St Luke's Lutheran Church 9 Alma Road, Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK

4^th Sunday After Pentecost

Epistle: Galatians 3:23-29

What a fiendishly difficult Gospel lesson this morning. So, turning to the Epistle……….

I’d like to concentrate particularly on St. Paul’s passage this morning. The churches have rarely lived up to the radical insights given expression in St. Paul’s writings here and the meaning of today’s Epistle is not that there can be or should be no distinctions among us, but that there can be no superiority of one over another or exclusion of one by the other. Paul’s words surely affronted first-century Jews steeped in a religion that fostered exclusion as a way of maintaining purity of faith and protection from outsiders: these are the people who prayed: “Thank you Lord, for not making me a foreigner, a slave, or a woman.” Paul rejected and reversed this view by declaring that these distinctions amounted to nothing in the eyes of God and those who would follow Jesus. In our confusing and complicated world, it is tempting to try to define ourselves by what we are not, rather than what we are, and to attempt to remain separate from those who are different, often out of fear. But such behaviour leaves us diminished and fails to fulfil our potential.

In my secular life I am an R.E. teacher and today’s Epistle is a passage that my students examine when we consider the topic of religion and prejudice. They are often perplexed about the limits that this passage appears to place on God’s grace: this age group has a strong sense of the importance of justice and they are cynical about how organised religion seems to find opt-out clauses for particular categories of people. “It’s a bit like that quote from Animal Farm” one girl concluded recently, “where the animals realise that some are more equal than others.”

“So what does the passage from Galatians teach about Christianity and equality in the sight of God?” I ask them. Furrowed brows. “O.K. What does it teach about the Christianity of the first century?” Now they understand. “Well, there were divisions in that society between Jews and Greeks, slaves and non-slaves and between the genders.” “Right. So what’s the application for Christians in 2010?” More furrowed brows. “O.K. Is it an exclusive list? Is it set in stone for all time?” There is a pause and then tentatively: “Sir? Are you saying that those old categories are just examples and that each generation has to apply the spirit of the teaching to its own time?” “So which from St. Paul’s list can we ditch, then?” There is a flurry of hands in the air. “Well, Jews and Greeks and slaves and free.” “We’re not left with much then are we? Just male and female. Are we happy that sexism is still an issue in today’s society? In the church? Yes? So what would we need to add in now that we’ve taken the other two out?” Now they’ve all got it. Everyone has an idea and there is some animated conversation in the class. “O.K. Conclusions?” And now we have a new list.

Black nor white.

Old nor young.

Able bodied nor disabled.

Straight nor Gay.

Tall nor short, fat nor thin. And so on. Even ginger people get a passing mention.

“Are you happy that this list is in the spirit of St. Paul’s teaching?”

They are.

And then someone asks: “Are you allowed to do that with the Bible?”

And that’s my question to you here this morning. If these passages we hear week by week are to mean anything to us, and be more than just mildly interesting ancient religious documents, then they must have an application to how we live our lives and to how we relate to each other and how we do that can’t, surely, be bound by the social and religious mores of an earlier age. Can they?

That to me is the challenge of the gospel: am I living a life that reveals God to others? Am I living a life that is in obedience to my understanding of how God has revealed his will? Does my understanding of Christianity, enhance or detract from the Gospel? Am I wilfully holding on to human prejudices and exhibiting them in my life? Am I even selectively using scripture to prop up those prejudices? And let’s be honest, we all do that when it suits us, particularly when the church isn’t taking a principled stance and offering us the guidance it should.

You don’t think the church fails to offer that guidance? Just think for a moment. How many times has the church found itself on the wrong side of both history and morality?

Is the world flat? Does the sun orbit around the earth? The church once tried to assert so and violently suppressed evidence and people that argued against it. That’s not exactly in the realm of St. Paul’s teaching, though is it? No but it shows a historic tendency. The church can be controlling and it can be wrong. It isn’t that long ago that Black Christians in the U.S. and South Africa were discriminated against and the Bible was used to support that discrimination: theology was hi-jacked in support of courses of action that were far from Godly in their oppression of individuals and groups. The wrong side of history and the wrong side of morality. This parish has a woman priest. Other Anglican parishes won’t even consider the idea. In other provinces of the Anglican Church there are women bishops but not here. Yet. The battle is still on. The wrong side of history and the wrong side of morality? Only time will tell.

Both of these examples are clearly against the spirit of the teaching of St. Paul in today’s passage from Galatians, so let’s have a look at my pupils’ revised list. How is the church doing today on disableism? On classism? On sizeism or ageism? Actually, probably not too badly. How are you personally doing on those issues? Have you really felt challenged about your attitudes in the light of St. Paul’s teaching? And where are we on issues of human sexuality? Will the church again find itself on the wrong side of history and morality as it goes against the spirit of the teaching of St. Paul in this battle and uses its theology selectively, as it has done in the past?

 If it is of any reassurance to you, these battles are not uniquely Anglican: in my denomination, as in some others, these issues of gender and sexuality have been resolved. The battles have already been fought and won within the spirit of St. Paul’s teaching and we pray for you as you face them.

So, what is the challenge today? If anything, I think, the message is about the power of the bottom up nature of Church decision making and doctrine. We have voices and we have power. Another passage of St. Paul, which always causes me to stop and think. “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” (Philippians 2.12) If you consider that God’s revelation did not stop at the moment the canon of scripture was decided in 393 A.D. then what is the Spirit telling you here, now, about wholeness in the church regardless of what conclusions the church may be steering you towards? The wrong side of history and the wrong side of morality? The spirit of St. Paul in Galatians? “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” The power of God’s love, freely given, when used by us is sufficient to overcome the human tendency to separate as a result of our distinctions and differences. Through this love we can have a collective unity – a single identity as children of God. It is the power of God’s love that can give us courage to move beyond fear and separation into integration, cooperation, interdependence, and mutual respect. This truth is rooted in the fact that each individual has been restored to unity with God by the loving, self-giving action of Christ. In so being restored to God, we can be restored to unity with one another in Christ.

Candidate Pastor Jack Parkes to the congregation of St. Peter’s Hudderfield.

Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ on this Trinity Sunday.

If someone were to ask you today, “What is God like?” I wonder how you’d answer; and would that answer be the same as one you might have made yesterday, or last week, or last year? What words do we use to describe the many different attributes of the God we worship? How can we approach the infinite with the limitations of our understanding and language?

This was a problem shared by the early church as its leaders tried to communicate a faith that had its foundations within first century Judaism into a new language and in a very different culture several hundred years after the time of Christ. So over the years the church developed the doctrine of the Trinity to express its understanding of God.

Of course, the word “Trinity” is not found in the New Testament, and nor is the doctrine explicitly taught there, but within it, foundations of the concept of the Trinity can be found.For example, in Matthew 3, verses 16-17, we read: ¹⁶As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. ¹⁷And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”or in Matthew 28: ¹⁹Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in^[a] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

And so the doctrine of the Trinity became one of the distinctive beliefs of the Christian faith, one that weaffirm week after week as we worship in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; and each year, on Trinity Sunday, we have the opportunity to think again about this statement of our faith.

And it’s not an easy task for us. The Trinity is one of the most difficult things to understand about God. Scholars and theologians have been arguing about the Trinity and what it means for centuries. St. Augustine of Hippo took nearly thirty years to write fifteen volumes called “About the Trinity”, and he constantly revised his work. So if it can give such a great theologian such pause for thought, I think we can be excused for admitting that maybe we, too, find this mystery of our faith hard to comprehend.

But fortunately, we don’t have to understand the Trinity in order to experience God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit. The Christian life is a long struggle to understand the incomprehensible and to find hints and metaphors that help us understand God, and I believe that as we move and change throughout our lives, one another aspect of God gains importance for us.

So I will just repeat my earlier question: “What is God like?” Do you imagine the God of the Old Testament who walked with Adam in the cool of the evening in a garden? Do you see an angry God who sent the flood to destroy his creation, or as a protector who led the Israelites through the desert in the form of a pillar of flame? Do you think about the image of God described in Isaiah, seated on a throne surrounded by Angels?  Or do you think of Jesus? And how do you see Him? As a baby cradled in his mother’s arms, or as the child in the Temple? As the preacher and teacher or the healer who performs miracles? As the friend and master? Or as the angry man striding through the Temple, overturning the tables of the moneychangers? Or as the crucified God, betrayed and forsaken by his friends? Perhaps you think of the Holy Spirit appearing as a dove hovering over the head of Jesus, or as the flame or wind at Pentecost?

Each of these images helps us in different ways to understand the complex and diverse nature of God, and they help us to keep a balanced view. God the Father is that part of God which creates and initiates. God the Son is that part of God which is fully at one with us human beings, and God the Holy Spirit is that part of God which stimulates and moves through our world changing and transforming things.

If we get too deeply involved with the distant concept of God as the Creator, it is possible for us lose sight of God as our personal saviour, the suffering human who is fully at one with our humanity. But then, it is perhaps possible that we might so identify with the human Jesus as our friend that we lose sight the energising, transforming aspect of God, which sweeps away our complacency. And so on. The concept of the Trinity gives us a way of knowing different aspects of the unknowable.

As we think of the Trinity,let us hold together in our minds the interlocking aspects of God and pray:

Almighty and eternal God, you have revealed yourself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and live and reign in the perfect unity of love. Hold us firm in this faith, that we may know you in all your ways and evermore rejoice in your eternal glory, who are three Persons in one God, now and forever. Amen

Pastor Libby