L.D. 5, Galatians 2:11-21 "The Christ in You" Scott Hoezee

In the last month I have received a fair number of emails that have had something to do with the Mel Gibson movie The Passion, which will be released this Wednesday. Gibson himself has said that he was very intentional about making this movie as graphic and brutal as he could in order to convey the depths of the passion or suffering of Jesus referred to in the film's title. The movie has been quite widely previewed to Christian leaders and groups and so the buzz about the film is already pretty loud. One phrase that I have seen repeated quite a few times already is along the lines of, "This is not a movie. It is an experience."

Of course, most of us are aware of cinema's powerful ability to give us emotional experiences. A good film may make you jump out of your skin with fright, laugh, cry, or make you so tense that your heart rate goes up. But when people talk about a religious movie as an experience, there is usually more to it than a run-of-the-mill cinematic encounter. Indeed, people are already talking about the potential evangelistic use that could be made of this new film. Last Sunday evening I mentioned that at last month's Worship Symposium, Craig Barnes conducted a workshop in which, among other things, he pointed out that the current generation of college-age young adults are very keen on the need to have lots of different experiences in life. Truth, identity, vocation, and a bevy of other important facets of life are now sought out through experience. To many young people today, you cannot believe something unless you have first experienced it yourself.

So in this day and age, when someone says that this new movie about the crucifixion in "an experience," we need to hear in that something significant. Personally, however, it doesn't matter to me what impact this forthcoming film may have. If it is helpful to some people (and certainly if it does end up doing some kind of evangelism in terms of making people think more soberly about Jesus' sacrifice), then that's wonderful, of course.

The difficulty I have is that too much attention to the alleged experience that comes from a movie may obscure, or make us discount, the reality of the spiritual experience that all Christians should have and live out every single day of their lives. If you need a movie to experience in your heart the reality of what Jesus did, then something is wrong. If we want to talk about experience in the Christian life, we should be able to do so vividly without any cinematic help. But I wonder how often we realize this.

As Galatians 2 will show, this may be a problem as old as the gospel itself. To show you what I mean, let's examine this interesting passage. Galatians is just generally the most feisty letter of Paul in the New Testament. Of the thirteen Pauline epistles, this is the about the only one where Paul dispensed with the usual niceties in the opening of the letter. If you check almost any other epistle, you'll see that one of the first things Paul always wrote was something along the lines of, "My dear friends, I thank God every time I think of you." But not in Galatians! This letter begins with a brash statement of Paul's shock. "I am astonished that you are deserting the gospel!" He doesn't let up, either. If you look at the first verse of chapter 3, you can see that Paul starts to call names. "You foolish Galatians! Who bewitched you!? Did somebody cast a spell on you so that you've lost your mind?!"

So what is it that has Paul so hopping mad and upset? It is the fact that the gospel of God's grace was being eclipsed in Galatia. Paul had preached the good news that salvation is God's free gift, earned for us 100% by what Jesus did on the cross. The sacrifice of Jesus was so supremely complete, that any suggestion that we could add something to it is the height of arrogant folly. Paul was beyond dogmatic in claiming that the terrible death of Jesus happened because there is no other way possible to set things right again. What's more, because it is the only way, it is also the all-sufficient way to which our human efforts could never, ever add one ounce of saving power.

That's what Paul told the Galatians until he was blue in the face. But then, not long after he left Galatia, he got wind of the fact that some new teachers had infiltrated the community and had begun to convince the Galatian Christians that if they really wanted to be saved, they needed to keep certain laws. Males needed to be circumcised, and dietary restrictions needed to be followed so they would keep kosher. If the people did all of that, then they would earn God's favor and so be more assured of their salvation. Near as we can tell, these teachers were not trying to set aside the cross but they were adding to it.

Paul was beyond livid! Oh sure, on the surface of things telling someone they were not allowed to eat shellfish or pork looked pretty innocent. But Paul was spiritually savvy enough to perceive that although subtle, making people think that their status with God hinged on whether they ate lobster thermidor over against a veal cutlet shifted the entire focus of salvation. Thinking that way put the focus not first of all on the precious cross of Jesus but instead on the way we structure our own lives. Yes, the work of Jesus counts for something, maybe for a lot, but our own work counts pretty big, too. But this was just the point on which Paul would brook no compromise.

To help make this more vivid, Paul relates one of the most amazing of all stories from the early church. Because here we are told that Paul and Peter--two men who between them wrote over half of the New Testament--did not always get along! In fact, Paul once publicly confronted Peter over the very same issue with which the Galatians were wrestling.

Apparently once upon a time in Antioch, Paul met the famous man Simon Peter. Paul knew full well that unlike himself, Peter had been one of Jesus' closest disciples and was reputed to be Jesus' hand-picked choice to become the key leader of the church. Peter was, if you will, the first pope, and so when Paul met Peter for the first time, he assumed that this man would be the very paragon of the gospel, the best living example of the gospel that you could ever hope to meet.

To Paul's shock, however, Peter turned out to be a little squirrely. Paul had heard about the vision Peter had received from Jesus one day while Peter was praying on a rooftop--a vision in which Jesus showed Peter a banquet table loaded with all kinds of mostly non-kosher food but then Jesus told Peter to take and eat. Paul knew that the meaning of that vision was that grace was now going to come freely and was not to be made dependent on food laws or any other law for that matter. That vision was Peter's cue to reach out with the gospel to all people without discrimination.

Paul had always loved that story because it validated everything he believed, too. Grace was utterly free because Jesus' sacrifice had taken care of everything for us. That's why Paul loved preaching the gospel to non-Jews and to Greeks and to all the other people who had long been assumed to be outside the circle of salvation. God in Christ had opened everything up and that was the best news that the good news of the gospel had to offer!

So Paul was eager to hang out with this man Peter, the rock on which Jesus was building his church. But then one evening in Antioch, to his complete chagrin, Paul saw Peter turn up his nose at some Gentiles who invited Peter and Paul for dinner. Peter looked at the table, spied the bacon-wrapped rabbit loin, noticed the platter of mussels marinere, and looked at the appetizer of oysters on the half-shell. Peter saw all this non-kosher stuff, looked his eager dinner hosts square in the face, and said, "Sorry, I just can't sit at table with you all." Then Peter left, taking a bunch of other Jewish-Christians with him. For his part, all Paul could do was scrape his jaw off the floor.

The next day, at the earliest opportunity, Paul let his fellow apostle have it with both barrels. "My brother Peter, you know as well as I do that you have in the past sat down at non-kosher tables and you know as well as I do that you did that because the gospel is not about kosher versus non-kosher or any other law. But now you're giving in to peer pressure! You've got a few folks around here who don't like how free the gospel of grace is and to impress them, you acted prejudiced against the good folks who invited you to dinner! But if that's how we are going to live on a practical basis, then let's give up preaching the gospel! There's no sense telling people that they are justified freely by grace apart from observing the law if we are then going to turn right around and pretend that keeping the law is vital to salvation after all! How dare you do this, Peter!?"

Paul was right. Peter knew it and repented. The cross really is all we need. That's why Paul goes on to speak what has rightly become one of his most famous lines ever. "I have been crucified with Christ so that I no longer live but Christ lives in me!" And now to bring us back to where we began this sermon, this is the spiritual reality the experience of which must be so vivid to us that it shapes our attitudes, forms our hopes, and guides our lives every single day. Yet that can be so difficult to remember. Right now there is a lot of buzz out there about how the experience of a new movie will bring Jesus' sacrifice home to people. Maybe it will in some fashion, but unless we already have the daily experience of the Holy Spirit making us participate in the crucifixion of Jesus, then no movie will help us.

After all, Peter did witness the crucifixion of Jesus--he didn't need a movie or even a sermon to experience Jesus' death. He saw it. He also met with the resurrected Jesus. He had the Holy Spirit of Pentecost poured out onto him in a way that literally changed the world. But even still Peter struggled with letting that reality shape and form him the way it should have. It should come as no surprise that we may struggle with this, too. But still we need to know, and then live like we know, the truth of our now having Christ in us. And for us as for Paul, the daily, abiding experience of being caught up with Jesus in life and in death should give us a liberating sense of joy.

Galatians 2 gives us such an intriguing combination. On the one hand Paul says "I was co-crucified with Christ." That sounds like the end. Crucifixion is the end of the story usually. In fact, have you ever realized how odd it is to hear that sentence? Statements involving death are not usually uttered in the first person. Last week someone sent me a review of two recent novels that take place in heaven. Here is the first line of one of those books: "My name is Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973."

Well now, except for fictional stories that follow people into the afterlife, we've never heard anyone say something like that because if you have been murdered, you are all done speaking in the first person. Come to think of it, you are all done speaking, period! So if you ever heard someone say, "I had a fatal heart attack last week" or "I was killed by a hit-and-run driver two months ago," you'd take several big steps back from this person! Because if you hear someone refer to his or her own past death, then either something really spooky is going on or this other person is a couple tomatoes short of a thick ragu.

But alas, we've lost our ability to be startled by the line "I was crucified with Christ." But when you get right down to it, that is just as odd as hearing "I died in a boating accident last year." The only possible reason Paul's line in verse 20 is not an insane thing to say is if, in the mystery of the gospel, Jesus' death on the cross upended death with the victory of life. If Jesus rose again from the dead by the power of God, then that death (and now also our participation in that death) becomes a most surprising pathway to life after all.

Jesus gave himself for me and for you because he loved me and he loved you. But let's stop speaking in the past tense. Remember, Paul may talk about having died in the past but he speaks of Christ living in him in the present. "I no longer live but Christ lives in me!" That fully alive, animating Savior is a loving presence we should experience every day. Having Christ alive inside of us should open our eyes to see the world in new ways.

When a woman is pregnant, she is constantly aware of the other life within her. She knows that what she eats and drinks will affect this other life, and so thoughtful women are careful. An expectant mother feels this life stirring within her, is aware of what's in her belly every time she turns over in bed, gets up out of a chair, or puts a morsel into her mouth. Such a person would not need to go see a movie about pregnancy or hear an OB-GYN give a lecture in order to have the experience of this life within her. Such outside depictions might help to focus this experience but it would not create the experience.

Paul knew that another life force was throbbing within him and it guided his actions. He always knew it was there and it made him do things that he otherwise would not have done. If you and I are alive spiritually, if we've got any hope or joy to go on, if we can find a purpose in life higher than whatever we can manage to squeeze in during these precious few years between crib and casket, then it is only because Christ lives in us. How real is that to you? How often, if at all, does this living reality occur to you in the course of a day? When was the last time you consciously decided on a certain course of action because you knew, you just knew, that you are not in this just for yourself or by yourself?

If we are Christian people, probably there are lots of things we do, say, and think during an average day that are very Christ-like even though they have become so habitual for us we no longer notice them. There is something right about that. To do a riff on something C.S. Lewis once said, if out on the dance floor you are constantly staring down at your feet as you make every step, you are not dancing but are still learning how to dance. But once you are really dancing, you don't look at your feet anymore nor do you need to think about what they are doing--the moves just flow.

A lot of our Christian living should be like that--we glorify Jesus in our speech and in our actions without having to stop to ponder every little step. But even good dancers always know when they are dancing as opposed to just walking and skilled dancers sometimes need to do some fancy footwork to keep from stumbling or to recover from a stumble that already happened. If Christ lives in us and indeed just is our life, then the knowledge and the experience of our lifelong dance of shalom with him must always be with us. Always we need to know who it is that quickens our spirits and enlivens our hearts.

The Bible tells us that sometimes we entertain angels unawares, and many find that beguilingly intriguing. In recent years there have been a spate of television shows of the "Touched by an Angel" variety that weave endearing plots about the ministry of angels disguised as ordinary folks. But this morning, behold I tell you a mystery: we may or may not bump into angels once in a while but we most assuredly do encounter Jesus.

Every once in a while, in our better, more transparent moments, we help each other, we speak just the right word, we do just the right thing, we give hope where there had been none even as a compassionate tear rolls down our cheek because suddenly we find we just love this other person so much we want to extend ourselves into his or her life. And if you are ever on the receiving end of that kind of love, of a word of hope, of a touch of ministry, I'm telling you right now that you would not be wrong if you said to the person helping you, "Thank you, Jesus." In fact, you'd have it just right. Amen.