Paul Spills the Tea

 

5-5-21: Narrative Lectionary - Galatians 1 and 2

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Christ our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

In the New Testament, after the Gospels, after the Acts of the Apostles… we have the Epistles… which is really just a fancy name for letters in the mail! Basically, when we read the epistles, we are reading someone else’s mail, but more like a public blog post, or even “letters to the editor” in your hometown newspaper. All those books in the New Testament with interesting names are letters by early Christian church planters to their congregations, bearing the names of the cities the churches were located in. Romans – Rome, in what is now Italy. Ephesians – Ephesus in modern-day Turkey. Galatia is a region in the middle of Turkey, and boy, did Paul have some things to say to the members of the church he helped to plant.

Paul is one of Jesus’ most famous followers and wrote much of these New Testament letters. But Paul wasn’t always PAUL. In fact, Paul began his life with the name of Saul - a man infamous for his relentless harassment of the early church during this period of persecution early in their history. But while Saul was traveling, a bright light flashed from heaven and Saul fell to the ground, made completely blind and encountering the risen Christ for himself – and this is what he alludes to in the beginning of his letter to the church in Galatia.

After this encounter, and after he was healed, Saul began to be just as zealous in preaching FOR the gospel of Jesus as he was preaching AGAINST it. This Saul, who then transitioned and was renamed Paul, planted churches across the Roman Empire like it was going out of style, then wrote to them when they would inevitably have problems. And most ironic of all, this super-strict, religious Jew who once persecuted Christians, became the champion of the inclusion of non-Jews in the early Christian church.

And that is what Paul is yelling at Cephas – Peter – for: Not for Peter being “too Jewish” but for Peter not being “Jewish enough.” Judaism at its core is not just about following some super strict set of laws, but instead – and I am VASTLY oversimplifying here - obedience to the law comes out of a response to the grace and love of God… I bet that sounds familiar.

Peter’s mistake was backtracking on the freedoms of the gospel of Jesus, just because Peter was afraid of the “circumcision faction.” While this faction has a name that sounds antiquated to our modern ears, we have a modern word for what the “circumcision faction” was doing – Gatekeeping. Controlling who was IN and who was OUT.

And so, by Peter’s hypocritical behavior – by being convinced by a faction of Jewish Christian and refusing to eat with Gentile Christians – Peter was sanctioning some sort of class system based on ethnicity, which is antithetical to both Christianity AND Judaism. Peter’s behavior negates the multi-ethnic and cross-cultural nature of the Gospel, that Paul spells out in further detail in the rest of Galatians.

I think that Paul was particularly sensitive to this issue because of his own story – probably why he was brave or brash enough to call out Peter to his face, and then to spill the tea in the letter to the Galatians. Because Paul knew what was at stake. Paul himself was welcomed as a follower of Jesus, even then the other disciples had every reason to be wary and keep HIM. And now PAUL – once the most rule-following rule follower – is telling the Galatians, and US, that there is no entrance exam to the community of faith.

In the name of Paul, we must ask ourselves – how are we, intentionally or unintentionally being like Peter, gatekeeping the Gospel of Jesus? What are our expectations that we assumed and accepted that are actually hinderances for some? Who are we afraid of disappointing with our truly expansive welcome?

I encourage you to read the whole letter – there is some really good stuff in there. As the rest of the letter illustrates, there are no such things as “classes” or rank, or hierarchy of Christians. Just as there is no ranking of who God loves more, or less, based on the rules – both spoken and unspoken – that Christians are “supposed to follow.” ALL are welcome, just as they are. Jesus tore down all the barriers we have put up between us – the last thing we should do is rebuild them. Thanks be to God. Amen.