious gardener, this would be an embarrassing confession to make. Good thing I’m not a serious gardener)
For sermons, the scripture texts form the basic root structure which, as the preacher lives with them and reflects on them in the time leading to the preaching of the sermon send shoots and runners in many different directions, it’s the preacher’s job to prune them back, to cut them off until she finds the one that is right for this congregations on this Sunday.
The first shoot that I had to cut short for this week was the hardest, because it was the simplest, most obvious sermon to preach from the Galatians text, especially with this being Pride weekend.
I know that preachers across the country today are preaching about Paul’s proclamation of the end of human distinctions, “There is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female.” It’s the end of ethnic distinctions, class distinctions and gender distinctions.
Those preachers are exhorting their congregations to open their arms, their hearts and their churches to the other, to the stranger, to the foreigner. And in many cases, they are encouraging their listeners to welcome the lesbian, the gay, the bisexual and the transgendered.
Those are great and powerful sermons that I hope will open new welcoming vistas in the hearts of those who hear them.
But I had to nip that sermon off in the bud. Not because I didn’t want to write and proclaim that message, and not because I don’t think that it’s a vitally important message for the world today.
I had to cut that sermon off because I am not preaching to the whole world, or to some random church this morning.
I’m preaching here, to you, to Family of Christ Presbyterian Church; and the truth is, I don’t think FOC needs to hear that sermon. If the number of people who are down at the pride parade this morning doesn’t prove that, then the amount of work we’ve done with Al Frente for the victims of the ICE raids certainly does.
That’s one reason, then, for cutting off a perfectly good sermon shoot, it’s just not what the congregation needs to hear.
As the great preacher and preaching professor Fred Craddock says, “you can’t preach from long distance.”
The second sprout that I had to do in comes from the opposite end of the spectrum; rather than being the very obvious sermon that anyone could preach it’s the very personal, private sermon that only I would preach.
Many of you know the story of how I got “sidetracked” on my way to being ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA). How the presbytery that I was theoretically “under care” of voted to kick me out of the process and how the people I thought I could count on there decided it was more politically expedient to let it happen.
So when I read in today’s Psalm, “Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against and ungodly people; for you are the God in whom I take refuge; why have you cast me off? Why must I walk about mournfully because of the oppression of the enemy?” it wasn’t hard for me to hear my own story in the words of the Psalmist.
And a sermon began to grow in my head; a sermon about the gatekeepers, about those who think it’s their job to keep people like me out, who want to keep my friends out.
“O send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling. Then I will go to the alter of God to God my exceeding joy; and I will praise you with the harp, O God, my God.” Yes, I would have preached about the promise of the Psalm and how I could trust that God will send light and truth to guide me on my way to where I want to go.
But I had to trim that shoot back as well. Not because I couldn’t write it or that it might not be a powerful sermon.
No, the reason not to preach that sermon is that this is not my pulpit, not the place to try to solve my problems; you’re not here to provide me with therapy.
While I learned in seminary that it impossible to preach without bringing yourself and your experiences into the sermon, there’s a point when it all becomes about you and at that point you’ve gone too far.
Now having weeded out those two errant but energetic shoots, I had to find the one that was slowly growing and hiding from me, the one that needed to be cultivated for this morning.
What came to me, reading both the Psalm and the Galatians passage, was the importance of the law. Which was really kind of odd for me, because when I, and I think a good number of you think about the law, we think of Pharisees and their modern day equivalents. We think of the people who in Jesus’ time wielded the law like a weapon, who said, “you have to do things this way, and only this way, or you’re out.” The ones who tested Jesus, who questioned his every action, and who ultimately called for his death.
Or we think of the people today who are always ready to pull out this passage or that from the Old Testament in order to decide who is in and who is out, those gate keepers that I wanted to talk about in the second shoot are always wanting to use the law against those that they want to keep out.
Because of those people, both ancient and modern, the law ends up being an unpopular subject with liberal theologians and in left leaning churches.
On my shelves I have many books that at least touch on the idea that the Christian church is supposed to be, in the words of one of them, “A church of love and not of law.” But is there a place for the law in a liberal church? What is it that the law can do for us?
The church in Galatia was facing the same kind of questions when Paul wrote his letter. Some time previously, he had visited their church and proclaimed the Gospel of Jesus Christ to them and then he had continued on his evangelistic journey to bring the good news to other churches in other places.
But, sometime after Paul had left another group came and they told the people of Galatia a different story. The new group told them that they couldn’t really be Christians if they weren’t Jews first and that the only way to do that was to obey the law especially the law that said they needed to be circumcised.
Paul writes his letter in response to that other group’s preaching in order to fix the damage they have done.
In his letter, Paul has to walk a tightrope. The church at Galatia was made up of a mixture of ethnic Jews and Greek gentiles. If Paul put too much emphasis on the law and the ancient covenant with Abraham as the way to salvation, then he risked telling the gentiles that they never could be real Christians. But, on the other hand, if he said that the law didn’t matter and the covenant didn’t matter then he would alienate the Jews who had for generations looked to the promises God had made to Abraham and his descendents.
Paul had to preach the Gospel of salvation through Christ, and connect it to the law and the covenant.
Today’s passage is the pivotal part of his argument, and it goes like this: God gave us the law, not to save us, not as a fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham, but rather as a guard and a guide for us until that fulfillment came in the person of Christ.
The law, Paul argues, served as a foster parent, or maybe a nanny to us while we waited, in his words “for faith to come.” The law taught those who followed it how to be in right relationship with one another and with God, but the law never had the power to save the, never had the power to make them holy.
With the coming of faith, with the coming of Christ the fulfillment of the covenant has arrived and those who have been raised under the tutelage of the law have now reached their maturity and can take their rightful place as heirs to the covenant. And all those who have been joined with Christ through baptism, whether or not they have been raised under the law, whether or not they have been circumcised, are similarly heirs to Abraham and to the covenant. There is truly no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female.
So does that mean the law no longer matters? Paul would say, “By no means!” The law can still instruct us and guide us; it can lead us toward God’s holy hill, as the Psalmist would say.
Jesus tells us that all the law can be summed up in two simple rules: “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, body, soul and strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
That tells us the use we as liberals have for the law. The law teaches us how to relate to God and how to relate with one another. We are to relate through love. The law was never meant to be a purity test, it was not meant to be used as a club to force others into our image, obedience to the law could never and can never save us, can never make us holy.
So are we to be a church of law or a church of love? Paul tells us “yes” that the two are the same thing, the law, when used properly is about love, God’s love for us, our love for God and our love for one another. Paul teaches us today, that we can be a church of the law and a church of love because they are one and the same thing. Which I think is very good news and a seedling I’d like to encourage!
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