Good morning! Before leaving for Kenya a few weeks ago, I didn’t have time to learn many phrases in Kiswahili, one of the main languages there. But one phrase I picked up quickly was the phrase “Bwana Asifiwe,” which means “Praise the Lord!” Each time I preached or taught, when we first started I would greet the congregation or the students with “Bwana Asifiwe!,” and they would respond right on cue with a loud and unison “Amen.” So this morning, I greet you with “Bwana Asifiwe!” (Amen) Bwana Asifiwe! (Amen). Of course, then after that splendid beginning, I had to confess that these were virtually the only Kiswahili words I knew…but they were very gracious with me!

For the sixth and final time this morning, we will open the book of Galatians, the first century letter written from the apostle Paul to the young churches in Galatia; what we would think of as modern day Turkey. This morning we will read from Galatians chapter 6, just the first two verses, and then we will skip down to the end of the letter.

Read Galatians 6:1-2, 11-18.

Archaeology is a fascinating science. Literally, archaeology means “studying old stuff.” Digging down to find the relics or artifacts of the past, trying to understand what has come before. Archaeologists have discovered the remains of magnificent past civilizations, patiently digging down through the layers of centuries of grass, dirt, rocks, garbage…using shovels and brushes, always trying to find something that was important...but at some point was covered over and eventually obscured under the weight of other things.

This week I read an article about an archaeological dig in Egypt. They’ve uncovered a new tomb in the Valley of the Kings, where King Tut’s tomb was discovered. They’ve dug down far below the surface, and found an ancient room with a number of sealed coffins…but mysteriously, none with bodies in them. They will continue looking for an old story. That’s the job of archaeology.

It’s not quite the same job that the Apostle Paul has taken on with the people of Galatia, but it has some similarities. Paul already knew the old story. And he and the Galatians have experienced the new One. But now he’s afraid it will be covered back over and obscured.

You’ll remember that throughout this letter, Paul has been energetically battling what he sees as a serious threat to the new faith of the Galatians. They had come to faith because Paul had introduced them to God in the message of the life, death on the cross and resurrection of Jesus. They had come to believe in a God who longed for people to know Him. The family of God was huge and available to all who would receive it. But just as people were grasping this new life, some outside teachers, probably Christians from a Jewish background, rolled into town. While they didn’t necessarily deny what Paul said about God in Christ, they wanted to add some layers onto it.

And so these teachers told people that if they really wanted to draw close to God, if they really wanted to be counted amongst God’s people, then they would have to obey all of the ancient laws. They would have to follow dietary regulations. All of the males would have to be circumcised, the physical mark of belonging to God’s chosen people. And Paul went ballistic. For Paul, it was about the cross of Christ. Period. The character of God, the forgiveness of God, the power of God, the desire of God for His people all came into intense focus on the cross. That was the good news, the gospel.

And as soon as anyone changed that to “the gospel plus…the law.” Or “the gospel plus the observance of certain feast/fast days.” Or “the gospel plus circumcision.” Or “the gospel plus anything else”…they were perverting it. They were covering up the new gospel of freedom with old stuff: Old law, old boasting, old creation.

Law. Boasting. Creation. Let’s sit with those three phrases for a moment.

First Paul deals with the law:

“Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” (v2)

Remember that Paul’s old life was governed by hundreds and hundreds of laws. The old way of living under the Law was how one was assured of being included in God’s people. But by this point in chapter 6, I think Paul is just tired of talking about, of hearing about the “Old Law.” He has battled and battled in favor of the cross and God’s grace. So it’s at this point he seems to me to say

“Fine! Do you really want a law, feel like you have to have one? Is that what will make you happy? Fine! Here you go. I’ll give you a new Law. It’s what I’ll call the law of Christ:

Bear one another’s burdens.”

Bear one another’s burdens.

Sounds good. What does it look like? In the 16th century, Martin Luther thought it meant bearing with the weaknesses and errors of other people in God’s family. Acknowledging that people sinned, made bad decisions…and not ignoring this, but bearing with them, gently leading them to restoration and loving them back towards wholeness.

Maybe bearing one another’s burdens has to do with walking with those who suffer. I told you last week how amazed I was to keep meeting people in Kenya, particularly in areas where many parents have died from AIDS…and finding so many families who have simply opened their homes and their lives to new children. Not building orphanages, but making room in their families.

Maybe bearing one another’s burdens has more to do with the whole community, with advocating for those who are weak and unable to do so.

Two weeks ago when our team was in Kenya, two of us were in the town of Mbita, up on the shores of Lake Victoria. We were staying with a local Pentecostal Pastor, Ezekiel, and his wife Lillian who is essentially a social worker in a local school. One late afternoon I went with Ezekiel and Lillian up the hill behind the town to visit a number of homes with children and widows in them. For our last visit we climbed up near the top to visit a man they simply called “Chief.” He was the ex-chief, or sort of ex-mayor of the area, a fairly powerful man. Now, Chief had three wives, and ten children, all spread across three adjacent houses. Polygamy is not an uncommon thing in that area.

As we sat in Chief’s little house, it became clear that Lillian had an agenda in visiting this house. Next door to Chief lived his brother’s widow, and 5 small children. This sister-in-law was brewing moonshine whiskey at her house, receiving all sorts of male visitors at all hours and constantly getting pregnant. Lillian thought that Chief could do something about the situation. And so we talked about it. And Lillian kept saying, gently but firmly. “But what about these children? I’m concerned for these children. These children are seeing things they shouldn’t see. Don’t you care about your nieces and nephews.”

Chief was visibly uncomfortable. Clearly he didn’t want to do anything about it. And clearly Lillian was making him uncomfortable, especially in the presence of a visiting pastor from America. And clearly Lillian was risking the wrath of a powerful man in the community. But she kept going. “What about the children?”

Lillian had taken on the burden of care for these children, believing they belonged to God and the community…at risk to herself.

Bear one another’s burdens. That’s what Paul said the new Law of Christ is. It’s pretty much what Jesus said in John 13:

A new commandment I give you…love one another. Even as I have loved you, so you should love one another. That’s how people will know you belong to me, if you love each other.

Paul was done with the old rules/laws. If you have to have a law…take this new law: Bear each other’s burdens in love.

Now, as an aside, verse 11 sort of jumped off the page for me. Paul makes a funny statement. He says “See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand!” Now, scholars pretty consistently agree that Paul, like most writers of his day, probably dictated to a scribe. And it would be normal practice for Paul to grab the pen and sign off the letter as a way of sort of authenticating it. But here Paul starts in with several paragraphs to go. And scholars have thought of all sorts of sophisticated explanations for why Paul might have written in much larger letters than his scribe was using. But to me, the simplest reason is the best. He wrote large because he wanted to underscore it. One scholar said it was as though Paul was saying “These letters are so large that even YOU will not miss the point!”

The second word I want us to settle on for a moment is the word “boast.”

Paul uses it quite a bit, in Corinthians and here. In verses 12 & 13 he claims that there are two reasons that the outside teachers are trying to compel people to add the law back on top of the gospel.

1. To give them something to boast in, “we succeeded in convincing them to do it our way,” almost an attainment of spiritual sales records. That makes me feel a little like I do when people come and proudly tell me “I led so and so to the Lord,” or “I am their spiritual parent.” I shudder a little, wanting a little more humility…I actually think the Lord might have quite a bit to do with those conversions!

2. To avoid being persecuted because of the cross. Apparently these teachers did not want to offend some of the “old guard,” and they would have by agreeing with Paul that all that was required for someone to be included in God’s people was accomplished in the cross of Christ. The cross, as the instrument of Christ’s death, but even more as a brutual instrument of Roman torture in the ancient world, would have been a shameful thing to many. It’s as though they thought “perhaps if we can partially cover it over with the Old Laws…it won’t be such an embarrassment.”

That may sound like ancient history, but it’s not so far away from us. Perhaps for different reasons, but I think that many in the American church today are uncomfortable with emphasizing the cross of Christ. Maybe it seems archaic. Some modern theologians think it is too violent. It’s too hard to explain how a death like that can possibly connect with a loving God, so we quit trying. We talk about spirituality. We talk about ministry. We talk about social justice. We talk about doing good things. We talk about the institution of the church. All important things. But pretty soon there are all sorts of layers on top of the foundational act of love, forgiveness and the defeat of sin: the cross. It’s obscured to the point of non-recognition.

Bishop John Spong has sold millions of books on “Christian spirituality.” Millions. In them, he says things like “the view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world…is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God that must be dismissed.” You see, he’s just thrown out the whole New Testament, including this book of Galatians. But he’s sold millions of copies.

Many mainline denominations, including ours in the Presbyterian Church are perilously close to becoming institutions for social good. We want so badly to be relevant and accepted and important in our culture, that we lose our message and become non-profits, competing for market share.

A friend of mine, Charles Wiley, who works for our denomination’s headquarters in Louisville, recently wrote this:

Without a Gospel to proclaim, we become an institution searching for a reason to exist. It is often said that without a mission, the church becomes like the Kiwanis club. Well, as a member of the Kiwanis once told me, let’s not insult the Kiwanians that way. As a civic club, the church is pretty pitiful. If we do not have a Gospel to proclaim, we better just close up shop.

And so Paul says, the old boast of accomplishment in the flesh, of selling people on the law…is bogus. If we have to boast, try this new one on, as the front of the bulletin says, “May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The final phrase to sit with is in verse 15:

…the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!

New Creation is a phrase packed full of meaning. This is Paul’s way of saying that what he has found in Jesus Christ is so totally radical, totally different it changes everything.

Get circumcised, don’t get circumcised…it doesn’t matter either way in light of a new creation.

In 2 Corinthians 5 he writes

if anyone is in Christ. there is a new creation.

We have moved into a new system of reality, the Kingdom of God. A new worldview, a new way of seeing the world, new priorities, new everything. New creation means the concept of the old world, one ruled by sin and fearful of death, is being replaced by a new one which has at least begun in Christ.

New creation means no matter how dark the world might look, God is in process of reconciling it to Himself. As Christians, we stand in the morning light of a new day that will ultimately be won by God. And we know it because Christ was raised from the dead. We are freed to live into the purposes of God. That is very different from living in fear of death. It is very different from throwing up our hands and saying “eat/drink/be merry, we’re all going to die.” It’s very different from following Jesus to have my needs met.

I wonder…if we are seeing this. You perhaps came to Christ for the first time years ago, and it was fresh and exciting and for a time everything looked different. Over the years things pile onto that faith. Layer upon layer. Sometimes just the events of life pile on. Sometimes the weight of living in this culture pile up. We don’t feel like new creations. We feel like someone with a nugget of faith from an encounter years ago, but now we have added layers:

Political layers: “real Christians are democrats. Or real Christians are republicans.”

Prosperity layers: God will meet my needs, and just happen to know what I need: a larger house, or a better job.”

We add all sorts of layers. Sometimes there’s nothing new at all. We just take an old life, the same life everyone around us lives and add a little Christian veneer to it.

We might need a new kind of archaeology, one that helps us strip away anything we might have added to the gospel. Maybe we are guilty of advocating a “gospel plus something else” life. Maybe we are ashamed of the gospel. Paul would say

For God’s sake…don’t obscure what you have come to know:

• new law (bear burden)
• new boast (in the cross)
• new creation (live in light of knowing end of story)

The message of Galatians is: You are free. The admonishment of Galatians is: So live like free people.

Let’s pray.