"Identify Yourself"
Galatians 1:11-24
Wednesday night I watched part of the Republican Presidential Candidates television debate. The first question to each candidate was: How do you identify yourself? Then each candidate said his name and one or two sentences to identify himself to the audience. John McCain said, "I'm John McCain, and I've served my country all my life." Ron Paul said, "I’m the candidate who will stand by the constitution." Tommy Thompson said, "I'm the Thompson who is not an actor." (He said that to distinguish himself from Fred Thompson, the actor, who appears about ready to enter the race.) Well, the portion of Paul's letter to the Galatians we read this morning can be thought of as Paul's response to the question: Identify yourself. We're going to be looking at Paul and his letters this summer, not merely because we want to know more about who Paul was and what Paul believed, but more importantly to know ourselves and come to a deeper understanding of who we are and what we believe.
We do learn some pertinent, if not essential, biographical information about Paul in the verses we read this morning. This is one of the few passages where Paul shares some personal history. He mentions something of his earlier life in Judaism. He describes how he violently persecuted the church in an attempt to destroy it. We learn that Paul was zealous for the traditions of his ancestors and actually more advanced in the study of his religious tradition than most of his peers. We also get a rough chronology of Paul's early travels. He tells about spending time in Arabia before returning to Damascus. He mentions going to the regions of Syria and Cilicia. We also get a glimpse of Paul's relationship with the other apostles. His relationship with them appears to be somewhat distant, maybe even strained. Paul surely has his reasons for rehearsing these details about himself, but such biographical data is tangential to his self-understanding.
I'm reminded of a "get acquainted" exercise we often use at our Welcome Weekend for visitors and new members. We give everyone an outline of the United States and invite people to trace their geographical journey, and then share it with the group. A typical response goes something like: "We'll I was born in Houston where I grew up. Both my parents taught in public schools. I went to college in California and then to Chicago for graduate school. I got my first job and worked in Kansas City. I met my spouse there and then two years ago we moved to Austin where we both work in the high tech industry." This exercise does help us know something about one another. Still, much like the biographical information Paul gives in our passage today, it tells more about where we've been and what we've done than it actually reveals who we are.
So when offers some biographical data, such information is only background for what Paul truly wants his readers to know about him. In fact, the first thing we heard Paul say this morning was, "I want you to know, brothers and sisters..." And what Paul wants them to know is his identity is in the gospel. Paul says, in effect, "If you want to know me, you have to know the gospel that I proclaim." Paul's life, you see, has been re-defined, re-oriented, and totally identified with the gospel.
But what does Paul mean by the gospel? As you know, the word Gospel simply means "good news." Yet what's the content of the good news that radically transformed Paul's life and gave him a new identity? My hope for our reflections this summer is that we'll get a stronger hold, a clearer understanding, of the gospel as it relates to our lives as individuals and as a congregation. Just to point us in the direction we'll be traveling this summer--by way of introduction--consider that when Paul refers to the gospel he's got a whole story in mind. He's thinking back to Genesis, about how the Creator created this world good and beautiful. He's remembering God's covenant with Israel to free the creation that has come under the power of sin and death. And he's proclaiming the surprising way in which has fulfilled his covenant promise through the death and resurrection of Jesus, God's Messiah. In Christ, the mystery of how God will redeem, heal and renew the creation has been revealed. This story of a gracious God who is redeeming the whole world is the gospel Paul proclaims, and with which he has become totally identified.
Perhaps one fo the reasons we have difficulty identifying with the gospel today is that we tend to overlook the larger story and break the gospel down into littler doctrinal pieces: justification by faith, forgiveness of sins, freedom from the law, and so on. I'm not saying that these doctrinal points aren't true—but that such doctrines only make sense when considered within a larger story.
New Testament professor N.T. Wright was pointing to this tendency to turn the gospel into a set of abstract dogmatic points when he wrote, "It is possible to say more or less all the orthodox Christian affirmations, but to join them up in the wrong story. It's possible to tick the boxes that say Trinity, Incarnation, Atonement, Resurrection, Spirit, Second Coming, and yet it's like a child's connect-the-dots…The dogmas matter, they are true, but you have to join them up the right way." That's part of our challenge this summer: to join these doctrinal points up in the right way. That is, in a way that connects our lives with the good news of God's reclamation of the world as revealed to us in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
And this ability to see the big picture and to receive it as good news is always a gift of God's grace, a work of the Holy Spirit. In our reading this morning, Paul takes pains to point out that this gospel of God's grace didn't come to him through any human source. "I did not receive it from a human source," he writes, "nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ." It's as if Paul is saying to his readers: "If you don't know anything else about me, know that my life in Christ was not something I was taught. No, it was God who opened my eyes to see the world in the light of Jesus Christ." Immediately we think of Paul's Damascus Road experience as told by Luke in his Acts of the Apostles. In this episode, Christ is revealed to Paul in a dramatic, mystical moment—a sudden flash of light and a voice from heaven. That's the way Luke describes Paul's revelation. But interestingly enough, Paul himself describes the revelation in less dramatic terms. He likens it to the lifting of a veil. A gift of seeing what had formerly been hidden. And Paul is convinced that this unveiling is the work of God's Spirit. That's probably why in our reading today Paul downplays any contact with the other apostles. He wants to make clear that the gospel he proclaims in not merely information about Jesus that he has learned from the other apostles. No, it's a revelation from God enabling him to see a New Creation, one that is being set right and made whole.
And surely the same is true for us. The gospel comes in power and conviction through the Holy Spirit, as a gift of God's grace. Others can teach us the stories and we can study and even memorize the creeds in Sunday School and confirmation classes, but such knowledge becomes effective in our lives through the work of God's Spirit.
I'm currently reading a biography of Jonathan Edwards, the 18th century New England preacher and theologian. There is much about 18th century Calvinism that we'd find hard to accept today, but some aspects of their understanding are helpful. For example, Edwards spoke of conversion to Christ primarily in terms of unveiling--a new way of seeing and experiencing the world. He called it seeing the world with "regenerate eyes." Once the good news of God's love for the world has been revealed to us by the Spirit, then we see evidence of God's redemption in nature, in our human interactions, in worship and in service to others.
Last Sunday during the children's time, I asked two of the children to share their experiences on our recent Mexico mission trip. I asked them what part of the trip meant the most to them. To me, the most significant moment on the trip occurred on Tuesday afternoon. A woman in Miguel Aleman invited us to visit her home. On a previous summer, our congregation had helped in the construction of her home. She had prepared refreshments of fruit and soft drinks for us, probably at some financial sacrifice to her. She showed us the improvements she had made on the tiny cinder-block house. She'd added a section, tiled the concrete floors, painted the walls as she could afford to do so. She was obviously quite proud of her house and grateful for the help we had given her. Before we left, we gathered outside her front door, offered a house blessing and then sang the Doxology. Looking on, some may have only seen a church group visiting a house, but through regenerate eyes we saw the kingdom of God breaking in, we experienced a glimpse of the New Creation, the redemptive purposes of God were unveiled. At times like this, the gospel isn't some information about Jesus or a set of doctrines, but a power and a presence that give meaning and purpose to our lives.
Well, there's so much more to discover about ourselves and our identity through Paul and his writings, and I'm looking forward to an ongoing conversation this summer. Our purpose this summer is not just to share information about the gospel and to hear words about Jesus, but to invoke the Spirit to turn our information into inspiration and our words about Jesus into a new way of life.