The Enforcers
Ordinary Time XIV; July 8, 2007
Galatians 6:1-16
This sounds like a collection of almost random sayings, which is generally true of the last part of any of St. Paul’s letters. Any one of these sayings could be stitched onto a sampler and put on the wall in your den and stand alone, particularly since some of them seem to contradict each other. “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” (v. 2) “For all must carry their own loads.” (v. 5)
I think it would be dull to dissect each of these statements and explain it to you. Well, maybe it’s something we could do together in a Bible study, but in a sermon I would rather uncover themes that run through the text and find their connection with life this week in Clarinda, Iowa – or anywhere else, for that matter. The underlying theme that I am moving toward in this sermon is the Way of the Cross and the portion that will take us there is “May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which 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!” (vv. 14-15)
But first things first. St. Paul has to deal with a tendency among some people that you have encountered and maybe had to deal with in yourself: the need to enforce. You know the type: this is the person who sees someone walking on the grass past a sign that says, “Keep off the grass” and thinks it necessary to point out to the offender his or her grievous sin. Miss Manners recently had a letter from a dentist who wanted to know whether it was appropriate to correct the grammar of his young patients. Speaking as one who is mortified by the ritual massacre of the English language, I understand his concern. When someone says, “My mother brought my sister and I to see you,” I shiver too. Anyway, the good dentist wanted to know how to deal with such transgressions. Miss Manners answered, “Do you really want to make your young patients look forward to seeing you even less than they do already?”
Now, as some of you know, I find it difficult to trust the professional competence of someone who cannot get simple grammar right, but I have learned not to correct people, but to let sleeping dogs lie – and nesting chickens lay.
Paul deals with a more serious concern than a mere transgression of language, of course. I have described for you before the attempts of a more conservative party to compel these Gentile converts to become circumcised, claiming that it was a matter of salvation. If you don’t keep the rules that God has laid down, you will be in big trouble, they claimed. And so they wanted to make sure these people of Galatia were conforming.
What do you do with someone who is out of line? I don’t mean your own young children, they are your responsibility and you are supposed to discipline them, but what about other people who are not under your authority who, while not hurting anyone else, are nonetheless breaking the rules? Is it your job to be an enforcer?
Maybe you constantly feel the desire to enforce the rules, to make something bad happen to those who break them, or maybe you simply cannot grasp why anyone would have that desire. Personalities differ. When it comes to those who want to enforce the rules, Paul goes for the jugular: “They want you to be circumcised so that they may boast about your flesh.” (v. 13) They’re not really interested in your spiritual welfare, he claims; they just want to be able to boast to their buddies how they managed to make you behave. Their motives stink, he says: they want to go to their revival meetings and count the notches on their Bibles, how many sinners they’ve managed to get to shape up.
Well, allowing for the possibility he may be exaggerating a little bit, I suspect he has it down. Do enforcers really care about the people they are trying to get to shape up? Or do they care more about their own reputation? Paul wants us to reject the desire to play enforcer, to want other people to shape up so that we can boast about it. “May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
But what if your motives are pure, that you really are concerned about the welfare of someone who is screwing up? Paul tells us that those who have received the Spirit should restore that person in a spirit of gentleness. How many enforcers behave with gentleness? When people want state constitutions amended to stop other people from doing something or when they scream loud slogans at their opponents, are they showing a spirit of gentleness?
Paul puts his finger right on the emotional issue when he says, “Take care that you yourselves are not tempted.” Have you ever noticed that those who are most agitated about wrong-doing in others have the very problem they attack? We had a minister in Cincinnati who was a national figure in the anti-pornography campaign. At one public meeting he described for us in detail how he had recently been traveling, stayed alone in a hotel room, and could not stop himself from watching the pornography on the TV set. This was why he wanted it removed from hotels; unable to discipline himself, he wanted it unavailable to everybody. You do not want me to tell this story with as much detail as we were compelled to hear. I kept thinking that I had recently taken a trip, stayed in a hotel room, and I surfed the channels for something to watch and, yes, I looked at some rather salacious previews. And I decided I was not wasting time or money on that garbage. End of story.*
One of our hot political issues is, of course, gay and lesbian people in church and society. It’s so much fun living in Iowa during a presidential campaign. Every Republican is busy trying to position himself to the right of all the others and the Democrats are busy trying to pretend the controversy does not exist. I thought about making a list for you of all the crusaders against homosexuality who have later come out of the closet, by choice or by force. It’s a long list, isn’t it? People from the religious right and the political right who have built reputations on attacking gays and lesbians and then been outed themselves.
Be wary of the ones who point the finger and shout. You remember what you learned as a child: when you point the finger at someone, three other fingers are pointing back at you. And your mother did not invent that saying; it goes back to Oogma, living in a cave, teaching her children and waiting for Thog to come home with fresh mammoth-meat. If you are eager to go after someone else for his or her misdeeds, “take care that you yourselves are not tempted.” Paul understood people; he knew what he was writing about. If a wrong is being committed, best leave it to those who have nothing personal invested in it and can act in a spirit of gentleness.
So, the solution to the whole thing is to follow the Way of the Cross. Whether you are inclined to be an enforcer or are one of those who are the subjects of the enforcers’ attention, the way of freedom is the Way of the Cross. What is that Way of the Cross for you and me?
It is the way of a new creation, Paul says. That’s what matters. The number of people you’ve managed to straighten up is irrelevant; how you are doing in becoming a new person in following Christ is relevant. It is a harsh but powerful image: the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. The things that the world considers important – to be popular, to have money, to look young, to be sexy, to be admired – are all nailed to my cross. And I am nailed to a cross when it comes to those things. Ouch.
Yes, the Way of the Cross can be painful, but it is also the way of freedom. It is the way to be free from the expectations of our culture, the way to be free from the urge to enforce or free from the attempts by others to enforce their standards on you. It is a Way that is chosen daily, because it is not easy. Forget about enforcing it on someone else or having someone else enforce it on you, just stop and take your own spiritual inventory from time to time. Are you more inclined to be generous and less inclined to be miserly than you used to be? Are you growing more inclined to forgive and less inclined to seek revenge? Do you tend to respond with more compassion than in the past? Is the worship of God growing more important to you than ever? Do you enjoy the experience of prayer more than you used to? Are you growing angry about the widening gap between rich and poor? Are you finding greater meaning in the stories of the Bible? These are some of the questions you can ask yourself when you take spiritual inventory; they help mark your place on the Way of the Cross. Your place: no one else’s.
To conclude as Paul does: “As for those who will follow this rule: peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.”
We pray your peace and mercy for us and for all the people of God, and for the Spirit’s guidance to travel the Way of the Cross. Amen.
Robert A. Keefer
Westminster Presbyterian Church
Clarinda, Iowa
* Since this happened at a public meeting, I betray no confidences in telling the story. Curiously, when I preached the sermon I failed to tell this story, but I decided to include it in the manuscript just the same.