Embracing Anarchy!

“See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand! It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who try to compel you to be circumcised – only that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.” (Galatians 6:11-12)

These are some of the closing words of Saint Paul’s most angry letter, and it finishes with the Apostle grabbing the reed pen from his scribe and taking over the writing himself – “See what large letters I make …” (Galatians 6:11).

I bet they were large letters. Even by this stage, Paul had been chained, imprisoned and beaten up so often that his hands must have been quite gnarled. His writing probably looked like that of a primary school aged child. Even so, Paul makes the effort because he’s passionate about getting his message across:

“It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who try to compel you to be circumcised – only that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ” (Galatians 6:12)

Thankfully, Paul was writing in Greek, in which this sentence is only 17 words long (not 33). Even so, I imagine he handed the pen to someone else after this effort and let them finish the paragraph. He’d made his key point (or points):

• You don’t need to be circumcised
• Those who insist you do need to be circumcised are cowards

Why were Paul and his opponents so obsessed with this issue of circumcision? Well, it all goes back to the book of Genesis, and to the original agreement that God made with Abraham:

“This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised.” (Genesis 17:10)

Circumcision was the God-ordained way that the men of the community showed that they were people of faith. God had commanded it, and the descendants of Abraham had remained obedient to that command, generation after generation. Now, Paul was telling everyone that it didn’t matter anymore, and that you could be a part of the community of faith whether you were circumcised or not. Moreover, you don’t need to worry about the old kosher food laws either or about most of those old laws written in the Torah. No wonder the religious authorities considered Paul a heretic!

What was it that led Paul to change his mind about something so fundamental to the faith of his forefathers and to question something so clearly written in the Torah? We know that he did spend a lot of time thinking through the texts in Genesis, and he argues in his letter to the church in Rome that Abraham had come to faith came before he was circumcised (see Romans 4:9–11) and hence that faith was more important than the symbol of faith. Even so, it wasn’t his study of the sacred texts that changed Paul’s mind. It was his God-given realisation that the Almighty loved everyone, regardless of race or gender or religion, and this realisation drove him to see that a lot of the old rules were just barriers to building human community!

If you read the early history of the church, as outlined in the Book of Acts, you see the Apostles and all the early leaders of the church gradually coming to this same realisation – that all those ‘Old Testament’ laws that functioned to separate Jews from non-Jews and to create hierarchies between people based on race or gender or economic status – all those old rules had to go so that the church could grow as an all-inclusive community of equals!

This was the new “Israel of God” as Paul terms it in the final verse of his letter (Galatians 6:16). Who is Israel, according to Paul? Not a country (which didn’t exist at Paul’s time of writing) and certainly not the nation state created in 1948. Israel wasn’t any particular place or race, so far as Paul was concerned. It was the people of faith, wherever and whoever they were – the spiritual descendants of Abraham.

These are complicated issues, I know, and you can spend a lifetime trying to unpack Paul’s arguments and see how he reached the conclusions he did. Personally, I think what is far more important than understanding every point Paul made is to grasp fully what is was that was driving Paul in his thinking and re-thinking of his faith and his traditions. To quote Paul again from his letter to the Romans:

“For I am convinced that neither life nor death, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

Amen!

Our Sunday Eucharist

We had a very special Sunday Eucharist last Sunday. It was great to reconnect with Wing Commander Scott Minchin, though I don’t think he was a Wing Commander when we were last connected. Either way, thank you, Scott, and thank you, Doug Pyeatt, who was also reconnecting with Scott after many years.

We didn’t actually do a lot of reminiscing, but we did have a vibrant discussion, both about our Bible passages and about world affairs. Scott didn’t hold back on his opinions on world events and the two most popular shorts from last Sunday were both related to politics rather than to any of the readings. I’ve posted those two below. For the other shorts, go to the Sunday Eucharist Instagram page, or watch the entire broadcast (including the Bible commentary) on YouTube.