Sermon: Identity Crisis

 Galatians 3:23-29
Identity Crisis
James Sledge                                                                                                 June 19, 2022

The Apostle Paul
Andrei Rublev (1410-20)

 When Christian missionaries began to go to different parts of Africa in the late 1800s, they took more than the good news of Jesus. They also brought with them Western ways. When they started churches among their new converts, they made worship look as much like it did back home as they could manage. They sang Western hymns and imported pianos and pump organs. And they wore black robes regardless of the temperature.

For all intents and purposes, those missionaries said to the people they met, “If you want to be Christian, you must adopt Western ways. No using indigenous musical instruments or existing musical forms. Being Christian meant becoming Western, and of course the Jesus they took with them to Africa was white.

Jesus always gets contextualized and culturized. Christianity began as a Jewish messianic movement, but its forms shifted as it became more and more of a Greco-Roman, Gentile religion. And when the emperor Constantine made Christianity the Roman Empire’s official religion, that religion took on the trappings of empire and power.

So what does it actually mean to be a Christian? What are the identifying marks of a Christian? I know people for whom it isn’t really Christian if it doesn’t include a traditionally shaped sanctuary that includes an organ for the music. I know of colleagues who took positions at new churches and then nearly got run out of town because they decided not to wear a robe, or they preached sermons from somewhere other than the pulpit.

In recent weeks I’ve had more than one conversation where questions about what the church is here for or what it means to be church have been asked. In some of these conversations, there was a bit of frustration with church, with Christian faith. If church is mostly about a certain style of music or architecture or dress, why does church even matter? Does church matter? Perhaps it depends on how we define church or Christianity, on what their identifying marks are.

In Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia, a portion of which we heard today, this issue of the identifying marks of the church and Christian faith are front and center. What has to be there for the church to be the church? Apparently some Christian missionaries have come to the church Paul had founded and told the people there that they weren’t really a church, that they weren’t really Christians, because they hadn’t become Jewish. The men hadn’t been circumcised, and they weren’t abiding by Jewish dietary restrictions and so on.

This is a lot bigger issue than whether they have pipe organ or sing a certain sort of music. Jesus was a Jewish Messiah, after all, and so most of the early Christians assumed that following Jesus meant becoming a Jew. But Paul sees Jesus as a more revolutionary figure, one who has opened up the promises made to Abraham all those centuries ago to everyone, Jewish or not.

The book of Genesis tells how God first appeared to Abraham and told him to go from his home and his kindred to a land that God would show him. God promised to bless Abraham but also said, “…and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

For Paul, Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise. Now through faith, which might better be translated as trust, everyone has access to the promise of God’s blessing, Jew and Gentile, slave or free, male and female, for all are one in Christ Jesus.

Paul is Jewish and, in other writings of his, it is clear that he has high regard for the covenant God made with Israel. He believes that covenant is still in effect, but in Jesus, he has discovered a new identity that he has shared with the Galatians, who are not Jews. And that new identity and the faith or trust that is part of it have made the Galatians children of God by faith, descendants of Abraham not by blood but by faith.

In a portion of Paul’s letter prior to the verses we heard this morning he says this. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. Paul is so filled with and animated by Jesus that all other identities have taken a back seat. Paul is still a Jew but now the non-Jewish Galatians are his family. To be baptized into Christ is to clothe yourself in Christ, and none of the identifying marks that rule Paul’s day matter anymore. To be in Christ is to share in an identity that supersedes all others.

The identifying marks that rule our day are different from those in Paul’s. Most of us don’t see the world as Jew or Gentile, nor do we worry much about whether someone is a slave or not. Gender distinctions are the only thing from Paul’s list that are still an issue today, but we don’t live in the sort of patriarchal society that Paul did.

What are the identifying marks that rule our society? If someone asks you to identify yourself, who do you say that you are? What are the things that most define you?

Some might go with conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat. Some might share their pronouns, he and him for me. Certainly race is one potent identifying mark in our culture, perhaps every bit as big as the Jew and Gentile division of Paul’s day. Occupation, age, education, wealth, and more are all things that help identify us.

What are the marks that identify you? When you describe yourself, where do you begin? And where does Jesus fit into that? Could you say something like I’m a white, male, cisgender, married, liberal Democrat, but none of those things mean anything to me next to my identity in Christ Jesus which makes me one with all others who are in Christ?

In my experience, not many Christians, myself included, think a lot about Jesus when we began to describe ourselves. Very rarely do we ever sound like Paul, speaking of no longer being ourselves but instead being Christ who lives in us. I wonder why that is.

Perhaps it has something to do with living in a culture which, for much of its history, thought of itself as Christian. When I was a young boy, it was pretty much assumed that everyone was a Christian. There was something of an exception permitted for those who were Jewish, but beyond that, you were supposed to be Christian. Either that or you were some sort of horrible, godless communist. And when everybody is Christian, or at least assumed to be so, then there really isn’t anything distinctive about being a Christian. It’s synonymous with being an American.

Of course the problem with that is similar to the problem with those missionaries I mentioned earlier thinking that Christian meant Western. The more Christian faith identifies itself with a culture, the more it is defined by that culture and the less it is defined by Jesus. Something that is supposed to recede and be as nothing becomes primary.

But Paul says that there is no longer American or any other nationality. There is no longer Republican or Democrat. There is no longer liberal or conservative. There is no longer white or Black. All those identities have been superseded by Christ dwelling in us and becoming what most defines us.

I think this is strange language for most of us. We’re used to thinking of Christian faith as a little something we add onto our lives, not as the very center of those lives, something that reorders all our priorities. Wouldn’t placing Jesus at the center of our lives push a lot of other things off to the side? We don’t want to give up that much control of our lives, do we?

But we do just that sort of thing all the time when we find some passion that animates us, or when we fall in love and suddenly our lives revolves around another. Then we easily let go of things that once seemed important, and I think Paul has discovered something like that in Jesus.

Paul hasn’t found a new religion. He has found a love that has totally transformed and reoriented his life, a love that has filled his life with joy and purpose like he has never known before. And he wants the Galatians, and us, to discover the joy and purpose of that love when Jesus dwells is us.

Lord Jesus, come to us. Engulf us in your love until that love dwells in us and transforms us and makes us new.