Today’s author is Prince of Peace member & staff member, Julene Hannesh.
Last week, I was talking on the phone with my friend Seth, a Vicar at a small ELCA church in Pennsylvania. We talked about our program years and the ebb and flow of youth ministry. In our conversation, Seth talked about his Lenten series on White Supremacy using resources prepared by the ELCA and how it attracted a wider audience than their regular church attendants, including some students from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania (KU). Throughout this series, a few of the KU students attempted to challenge the content, and at the end of it, one of the students asked Seth if they could continue the conversation sometime. Seth invited this college student for coffee, and they talked about the series as well as many of the major themes of Christianity. In Seth’s series about white supremacy, there was an overarching theme of communal sin and the intersectionality of oppression that holds white people (especially cisgender, straight men) in privilege and everyone else in oppression. The student, who identifies as an Evangelical, thought that the series did not put great enough emphasis on a personal relationship with Jesus and a transformed life through conversion. The student went on to read aloud to Seth from Paul’s letter to the Romans and concluded the conversation by telling Seth that he worried about his and his church’s salvation, for they just “weren’t getting it”. Seth, frustrated, told the student that he would pray for him too, and if he ever wanted to come back to their church, that he would always be welcome. As I sat down to write this devotion, I couldn’t help but think of this interaction.
In our text for this week, Galatians 1:13-17, 2:11-21, the apostle Paul writes to the church of Galatia about what he deems to be the real issue: Christ and the Law. After a customary greeting (1:1-4), Paul quickly expresses his shock that the Galatians are turning away from God and following a distorted version of the gospel (1:6-9). He then addresses accusations that he is merely trying to please people, shifting into a defense of his authority as receiving this message as a revelation of Jesus Christ (1:10-12). Paul shares his early life and work and recounts a divine intervention that reorients his understanding of God’s plan for history and his place within it (1:13-17). After this introduction and acknowledgement of his authority, Paul makes his first point in addressing Christ and the Law: Justification is by Faith, not works. Paul insists that people are justified—the act of being put in right relationship with God—through faith in Jesus Christ or through the faith(fulness) of Jesus Christ and not by doing works of the Law (2:16-17) (Powell, 2018, p. 332). Paul’s opponents may have been spreading the message that living in accordance with the Jewish law could put them in right relationship with God, or at least improve their status with God in some way. However, Paul claims that such a teaching nullifies “the grace of God” and, to be blunt, means that “Christ died for nothing” (2:21) (Powell, 2018, p.332). If justification depends on what human beings do rather than on what God has done through the cross, it strips the sufficiency of God’s grace. God’s grace is all-sufficient for making people as right with God as they ever can or need to be.
Praise be to God that my salvation is because of God’s faithfulness and grace, and not my own doing, because I would never measure up. I’m thankful too, that it was my friend Seth having this conversation with the KU student and not me because I would have had a hard time sitting down with someone who argues that the church needs to stay out of politics and that everyone can be saved if they just take it upon themselves to take Jesus into their life. How does one even do that? Is it a one-time ceremony of accepting Jesus, or does it require daily action? My list of questions for this student, or really for God, would be endless. Thankfully, I have also read Romans and know that God’s grace and love are for all people and beyond anything humans are capable of. And because God’s grace is all-sufficient, it frees us up time to dismantle systems of oppression such as white supremacy. May we never grow so complacent in our salvation that we forget our calling to help liberate others, especially those held captive by systemic and communal sin.
Romans 8:31-39 (one of my favorite passages of the bible)
What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”*
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, 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 in Christ Jesus our Lord.
*Reference to Psalm 44:22
Prayer:
Gracious and loving God,
We give you thanks for the gift of your word, for the voices of Paul and the prophets, for those who wrestle honestly with faith, and for the power of your Spirit who meets us in the questions. Thank you for the reminder that we are justified, not by our works, knowledge, or the strength of our belief, but by the faithfulness of Christ. In a world where it is easy to draw lines, cast judgment, and try to measure righteousness, help us remember that your love cannot be earned and it certainly cannot be lost. And call us to continue the work of dismantling white supremacy and systems of oppression.
In the name of the One who justifies, redeems, liberates, and holds all things together,
Amen