Sermon Transcript: May 25, 2025
Our scripture lesson this morning is from the letter to the Galatians, chapters one and two. We are just going to dip our toes into this letter this year. This is one of Paul’s letters that he wrote to the church in Galatia, a church that he started, and then he would communicate with these churches and their leadership through this letter writing. And of course, Paul’s letters make up a good portion of the New Testament. So in today’s terms, we can think of most of our New Testament as actually Paul’s outgoing mail.
So he writes to the Galatians (Galatians 1:13-17 & 2:11-21):
You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. But when the one who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the gentiles, I did not confer with any human, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterward I returned to Damascus.
But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood self-condemned, for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. And the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the gentiles to live like Jews?”
We ourselves are Jews by birth and not gentile sinners, yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through the faith of Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law. But if, in our effort to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have been found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! But if I build up again the very things that I once tore down, then I demonstrate that I am a transgressor. For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.
For the Word of God in Scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us—Thanks be to God.
***
We all live by faith. Every day, we trust in people and ideas and things we did not make and do not fully understand.
I have no idea how an airplane flies. I’ve never studied in depth the science of flight. I know vaguely about this thing called “lift,” which is, I guess, important to flight. But I don’t know how airplanes fly. Yet I’ve been in airplanes many times—over land and ocean to other continents.
Why? Because I trust the engineers who design the planes, the mechanics who assemble and maintain them, the pilots who fly, and the air traffic controllers who guide them. I trust because I see planes fly and land all the time. And I know that the incidents and accidents are a rare exception to the vast majority of safe flights.
We all live by faith.
We could explore other examples of things we do every day, not because we know for sure, but because we trust in some other source—things that we don’t even think about. But the bottom line is that it’s almost impossible to not live by faith, broadly defined.
We can have faith in science, like the science of flight. We can have faith in each other, faith in love, faith in God, faith in the truth of the world, faith in the economy or the government, in free markets, in the innate worth and dignity of every human being. And these faiths are not mutually exclusive—at least, not necessarily so.
A lot of people believe that you have to choose between faith in science or faith in God. Not necessarily so at all. I know many scientists who are people of faith—many who even claim that their faith makes them better scientists. I also know many scientists whose grasp of the world has convinced them that the existence of a benevolent divine being is unlikely or downright impossible. And likewise, I know people of faith who are not threatened by scientific claims about the origin and nature of the universe and our evolution as human beings—but who incorporate these scientific truths as part of their faith in a loving God.
And I certainly count myself among those.
I love to learn about nature and the natural world. I love to learn about galaxies and atoms and everything in between. At the same time, I acknowledge that the world contains tremendous suffering, and that not all of this can be reduced to human sin and folly or the presence of demonic forces. I do not believe that God punishes people with cancer or hurricanes. I know that earthquakes are a geological reality, not divine retribution.
Yet I also acknowledge that the question—why would a loving God allow innocent suffering to exist?—is a legitimate and unanswerable question. Not unanswerable in the sense that we can’t propose thoughts, ideas, and theories—we can. But unanswerable in the sense that we cannot truly know. And so we must hold our answers with humility. Which means that having faith in a loving God is a choice that we make. And if we choose it, we live accordingly—without the need for incontrovertible proof.
In our passage today, Paul makes a case for living by faith in Christ. Now, I’ll admit, I do not always love the way Paul goes about making his arguments. At times, he seems unnecessarily aggressive and antagonistic. And he certainly has a lower tolerance for mystery than I would like. But I cannot deny that he was effective in what he did.
We know that in times of chaos and turmoil, certainty sells. It’s very attractive when the world feels chaotic and out of control—even if it’s misplaced or based on misinformation or biased perspective. Certainty appeals to our need for control.
And make no mistake, Paul is writing to a community that is in chaos. You and I think of Jewish and Christian as two separate categories—but that’s not so at the time of this writing. In fact, reading that perspective back into a text like this is very dangerous.
The categories that apply to this time are not Jewish and Christian, but Jewish and Gentile. And the question that Paul and others are debating in this passage is whether one needs to become Jewish before they can follow Christ.
You see, Paul believes that a Gentile can be a follower of Christ without first converting to Judaism. But there are others who disagree. And that’s at the heart of our text for today. That’s the question they are debating.
Paul’s experience has taught him that God’s love in Christ is expansive and inclusive, and that it does not obey the limits and borders or categories that we set up to separate ourselves from one another—even the religious ones. Now, others’ experience tells them that the will of God is mediated through this one path and one faith alone.
And there are still people who believe this today—although they go by different names.
Even though I would have preferred Paul to make his case another way, I have to admit—I think he came down on the right side of things. As William Sloane Coffin once wrote, “It’s always the right time to change your mind when to do so will widen your heart.”
Likewise, the quote on the bulletin cover from Barbara Brown Taylor—this is the definition of faith I want to go forward with: “A radical openness to the truth—whatever it may turn out to be.”
Living by faith means trusting in God’s goodness even when you don’t always see it or can’t explain it. It is a choice we make of where to place our ultimate trust. It means not being afraid—wherever truth may be found. And it means holding on to our categories lightly—and to our certainties even more lightly.
Frederick Buechner writes:
“By faith we understand—if we are to understand it at all—that the madness and lostness we see all around us and within us are not the last truth about the world. They are only the next-to-last truth. Madness and lostness are the results of terrible blindness and tragic willfulness, which whole nations are involved in no less than you and I are involved in them. Faith is the eye of the heart. And by faith we see deep down beneath the face of things. By faith we struggle, against all odds, able to see the world is God’s creation even so. It is God who made us and not we ourselves—made us a peace to live in peace, of light to dwell in light, and out of love to be, above all things, loved and loving.”
That, Buechner writes, is the last truth about the world.
So—you can live by faith and be a scientist. You can live by faith and be a cynic or a skeptic. You can live by faith and be Christian, or Jewish, or Muslim. You can be Christian or Jewish or Muslim and not live by faith too—or at least not faith in God as your ultimate trust.
But I think it was Dylan—Bob Dylan—who said, “You got to believe in something.” You have to trust someone. Because we all live by faith, one way or another.
But I have to tell you, one of the most interesting and compelling aspects of our Reformed faith is that it reminds us not only of the importance of our faith in God—but that in Christ, God has endlessly chosen us. God has faith in us. God loves us unconditionally. And we have our lives to prove that God made the right choice.
May we live and love accordingly. Amen.
