Once More

Once More … with Feeling!
Dr. D. William McIvor
July 25, 2004
Presbyterian Church in Sudbury

Near the end of Galatians Paul writes, “See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand!” That reveals the letter-writing pattern in ancient times. The “writer” would actually dictate and a scribe, technically called an amanuensis, would write the words on parchment. But near the end, Paul took the quill pen in his own hand and wrote, “See how big these letters are. That shows the importance of everything I’ve said so far.” So chapter six reemphasizes, with great feeling, the message of the whole letter. And Paul puts expresses this in terms of practical advice about how to respond faithfully to Christ’s grace. He concludes the letter with sensible advice for healthy Christian living both individually and as a church. Let’s read it in Galatians 6.

My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. For if those who are nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves. All must test their own work; then that work, rather than their neighbor’s work, will become a cause for pride. For all must carry their own loads.

Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest-time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.

See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand! It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh that try to compel you to be circumcised — only that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. Even the circumcised do not themselves obey the law, but they want you to be circumcised so that they may boast about your flesh. 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! As for those who will follow this rule — peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.

Out in the country one day, a motorist drove his car into the ditch. There was no way to get it out by himself and this was back before cell phones. But a farmer came by with his horse, which he called Buddy, and the farmer offered to pull the motorist out of the ditch.

So the farmer hitched Buddy to the car and called out: “Pull, Buster, pull!” Buddy did not move.

Finally the farmer called, “Pull, Buddy, pull!” It was then that the large horse stepped forward and easily moved the car out of the ditch.

The grateful motorist thanked the farmer but asked him why he called out the wrong name three times. The farmer told him that Buddy was blind, and if Buddy thought that he was the only horse pulling, he wouldn’t even try.[1]

That is what Paul was getting at in the last chapter of Galatians. Being a Christian means many things and one of the most important is that we are not alone. Being a Christian means that we pull together. And Paul doesn’t trick us like the farmer fooled poor old Buddy. Paul just says as Christians we are together and we belong together. In fact, our pulling together is the sign that we are faithful followers of Christ’s grace. “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” This means two things, the first of which is that we are to have mutual care for each other.

At first glance, today’s text appears disjointed, with its admonitions about restoring those who transgress (6.1), sharing with those who teach (6.6), and not growing weary of doing the right thing (6.9). But the common thread is the importance of pulling together in the Christian community. Burden bearing is at the heart of church life and one of the ways Paul expresses this is in terms of how we treat church members who have done something wrong.

Every once in awhile we ministers will be told about a church member doing something “wrong.” Sometimes it’s a general complaint: “isn’t it awful those people (whoever they are) do things like that.” Sometimes it’s more specific: “isn’t it a shame that so and so is doing such and such.” Then the person telling us implies or sometimes even says we ought to do something about it.

This presents some interesting dilemmas, occasionally even some legal questions. For example, if we have reason to suspect that child abuse or sexual abuse have occurred, then we are required to report such things to civil authorities. Mostly, however, the question is what do we do when a church member sins and we find out about it?

Paul says we must be gentle with such people. “My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit [and that means all Christians] should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness.” In the church, if someone sins, our responsibility is gentle restoration. Not retribution. Not punishment. Not setting up tribunals to see that the guilty party pays for his or her sins.[2] Not even judgment or condemnation. Just gentle, Spirit-filled restoration.

That sounds nice. But there is a problem which Paul does not even acknowledge. Paul doesn’t even think about what for us is the biggest problem here, which is that we don’t want other people, not even other Christians, intruding into our lives. The mood today is live-and-let-live. We stay out of other people’s business and expect them to stay out of ours. If friends too often butt into our private lives, we avoid seeing those friends. And most of what we do, we define as private and nobody’s business, not even the minister’s. I get asked all the time you weren’t preaching at me today, were you? I sometimes want to answer, “Of course not. You’re perfect and we’re all perfect here. So I’m just preaching at those bad people out there.” That’s the problem. Paul said we ought to restore sinners gently. We’re all sinners. But if people — even preachers — talk specifically about our sins, we feel like they’re meddling where they don’t belong. We’ve all heard the expression, Now you’ve stopped preachin’, pastor, and you’ve started meddlin’. And we don’t like it.

As Christians we have freedom and responsibility for each other. We tend to see freedom as meaning no one else can interfere with my private life. That makes mutually caring for each other very hard to do.

So as a second thought this morning, let’s just admit that bearing each other’s burdens is hard. It rubs us the wrong way. It sounds so right when we hear it: “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ … So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.” (6.2, 10) But doing this in a practical way is very hard.

Do you remember the movie “Awakenings”? It came out in 1990 but I saw parts of it again not long ago when I was channel surfing late one night. The movie was directed by Penny Marshall and starred Robert De Niro as Leonard Lowe and Robin Williams as Dr. Malcolm Sayer. It was based on a book by the same title written by Dr. Oliver Sacks.

In the movie a Dr. Sayer goes to work in a hospital in the Bronx. He quickly discovers a number of patients who are catatonic and have been that way for 25-30 years. Everyone who enters the world of these patients believes their mental capacities are gone. Everyone has given up on them, except Dr. Sayer.

He trains the staff to notice the slightest change in the look in their eyes. He discovers they respond to patterned movements such as catching balls. Those who have not walked in years begin to move when they are held onto and touched by one of the staff.

After successfully “awakening” a man named Leonard Lowe using a new drug called L-Dopa, Dr. Sayer makes a plea to the medical chief of staff to raise $12,000 to put all the other patients on this medication as well. It is the summer of 1969 when all the patients “wake up.” But within months, all of them slip back into a catatonic state. The return is as painful as the awakening was joyful. Yet, life is changed for every patient, every staff person, and every family member of those who were awakened.

As the plot unfolds, Dr. Sayer realizes that the “cure” is not going to be permanent and he’s very disturbed by that. But Leonard, knowing that he will soon slip back into a catatonic condition, has the courage to say, “People have forgotten what life is all about. They’ve forgotten what it is to be alive. They need to be reminded. They need to be reminded what they have, what they can lose, what I feel, this … this … this joy, the freedom, the spaciousness of life, the gift of life. This is what they’ve forgotten. This is what they need to remember. This is what we’ll tell them.”

The final scene shows Leonard Lowe sitting with Paula, a woman he became interested in during his awakening. Paula is reading a book to him in the hospital visiting room. She now has a transformed understanding of the spirit that resides in Leonard’s once again catatonic body.

Sometimes a secular movie can preach better than a thousand preachers and ten thousand sermons. You can’t see Paula reading to Leonard without knowing that it is the right thing to do. That’s fulfilling the law of Christ. That’s bearing one another’s burdens. It’s hard. But it’s the right thing and the Christian thing to do.

So we may wonder at times, if burden bearing is so hard, how can we keep at it? The answer is both simple and profound. We keep at it and accept each other as we are and love each other and bear each other’s burdens because God keeps at it with us. God accepts us and loves us and bears our burdens. This is the whole point of the Bible. It’s the fundamental message of Jesus. It’s what Galatians is all about. God loves us and accepts us and bears the burden of our sins on the cross. Therefore, we must love and accept each other and bear each other’s burdens.

Love is the meaning of it all, my friends, and it’s what all the saints have tried to teach us. One of the more compelling saints was a woman we know only as Julian of Norwich. In May of 1373, Julian, only thirty years old at the time, fell gravely ill and was close to death. A priest was called to administer the last rites and at one point her mother closed Julian’s eyelids, believing her death to be imminent. While she was in this near-death state, gazing at a crucifix the priest held before her eyes, Julian experienced a series of sixteen visions, what she called “showings” of Christ on the cross. At some point shortly after her unexpected recovery, she wrote an account of her experience.[3]

Julian wrote: “There is no created being who can know how much and how sweetly and how tenderly the Creator loves us.” God is “endless delight.” God is maker and lover and keeper of all that is. The love of God is at the center of all things, the inner meaning of everything. Julian prayed to know the meaning of the “showings” that were given to her. She received this answer: “What, do you wish to know your Lord’s meaning in this thing? Know it well, love was his meaning. Who reveals it to you? Love. What did he reveal to you? Love. Why does he reveal it to you? For love.”

In the church in Norwich built in her memory, there is a stained-glass window inscribed with Julian’s most famous line, echoed by T. S. Eliot at the end of his Four Quartets: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” At first sight, this seems glibly simplistic. But remember that Julian received her visions four years after the third outbreak of bubonic plague in Norwich (which killed half the town’s population) and in the midst of an unspecified, nearly-fatal illness of her own. Clearly, her assurance that “all shall be well” was no facile optimism, but the ringing assurance of a soul that had found its center in the eternal love of God.

Paul also found his center in the eternal love of God. So at the end of his amazing Galatian letter he wrote that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision matter but only the new creation. (6.15) Externals don’t matter! Externals don’t matter, whether they be obeying religious rules, or our own dyings, or the plagues and tragedies that wipe us out. The only thing that counts is the grace of Christ working in us. Paul insisted on that. And Julian insisted on that too — and this is so hard for us to believe! — in truth, nothing can ever separate us from God’s love, which never falters, never changes, never ends. She wrote, “Only pain blames and punishes, and our courteous Lord comforts and succors … And the loving regard which he keeps constantly on us, and especially when we fall, it seems to me that it can melt our hearts for love and break them in two for joy.”

With hearts broken in two for joy, may we bear one another’s burdens, and in doing so fulfill the law of Christ. Then “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

[1] Kenneth Dodge, The Pastor’s Story File 14.3 (1998): 4.

[2] Charles B. Cousar, Galatians (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982) 144.

[3] Deborah Smith Douglas, “Julian of Norwich: ‘God at the Center of Everything,’” Weavings 13.1 (1998): 11. “Although Julian claims to have been unlettered at the time of receiving her ‘showings,’ her book is in fact a marvel — not only of such rhetorical skill and literary merit as to warrant comparison with her contemporary Geoffrey Chaucer, but richly steeped in the Latin Vulgate scriptures, solid Trinitarian theology, and the foundational monastic writings of western Christianity. Hers is the first book known to have been written by a woman in English. After centuries of obscurity, it is now regarded as a spiritual classic — one so particularly suited to the needs of the late twentieth century that it has even been suggested that ‘in some mysterious providence of God her wisdom has been “saved up” for our generation.’” Douglas also cites Michael McLean, Introduction to Julian: Woman of Our Day, ed. by Robert Llewelyn (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, I985) 2.