Sermon delivered on Trinity 4C, Sunday, June 19, 2016, at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of today’s sermon, usually somewhat different from the text below, click here.

Lectionary texts: 1 Kings 19.1-15a; Psalms 42.1-43.6; Galatians 3.23-29; Luke 8.26-39.

Grace to you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Despite what may be in the bulletin, you better be paying attention this morning. I’ll be distributing a quiz during the passing of the peace that will include ten multiple choice questions, a short essay, and for bonus points your best joke about Kevin for future use from the pulpit.

Paul’s letter to the Galatian Christians is a six-chapter argument against the teaching of people he has come to call “the agitators.” If you read this letter from the beginning to the end you’ll get a sense that Paul is madder than an ol’ wet hen at the insistence of these folks that the Galatians must be circumcised now to really be part of the covenant family of God. He has preached to them the good news of Jesus Christ, and God’s purposeful inclusion of all whom he will call to himself, not only the Jews, but also the Gentile peoples of the earth. Paul is so insistent that the practice of circumcision is no longer necessary for living in a covenant relationship with God that he calls the Gospel, shockingly in the Jews and Judiazers ears, the “gospel of the foreskin” (2:17)

Paul understands this through the promise that was given to Abraham before circumcision or the Law was ever even given, that his descendants would be so numerous that counting them would be impossible, and that through him all the nations of the earth would be blessed. It was a unilateral act of God that always had in mind the inclusion of people outside of ethnic Israel.

But what about the Law? If the law has been fulfilled by Jesus, then what are we to make of it? Paul answers this by explaining that the Law has acted as a schoolmaster, or a tutor, which has taught us about God’s holiness and sovereignty. God’s people have been cared for and taught under the Law. But the Law was never an end. It was the schoolmaster, or the tutor that taught us. It was a tether, meant to keep God’s people in communion with him until the time when they no longer needed the schoolmaster or tether.

I’m reminded of the kid leashes my dad and mom had for us when we were children and would go to the Ohio State Fair. They kept us from wandering too far away, but if we worked hard enough at it we could most certainly slip away and go running through the Bricker Building, crashing into whatever display stood in our way. The leash was a reminder to me that, as a child, I was incapable of caring for myself, even if I thought I could. And I REALLY thought I could take care of myself.

The Law, like the leash, cannot save someone from harm if the one on the end of the tether does not want to be safe and close to the Father. But the Law did, and still does, one thing that cannot be overlooked: it points to the Law fulfilled. It points to Jesus Christ. It wakes us up to the fact that through its rites and ceremonies, and through the sacrifices that were made in the legal system, that the whole narrative history of Israel is always pointing, constantly pointing, straight towards Jesus and the promises that were made to Abraham, and are realized by grace through faith. It is Paul’s argument against these agitators that it is precisely because the promise was given to Abraham prior to circumcision and the Mosaic Law that our justification does not come after following God’s Law, but is given to us before it.

Let me tell you a story. It was a beautiful summer day in 1998. A group of kids were sitting in the dugout at their local baseball field awaiting their coach for practice. The sun was shining, everyone seemed to be in great spirits, and the typical teenage boy banter was going back and forth between the boys. At the end of the dugout sat one boy. He was mostly a quiet kid. He had been overlooked by other kids when they were gathering together others to form their teams for the summer league. He was a little chubby, wore glasses, and wasn’t terribly quick. And no, I’m not talking about myself. He was also known as being the “church kid.” If anyone had cared to talk with him they’d have learned that he was really one of the greatest guys they’d ever come to know, but the issues of teenage politics kept them from doing so.

But there was one other boy who desperately needed to fill his roster, and this slow kid was the only guy left he knew who lived close enough to play regularly. So he asked him to join. This quiet kid at the end of the bench struck up a conversation with, as he saw it so far, the only person on the team who didn’t make fun of him (at least to his face). He was speaking to the one who used him as a warm body to fill a bench position. In the course of their conversation the boy who had done the recruiting started to feel really awkward, but didn’t know why. So he blurted out, “you know, I’ve been thinking about going back to church. It’s been a long time, but I feel like I need to get myself straightened out before I do.” The other boy just looked up at him from his seated position in the dugout, squinting towards the captain who had the sun at his back, and he said, “why would you clean yourself off before getting into the bath? When you follow Jesus, you’re free from the legal stuff that you couldn’t possibly accomplish on your own. Come with me this weekend, and I’ll show you what I mean.” The captain had never heard it quite put that way, and this just stuck in his head. He agreed to go to church with the bespectacled kid, and there in that place heard the Gospel proclaimed: “Jesus saves.”

Why do I tell you this story, you might ask? Because it presents a truth that is so simple that Freshmen in high school can understand it. Jesus fulfilled the law’s requirements, and he reenacted in himself the long and stained history of Israel, but did it without blemish of sin or transgression. And now the law that we follow is a fulfilled Law, very much alive and active on our behalf now.

This is Jesus. And, as has been promised in the Prophets, God’s Law will be written on our hearts and minds by the Holy Spirit who came into us at baptism to mark us and make us truly alive, breaking us free from the schoolmaster and tether, causing us to grow and be like Christ here and now. This law that is written on our hearts and in our minds is this: that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and the second greatest commandment and summary of the Law is that you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

For in our baptism into Christ we have put on Christ. He has taken our old and filthy rags of our self-attempt at doing righteous deeds and cast them away, and now he clothes us with his righteousness, enclosing us in white garments signifying the holiness of life we can now live because of the grace of God alone. Bathing before baptism (trying to clean up our acts before being united with Jesus) would be akin to wallowing in a pigsty with a bar of soap. We cannot make ourselves clean; neither can following the legal requirements of the covenant that pointed to what life in God’s kingdom through Christ would look like. It is in the baptismal waters where we encounter God’s Holy Spirit beginning the work in us, and uniting us with Jesus himself, and his body the Church.

Circumcision is not a follow on to this saving faith in Jesus. It’s is the old pattern that is no longer in effect for us as Christ has already completed its demands. But the Law does still exist, and whenever we read it or speak about it it reminds us that, although we are saved by God’s grace, we are still at the same time sinners. Sinners saved by grace. Simul iustus et peccatore. And this causes us to cling to God’s grace all the more. We still don’t deserve it based upon our own merits, but solely cling to Jesus name. We accept his invitation for all to come to his bath waters, the sacrament of baptism, that we may be made clean and indwelled by his Spirit.

It is through this uniting with Christ and his holy Church through baptism that we are set free; free to do good works, to bless, to heal, to forgive, to love with a heart filled with God’s love. It is what will cause us to say to someone, “Grace and mercy are yours in Jesus Christ.” If we were to continue under the law we would be less merciful, as we would all be bound children crying out for justice whenever someone transgressed the law. We would shame people for not doing what we feel they should be doing. It’s when we fly some bird shape at people in traffic with whom we may have disagreed with their driving style.

But under the grace of God, the fulfillment of the Law in Jesus, we do not do these things. Rather, we love people. We love people right into God’s kingdom, and to their uniting with the Triune God and the Kingdom of God on earth, the Church. We know they are coming from a place where the law reigned, and is evident in the devastating after-effects of sin in this world and in their lives. So we gently speak to them, and we treat them as equal with us. For we being simultaneously righteous and sinner must remember that we still are sinners who are saved by grace. We were that other person once upon a time.

And it’s the Law that reminds us of that, making this gospel message clearly more beautiful by the moment.

There is now neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for we have all been baptized and saved by the Lord Jesus Christ, marked as sons and daughters of the Father by the Holy Spirit, and transformed for a new life. A life of holiness after the Law of Christ that the Holy Spirit will write on our hearts, as was promised. No longer should there be a distinction and discrimination between races and classes of people here in the Church as there were in the time of Paul’s writing. The pattern of superiority and inferiority has become irrelevant: it does not matter as far as belonging to Christ and being Abraham’s true heir goes, whether you are whatever you are. What you are, or for those in this room who aren’t can be, is God’s own adopted child, dearly loved and cared for. You’ve been given good gifts, and are called to do good with them in your love and service for the Lord. You’ve been circumcised in the heart as was foretold by God in Deuteronomy, and then echoed by Paul in Romans.

So, my dear brothers and sisters live a life of serving the Lord, loving him with all your heart, and mind, and soul; and love your neighbor as yourself. This is our standard in Christ. Proclaim the freedom of Jesus Christ to all who need to be set free from the curse of the Law, that it cannot save although it still can teach us about the one who did and does save us, and why we needed to be saved.

May the Lord of grace and mercy, the Lord who has set us free, imprint his law in our minds and our hearts, circumcising them, that we may be holy and pleasing in his sight as we do our work in his Kingdom and world.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters. Amen.