by Mark Stenberg
Epistle Reading: Galatians 6.1-18
For Sunday, July 7, 2013: Year C—Ordinary 14
Hey. I don't know if you've noticed yet, but it is a great time to be alive. Especially if you are a preacher, teacher, theologian or exegete of the Bible.
There has been a strange and wonderful confluence of events that has led us to the brink of a new paradigm. With all due respect to Phyllis Tickle, this new movement is not the Emergent Church (whatever that is). It is much bigger than that. It is a political Jesus and a political Paul. Jesus and Paul set against the Roman Empire.
Horsley and Wright
Do you think that the Apostle Paul didn't set out to take down the Roman Empire? Think again. Or at least show some respect for the revolution that is going on in the field of Paul scholarship with Richard A. Horsely at the center of the movement.
Check out this really beefy introductory essay, penned by the venerable Sir N.T. Wright, written a mere 10 years ago, that is helping to launch the revolution: "Paul's Gospel and Caesar's Empire" I dare you to not get sucked in. It's the gateway drug to full on political readings of the whole bible such as In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY, 2008).
The Circumcision Issue
"I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different Gospel." Thus Paul begins his letter with an unabashed scolding regarding the matter of Non-Judeans adopting specifically Jewish practices, notably circumcision.
Traditionally, scholars and theologians have turned this into a theological discussion about the law and the gospel and freedom in Christ and split hairs over the nuances of the terms all the way from here to kingdom come.
A New Perspective on Galatians
But according to scholar Neil Elliot, the central issue of Galatians (the circumcision of non-Judeans) was not a religious or theological issue. It was a political one. "Non-Judeans were encouraging one another to adopt specific Jewish practices…to avoid harassment from their pagan neighbors."1
Since Roman control was recently organized in the region there was heightened pressure to participate in the cult of Emperor worship. While the church in Galatia was caving in to the pressure of the imperial cult, Paul was asking for radical resistance to the Empire. According to Elliot: "The Galatians may have intended to adopt specific Jewish practices as a sort of civic camouflage, hoping to pass off their withdrawal from the civic cults as their newfound interest in an ancient ethnic religion tolerated by the empire, and thus to escape harassment." (ibid, 106)
Implications for Our Text
Paul's final word to the Galatians is one of judgment and mercy. He demands that even those who have fallen away are to be restored in a spirit of gentleness, a spirit that is the absolute antithesis of Roman violence. They are to be subject, not to the law of the empire but to "the law of Christ," which demands that they "bear one another's burdens." (vs. 2) They are not to live according to the cult of the Emperor with its intricate network of patrons and clients, for they are "a new creation." (vs. 15) And this ethic extends even beyond their own community as Paul adds "let us work for the good of all." (vs. 10)
A Community Ethic but Individual Judgment?
The most challenging part of this text is the stark contrast between the communal ethic in which the Galatians are to bear one another's burdens and the images of the last judgment, at which believers will apparently each stand on their own: "All must test their own work" (vs. 4); "All must carry their own loads" (vs. 5); "For you reap whatever you sow" (vs. 7); The notion of being suddenly ripped out of a community of mutual gentleness and having to appear before God, all alone? That is terrifying. Which brings us to our hardest question…
The Hardest Question
Is the image of the individual standing all alone before the judgment of God consistent with the rest of Paul's message of this highly communal ethic of healing and restoration and second chances? At "harvest-time" will we stand alone?
1In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance, Westminster John Know Press, Louisville, KY, 2008, "The Apostle Paul and Empire," Neil Elliot, page 105.
Mark Stenberg is a trained academic theologian who got side-tracked planting churches. He started House of Mercy House of Mercy, with co-pastors Debbie Blue and Russell Rathbun in 1996 and ten years later he left that call to launch Mercy Seat Lutheran Church along with his current colleague, Kae Evensen. Mark holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University where he studied philosophy with the likes of Jürgen Habermas. He is also an adjunct professor at Luther Seminary, teaching in homiletics and in the D.Min. program. Mark lost his spouse to cancer in March of 2007 but is profoundly grateful for every moment he gets to spend with his amazing children, Angela and Mateo.
