Christ United Presbyterian Church, June 23, 2013

CUPC
June 23, 2013

Sermon

Galatians 3:23–29

Here's the audio link to my sermon if you'd like to listen to it.  Below is the complete text.
https://www.box.com/s/81wbveelg6wd0990gkls

My surname is Crawford.  That’s one of the most common names in Northern Ireland.  My father and mother were both immigrants from Ireland, although they met in this country.  My father grew up in a little village on the coast of the Irish Sea in County Antrim called Glenarm.  Like many of the Crawford’s in Northern Ireland, my father’s father immigrated from Scotland to Northern Ireland.  In Scotland the clans Crawford and Lindsay are closely related. My father grew up with 8 siblings in a family that might be called “mixed”:  his mother was Roman Catholic.

My mother was a Heaney, and she grew up on a farm in County Down.  She had one sister and 8 brothers.  The farm is still run by my cousins.  The farm is just outside a village called Kilkeel, and it too sits on the coast of the Irish Sea.  It’s about 90 miles from Glenarm to Kilkeel, and the driving time would be about 2.5 hours.  If you’ve ever heard about where “the mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea,” that’s Kilkeel.

So I’m predominantly Irish with a touch of Scots blood, born of parents raised in a world that was far from my own early years in the Bronx.  Did I mention that my parents help to found a little Presbyterian church in the Bronx where I grew up.  So I’m also a birthright Presbyterian.  My parents sent me to a Lutheran grade school, and I stayed within the Lutheran systems all the way through college.  Then I went to Princeton Theological Seminary and became a Presbyterian minister.

If you knew all the details of my life and ancestry, you might think that you know me.  We think that it’s important to know people by their backgrounds, their histories, their status, their successes, their money, their gender, their race, their talents.  But not once did I tell you the most important thing that defines me; the only thing that defines me.  

In fact you might not even know that I’m actually adopted.  Nothing of what I’ve just told you would actually be evidence of the single most defining piece of my life:  I am a Christian, adopted into the family of God through the gracious work of Jesus Christ.

It doesn’t matter if I’m Irish or Scots-Irish or a college graduate or a seminary graduate or that I have an earned doctorate or am an ordained minister or any other arbitrary identifying credential that we love to tag people with.

Paul tells us that nothing in our earthly heritage – whether bloodline or social history – is important.  None of it truly sets us apart from one another.  There are only two groups of people in all the world:  those who have become members of Christ’s family by faith through grace, and those who have not – YET.

In today’s epistle lesson Paul is writing to a congregation of Christians in Galatia.  He wasn’t writing to convert people who hadn’t become Christians yet.  He was writing to a group of people who said that they embraced their membership in the family of Christ. 

I can almost hear the irony in his voice:  “If perchance you belong to Christ, the it will show.  You will live your life differently.  You won’t be tempted to use old rules as weapons against people.  You won’t worry about class distinctions among yourselves.  You won’t worry about gender distinctions among yourselves.   For all of you are ONE in Christ.”

You see for Paul if you were a Christian it would show.  You would be seen by the world as perhaps a bit off.  Your behavior would be noticed by the world as being different from other people’s behavior.  Paul wanted them – us – to live under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, not the traditions of society or even the traditions of religion.  Paul wanted them to be caught being Christians.

I’ve been caught being Irish.  I can sing a great many of the old Irish folk songs and more than a few of the old drinking songs.  I’ve been caught being from the Bronx.  Ask my wife.  Every now and then I’ll start talking excitedly about something and sure enough my trained and cultivated language gives way to Bronx tempos.  I’ve been caught being a Presbyterian minister.  Well, here I am this morning.

Have I ever been caught being a Christian? 

Would someone who saw you on the street wonder if you were a Christian or at least wonder why you were doing something that seemed out of place for a citizen of Marshall?  Would someone coming into this fellowship on Sunday morning – or any other day that we were gathered together – wonder if we were Christians?  Would they know that this was an assembly of sinners forgiven by God and living in the oneness of membership in Christ’s family?  

Obviously individual commitments are different than group behavior.  Paul doesn’t question whether or not any individual is a Christian.  He doesn’t judge them as individuals.  He seems to take it for granted that everyone in this congregation in Galatia is at least trying to be Christian. 

The problem that he sees is that when they come together, when individual behavior becomes a part of group behavior, the group itself may not be recognizable from any other group in town.  The group – this congregation – seems to display the same prejudices, the same biases, the same bigotry, the same stupid hierarchy based on social history and tradition, the same materialism, the same rigid legalism – as every other social group in town.  And that just shouldn’t be so. 

A congregation made up of Christians must demonstrate so that all can see their oneness in the body of Christ; their unity of purpose in pursuing the will and the power of the Holy Spirit.  Petty jealousies, unforgiving judgments, the age-old social hierarchies of the community at large, ignorant prejudices have no part in the body of Christ.

As people who live in a society that idolizes individualism, we sometimes want to believe that some personal “commitment to Jesus” is all that we need to declare in order to be Christians.  Paul wasn’t interested in judging the faith of individual Christians. 

Paul was concerned with the fact that when people who call themselves Christians come together in an assembly called a congregation then the behavior of that congregation must be different from other groups. 

The behavior of a Christian congregation must be able to show the world the way in which God wants us to live with one another.  The behavior of a Christian congregation must represent the rule of God’s kingdom here on earth. 

The Christian congregation must get caught being Christian.  It must not be locked into judgmentalism.  It must not be locked into rigid traditionalism.  It must not be locked into hateful racial or gender prejudices.  It must not be locked into the social hierarchies of the community at large.  It must seek first the kingdom of God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  It must show all the world that God – not one of us – is the owner and the head and the heart of our congregation.

A Christian congregation must get caught being Christian for all the world to see.  It must be the place where all the world can see the kingdom of God, “on earth as it is in heaven.” 

Paul was concerned with who we are and how we act WHEN we come together in the oneness of Christ’s own family.  He makes it clear that there is no longer any family heritage or social tradition that establishes individual preference or authority or sets any one of us apart when we assemble as Christ’s body here on earth.  We are all one in Christ’s family, living our lives together in ways that would make all the world proclaim:  “How odd.  They must be Christians.”

When we come together as a congregation we have an enormous responsibility to show the world how our faith makes the fellowship of God’s people very different from every other group in town. 

When was the last time you got caught being Christian?  When was the last time our congregation got caught being Christian? 

Amen.