Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com
Galatians 1:1-10
I love maps. I have always loved maps. We traveled a lot when I was a kid. We lived in Eden, New York, outside of Buffalo and my Mom’s family all lived here in Texas, so we traveled down here by car at least once a year. I always wanted to read the map, to see where we were and where we were going. The thing about maps is that you have to learn how to use them. If you don’t know how to read a map, it is just a bunch of squiggly lines.
A few years ago, I had to learn to read a different kind of map. I started getting into backcountry hiking and backpacking. The maps used to traverse the backcountry are a little different than other maps. You really need to know what you are doing. When you are on foot, in the backcountry, with trees towering overhead, and you don’t know how to read the map, you might look at the map and say “oh good my campsite is only a quarter mile away,” not realizing that the quarter mile includes crossing a rushing river, climbing 1000’ vertical wall and repelling down the other side.
But we are on a different kind of journey. We are on a faith journey. Scripture is our map on this journey, but often, we don’t know how to read that map.
“Looking at the Map”
Today, we start a four-week journey through one of the most amazing letters ever written, the letter from the Apostle Paul to the Galatians. When we go on a trip, before we even pull out the map, we need to decide is what kind of trip we are taking. If you are trying to get from here to Shoreline drive, a world atlas is not going to help you. If you are trying to get to Pakistan, a map of Corpus is not going to help you. If you are trying to hike the Appalachian trail, a road map is pretty useless, if you are trying to navigate the streets of Paris in a car, a trail map might not work.
So let’s think about what kind of trip we are taking, in terms of understanding what we are reading. What we are reading is a letter. Let me ask you, do you read a letter differently than you read an instruction manual? And what kind of letter? Do you read a letter from a loved one who has been away for six months differently than you read a letter regarding your insurance coverage.
This letter is a personal, passionate, pleading letter from a pastor, Paul to his beloved congregation, a congregation that he started and a congregation that he is quite worried about.
1Paul an apostle—sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities,
This seems an odd way to start a letter. We tend to go with “Dear Joe.” But, in the Greco-Roman tradition Paul was writing from, the opening formula was sender, addressee, greeting. So if I were writing a letter to my pastor friend Ryan, I might write:
Will, a pastor at Grace United Methodist Church in Corpus Christi to Ryan, my brother in Christ in San Antonio, hey buddy!
But we are not that far yet. Here is the sender:
1Paul an apostle—sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities
So we sort of know what kind of map we are dealing with. Sometimes when we start looking at the map, we need a little help interpreting it. There are always lots of abbreviations and stuff. Sometimes in scripture the instructions are in Greek.
I am not going to teach you Greek today, but I want to show you something. This sentence:
1Paul an apostle—sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities
…does not say that in the original Greek. It says something more like:
Paul, an apostle -- not from men, nor through man,
Where did the word ‘sent’ go? Apostle means “one who is sent” so the translation is just filling some things in for you. So Paul is a sent one and he wants you to know who he has been sent by.
1Paul an apostle—sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead—
So what is very important for Paul to get across something he ties to his name in the first words of his letter is that he is an apostle, a sent one and the one doing the sending is Jesus Christ himself. That is a pretty powerful way to start a letter. There are some other folks with him too.
1Paul an apostle—sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead— 2and all the members of God’s family who are with me,
So remember: sender, addressee, greeting.
1Paul an apostle—sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead— 2and all the members of God’s family who are with me, To the churches of Galatia.
I can’t help but think back to the topographical maps I used when I go backpacking. There are these little lines on the map that you might just want to ignore. However, it is important to look at the map legend to figure it out. When we do we see that each line represents 40’ change in elevation. You cross of few of these lines and you realize how important they are.
But sometimes we read over scripture not noticing these big clues. We don’t look closely.
For those of you who are parents, I want you to imagine intercepting this email from your child. Let’s pretend you child’s name is Max and he is a teenager:
Billy,
Scott told me to email you and tell you to bring Susan to the place I showed you and make sure to bring plenty of those things.
Max
As an inquisitive parent, you should probably want to know who Scott, Susan and Billy are, where the place is and what things Max is bringing. But somehow we read this letter in the Bible, a book that Christians consider God’s word to them and we zip right over this kind of stuff.
When we are looking at a map we also need to know a little context.
When I look at a map, and see that I have to go one mile it matters if I am in the Colorado Rockies or Big Bend or on Shoreline Drive and it matters if it is August or December.
But what about the context of our letter?
Who is Paul? One of the most quoted men in the history of Christendom (possibly next to Jesus, maybe more than Jesus) and most people know nearly nothing about him. Scripture paints this picture of this amazingly complex human being, Saul of Tarsus, a very important member of the Jewish religious elite who actually persecuted Christians because they were not following the tradition and laws of the Jews. He has this amazing encounter with Jesus Christ, not during Jesus earthly life but after the resurrection and is called into this ministry of spreading the gospel traveling thousands of miles being beaten and imprisoned and shipwrecked and all the while writing these wonderful letters that teach and inspire and motivate us and bring us closer to Christ. And most people who quote Paul and use his words to back up their position on some issue of morality know nothing about him.
Who are the Galatians? Well now we need a different kind of map.
If you take my course, you will see that this is a complex question, but the easy answer is that the Galatians are members of two or three churches in the northern part of the Roman empire in what we now call Turkey. So what?
Billy,
Scott told me to email you and tell you to bring Susan to the place I showed you and make sure to bring plenty of those things.
Max
Does it matter if Susan in this letter is a 15 year old middle school student or a 35 year old professional wrester? And where is that place? Is it the school or dark alley? That might tell you something about context.
Here’s the context of the Galatians. These churches are in non-Jewish areas. The Christian church, in its infancy was an offshoot of Judaism. If Paul were to say the letter was from Paul, a good Jewish authority who was sent by Jewish authorities, they would say, “So what? We aren’t Jewish.”
Sender, addressee, greeting. Here is the greeting:
3Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
The next part of a letter in the Greco Roman tradition is the thanksgiving. Let’s go back to my fictional letter to my friend Ryan:
Will, a pastor at Grace United Methodist Church in Corpus Christi to Ryan, my brother in Christ in San Antonio, hey buddy! I thank God every day that we are friends and colleagues in ministry!
Here is how Paul does it in Romans:
8First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed throughout the world.
Here is how he does it in First Corinthians:
4I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus.
Here is how he does it in Galatians:
6I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—
Paul is not happy. He takes no time for the normal niceties and gets right to it.
Over the next couple of weeks, we are going to go more deeply into the issues facing the Galatian church that have Paul so upset but, for today, let me give you a synopsis. The Galatian Christians are being led astray by some teachers other than Paul. Remember why it is important to know where the Galatians are? The location of these churches tell us that their members were not Jews. This is where some more context will help: remember that the first Christians were Jews, Christianity was a small part of Judaism, an offshoot if you will. As we will hear more about next week, Paul has taken it upon himself to spread the Good news of Jesus Christ to non-Jews or, as the Bible calls them gentiles. He goes to these gentiles and says, you can be made right with God simply by having faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was crucified, died and rose from the grave. He convinces them that, as he says in chapter 2, verse 16:
And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.
But then, Paul leaves, and along come these other teachers who give this entirely different message, telling these new Christians that they have to back up and become Jews first and that they have to follow the law of Moses to be put into right relationship with God.
To Paul, this is completely contrary to what he taught them. He says in chapter 3:
1You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified!
And in chapter 4:
20I wish I were present with you now and could change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.
Back to today’s text:
6I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.
Now here is something to remember about a map. It is just a map, not the actual thing.
My friend Ryan has a new car with this really cool satellite navigation system. We were in Kerrville one time and decided we wanted Chinese food. He knew the name of a good place but he didn’t know where it was. So he typed into this little screen on his dash and it told us where it was and how to get there and then told us out loud every turn to take to get there from where we were.
When you first turn this thing on, it gives you all these warnings like, don’t look at the screen when you are driving and even the best maps can be wrong, so actually look at the road!
There have already been stories of people driving off the roadway or right into a building because their satellite navigation system told them to turn and they just listened without looking. Maps are our guide. But as has been so well said.
You will learn more about a road by traveling it than consulting all the maps in the world.
-H. Jackson Brown, jr. p.s. I Love You
We can learn all we want about the history and context and background of scripture, but if it doesn’t affect us, change our lives, bring us closer to God and Jesus Christ, then we are missing the point.
6I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.
Paul was worried that the Galatian Christians were abandoning a Gospel of grace that says, it is your faith in Jesus Christ that puts you in right relationship with God in favor of a false gospel that says, it is following the law of God that puts you in right relationship with God. Paul saw those as incompatible and so do I.
We will look more closely at that over the coming weeks. But, as we take our eyes off the map and put them on the road, we have to ask, what “false gospels” are we tempted to follow?
Just from my own experience, I think there are a lot of them. The word gospel literally translates “good news.” But Paul is talking about “the good news” of Jesus, The Gospel. But the world tells us that there are some other “gospels” out there. The gospel of success, the gospel of money, the gospel of power, the gospel of influence, the gospel of security.
But you know what I think the most dangerous false gospel may be? It is one that is like a wolf in sheep’s clothing because it easily passes as the gospel. I call it a personal benefits gospel. It is a gospel that focuses on the good news of Christ, but leaves out half of it. It talks about the good stuff, which we should talk about, like the unconditional love of God, God’s grace and God’s abundant forgiveness, but it leaves out the response, the response that God’s unmerited love calls us to, the call to be true disciples and make disciples of Jesus Christ. I am talking about a personal benefits gospel verses a life-altering servant discipleship gospel that not only calls us to accept the grace of Christ that forgives us and moves us back into relationship with God but also calls us to sit and the feet of Jesus and learn to be a true follower.
I think that this is not a failure of members of the church; I think it is a failure of pastoral leaders like me, not just here at Grace but in most churches. Pastors have been afraid to push people to be disciples and have been too long content in allowing them to be members. Pastors have sat back and allowed people to stand in the shallow waters instead of holding people accountable for discipleship out of fear that people might leave.
I love what Paul says in verse 10:
10Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.
I have decided to not be afraid to push people. I expect them to push back because I’m not Jesus and my path is not always the correct path, but I am going to be pushing myself and all the leaders I work with to sit at the feet of Jesus and learn more about the depths of discipleship he calls us to.
So, here is the good news, you don’t have any homework this week. Instead I do. It is my homework this week to think and prayer and discern about how to help some of you move from just receiving the grace of God to sitting at the feet of Jesus and learning to be a disciple.
3Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
