Cross Purposes

[This message was delivered at Perinton Presbyterian Church on July 6, 2025, based on Galatians 6:7-16. A video copy can be found on their webpage.]

Two peoples, living side by side and sharing ancestors, yet historically set against each other.  My heart aches for the Israelis and Palestinians living so close to each other, yet so far apart. My heart aches for Jewish children living in fear of Palestinian attacks. My heart aches for Palestinian children living in fear of Israeli attacks. Every child is a precious gift from God. Children should not grow up in fear, but in love and acceptance of their neighbors, even neighbors that are of a different heritage. That is true in every place and nation, including our own. Children should not grow up in fear for their lives or that their parents will be separated from them. My heart aches for Jewish and Palestinian soldiers, following orders and seeking to serve their national interest, and too many of them wounded or dying. This struggle didn’t start two years ago. It has been going on for centuries, indeed for over two millennia. It starts with the two sons of Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac, one born of Abraham’s wife Sarah and one born of their servant Hagar. These half-brothers became warring siblings. I am in this strange place: I am pro-Israel and I am pro-Palestine. I want these warring cousins to find a way to live side by side with respect, kindness, and peace. My hope remains strong that one day we all will learn to live together as neighbors, even though the current situation makes that seem impossible.

The challenge was there for the early church. The barrier-breaking ministry of Jesus meant good news for all people, not just Israeli nationals, but Jews and gentiles, women and men, poor and rich. All people. As first generation preachers of the good news, both Peter and Paul invited all people to respond to the good news of God’s love in Christ—and gentiles began responding in great numbers.  Here was the challenge for the early church: it started with Jews and soon welcomed large numbers of gentiles. Jewish followers of Jesus were the first leaders of the church. Many of the Jewish believers were willing to welcome gentiles, as long as the gentiles became Jewish followers of Jesus. Judaism had devolved into a religious system, with mandatory rituals and rules.

Circumcision was one of the rituals. It was administered to baby boys, like a sacrament, and to men entering Judaism that hadn’t been circumcised. The Jewish followers of Jesus were telling the gentiles, you may join us as long as you become like us. Here is how that might feel for the outsider. A friend once invited me to golf with him at the golf club he belonged to. I have played golf since I was a teenager, but always at public courses, where anyone could play. When I went with my friend to the club, I wore a tee-shirt. An employee told me I couldn’t play on that course because I wasn’t wearing a golf short with a collar. My tee-shirt was a good one and clean, but it didn’t have a collar. My friend was embarrassed and said to wait for a minute. He went and talked to someone and came out with a shirt with a collar for me to wear there. I put it on and played with him. But I was not at ease. I wondered what other rituals they had that might disqualify me. As I played, I observed only white people playing, all with nice golf shirts with collars and good equipment. When we finished playing, my friend invited me into the clubhouse for something cold to drink. Then I saw some black people, serving the white people. And I became very uncomfortable. I didn’t really belong there. I wasn’t part of the in-group. I didn’t know the secret handshake or the code words—and I didn’t want to.

How might a gentile follower of Jesus feel entering a church that had in-house rules and rituals to make sure only the right people entered? The apostle Paul responds with clarity. His letter to the Galatian church has an unusual urgency. Unlike every other letter of Paul, this letter has no opening thanksgiving section. Paul is in a hurry to right a ship that might be sinking. He uses bold language. Chapter 3 gets to the heart of the matter with words Paul uses nowhere else. “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified!” The Message makes it more colorful: ”You crazy Galatians! Did someone put a spell on you? Have you taken leave of your senses? Something crazy has happened, for it’s obvious that you no longer have the crucified Jesus in clear focus in your lives. His sacrifice on the cross was certainly set before you clearly enough.” Paul had once been a member of the in-group, circumcised according to the rules, ritually clean. Then he met the crucified and risen Lord and the grace of God turned his religious world upside down.

What was at issue? Demanding people to become religious was a denial of the grace of God in Jesus. I have worked for the Church my whole adult life and I understand the danger of religion. I know it from the inside. Religion tends to become ritualized and rigid. It tends to live by rules and demand that people follow the rules. The people that gave Jesus the hardest time were the religious leaders. Jesus was condemned to be crucified by a toxic combination of political and religious leaders. Beware of mixing church and state. When that happens, the church always loses.

Paul’s answer is the gospel, the good news of God’s grace freely given by Jesus. “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!” Now hear it in “The Message”: “I am going to boast about nothing but the Cross of our Master, Jesus Christ. Because of that Cross, I have been crucified in relation to the world, set free from the stifling atmosphere of pleasing others and fitting into the little patterns that they dictate. Can’t you see the central issue in all this? It is not what you and I do—submit to circumcision, reject circumcision. It is what God is doing, and he is creating something totally new, a free life!” In the cross of Jesus, grace wins and mercy prevails. We cling to the cross because there Jesus does what religion could never do, setting us free to love God and love neighbor. The point system is gone. Grace flows from the cross of Jesus.

When the power of Jesus’ death on the cross is understood, nothing will ever be the same. In his letter to the Church in Ephesus, Paul summarizes this: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast.For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we may walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:8-10)

Recently I was in a local hospital for part of a day (passing a kidney stone: ouch!). My time there started in one nursing shift and ended in the next one. I experienced two kinds of nursing. The first shift nurse was competent, but she never asked how I was. She didn’t offer me a warm blanket or a bottle of water. She took my vital signs without making eye contact with me or even speaking to me. At 3pm, her shift ended and she left without saying a word to me. The next nurse came in a few minutes later to take my vital signs. She sat next to me and spoke to me, asking how I was doing. She told me her name. She asked what I did for a living. She offered me a warm blanket. She asked if there was anything else she could do for me. What a difference it made in my brief hospital stay. Oh, one more observation. One of them was wearing a necklace with a cross hanging from it. Which do you think it was: the first nurse or the second one?