Narratives of Grace
page detail from Galatians, 1611 KJV Bible (Replica Edition) photo by jch
Sermon Series “Through the Bible,” № 70, Galatians 1:1-5, 6:14-18
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ …. – Galatians 1:3
Today, our journey “Through the Bible” moves to Paul’s letter to the Galatians. When studying Romans or the Corinthian letters, the audience is easier to pinpoint, because Rome and Corinth are cities, easy to find on the map. In contrast, Galatia is a region with indistinct boundaries, northwest of the Holy Land, in modern-day Turkey.
In the time that the early Church was expanding, the region of Galatia was governed by Rome. Paul, during his missionary journeys, established and nurtured at least five congregations there. Paul’s letter to the Galatian Christians is one of his earlier works, and reflects ongoing controversy about the developing beliefs and practices of the early Church.
In the short introduction I’ve placed in your worship bulletin, you can read a bit more about this letter and its impact on Christian theology and ethics. Charles Cousar, Professor of New Testament and Presbyterian pastor, once wrote, “Paul’s letter to the Galatians has had an impact on the life and thought of the Christian church far exceeding its modest length (150 verses) … it has exercised profound influence on theologians struggling with the issues of freedom and faith, gospel and law, the Spirit and ethics ….”[1] Due to its modest length, it’s a bit easier to see the letter’s structure. Like most of Paul’s letters, the body of the letter addresses what to believe and how to live when dealing with conflict and facing pain.
What I want you to notice is the tone of the letter’s beginning and ending. In the opening salutation addressing his friends, Paul writes, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Later, in the closing valediction, saying farewell to his friends, he writes, “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters.”
In his writing, Paul is consistent in this sort of opening and closing. Galatians, like all of the Paul’s letters, and despite difficult subject matter in the middle, is framed at beginning and end by a tone of “grace and peace.” Why does Paul frame his letters this way? I think it’s more than simple convention. I believe Paul is stating the main point of his message again and again, habitually, irrepressibly. Paul’s literary style tells us the good news of Jesus, no matter what it sounds like somewhere in the middle, is first and finally a message of grace and peace.
Focusing for a moment on today’s reading from the Hebrew Testament, Isaiah, too, was writing during an era when there was plenty of conflict and pain, and people of faith and conscience wondered what to believe and how to live. Foreign oppressors with false gods were in charge of society. In other passages, Isaiah courageously challenges the sources of conflict and pain. In this text, however, he reminds his people of the dominant feature of the story God is telling through their nation’s history. “I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord … because of all that the Lord has done for us … he became their savior in all their distress.” Like Paul, Isaiah’s tone emphasizes, first and finally, a message of grace and peace.
As I was thinking about the way Paul shapes the message of grace and peace, a cross reference in my data base led me back to a sermon by my former colleague Lonnie Lee, in which he highlighted some passages from Thomas Cahill’s book, How the Irish Saved Civilization.
In essence, Cahill told the story about the role the Church in Ireland played as the Roman Empire ended and the Dark Ages began. As Europe descended into destructive chaos, many ancient libraries were lost forever. But in Ireland, Christian monks and scribes copied and preserved both Christian and Classical manuscripts.
Lonnie Lee pointed me to a passage in Cahill’s text that describes the significance of this activity in words from which ultimately I borrowed a phrase as my sermon title. Cahill wrote, “We normally think of history as one catastrophe after another, war followed by war, outrage by outrage -- almost as if history were nothing more than all the narratives of human pain, assembled in sequence …. But history is also the narratives of grace, the recounting of those blessed and inexplicable moments when someone did something for someone else, saved a life, bestowed a gift, gave something beyond what was required by circumstance.” That’s not a bad way of describing the contrast Isaiah and Paul were making in their preaching. Though sometimes it seems that our life stories will be narratives of conflict and pain, the prophet and the apostle say that for people of faith, our life stories may become narratives of grace.
Today we ordain and install new church officers. If you pay attention to the annual cycle of events, you know how the fourth quarter of the year is full of administrative projects, programming events, and worship experiences. The ink is not yet dry on the Annual Report. It seems a little crazy that we Presbyterians, after a busy season, spend so much time and energy on officer training, ordination, and installation.
We do so, in part, because we recognize something that former General Assembly moderator Joan Gray said, years ago: “John Calvin had the radical idea that lay people could actually run the church. Over against more than a thousand years of clergy-dominated church life, Calvin and those who came after him envisioned a system in which clergy and elected laity (work) together. In my estimation, the single most significant fact of our polity is that elders (and deacons) always outnumber clergy. The practical result is that few churches will ever rise above the level of their elders and deacons.” She said, “we must take officer training seriously … we must challenge our officers (all our officers) to claim their role as spiritual leaders.”[2]
In a few minutes, the officers-elect will stand to confirm the call of God through the voice of this congregation. They will take their vows, receive the laying on of hands, and hear the prayers of ordination and installation. Officers, part of the purpose of this day is to remember and reaffirm
the character of your service and the content of the message you speak and live. In a world full of conflict and pain, may your service proclaim the good news of grace and peace. May our ministry together weave a narrative of grace.
NOTES
[1] Charles B. Cousar, Galatians, a volume in Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982, p. 1.
[2] Joan S. Gray, “Three Imperatives in the life of the church,” http://pcusa.org/gamoderator/polity.htm
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