Good morning. I’m Ms. Chic Cheeks, professor of “human relationships” at the Portorricensis University. My specialty is to study and analyze the interaction between human beings. Lately, I’ve been studying the phenomenon of identity within religious organizations and was hired to share some of my insights with you today. Given that you are a church and not my usual classroom I decided to tie my observations to a Scripture passage: Galatians 2:1-10.I have observed how, regrettably, different ethnic groups within the same religious organization may congregate separate from each other and my hypothesis is that they do so in an effort to protect their racial and cultural identity. This is particularly interesting in light of certain approaches to engage in mission by different ethnic groups or towards different ethnic groups. I believe these issues were at the heart of the council or meeting at Jerusalem as narrated in Galatians 2 and Acts 15. The main issue was supposedly if the Gentile Christians should be circumcised or not.
Now, let us review why Paul is telling this story. Paul is writing a letter to the churches that he founded maybe a couple of years before in Galatia. He is writing a very passionate letter that shows some anger because, regrettably, they have been listening to some other Jewish-Christian missionaries – like him – who told them they had to be circumcised in order to be received in the Christian community. The whole letter to the Galatians is intended to convince them that they don’t have to be circumcised or keep other Jewish laws. Paul is passionate about this issue not because of circumcision itself but because he believes the whole argument ‘do it; don’t do it’ is a distortion of the true gospel and a threat to the unity of the church. Paul argues in favor of a gospel of grace and the sufficiency of the cross.
In the second chapter of Galatians Paul is narrating his experience at the meeting in Jerusalem showing that the whole issue is not new and to support his argumentation against circumcision. Notice Paul’s strategy at that council. He decided to go there with two other: Barnabas a circumcised Jewish and Titus an uncircumcised Greek. They were from the church in Antioch, a multicultural church. He goes to Jerusalem, the head church at the times after 14 years of having been preaching a law-free gospel to the Gentiles. He was motivated to do so by a revelation and he managed to have a ‘private meeting’ with the ‘acknowledged leaders’ to discuss the matter to make sure he was not ‘running in vain.’
Obviously Paul was smart. He took a multicultural delegation to the people in power including an uncircumcised Greek. He brought with him the very issue they were to discuss. Then he took three to a private meeting. It’s like if a congregation would send a delegation to the Presbytery meeting and the delegation would pull outside the moderator, the stated clerk and the treasurer (the acknowledged leaders) to a side conversation. You know: those famous parking lot meetings where the important things are decided before presenting them in the Assembly. It is very important that he decided to address the issue based on a revelation. Wouldn’t you like that all matters brought before the governing bodies of your church were motivated by revelations rather by the individual’s own agenda? Anyway, back to Paul, the fact that he went to Jerusalem moved by a revelation means that he was not seeking their approval. As Martin Luther noted in his commentary to this passage, he couldn’t take back all those years of preaching a circumcision-free gospel. Most scholars agree that he wasn’t seeking approval on the content of his preaching but rather he was seeking the unity of the church. His concern about not ‘running in vain’ was a concern about the church accepting the Gentiles who believed the message Paul had been spreading around. Speaking about human relationships, this Paul was very wise playing the balance between respecting the authority of the leaders of the church in Jerusalem and not seeking their approval while asserting the authority of his law-free gospel because it was entrusted to him – by God as the passive verb in verse 7 suggests.
The military language in verses 4 to 5 give witness to the struggle it was. This was not an easy issue to deal with. Regrettably, some brothers slipped in, spied, tried to compel, tried to enslave. You can infer that they wanted Titus as well as all other Gentiles to be circumcised. I imagine that the argument was as intense as any delicate issue discussed in a Presbytery meeting or the General Assembly or a session meeting; especially issues that cause divisions in the church, just as the circumcision issue was causing a division then. But Titus was not compelled to be circumcised. Aren’t you grateful? I mean the history of the church would be completely different if acceptance to the community would still be based on circumcision. On one hand I’m grateful that we symbolize acceptance to the community with baptism, which is a ritual that allows both female and male to participate, as the Women’s Bible Commentary duly notices. On the other hand, circumcision was only one concrete way of saying: follow the law. It was one concrete way of saying: become a Jew. The issue was so important because it would mean an imposition of the missionary’s culture unto the evangelized Gentiles. However, this is not an anti-Jewish letter. The conflict was internal to Christianity.
Regrettably, the problem was one of identity. Jewish-Christians of course wanted to keep their Jewish identity. Gentiles wanted to have a Christian identity. And as much as we may like the idea of Paul advocating for the respect of the Gentiles cultural identity, which he did, he was really proposing an identity based on higher criteria. Paul drove people’s attention to a grace gospel where Jesus Christ’s death on the cross was enough for justification and neither circumcision or law or cultural impositions should be a requirement to be redeemed.
One of the outcomes was that Titus was not compelled to be circumcised. Paul way of phrasing it is important because it is not about being circumcised or not, is about imposing the circumcision. The door was still open for people to do so willingly or not to do so, as the other outcomes suggest. They agreed on a division of the labor, in the words of True to Our Land, an African American commentary: “Paul and the other leaders agreed to a division of labor – with the Jerusalem leaders evangelizing the Jews with a law-observant gospel, and Paul evangelizing the Gentiles with a gospel free of circumcision.” Agreeing in one gospel of grace ensured the unity of the church. They used different people to continue the work with different communities and they agreed to respect the racial, ethnic and cultural identities of the people joining the church of Christ but ultimately they were one church with one identity, an identity defined by the cross of Christ.
Martin Luther found in Galatians a grace-gospel that offered freedom. He saw in the circumcision issue the religious practices that were enforced in his times in order to attain God’s grace.
Just as well we can apply to church nowadays. Regrettably, different ethnic groups come to the church and worship separately. They do so to protect their identity because they bring their culture to worship. Their ritual is different from other ethnic groups. It is a very good thing that the church embraces their differences and welcomes them to worship bringing their culture. But the danger is – as it was to the church of the 1st century, as it was to the church in the 15th century – that the church might forget their true identity: one united church built on one gospel of grace; justification based on Jesus’ cross, not on deeds, not on marks on the flesh, only Jesus.
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