Christmas 1, 2024: Galatians 3:23-25,4:4-7

  I’ve had a weird week. As many of you know, Christmas Eve was Father Jeremiah’s last day. I did a…remarkably good job of keeping it together until, as some in the choir will attest to, the last verse of the last hymn at the 11:00 service. Then my daughters gave me a Christmas present of a stomach bug. Luckily, Rev Kathy was willing to pinch hit at the last minute so Deacon Kris and Joel didn’t have to adjust from a Eucharistic celebration to Morning Prayer, and either way, at least Deacon Kris was already planning on preaching. On Wednesday, we got some odds and ends from the Williamsons - things that didn’t get packed but that they didn’t want to bring in the car. And it was weird seeing their house empty, and seeing them after we’d already done our big goodbyes on Christmas Eve. Then on Thursday morning - sermon writing day - I got a text from my best friend that read, “there is no point to this week, right?”

And that kind of snapped me out of my funk. Because she’s right and wrong. There is definitely a post-Christmas Day lull, especially, but not only, in corporate life. Secular world and church world take their cues from one another in a kind of awkward dance, where we’re often unsure who is leading. When I went to set up Morning Prayer on Thursday, the app that I sometimes use wouldn’t load the scripture lessons. Then when I went to my trusty Book of Common Prayer, there was nothing in the Daily Office for December 26, 27, or 28. Since those are all Major Feasts, I went to Lesser Feasts and Fasts and used the Eucharistic readings, but it was just so funny that the BCP, which has Daily Office readings for Christmas Day and December 29, also took a break for St Stephen, St John, and the Holy Innocents.

But despite all of that, here we are, smack dab in the middle of the Christmas season. A season of new life. Of the Word, the logos, the divine reason implicit in the cosmos, ordering it and giving it meaning. Our lesson from the Gospel of John is the extended cut of the Christmas Day reading, which ends at “the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” And in Galatians, we have Paul doing some meaning making. What does Jesus’ “fulfillment” of the Law mean for the fledgling Christian community? The writer of the Gospel of John may have had some writings of Paul - if not the physical writings, likely some teachings of his. But Paul himself was long gone before the writing of the Gospel of John.

While modern biblical scholarship does not agree on how to chronologically sequence the entire New Testament, there is consensus about a basic framework which dates the letters which are undisputedly written by Paul, among which is Galatians, as the earliest written documents of the New Testament, before not just John, which was the last of the Gospels to be written, but before all four of the Gospels. Paul was a contemporary of the disciples - he fights with Peter all the time in Acts and in Chapter 2 of Galatians Paul writes of opposing Cephas - the Aramiac of Peter - “to his face”.

When Paul writes, he pulls from a variety of sources, but few if any of his Christian sources would have been written down - it would still have been a largely oral tradition. Paul came from a deeply Jewish background. The Scriptures of Israel were embedded in his bones. (Richard Hays) His sources included the Hebrew Scriptures, which provided his world view, as well as the revelation he experienced, and the practical theology he was practicing on the ground. Because Paul was an itinerant church planter, he worked to establish Christian communities, but didn’t stay. One thing Paul wanted to guard against was becoming too important to any one community, even commenting in the first chapter of First Corinthians, “It has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.” Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (1 Cor 1:11-13)

But Paul is solving a different problem with the church in Galatia. Rather than “how do I keep these people from splintering off?” he addresses, “how do I bring these two groups who did not mix, that is, Jews and Gentiles, together into one Christian community where they can live and work and worship together?” One of Paul’s big arguments with Peter is about Gentile inclusion and what it means to a largely Jewish movement to bring Gentiles into the fold. Are Gentiles now subject to the Law of Moses? Paul says no. Paul goes further and says, while there is no prohibition to following the Law, it is not a requirement due to Christ justifying us through faith. The “disciplinarian” we are no longer subject to isn’t a great English translation because there isn’t a great single word that fits, and in today’s culture there is a harshness associated with discipline. But it’s not as harsh as that word implies. In Biblical Greek, the  “disciplinarian” would have been a slave who guarded, guided, and supervised children. So what Paul is saying is that the community is no longer supervised by staff, or by a nanny, but by the parent themself. That with the incarnation, with God with us in the form of Jesus, the nanny is no longer necessary.

At the end of the day, the question Paul is trying to answer is, “what is it to be a follower of Christ Jesus?” As people keep asking him and reporting to him, he responds with answers for each question from each community, taking into account the geography, specific problems, and cultural makeup of each community.

And these are questions we continue to ask in modernity. What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus in our place and in our time? The answers to those questions continue to change over time with how people change and how communities change.

One of the most important things seminarians are taught about preaching is that it’s always “we”, never “you”. That the preacher ought never to be speaking in terms of instructing the congregation from a position of scolding or “Father knows best”, but from a humility coming from the knowledge that the preacher is also preaching to themselves. I preface with these words as I want to make it clear I’m choosing my next words purposefully: Grace and St Stephen’s, as a parish, is now entering a time where you are being asked to articulate who you are. As much as the clergy love the people with whom we serve and to whom we minister, we are not members of the congregation; we are members of the diocese. When I was ordained, my membership letter wasn’t transferred. There (should be) is a line through my name in the parish register at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Alexandria, VA with the note “ordination.” The clergy are not the captains of the ship. We strive to act as a rudder, helping steer the parish, but our job is not to set the course or, worse, drag the parish along.

So the questions for you to answer in the coming months are, “who are we?” “where are we?” “where do we want to go?” “what does the person to help us get there look like?” Those are big questions. Consequential questions. Questions that will shape this parish for years to come. But. Before I get too heavy or too frightening before our previous rector even has the keys to his new house, it’s important to remember that no matter how much scolding Paul does in any of his letters, it never ends without hope or without love. And Galatians is no exception, reminding Paul’s readers to follow where the Spirit is guiding them and to bear the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Gal 5:22) He even gets a little cheeky, commenting that “there is no law against such things”, so even those in the Christian community who still follow the Law can practice those things.

These “fruits of the Spirit” are what you are to discern and how this parish bears and shares that with the world. Paul understands salvation as the remaking of the world when he writes, at the closing of Galations, “For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!” (Gal 6:15) As John writes of Jesus after Paul’s death, “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.” and that “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” It is up to us, to each one of us and to our parish community, to discern what that grace means to us and how we shine the light of Christ’s love in the world. And, to borrow from Paul, “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters. Amen.” (Gal 6:18)