Proper 7

Preparation

    Please begin by reading Galatians 3:23-29 in your Bible. If you do not have one at hand, we have provided that text for you at the end of this reflection.

Reflection--Living in Freedom  

    Did anyone ever ask you the following question, perhaps in a hostile tone? “Who do you think you are?” 

    Regardless of your race, gender, orientation, social position, nationality, or any of the other boxes we humans like to put our brothers and sisters in, if you have a firm belief in Jesus the answer is easy.  It comes straight out of today’s passage from Galatians. “In Christ Jesus I am a child of God!” You can hold your head just as high as the next person.  You are not a second-class citizen!  You are a child of God!

    That is the great and liberating lesson we should learn soon after we come to faith.  The good news from the Apostle Paul is that we are united together in equality with other believers as children of God and we are free.

    But many find freedom a frightening thing!  Paul was having trouble with the Galatians because they wanted to hold on to the rigid religious rules and social structures that they had known before they became Christians.

    That problem has not disappeared in the centuries since. Lots of new and even lots of long-term Christians still want to ask: “O.K. I’m a Christian. Now what are the rules?”

    People want to treat the Bible and faith this way because it is perversely comfortable. The comfort legalism gives us is that if we know all the rules, we need not think, we need not pray, we need not do the hard work it takes to discover what it means to live in imitation of Christ.  But legalism is also a terrible trap.  Legalism always sets us up for personal failure. Nobody can live by every “jot and tittle” of the law day in and day out. It also can get pretty ridiculous just trying to figure out every subtle nuance of the law.

    As Paul makes crystal clear, Jesus’ response to all this kind of legalism is “get over it!” A mature Christian life is not lived with our favorite list of rules in one hand. Jesus came to set us free from all that. Christian life is lived marching out in freedom together, all equal before God, seeking to learn as much as we can about how Jesus lived and approached life. Again and again, the question is not what are the rules, but “what would Jesus do?”

    Let go of all that comfortable structure. Let Jesus take charge of your life. Yes, it means living in the moment in uncertainty about what is coming next. But be willing to trust and risk! You will find a whole new world opening up before you. Jesus does not disappoint!

revclay

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Galatians 3:23-29

 
    Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise.  [NRSV]