Sermon, Proper 7, Year C, June 20, 2010

"For in Christ you are all children of God, through trust" (Galatians 3:26)

Based on the radio and TV ads I've seen and heard over the years, there is no restaurant that gears up for Father's Day like the Outback steakhouse. But I haven't heard their famous slogan for awhile now: "No Rules, Just Right." According to Outback, the "No-Rules" approach empowers employees to do whatever it takes to make a customer happy. At least one pastor doesn't like that slogan. On the Internet, he fulminated about the message that Outback's slogan sent about the lack of rules. Of course there are rules, he said, the rules of God. Of course, it's really just an ad slogan, a slogan that Outback seems to have tired of.

And if truth be told, that Outback slogan is not that far from the truth, as Paul has been trying to explain it to the Galatians. To catch everybody up from last Sunday's sermon, Paul has been arguing with Gentile and Jewish Christians about the proper relationship between "the Law" and Faith; or in other words, the proper relationship between rules and trust. Paul preached that the old rules about circumcision and "unclean" foods must not be allowed to stand in the way of all people, Jews and Gentiles, becoming members of the same family in Jesus Christ.

So does that mean that Outback is right? Are there no rules, just right, in the church? Two thousand years later, I hardly think we've gotten rid of all the rules: maybe not as many as there used to be. But given that we're Episcopalians, I suspect that there are those who think that there are not enough rules and others who think there are still too many. Coming back to Paul's argument with the Galatians, what is the purpose of rules? "The Law," Paul argues, was our "disciplinarian." Literally, the Law was our "boy-leader," our combined tutor and nanny. The rules of the Law of Moses were there to show us what life with God is supposed to be like. But every teacher will tell you that you can show people how to do something all you want. But until the student does it herself, then that which is taught can't be learned.

And anybody who actually plods through the Old Testament knows that knowing the rules was never enough in the end for God's chosen people, Israel. And it's not enough for us. So, Paul argues, the Law was our tutor "until faith came." Does he mean another set of rules and doctrines that we must add to our system of beliefs, so that by our belief we can earn eternal life? If that's what we think Paul means by "faith," then the warning of the 18th-century theologian William Law can be applied to us: "Suppose one man to rely on his own faith and another to rely on his own works, then the faith of the one and the works of the other are equally the same worthless filthy rags." It was not our faith that came. It was Faith that came. It was a man who came. It was Jesus Christ who came.

Faith and trust are different words for the same concept. Jesus spent his life here on Earth trusting his Father, even to the cross. Through every unexpected twist and turn, through every conflict and danger, Jesus trusted his Father. It is by his trust that the risen Jesus lives with us, and through him that God lives with us. That is what Paul implores the Galatians to do; to trust that they are now children of God, in Christ, through trust. And so it is not by rules that a mature family of God is governed, but by trust: trust that in Christ all shall be well. And so in Christ we can trust that whatever cross we bear at the moment is but a momentary passage to Resurrection. And so in Christ we can trust that whatever decisions we have to make, God is the ultimate decider, and his decisions can only be good for us.

We don't know if Paul won the argument in Galatia. He lost an earlier version of the same argument in Antioch, which he retells in this letter. He would make the same argument later in his letter to the Romans. A later letter from the Bishop of Rome implies that it was by "jealousy" within the Church that Paul was handed over to the Roman authority for his execution. Perhaps he lost the argument in his own lifetime. But it is Paul's letters that we read today as the inspired word of God. Arguments come and arguments go. But the trust of Jesus Christ remains always, as does our adoption as children of God. No rule is more right than that.