Sermon Archives

June 13, 2010
Pastor Judy Bangsund

"No Other Gospel: How, Then, Shall I Live?"
Sermon Series on Galatians (2 of 5)
Galatians 2

At Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, students were known to toss erasers at the clock. They did this because each precise hit caused the clock to jump ahead one minute. Before class one morning, they succeeded in advancing the clock by ten minutes. Now, some universities have a rule that if the professor is more than 10 minutes late, students are allowed to leave without penalty. On this particular day, since the professor arrived late (according to the classroom clock), students had already left. Well, the professor never said a word about the incident. However, at the end of term he presented the class a killer of a final exam. As the students labored to finish in the allotted time, the professor amused himself by tossing erasers at the clock.

Do you know what I have discovered? We love justice. Justice is good, and we like it when someone makes things right. We like justice…until it turns around and bites us. Then we hope for mercy.

Last week we began a 5-week series on a very important New Testament book: Paul's letter to the Galatians. Pastor Jim told us last week that it was written because Paul was astonished - even shaken - that these new Christians had abandoned the Gospel of Jesus for some other gospel, a gospel that was no gospel at all. They had done so because a shadowy group - a group of Jewish Christians, to be exact - had been dogging Paul as he went about preaching the Gospel to non-Jews. As non-Jews (also called Gentiles) became believers in Jesus they, like all believers, were made right with God simply by faith in what Jesus had done for them on the cross. Paul preached the simple Gospel that no one - Jew or Gentile - can be made right with God except through faith in Christ. Period. Full stop. But this shadowy group would follow Paul from place to place, adding law on top of the Gospel Paul had preached. By adding on to it they distorted it so that was no longer good news. This shadowy group was known as the Judaizers. They said to the new Gentile believers, "Yes, Jesus died for you. Yes, this is what Paul preached, and it's a good thing - as far as it goes. But Paul was in a hurry, don't you know, and he didn't have time to tell you the whole story. Even though you are saved you still need to live your lives according to God's law. How, then, shall you live? You must live by the law, including circumcision, keeping a kosher table, purification rites, sacrifices..." and on and on. In short, Jesus' death on the cross had changed nothing.

Paul, shaken by this news, sat down to write a letter to people of the 1^st century that has become a crucial part of God's Word to Christians of all times. Perhaps, especially to Christians in the pluralistic 21^st century, where the Gospel gets added onto all the time.

Gospel, of course, simply means "good news." THE Gospel is the good news that centers on Jesus' death and resurrection. The hub of The Gospel is that Jesus died so that justice would not be applied in our case (because it would kill us). Instead, we are forgiven and granted eternal life. This wonderful gift can be received only by faith; not by anything we can do. And there's the rub. It's hard to accept. Perhaps we are not so different from the Galatians. In his letter, Paul reminded all of us that nothing - even something as good as God's law- nothing can take the place of the cross.

Because of the Gospel, we can be forgiven. Think of King David. David was a good man, one of the very few kings of Israel who promoted God's law and honored God in all he did. The Bible describes David as "a man after God's own heart." But David - like every other human being on this earth - wasn't perfect. You know the story: how he sinned with Bathsheba and then had her husband, Uriah, killed on the battle field. It was a cowardly thing for a king to do - especially a courageous and God-fearing king like David. You heard it in our Old Testament reading today - how Nathan, the prophet, called David on the carpet - "You are the man!" And Nathan executed justice against the king - blind justice, which treats all people alike. Rich or poor; peasant or king. (Justice is blind, of course; that's what makes it just.)

David knew that God is just. But he also knew that God is merciful. The psalm we read earlier today, a psalm of David, expresses the heavy burden of a person who has done wrong - perhaps a grievous wrong, such as David had done. But in confessing his sin - not trying to hide it from God - the sinner then experiences the profound and unutterable relief of forgiveness. David finished this psalm of confession with these words: "Many are the woes of the wicked, but the Lord's unfailing love surrounds the man who trusts in him. Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous; sing, all you who are upright in heart!" And who are the upright, the righteous? The forgiven - and that includes you and me.

In the same spirit of relief and joy, Paul cries out: I have been crucified with Christ! I have died to the law; now its demands for perfection no longer tyrannize me. Now I live as a new person - "No longer I, but Christ lives in me." Like David and Paul, you and I are forgiven. And there is nothing that we can add to this Gospel, because its message is complete. To add to it is to subtract from it; to add to it is to lose the possibility of forgiveness.

How, then, shall we now live? That's the question! Crucified with Christ, by the mercy of God, we now live in gratitude and in love. A whole new set of dynamics develops. Think of the woman in our Gospel lesson - a prostitute whose sins were many, according to Jesus. She came to the house of Simon the Pharisee, one who lived under the tyranny of the law, resulting in his self-righteousness and judgmental attitude. She came to his house but he was not the one she sought. She sought Jesus and his forgiveness. And, Jesus said, because she was forgiven much she loved much. Forgiveness results in love and gratitude to the one who gave his life to forgive ours.

How, then, shall we now live? As those who have found new life in Christ. I remember an African pastor who showed us how difficult it is to let go of the old life. A parishioner had come to him to ask him to bless his new bus, with which he hoped to start a new business. He asked his pastor to come and bless it, hoping for God's favor. The pastor saw nothing unusual in his request, so he went. But as he began his prayer, he noticed the blood and feathers of a slaughtered chicken on the front seat, a sign that the witch doctor had been there before the pastor, asking the blessing of the ancestors. Apparently this church member had not left the old ways behind, but had merely added a Christian layer on top of his old beliefs - much like the judaizers of Paul's day.

Clearly, this parishioner still feared the ancestors. The underlying belief was that if you didn't pay them appropriate attention, they could ruin your business, cause your crops to fail, even strike your children with disease or death. The ancestors were feared, and this parishioner was taking no chances. He was covering all the bases.

Compare that man with another church member, a man who attended our campus congregation by the name of Peter Ngumuo. Peter was a Christian who had suffered some hard times that year. His 5-year old daughter had been killed by a truck as she had tried to cross the busy road on her way to Sunday school. Not long after that, his house burned to the ground - probably as a result of a curtain blowing in the breeze a little too closely to a gas burner. Neighbors whispered that Peter suffered these tragedies because he had ignored the ancestors. His late father had been a witch doctor, a position that Peter had inherited when his father died. But Peter had refused that position, saying that as a Christian, he no longer feared the ancestors. He knew that no one could influence his life beyond the grave, but God alone. And he also knew that God loved him, so he had nothing to fear. Peter put his trust in the Gospel alone.

At that time, I was serving this congregation as their pastor. So I went to visit Peter and his family. It happened to be about 3 in the afternoon during Holy Week, and I found this family having devotions. Rather than set aside this important activity, they invited me to join them. (I was delighted.) The children read a section of Scripture and then talked about it. Then the others gently expanded on the child's thoughts. They sang some hymns (like many African Lutherans, they knew their entire hymnbook by heart), and then they offered prayer. I found myself wishing that we were following the same pattern in our family.

Afterwards, I asked Peter whether these devotions were special for Holy Week. Smiling, he shook his head. They routinely had devotions twice a day. I was amazed! Here was a man whose whole life had been changed by the Gospel. The ancestors were, for him, no longer to be feared; but simply people to be remembered with love and gratitude. When I asked him about his tragedies, he smiled again. He knew his daughter was with Jesus; he would see her again. As for the house, his Christian neighbors had helped him rebuild. Here was a man at peace, whose laughter and joy were infectious. What a difference the Gospel had made in his life! Like Paul, his old life and its accompanying fears, had been "crucified with Christ." No longer were Peter and his family living under the tyranny of fear; rather, they lived their lives in love and gratitude, trust and hope - because of what Jesus had done for them.

Have you, too, been gripped by the life-changing magnitude of what Jesus did for you on the cross? If so, then you, too, know what it means to have been crucified with Christ. How then shall we now live? Let me summarize what you have heard today:

Live humbly. Know that you are a sinner, confessing your sin. I was recently at a wedding where the couple wrote their own vows. One of them was this: "I know you are not perfect, and I do not expect you to be." What graciousness are in those words! It is the opposite of tyranny. They also promised to forgive and to encourage one another. That's what it means to live humbly.

Live faithfully. Luther said that Christians are simultaneously saints and sinners - sinners because we still sin, but saints because Christ has made us so. Saints are forgiven sinners. You qualify for sainthood, not by what you have done, but by what Jesus has done for you. Because you are a forgiven sinner, do the things that befits a saint. The prophet Micah says, "What does the Lord require of you? (The law? No.) But to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." Here is where justice comes into its own - not as a tyrant over you, demanding perfection; but as a servant of love. Jesus said that the heart of the law is mercy, that the whole law could be fulfilled in this one command: love your neighbor as yourself. Start, not with law, but with love. This is what it means to live faithfully in Christ.

Live thankfully and hopefully. Because the Gospel is pure gift, your natural response will be gratitude, trust and hope. These dynamics soon take on a life of their own, multiplying themselves over and over again in your worship and in your service to one another. It finally becomes a new way of life, and it changes everything.

Humility and forgiveness; justice born of mercy; love and gratitude; trust and hope, centered in Christ. This is the way the Gospel works itself out in your life. My friends, Paul was right: there is no other Gospel. The students who threw erasers at the clock found out that justice is a stern taskmaster. They played a game they couldn't win. Compare that scenario with the scene at Calvary, where Jesus made possible for you a life of forgiveness and love. It is the best news there is. Amen.