1 KINGS 17:17-24
GALATIANS 1:11-19
LUKE 7:11-17
What amazing times we
live in?
In our lifetimes,
we’ve witnessed prophets, seen the world turn away from a grave social sin, and
experienced miracles from this social metanoia.
Metanoia is a big
word we heard a lot in deacon formation.
It’s a word I hadn’t much heard before entering the diaconate. Webster’s Dictionary defines Metanoia as a transformative change of heart, or a
spiritual conversion.
Metanoia is what St.
Paul experienced when he converted from Christian-hunting Jew to the man who
brought the Good News of faith in Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. We hear him reference his personal metanoia
in today’s letter to the Galatians.
God calls us all to constantly
pray for transformative changes of hearts when it comes to the sins that
dictate our lives (both social and personal); to spiritually turn away from
these sins and walk closer to God.
As I said, what
amazing times we live in. In our lifetimes, many of us have
been blessed to watch our country turn away from a glaring social sin:
institutional racism.
As
a child of the 1960s, the civil rights movement had a big impact on me. I still remember the April day Martin Luther
King Jr. was assassinated.
In
my family, I was blessed with a father and mother who judged a person “not by
the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” In fact, my Godmother is an
African-American nurse who attended Seattle University with my mom.
Still,
I can remember the taste of 1960’s racism.
Growing
up we had a sweet, elderly next-door neighbor lady who became a
hate-spewing racist when talking about people of color.
For
a young boy, this was all too confusing. I never understood this level of
hatred toward a person solely due to the color of their skin.
Hatred
is never from God, only love is from our Lord and Savior. Hatred comes from another source -- the
opposite of a divine source.
What’s
the miracle in all of this, you ask? Who
in the turbulent 1950s or 1960s would have ever believed an African-American
would be elected President of the United States? Like or dislike the man himself, one must
marvel at how far we’ve come as a country when we as a society turned away from
the social sin of racism.
This
is not to say racism is dead and gone in America. Sadly, as a nation, we still
have a lot of work to do in this area.
In
South Africa, apartheid was the law of the land until the early 1990s. Minority
whites ruled over a majority, black population 10-times bigger than their white
masters.
It
was a brutal, repressive and abusive system.
Many
of the whites there were certain of the coming retaliatory violence when blacks
took over as the ruling race. Retaliations seen in other parts of Africa would
inevitably happen in South Africa.
Enter
Nobel Peace Prize Winners Rev. Desmond Tutu and eventual black President Nelson
Mandela, a man imprisoned for nearly 30 years by the white South African
government.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be
called Children of God.”
Rev.
Tutu, President Mandela and the last white South African leader President F. W.
De Klerk helped a nation to turn away from its social sin.
By
their words and actions, South Africa (a poster-child of modern day racism) had
a transformative change of heart. South
Africa witnessed a peaceful transfer of power from white to black rule without
the retaliation seen in earlier national transformations in Africa. This, too, can only be seen as a modern day
miracle.
What
does all this have to do with today’s Gospel and readings?
Let’s use St. Paul’s letter to the
Galatians as a guide to the miracles of Jesus in our world today and yesterday.
To
understand its context, one needs to understand what was happening in Galatia
two-thousand years ago. Paul spent time there and formed a beautiful Christian
community.
But after he left, a group of Jewish missionaries came along and challenged what Paul taught. They felt Paul had watered down the Gospel message to please the gentiles of this dusty outpost in what is now modern day Turkey.
But after he left, a group of Jewish missionaries came along and challenged what Paul taught. They felt Paul had watered down the Gospel message to please the gentiles of this dusty outpost in what is now modern day Turkey.
These missionaries said the only
true Disciple of Christ must be a practicing Jew, must be circumcised, must
diligently follow all 613 laws of the Torah.
In other words, the church had two
entrance doors. One for Jews only.
Another for non-Jews.
Sound
familiar?
Sound
like the Jim Crow laws that kept racism alive and well in the U.S. after the Civil
War?
Sound
like a society of minority whites who felt moral superiority over less educated
blacks in South Africa?
Miracles
let God’s voice be heard in 1960s America, in 1990s South Africa, and in Paul’s
world two millennia ago.
Jesus
and His Gospel message of love conquer the human inclination toward hatred,
racism, and social sin.
As
St. Paul would argue to the people of Galatia, the Good News of Jesus knows no
boundaries of Jew or gentile, free or slave, male or female. As St. Paul tells
the Galatians, “you are all one in
Christ Jesus.”
So what social or personal sin do we need to
turn away from today? What transformative change of heart is God calling us to?
Pray.
Check
our prejudices.
Listen
to our hearts.