From the Letter to the Galatians:
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel — not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Galatians 1:6-7 (NRSV) – January 28, 2013.)
I confess to a certain fondness for the Galatians. I’ve never been a really big fan of Paul the Apostle and I sometimes wistfully wonder how our Christian faith might have developed if he had not been its principal post-Ascension spokesperson. What if the Johanine community that produced the Gospel of John and the three letters that also bear his name had been more prominent? What if James and his insistence on works of mercy because “faith, if it has no works, is dead” (James 2:17) had been more influential than Paul’s assertion to the Romans that salvation is “by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works” (Romans 11:6)? Well, we’ll never know . . . but apparently the Galatians were listening to someone suggest an alternative to Paul’s understanding of the Christian gospel and, as a result, he wrote them this letter. Anybody that could so upset Paul that he would call them “you foolish Galatians” (Gal. 3:1) gets high marks in my book! That the Galatians were also Celts with whom I, as an Irish-American, share an ethnic heritage gives them additional credit.
But I have to admit that Paul does have a point about “a different gospel” and that “there is [not] another gospel.” What there are are differing interpretations of the gospel, different understandings of its import, different emphases on points of its message. What I really don’t like about what Paul is saying is the implication that his and his interpretation only is correct and that, therefore, anyone who disagrees with him “wants to pervert the gospel of Christ.” I believe it is entirely possible to have disagreement on this things, to have unity without uniformity. In fact, I would say it’s desirable, but here in his letter to the Celts of Asia Minor Paul doesn’t seem to think so.
Elsewhere Paul used the metaphor of the body when he tried to share with the church in Corinth the fundamental importance of unity. In the body metaphor in the 12th chapter of the First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul demonstrates how a body is made up of diverse members: “If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.'” (1 Cor. 12:19-21) Unity among diverse elements comes through inclusion of the various members of the body of Christ in deep sharing and mutual responsibility.
Of course, Paul was thinking of varying and diverse roles within the body of a congregation – apostle, evangelist, pastor, catechist, preacher, and so forth. He does not extend the body metaphor to those with differing opinions about the nature of faith, the person of Christ, the doctrine of atonement, the nature of salvation, and so forth. How much more lively might the church be if he had? How much more lively might the church be if we would?
If instead of thinking of the church as a community in which to find “the right answers,” we thought of it as a community in which to explore questions, how much more relevant and helpful to people’s lives might it be? So long as unity is seen as uniformity, we will be stuck trying to find (or convince others of) right answers. But if we can see unity in diversity, we will be able to hear a variety of responses; some responses will be useful for some seekers, and others will be useful for others. None will be “right” and none will be “wrong,” but all will be relevant.
This must be the church’s quest in the 21st Century, unity in diversity which makes the gospel relevant in the lives of all. No longer should we hear anyone address another as “you stupid Galatian!” No longer should we hear anyone condemned as “perverting the gospel.” We are not to preach “a different gospel,” but we are to offer a gospel that, with all its varied emphases and diverse applications, makes a difference.
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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
More than thirty years ago, a bishop named Wesley Frensdorff set out his vision for the church in a piece of writing he title simply The Dream. Wes Frensdorff was a good friend to Evelyn and to me. He was her parish priest when she was a child, and her boss when she was the director of the Diocese of Nevada’s summer camp. He officiated at our wedding, and is the person who spoke for God and hounded me into eventually becoming a clergyman. As my Rector’s Report, I’d like to share his dream with you, adding my own brief comments as to how I see this church meeting his vision.
As anyone who knows me will testify, I am no Calvinist! But hats off to John Calvin who wrote about these verses, “God has manifested himself to be both Father and Mother so that we might be more aware of God’s constant presence and willingness to assist us.” (Commentaries, Vol. 8, Baker Books:2005) Isaiah’s words on behalf of God are among the strongest maternal images of God in Holy Scripture. Just three chapters later, speaking through the prophet, God will ask and declare, “Can a woman forget her nursing child And have no compassion on the son of her womb ? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you.” (49:14-15) And, again, Calvin wrote, “God did not satisfy himself with proposing the example of a father, but in order to express his very strong affection, he chose to liken himself to a mother, and calls His people not merely children, but the fruit of the womb, towards which there is usually a warmer affection.”
So let’s admit right off the bat that we have a problem here. Where the progressives and liberals among us would much prefer to read Paul condemning the institution of slavery, he does not. Instead, he simply admonishes slaves to be good slaves and masters to be good masters, and even goes so far as to analogize a Christian’s relationship with God (or Jesus) to slavery. This just doesn’t sit well in the modern mind and provides plenty of ammunition for those whom Friedrich Schleiermacher addressed as religion’s “cultured despisers.” We would much rather Paul hadn’t said this.
My late brother had a cartoon cut from some magazine taped to the door of his university office (he was a professor of political science and constitutional law) for years. I suspect it came from either Playboy or The New Yorker, but I really don’t know. It depicted two scientists working at a chalk board. To their left on the board was a complicated looking mathematical formula and to their right, another one. Connecting the two sets of numbers were arrows drawn from and to the words, “The a miracle occurs.” One of the scientists speaking to the other says, “I think you should be more specific here in step two.” (Of course, I’ve been able to find the cartoon on the internet and will post it with this meditation.)
It’s a familiar enough parable, this story of the farmer who sows his seed only to have most of it fail to produce for one reason or another. Jesus’ use of the broadcasting seed as a metaphor for preaching is reassuring to those of us who preach on a regular basis. It seems to say it isn’t our fault if what we preach has little or no impact on the hearers; it’s the fault of the “soils” into which we are sowing – maybe “Satan” snatched it away, or maybe the hearers have no “depth”, or maybe they are just too concerned with “cares of the world”. 
Mark, Matthew, and John all report that on another occasion Jesus commented, “Prophets are not without honor except in their own country and in their own house.” One can’t get much more dishonored that being accused of being crazy!
I held off offering a meditation on this Inauguration Day, the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday, for a variety of reasons. Throughout the day, however, this particular bit of St. Paul’s Letter to the Church at Ephesus kept returning to my mind. The Episcopal Church uses this in dialogue form in our baptismal liturgy, so it is familiar to us. The idea that we are all in some way united is a part of our Anglican ethos.
In our gospel lesson today, Jesus turns water into wine. He does so, somewhat unwillingly it seems, because he and his mother are at a wedding banquet and the couple is about to run out of wine for their guests. Mary brings this to Jesus’ attention because she apparently believes he can do something to save the hosts from embarrassment. At first, however, he seems disinclined to do anything about it. Not the least bit phased by her son’s reluctance, Mary tells the servants to do whatever he tells them, and she goes back to the party. I have always imagined that as she turned away Mary gave Jesus the same sort of look my mother would give me when I tried to not do as she wanted, the same sort of look I’ve seen my wife give our children. So . . . Jesus turns water into wine, and (as you will see) not just any water into not just any wine, but really good wine! Now, one supposes that Jesus could have done something else to assist the wedding couple, but he chooses to do this, to turn water into wine.
