Sermon preached by the Reverend Canon Richard Tombaugh

St. Paul’s on the Green, Norwalk, Connecticut

5^th Sunday after Pentecost - July 1, 2007

About 50 years after the death of Christ St Paul wrote a short letter to the newly established Christian community in Galatia, an area on the southern coast of what is now Western Turkey. The Christian Church there was torn by an internal struggle so bitter that Paul used a jungle metaphor to describe it: “But if you bite and devour one another take heed that you are not consumed by one another.”

It is often difficult to pick up the context of a book of the Bible from the small selections we hear on a given Sunday. Sometimes this is not all that important. Other times, like today, it seems quite important, especially when the context has many parallels to the contemporary situation in which parts of the Anglican Communion seem to want to bit and devour one another.

The terrible fight in Galatia in Paul’s time was between Conservatives and Radicals. Neither group was inclined to take any prisoners; and both groups took issue with Paul. Conservatives challenged Paul’s proclamation that God’s forgiving love though Christ is the sole ground of salvation and the only access to his eternal kingdom is by faith. The conservatives preached that faith was not enough to make sure of God’s kingdom. In addition to believing that Jesus was the Messiah, the conservatives said one must observe all the laws and customs of the Old Testament. One must have Christ and Moses, grace and law – law as understood by a strict reading of the Old Testament.

The Radicals attacked Paul from the opposite side. They wanted to abandon the Old Testament and its prophetic insights entirely. They thought that Paul’s demand that we crucify our old sinful nature and cultivate the fruits of the Spirit was really a rebuilding of the old legalism and would endanger the freedom of the Christian movement. They wanted to cut Christianity loose from Judaism.

Paul’s arguments in his letter to the church in Galatia answer and transcend both these competing positions. More importantly they address at least two issues that are roiling the Anglican Church today: the basis of authority in the Christian religion and the universality of the Christian mission.

A Jewish rabbi debating the application of the Jewish laws to a new situation would always begin by quoting Moses and other fathers in the support of his views. The Jewish rabbi believed that God had revealed to Moses all of his will and nothing but his will for all time, changeless and unchangeable. The Jewish thinkers believed that the Spirit had spoken to Moses and the prophets and sometime in the future the Spirit would speak again through a prophet like Moses. However, in the present time there was no worthy prophet and a strict interpretation of the law was the only safe guide. It was as if the Spirit was imprisoned within the Old Testament which the Spirit had originally inspired.

Paul protested vehemently against these views. He preached that the Spirit of prophecy continued to be revealed in the risen and glorified Christ who was everywhere present, on earth as in heaven. This did not mean that Paul had no use for the Old Testament. Rather he preached his gospel as the fulfillment of the Jewish scriptures. But this fulfillment meant more than that Jesus had been and done what the scriptures had foretold. According to Paul the Spirit had revealed and made possible the new kind of life the Old Testament prophets had envisioned for the kingdom of God. This fulfillment made much of the ancient revelation obsolete. To put this revolutionary idea another way, the risen Christ opened the way for a resurgence of the Spirit experienced as continuing revelation which could never again be confined within the scrolls of the Old Testament.

Paul’s location of the seat of authority in scripture as experienced by the Christian community goes far beyond the immediate controversy in Galatia. It reaches out even today to challenge the strife within the Anglican Communion. Paul’s claim that authority does not lie solely in the words of scripture written centuries ago but continues to be revealed in the direct personal fellowship of members of the body of Christ underlies much of the position of our Episcopal Church. We can hear the echoes of St. Paul, for example, when we argue that we are being faithful to the gospel by struggling to understand what the Spirit is revealing to us in our acceptance of same-gender committed relationships.

Also in this letter St. Paul argues that the Church is Christ’s instrument to promote the unity of all men and women in Christ Jesus. In Paul’s view the greatest obstacle to unity and equality in Christ was the deadly trait of biting and devouring one another, of competing for power, influence and honor. What made this sin more subtle was that it could be cloaked in the garment of religious sincerity. The Jews in Galatia could claim they were conscientiously following religious law when they refused to eat with Gentiles. This outraged Paul who believed that such actions denied the truth of the Gospel that all is of grace and grace is for all. If all men and women were children of God through Christ, there could be no exclusion by class: Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. The unity of the Church required the recognition of the equality of every individual before the grace of God. Only through radical inclusion could the unity of the Church be achieved and maintained.

Paul’s argument that the unity inherent in baptism and the Eucharist can not be maintained in a spirit of division underlies our theology of radical welcome and inclusiveness here at St. Paul’s and many places elsewhere in the Episcopal Church. We preach that God through the Spirit of His son has given to all the gift of new life of freedom from fear and sin, wrath and death. This new life is truly a gift to all. It cannot be earned by obedience to rules that would exclude persons from the life of the Church because of their education, national origin, gender, affluence, race or life style.

Like the conservatives in Galatia there are Anglicans elsewhere in our country and in the world who claim that sole authority resides in scripture as written, not as experienced through grace by the Christian community. On that basis of authority they would exclude from the fellowship of Christ’s body those persons who live in committed same-gender relationships. They seek power and influence to enforce their views on the Anglican Communion, seemingly willing to bite and devour if necessary.

The reality of these current challenges to the unity of all persons in Christ and the universality of the Christian mission makes it ever more imperative that we at St Paul’s strengthen our resolve to extend gracious and grace-filled hospitality to every person who enters our doors. While we can honestly advertise that we do church differently, it is good to remind ourselves that the inclusiveness we proclaim has an ancient theological basis, well articulated by the our patron saint, St Paul, in his letter to the Galatians.