Christian Identity in Galatians 3

Sermon 398 St. Martin’s 153 6/22/22

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.

Galatians 3:23-29

Getting Closer to God I want to start with an update we’ve made to our seating policy here at St. Martin's. This was pretty last minute, so we were unable to send out an email or include it in the bulletin. 

But after the peace and announcements, we would like to invite all the founding members of St. Martin's and their families to sit in the front pews from now on. We want to reserve these pews as a permanent place of honor for you, and we’ll make sure to rope this section off from now on. 

If you are a lifelong Episcopalian, we would like to invite you to sit right behind our founding members. Your loyalty and dedication to this denomination is much appreciated, and though it’s not the front row, we hope you’ll still be satisfied with your place among us.

Behind them, we’re reserving space for native Houstonians. Our church is proud of the city we’re in, and though you may not have been at St. Martin’s as long as some others, we want to show you our respect. Again, it’s not as good as the front row, but you’re still fairly close to the action. 

If you’re new here, welcome, we’re glad you’re here, but we would like you to sit in the back. You’re probably a bit lost anyway, so we don’t want you to distract our more faithful members. 

As you can tell, our policy is based on how worthy we’ve deemed certain groups to be; the more worthy you are, the closer you’ll be to the holiness of the altar.

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Now, could you imagine if we actually had that policy here? We’d have every news outlet within a 100-mile radius doing a story on us. 

But it’s not too far-fetched. I served in a historic church in Northern Virginia that still has box pews from the 18th century. Each pew has its own door, and back then, the closer you wanted to be to the altar, the more you had to pay. George Washington’s box was right in front of the altar.

Why don’t we have a pay-to-pray policy these days? Seniority matters in so many parts of our lives, whether it’s in our profession or the education system. A new hire doesn’t have the same privileges as the longtime Vice President, a private doesn’t garner the same respect as a general, and a freshman does not have the same freedoms as a senior. 

Spend five minutes with a group of young children, and you’ll likely hear, “Yeah but I’m older than you.” Whether it’s a difference of three years or three months, it seems to justify why someone gets to go on the swings before someone else. The point being: learn your place. I’m older than you. I’ve been here longer. 

Sometimes we’ll be a little more equable and decide to use alphabetical order rather than age or seniority to determine who goes first, but as someone with a last name starting with the letter A, let me tell you, I did, in fact, think I was better than the poor saps with a W or Y last name.

The question I want to reflect on today deals with who gets to go first. Who gets to be closest to the action in the Kingdom of God? Or another way of saying it, how do we learn our place?

Isaiah The prophet Isaiah was wondering something similar when God gave him a vision like none other. He proclaimed:

Every valley would be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground would become level,     and the rough places would transform into a plain.

For a person who had to walk everywhere they went, they knew how long a journey was based on how much their feet hurt at the end of it. You could feel walking up the mountains in your thighs, and your ankles would be burning after a steep valley descent. 

For a people who walked the long journey to Babylon, exiled from their land, the question had stopped being, were they first on God’s list of favorites, but were they on the list at all anymore?

Isaiah’s vision was both hopeful and disturbing because it seemed the playing field was being leveled; God was raising up that which had been cast down so that…

the glory of the Lord would be revealed,     and all flesh would see it together,      (and we would know it), because the mouth of the Lord had spoken.

To those in Babylonian exile, this was welcomed news: God would make a path for them to re-enter the land, and all of them, together, could draw close the glory and majesty of God. They were not last on his list…but there was more to it. 

Isaiah had prophesied earlier: “In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it.” 

All flesh would see the glory of God, but it also seemed, according to the prophet, that all nations would have access to the mountain of God; essentially saying that they’d have the same equal access to God as Abraham’s descendants. 

Who exactly was having to learn their place in this situation? The exiles who would return to their land and be restored to their God? Or the nations, who were now welcomed with the same rights and privileges? They were being elevated to a whole new level. 

Isaiah’s vision was good news for those in exile, though maybe a little disturbing. But it was shockingly good news for all people. It appeared some barriers were coming down to allow this sort of access to God. 

Good news and gospel are the same word. 

The Gospel Implications When someone gets a vision of the gospel, it fundamentally changes how they see, not only themselves, but also how they see others in relation to that good news. The gospel is for us, but it is not for us to hoard for ourselves. 

The prophet Isaiah got a clear vision of the gospel’s implications long before Jesus was on the scene. When he prophesied of valleys being raised, mountains made low, so that the nations could journey (unhindered by anything) into the presence of God, that is the gospel. 

When Peter in the Book of Acts received a vision from God and things began to click, he proclaimed, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every people anyone who fears [God] and practices righteousness is acceptable to him.” That is the gospel. 

After being knocked upside the head by the Lord himself, the gospel came rushing into the Apostle Paul’s heart and soul with such force that he dedicated the rest of his life to its proclamation. Paul, a Pharisee of Pharisees, understood the implications of the gospel and became the Gentile Christians’ biggest advocate.

Galatians chapter 3 is a perfect example of the leveling nature of the gospel: the Law’s function as a disciplinarian has ended; faith in Christ levels the playing field. If you believe in the Lordship of Jesus and are sealed in baptism, then you have been clothed with Christ, as Paul says. 

What an odd phrase. In no other parts of our life do we talk about being clothed in someone, or clothed in an idea or ideology. Maybe if we were wearing something really nice, and a person asks, Who are you wearing, Christians should say, “Oh, Christ. Thanks for noticing.”  

But the sinful and broken world we live in tries to tell us things about ourselves; it gives us titles and labels that we carry around—that we clothe ourselves in—and some of those labels we begin to believe. Some of them make us feel important, others make us feel worthless. 

Paul rattles off a list of categories that would describe the members of the Galatian churches: Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. Everyone could find themselves in that list, but Paul was making an important point about identity.  

Consider the plight of slaves in the Roman world. Not only were they someone’s property all of the days of their life, but their status also excluded them from having any sense of heritage or kinship. Property does not have a lineage to be proud of; property doesn’t have a family; property is to be used and then discarded when it has lost its worth. A slave might say, “The world says I’m worthless, and I’m beginning to believe it.”

But faith in Jesus and putting him on in the waters of baptism began the process of linking people and groups that otherwise separated. The church was the only place in society where Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, men and women were engaging with one another as equals. 

Better yet, Paul was saying the good news of the gospel supersedes everything the world tries to say about us, including the derogatory things we might say about ourselves. 

Faith in Jesus doesn’t wash away being a Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, but it does remind us that we are more than those things. There is more to us than the categories the world gives, for as Paul says, “all of you are one in Christ Jesus…you belong to Christ [and are] heirs according to the promise.”

What does our society say about you? What molds are they trying to fit you into in order to be respected, seen, or given worth? And how does that shape what you say about yourself?

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It is unhealthy how much I compare myself to others. I compare my marriage, my parenting skills, heck, I compare the state of my front yard to those around me. Just the other day, I was beating myself up while at the pool because someone else’s three-year-old was swimming better than my three-year-old.

From those comparisons, I begin to tell myself: I’m lazy, I’m selfish, and I’m not a good parent. 

What expectations do you feel from our culture, and in what maddening ways are you trying to keep up with the Joneses? How does that affect what you think about yourself? 

Better yet, how can that change in light of the gospel?

A Story Eldridge Cleaver was a Black Panther and an avowed Marxist with a long criminal record. After being released from prison in 1966, he became a Black Muslim and the Minister of Information for the Black Panthers. 

Two years later, he had another run-in with the law after ambushing some Oakland police officers, leaving two of them injured. Not wanting to go back to prison, he fled with his family to France. 

While abroad, he felt empty inside, burdened by what he had become. Shame and depression followed him wherever he went. One fateful night, when he was contemplating taking his life, he suddenly had a vision as he looked out at the night sky. All the leaders he had admired over the years paraded before him in his mind’s eye: Fidel Castro, Mao Tse-tung, and Karl Marx. 

This is what he wrote next in his autobiography,

“Finally, at the end of the procession [of figures in my mind], in dazzling, shimmering light, the image of Jesus Christ appeared. That was the last straw. I just crumbled and started crying. I fell to my knees, grabbing hold of the banister; and in the midst of this shaking and crying the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm came into my mind. 

I hadn't thought about these prayers for years. I started repeating them, and after a time I gained some control over the trembling and crying. Then I jumped up and ran to my bookshelf and got the Bible. 

It was the family Bible my mother had given to me…And this Bible... [my wife] brought with her a very small bag from the US, instead of grabbing the Communist Manifesto…she packed that Bible.

That is the Bible that I grabbed from the shelf that night and in which I turned to the 23rd Psalm. I discovered that my memory really had not served me that well. I got lost somewhere between the Valley of the Shadow of Death and the overflowing cup. 

But it was the Bible in which I searched and found that psalm. I read through it. At that time I didn't even know where to find the Lord's Prayer. I looked for it desperately. Pretty soon the type started swimming before my eyes, and I lay down on the bed and went to sleep.That night I slept the most peaceful sleep I have ever known in my life.

I woke up the next morning…and I could see in my mind the way, all the way back home, just as clear as I've ever seen anything. 

I saw a path of light that ran through a prison cell...This prison cell was a dark spot on this path of light, and the meaning, which was absolutely clear to me, was that I didn't have to wait on any politician to help me get back home.

I had it within my power to get back home by taking that first step, by surrendering; and it was a certainty that everything was going to be all right. I just knew that—that was the solution, and I would be all right if I would take that step.”

Even though going back home to the US meant he would spend more years in a prison cell, Eldridge Cleaver had found his true home. His peace, assurance, and dare I say the identity he had been searching for his entire life was found in the person of Jesus Christ. 

The other things that defined him over his life as a Black Panther, a Marxist, a fugitive on the run, had gotten him nowhere, and it had added to a life of misery. But he discovered who he was by being defined by Jesus rather than the world.  

Neither Jew or Greek; slave or free; male or female, for all of us are one in Christ Jesus. We, who were outside the bounds, according to the Law, have been welcomed in through faith.

We all claim Jesus as our own because we have found that he is the source of all our hopes and dreams; he is the answer to our deepest longings and most heartfelt desires, for he is the true lover of our souls, and he is our home. 

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We come back to this place, week after week, because we need to be reminded that God has said something about us that we could not say about ourselves without him. It’s here that each of us is told that in Christ we are something more because of his great love for us. 

You have been clothed with immortal love, and when you realize that, you begin to look around and see that others are clothed with that very same gift. 

That gospel-fact shapes how we think about ourselves, how we talk about others, and how we engage with the world around us. 

In Christ, there is always something more…including with you. 

Photo by Josh Eckstein on Unsplash