Second Sermon at St. John's Barrington

Year C, First Sunday after Christmas, RCL
Galatians 3:23-25, 4:4-7

When I was younger I was not a neat or tidy kid. Growing up my older brother Eric and I had to share a bedroom and it was always very easy to tell whose side of the room was whose, because one of the biggest differences between Eric and I is tidiness, Eric has always been very neat and orderly. Last week my mom was telling a story about how on Christmas mornings we would rush to open our gifts and since we’d be having family come over we would bring all our gifts to our rooms and display them on our beds so everyone could see what we had gotten for Christmas. As you can probably guess from what I’ve told you Eric’s presents were always laid out very neatly and orderly whereas mine were more likely than not just thrown on my bed.
The way we handled our Christmas presents was typical of our tidiness everywhere else. The only way I would ever clean up my room was when I was made to. And I doubt I could count the number of times that I was made to clean my room. Now, growing up I knew that I was supposed to keep my room clean, but knowing and doing are not the same thing. If my room was ever clean it was because my Mom or Dad, usually my Mom, made me clean it, it was only because my Mom or Dad had acted as a disciplinarian and made me do what I was supposed to.
In the reading from Galatians today we hear St. Paul explaining the law to the Galatians in similar terms. “The law was our disciplinarian” he wrote. St. Paul had visited the Galatians before sending this letter and had preached a Gospel centered on faith in Jesus Christ. The Galatians however began to listen to someone else after Paul had left them. The message that the Galatians received after St. Paul left stressed not just the importance of but the necessity of following the law. In his travels St. Paul heard what was happening with the Galatians and wrote this letter to correct them.
St. Paul wrote to them explaining justification and the true place of the law. “The law was our disciplinarian” we heard in today’s reading. The Israelites had the law not to be made righteous before God but to keep them in line while they awaited the fulfillment of the promises made to Abraham. St. Paul began to argue against the newly held view of the Galatians by asking them “Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard?”. He goes on to talk about how Abraham “believed and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”. St. Paul makes a case based both on the experience of the Galatians and the biblical narrative for the primacy of faith over and against the law. He then goes on to explain the purpose of the law, that it did not guarantee the promise made to Abraham, that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through him, but rather the law was given as a disciplinarian to watch over the Israelites until the promise was fulfilled.
This promise was fulfilled through Jesus Christ. St. Paul wrote that it was through Jesus “that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith”. In today’s reading we hear that this promise has been fulfilled by Christ because through Christ we have been adopted as children of God. We are justified, we are made righteous before God, not by any works we can do but because in Jesus we have been made children of God. Whether or not we follow the law does not even come into the question, as children of God we do not earn God’s love, God gives that love to us freely, and we accept that gift of God’s love through our faith in Jesus Christ.
To go back to the story about my untidiness. My Mom acted as a disciplinarian, she made sure that I knew I had to clean my room and when I failed to do so there were repercussions. Her making sure I did this never made me into a tidy person though, I cleaned my room because my Mom was there making me do it. Living on my own for the past few years, I’ve become a little neater, partly because I’m in a dorm now and the space is fairly cramped but also because I no longer have someone to clean up after me. When I come back home on breaks, however, my newly acquired tidiness quickly disappears.
I realize the importance of being neat and tidy, especially after living in a dorm room. I recognize the benefits of these qualities, I know they would make a lot of things easier, but like I said earlier, knowing and doing are not the same thing. I am not a neat person and even with a disciplinarian I can only feign neatness. I will always fall short at this, no matter how many people tell me I have to do this and punish me if I do not.
Now, here I’m only talking about being tidy, keeping things neat, just think of the difference between keeping things tidy and being righteous before God. If a disciplinarian falls short for something as little tidiness imagine how ineffective it must be for something like being righteous before God. We cannot earn or make ourselves righteous before God. We are all imperfect, how could we ever make ourselves righteous before that which is perfect. We can’t. But yesterday and the day before, we gathered here to celebrate that God took on our imperfection, and in doing so has sanctified our imperfection. There is no longer any question of earning God’s love or being worthy of God’s love, for we are children of God and as such God’s love is freely given to us.
I find the fact that God’s love is given to us regardless of what we do or if we are worthy of it to be terribly comforting. It does however trouble me. For if what we do doesn’t affect whether or not we receive God’s love what’s the point of being good moral people? What’s to keep God’s grace from becoming what Dietrich Bonhoeffer termed cheap grace? In the letter to the Galatians St. Paul wrote, “do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another” and also, “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ”.
It is through Christ that we are justified, we cannot make ourselves worthy of this or earn it, it is freely given because we have been adopted as children of God. St. Paul tells the Galatians, and us, that this does not mean we should go off and do whatever we want. Rather, in response to the gift of God’s love, we ought to be come slaves, or servants, of love ourselves. To go back to me being untidy, when I’m home on break every so often I’ll clean up a little around the house, not all the time, but it happens, and I do this not because I have become a neat person or because I want things to be tidy, but because I know my Mom likes things to be neat and clean. In response to the love that I know my Mom has for me, I try and do what she wants, I try and do things for her.
How much greater ought this response to being loved be when we are talking about being loved by God? As children of God, freely receiving the love of God, we ought to bear one another’s burdens, we ought to become slaves of love. For, it is in response to God’s love that Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” And that the second is, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
So remember, we have been adopted as children of God, and God loves us no matter what we may or may not do and in response to this love we ought to become slaves of love, we ought to bear one another’s burdens.