FROM A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW

Galatians 3: 23-29

June 24, 2001

The story is told that in the late 1960s, Swiss watch makers were presented with a new way of keeping time. In fact, one of their own came up with it. The Swiss watchmakers were the best in the business; they had perfected the art of accurate watches. They knew how to make the best springs, the most accurate cog wheels, using gems to make it run as free of resistance as possible. They looked at this new way of keeping time and said, "That’s not the way you keep time." They rejected it. A company in Japan took the idea, and in a matter of a couple of years, turned the entire time keeping business on end. The company was Seiko and the timepiece was the digital watch. Swiss watches haven’t disappeared, but their share of the market has been reduced tremendously.

The change that took place is called a "paradigm shift." A paradigm is set of rules or regulations (written or unwritten) that establishes or defines boundaries and then tells you how to behave inside those boundaries or frame of reference. The Swiss had a very clear paradigm as to how time was to be kept. A new way came along and they could not accept it because their paradigm prohibited them from seeing any other option. This story has been used to describe the need for companies, organizations, businesses and even churches to be willing to look outside the box to see how the mission might be accomplished. The seven last words of a dying church (or any organization) are: "We’ve never done it that way before."

I believe that this analogy is helpful in trying to understand what the life and ministry of Jesus Christ was about, in fact, what God was seeking to do even centuries before Jesus. This last week in Vacation Church School, I taught the adult sessions. On Wednesday evening we looked at a passage from Isaiah 56 in which God was trying to open the eyes of the people after the Exile about God’s inclusive love rather than excluding people from God’s presence. According to the Torah, eunuchs and foreigners, particularly Moabites and Ammonites were to be excluded from God’s presence. Isaiah came proclaiming that "God’s house shall be a house of prayer for all people." That was a new thing, a new vision, a new image. Isaiah was changing the paradigm. Jeremiah proclaimed that God was writing a new covenant, one not on tablets of stone, but one written on the flesh of our hearts – not exterior, but interior. Jeremiah was changing the paradigm.

Jesus came proclaiming that he was fulfilling the Law, not destroying or abolishing it. Yet, he went on to proclaim in Matthew 5 how it is not the outward sign of anger or rape that is the sin, but the inward thought of the heart that is the root of sin. Jesus was changing the paradigm; Jesus was redirecting one’s relationship with God away from the outward signs to a more radical and demanding aspect of the heart. Instead of rules that excluded, Jesus expressed a love that included. It is easier to exclude people than it is to include people different from you. Purity was not measured by how completely you obeyed every law of the Torah, but by how you loved your neighbor as yourself, doing to others how you would want to be treated. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day wanted to get rid of Jesus because he was causing a paradigm shift that upset their sense of God and God’s laws. God was doing something new and their perception of God could not allow that change.

In early May I flew to Dallas, Texas to attend a weeklong workshop. I had a window seat on the left side of the plane as we flew out of Seattle, and I had a perfect view of Mt. Rainier from 18,000 feet as we climbed to our cruising altitude. I could see Chinook Pass, I could see Mowich Lake on the northwest corner. The perspective of the mountain and distance is quite different than from our traditional land view. I saw a larger picture that helped me understand my smaller picture.

The Apostle Paul is trying to explain to the churches of Galatia about a paradigm shift that has taken place. Some people were holding on to the Torah and demanding obedience to it; Paul was arguing that in Jesus Christ we have moved beyond the Law to a new relationship with God – one based on faith, not obedience. The NRSV uses the word "disciplinarian." In the Greek that is the word "paidagogos" – pedagogue. In the Greek-Roman culture, a paidagogos was a slave who was in charge of the children in the household, making sure they behaved, that they got to school, that they were safe – similar to a nanny. Paul’s point was that once a child becomes old enough, there is no longer a need for the paidagogos or nanny. Paul is saying that now that Christ has come, we no longer need the Law as a nanny to instruct us; we have Christ and faith.

Do you remember your baptism? Do you remember your commitment to Jesus Christ? Do you remember the time (or times) when you made a commitment to live as a Christian? It was the custom in the early church that at baptism believers would shed their old clothes and put on brand new clothes symbolizing their new life in Christ. We are clothed with Christ, a new life. Christ is not "out there" standing over against me pointing a finger saying, "thou shalt not…" Rather Christ is in every fiber of our being; Christ is within us transforming us into new people who begin to think and act in the spirit of Jesus Christ. We are the body of Christ!

In baptism one enters into the Body of Christ, or, the Reign of God, which transcends anything human. It is a new way of being. For Paul this meant relating differently to other people. In the culture of the Apostle Paul there were three distinct social classes and divisions. The Torah required that Jews not associate with Gentiles, so there was that distinct division; it was common custom for people to enter into and out of slavery depending on their economic status; slaves had few rights while in this state. The third social distinction was male/female. In both the Jewish culture as well as the Greek, women were less than equal; they had few rights.

In this new paradigm, this faith in Christ, this Body of Christ, the cultural barriers that separate and divide people do not apply. Women are equal to men; the woman on welfare is equal to the owner of Trailwagons; the Hispanic farm worker is equal to the ranch owner; people living in housing that is inhumane are equal in God’s eyes to those living in multimillion dollar homes on Scenic Drive. The person who believes in Jesus Christ but is struggling to get off alcohol or drugs is equal to those who do not have those addictions. By faith, all people are children of God. And if they are our brothers and sisters in Christ, then we will treat each other differently here and now.

What Paul was describing is his belief that the church (the Reign of God on earth) is really an alternative community that seeks to live out God’s new ways in the midst of a world that continues to resist God’s justice and love. Barriers that divide in the community do not exist within the walls of this church and our worship. Attitudes of prejudice, hate and fear that run rampant in the culture, are replaced within the church with the desire to understand, respect and love. This is a place to build up a person, not tear them down; to build bridges of understand rather than walls of separation. We confess our sins and pray for God’s strength to transform us into new creations.

And the transforming factor is that we are all children of God through faith, clothed with the Spirit of Christ Jesus our Lord. The church is an alternative community, counter-cultural. The church presents a new paradigm for living – one that sees the glory of the Reign of God and seeks to live it out in our daily lives.

Are you so clothed with Christ that others can tell a difference? Or are there barriers, attitudes, fears, that you need to have removed? Do you see the new picture? Christ invites you to live that new life.