White Flag - Galatians 5:13-15 (Sermon from June 28, 2015)

There’s been a lot of discussion about flags this week, well, actually about one particular flag that many folks find offensive.  It has led to a massive exchange over social media about removing offensive flags—to the point that someone suggested the removal of the Duke flag because they found it offensive.  I am not going to directly enter into the debate over heritage verses hate—you will have to draw, on your own, what not the Southern, or Republican, or States’ Rights response should be, but what a disciple of Christ’s response should be.  I do want us to consider a flag this morning, a flag that I believe should be flown within the heart of every disciple of Christ.  It is not the Stars and Bars, nor even the Stars and Stripes, but it is a simple white flag.  I’m not talking about the white “Christian” flag emblazoned in the corner with a blue rectangle and cross that we find in many churches.  I am talking about the white flag that is normally associated in conflict with surrender.

Freedom and surrender…those things don’t seem to go together, especially this time of year.  I mean this coming Friday Saturday is the 4^th of July where we celebrate our nation’s independence…an independence won not by surrender, but by asserting ourselves and winning the war.  However, for those of us who seek to be followers of Christ, it is always about surrender.  When I teach Creative Writing at youth events, I always try to remind the youth that the words we use are important.  We can’t use words flippantly…and the word I think best describes how we enter into a relationship with Jesus is surrender.  A lot of times we hear folks talk about taking Jesus into their hearts or accepting Jesus, and while I know those are the traditional ways of talking about it, I take issue with the phrasing…taking Jesus in or accepting Jesus into our lives puts the emphasis on us, we are doing the work that is key to our salvation.  Surrender, however, is a passive action.  It is giving up that we can do anything, even asking Jesus into our hearts, to be saved.  When we surrender, we lay down our lives and our efforts, stop trying to do anything to get saved, and simply acknowledge that Christ has brought us salvation, He has done all the work, and we are helpless to do anything other than surrender to Him, His work, and His Lordship.

Paul spends a lot of time talking about surrender throughout his letters, though he never actually uses the word.  In this morning’s reading, we find that Paul connects freedom and surrender. Paul’s writes, “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.”

Paul begins by reminding the Galatians that they have been called to freedom.  They have been freed from the efforts of trying to earn their salvation by following every letter of the Law.  He is reminding them that they have been freed from the power of sin…that they have the freedom to choose now, to choose to surrender their lives to the salvation brought through Christ, or to choose to continue living in sin.  You see, before Christ, we could not hope to not sin…sin had complete power over us, even in trying to live out lives obedient to the Law were sinful because the emphasis was not on God, but on ourselves, trying to escape punishment and earn the blessings of God.  This is one reason I don’t like the evangelistic efforts of things like Scaremare and Heaven’s Gates/Hell’s Flames that try to scare a person into a relationship with Christ, suggesting that we accept Jesus (their terminology) not out of a loving surrender to what He has done for us, but out of fear and selfish self-preservation.  Paul elsewhere has to counter the results of some folks who had decided since obedience to the Law cannot bring salvation, and that all that we need for Salvation is found in Christ, that they can just go on doing whatever they want to do, even arguing that the more they sin, the more God’s grace can abound, trying to use choosing to sin as an effort to glorify God.  Paul says, “What then, shall we go on sinning so that grace may abound?  By no means.”  Paul says now that we have the freedom to live for God or live for ourselves, He calls us to voluntarily surrender ourselves and seek to live out our lives in accordance with the Will of God—that is the “loving God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength” part of the Great Commandment.

In this morning’s Scripture reading we hear  Paul’s efforts to bring our minds to the second half of the Great Commandment, “loving our neighbor as ourselves.”  Paul says that we should not use the freedom that God gives us to indulge in ourselves, but that we should, in our freedom, not only surrender to God, but surrender to one another, “through love become slaves to one another.”

What’s Paul saying here?  To put is simply and straight forward, Paul is reminding us that when we are disciples of Jesus, when we are living out our lives in the freedom from sin and the threat of eternal death and punishment, that our lives are not about us.  It is not about me.  It is not about you.  It is about life together in the grace of God.  Paul has to reminding folks over and over again…he has to remind us over and over again…that our lives together matter, and we are not only to love our neighbor as ourselves, but more than ourselves.

Over and over again through Paul’s writing Paul combats against the idea that our salvation in Christ is simply a “me and Jesus” kind of relationship.  He takes on the “arrogant” Christians in almost every congregation.

To the churches in Ephesus and Corinth, Paul tackles the idea that the gifts that God gave us are to be used to elevate us as individuals, that their purpose is to benefit us…in those places Paul reminds those striving to follow Jesus that their Spiritual gifts, the evidences of God’s grace at work in their lives, is not to build ourselves up, but they are to be used for building up the Body of Christ…the church.  In fact Paul says that if we have all these Spiritual Gifts and use them, but do not exercise them in love, that all our efforts are useless.  In fact, also in Corinth, Paul tackles the arrogance who are seeking to use their gifts, specifically speaking in tongues, without regard to how it was being received by those around them—and with no one to interpret the tongues, the exercise of those gifts was definitely not for the glorification of God and building up the church, but about the one with the gift saying, “Hey, look at me, I have this gift, I am important.”

In Rome, Paul tackles the arrogance of Christ followers in how they relate to those who are new to the faith or who are struggling, over the issue of eating meat that had been sacrificed in the temple of a false god or idol.  For many who had grown up in the Jewish faith and were newly coming into the faith walking in the Way of Jesus, the idea of eating meat that had been sacrificed to someone or something other than God was unheard of.  To them, eating that tainted meat meant that they were participating in that ritual and in taking unholy meat into themselves, they themselves were becoming unclean and detestable to God.  The mature Christians, on the other hand, knew that there was nothing to this.  They knew there were no intrinsic properties of the false religion that had been attached to the meat and that it was just as spiritual safe to eat as any Kosher food.  Paul encounters their arrogance in Rome as those who ate the meat, still secure in their faith, were looking down upon those who were afraid to.  Perhaps there was the attitude of, “Hey, we know it’s okay, we know it doesn’t mean that we worship that false god, I don’t care what they think, I’m just going to eat the meat, serve it at my house, it’s my house anyways, they just need to get over it.”  Paul calls them to surrender that arrogant way of thinking and realize it is not about them, but about those new, growing Christians and that they need to abstain from eating that meat if it offends or compromises the faith of another.

That is the thought that lies behind Paul’s writing today.  Paul says, “I know that you realize that you have grown enough in your faith that you realize that you have been set free from the Law.  The Law, which once bound you, no longer has rule over your life.  However, just because you know that you have been freed from the Law, it doesn’t mean that you should just do whatever you want.  You need to take your brother and sister into account.  You need to think beyond yourself and think to their need and how the things you do may affect them, and adjust accordingly.  Paul says everything you do, or don’t do, do in accordance with, not what makes you happy, but out of care, concern, and love for your brother or sister in Christ.  It is another call from Paul to those of the church in Galatia, and to us, to surrender prideful arrogance and live our lives, make our decisions, out of our Spirit-filled hearts.

How does this get played out?  It gets played out in our life together.

It means we are called to stop being pridefully arrogant, putting ourselves and how we see and think of things above everything else, and respond to our brothers and sisters and those around us with love.

If we are loving our neighbor as ourselves, if we are placing their good and their feelings ahead of our own, then it is going to affect what we do and how we act.

For instance, if our brother or sister is a vegetarian and we are a full-blooded carnivore, we are not going to serve them a meal of hamburgers and hotdogs and tell them to get over it, meat is good.  We are going to provide a meal that honors their appetite.

If a brother or sisters is troubled by the language we use, we are not going to tell them to get over it, we are going to alter the way we talk to be able to have a conversation with them that won’t cause them to shut down the dialogue.

It means if a brother or sisters doesn’t drink alcohol, or is even alcoholic, we are not going to serve drinks at a party we invite them to.

If a brother or sisters is troubled by the music we listen to, though it is music that we believes honors God, we don’t insist on listening to it when they are around.

All this means that if we are doing something that would cause pain to our brothers and sisters or weaken and undermine their faith, no matter if we believe that what we are doing is okay, we need to stop being self-indulgent, surrender to the leading of the Holy Spirit, and respond with actions that reflect our love for them.  I am not talking about surrendering the core aspects of our faith, but when it does not compromise our relationship with Jesus, and will actually open up our relationship with others, raise the white flag, surrender our pride,  and let it go. 

My brothers and sisters, as we celebrate freedom this week and each and every day beyond—let us not abuse that freedom, but let us raise a white flag, and live  it out surrendered to loving God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, and loving our neighbor as ourselves.

In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.