Table of Contents

Table of Contents



Introduction



Monologue #1: Circumcised or uncircumcised: What is my identity?
Based on Galatians 2:1-10



Monologue #2: Slaves or adopted: Are we living a gospel of freedom?
Based on Galatians 4:1-11



Monologue #3: Sarah and Hagar: What’s a mother to do?
Based on Galatians 4:21-5:1



Bibliography



Bibliography

Blount, Brian K. General Editor. True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007.

Braxton, Brad R. No Longer Slaves: Galatians and African American Experience. Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 2002

Cousar, Charles B. An Introduction to the New Testament: Witnesses to God’s New Work. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2006.

Cousar, Charles B. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Galatians. Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, Louisville, 1982.

Luther, Martin. Comentarios de Martín Lutero. Vol 2: Gálatas. Tr. Erich Sexauer. Viladecavalls, Barcelona, España: Editorial CLIE, 1998.

Newsom, Carol A. and Sharon H. Ringe. Women’s Bible Commentary. Expanded Edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1998.

Sacra Pagina: Galatians. Frank J. Matera. Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1992.

Sandra Hack Polaski. A Feminist Introduction to Paul. St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 2005.

The Anchor Bible: Galatians. Vol 33A. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1998.

The Discipleship Study Bible

The Harper Collins Study Bible NRSV

The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. XI. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1994.


Sarah and Hagar: What’s a mother to do? (Galatians 4:21-5:1)


Hello, my church. May God bless you. My name is Isabel Quirós and it is for me a pleasure to be with you today. I come from very far and I never thought I would come to the United States some day. I always said I would not get on an airplane if they paid me. But I did not think also that my son would be successful so far away from me. I always thought he would do well but not soooo much. My boy, why did not you stay in Puerto Rico taking care of a church there? Ok, you do not have to say anything now; we will talk in your house. For sure he is going to say that I am embarrassing him in public again, but the truth is that I am very proud of my boy. After he studied to be a pastor, he became a doctor and he knows a lot about the Bible, so I ask him all the questions that I have. You see, I read the Bible a lot. Sometimes I ask questions that my former pastors look at me with their mouths wide open and try to tell me stories that don´ convince me so I ask my son.

Well, they didn´ invite me to talk about my son. They invited me to talk about Paul and of his allegory of Sarah and Hagar. ¡Quite a man this Paul! He is famous as a male thinker and arrogant I would say. But when I realized that he defended the gentiles when others thought that they should be “circuncised” and then I realized that Paul was protecting them because they were trying to impose upon them a culture that it wasn´t theirs so as to become part of the people of God, I said to myself: “I have to study this letter to the Galatians more thoroughly.”

And listen, you know what I learned? That over and over again, with a different story Paul insists that the right gospel does not require the gentiles to be “circuncised” to be part of the People of God. Paul is telling the Galatians that whoever tries to force the gentiles to be “circuncised” is as if they were being slaved again and therefore minimizing Christ´s sacrifice on the cross. Look, I think that those Galatians misunderstood the whole thing. Either that or Paul was upset, because he says the same thing three different ways. First he tells them that that was what was agreed at the Jerusalem Council many years back. Then he tells them of slavehood and freedom. He tells them of being children of Abraham, of law and grace, of the slaves and of the adopted children, and last, tired of saying the same thing in 20 different ways, it seems to me, he tells them the story of Sarah and Hagar. I will tell you something: I din´t like it at all what he does with the story because he does not mention Sarah at all. Then he changed the identity of the sons to be because of the mother, to be because of the father and then at the end of the story Hagar is in a poorer situation than in the original story because besides being a slave and a foreigner Paul leaves her “kicked out” and having children that will be slaves. But, when I learned that the purpose was to give a new interpretation to an old text, on light of Christ´s sacrifice and with a liberating message for the gentiles, then I calmed down.

The situation was that there were people preaching to the Galatians that they had to be “circuncised” to be part of the community of believers and apparently “those who were confusing them” (which Paul never really identifies) were using the story of Sarah and Hagar. They said that the children of the covenant were the children of Sarah, the “circuncised”, but other of other races, the foreigner or gentiles, like Hagar and the Galatians, who were not “circuncised” were not children of the covenant and they were not heirs. So, you know, if the Galatians wanted to be heirs they would have to change mothers and according to the “troublemakers” they would be heirs if they get “circuncised”. And then Paul appears and tell them, “No way, Mr. That’s not so. If you interpret allegorically the story of the free and the slave you will find out that really the children of the covenant are the children of the promise, the children born by the grace of God, not by human will like the son of Hagar.” Do you notice that Paul changed the story? Now it turns out that it is God the father who determines if they are children or not and the “criteria” is divine intervention, it is not race nor culture. For sure Paul scored. I imagine that those who heard this new interpretation of the story were dumbfounded with their mouths even wider than the pastors when I ask them questions that they cannot answer. And Paul used this interpretation to encourage the Galatians to reject any teaching that was not according to the gospel of grace. They were to stand firm against any threat to the freedom that Christ obtained on the cross.

Well, but Paul had already said that of the new identity based on God and Christ´s crucifixion so I kept thinking “what would be what´s new” in this passage. I kept thinking if Paul meant something new in this passage and that´s the reason why he tried to reinterpret the story of Sarah and Hagar. Naturally, he had to show that he was well versed in the scriptures and could interpret them as well as those “troublemakers”, but I thought there must be something else. Then I realized that what is new about this passage is the quotation of Isaiah of the sterile woman but who has many children and the references to the present Jerusalem and the celestial one. At first sight one associates a sterile woman with Sarah, who gave birth by divine intervention when she was older than I am now. But it turns out that such words of Isaiah refer precisely to the city of Jerusalem. That is what my son told me, who is the one that really knows about theology. Then my son showed me in a chart that Paul was using a way of philosophizing that was like placing opposite ideas in two columns. Hot-cold, good-evil, etc. Well, Paul place in this chart of Galatians 4: law-freedom; children of the free-children of the slave; present Jerusalem-future Jerusalem; earthly Jerusalem-celestial Jerusalem; Hagar- ____________(blank). Look, when I saw the chart that my son wrote and I “look” at the space blank it came to mind verse 4:19 that Paul says that he is having childbirth pains. I thought: “Naturally! Paul does not mention the name of Sarah because he is Sarah, and does not mention the names of the “troublemakers” because they are Hagar.” Paul was comparing his preaching with theirs, and the gospel that they preached with the gospel he preached. Can you see that the two covenants he mentions are not the New Testament and the Old Testament, neither Judaism and Christianity? They are two different interpretations of the sacrifice of Christ and of how one can enter the Christian community.

But what Paul says in this passage that is new about Jerusalem, when you place it in the chart, the present and earthly Jerusalem is placed on the same side as the law and slavehood. Do you see where I am going with this, right? Paul is placing the blame about the “confussion” in Galatia on the church in Jerusalem. Look, it had already been agreed in Jerusalem that the preaching to the gentiles was about a gospel free of the law and the circumcision and now this people show up and start preaching a whole different thing and Jerusalem lets them do so. No wonder Paul was disappointed! Paul was holding the leaders accountable for their responsibility to enforce the agreement reached at the Jerusalem Council and their responsibility to accept all the gentiles who believed in the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ and their responsibility to protect them so that no one would force them to be “circuncised”. Paul is calling the leaders to shape up.

Dear church, this is a never ending tale. Nowadays we do not talk about been “circuncised” or not but just the same there are groups who want to impose rules and who judge other believers because they do not observe the same religious practices. Nowadays in my church we do not talk about Christian Jews and gentile Christians but I notice that they talk about Hispanics, Latinos, Asian and other minorities and there are some who criticize that each group worship God with different music and instruments. Well, I don’t like what I hear that Calvin talked about a capella” nor do I like that about using only the organ. But nothing of that is what is important. In this passage what is important is that Christ obtained for us the freedom to be called children, male and female, regardless of our race or our culture. In this passage what is important is that such freedom requires us to claim from our authorities and our leaders when they are not accepting their responsibilities. Dear church, what are the divisions in our church today? What are our leaders doing “regardin” this? Are they working for the unity of the church or are they allowing, or even causing, more divisions “en el” body of Christ? Get up, dear church! Live you freedom in Christ. Let us pray.


Slaves or adopted: Are we living a gospel of freedom? (Galatians 4:1-11)



Hi everybody! Thank you so much for inviting me today. I’m thrilled to be here. It is so exciting! My name is Violet Green and I’m an artist. I love colors! I guess I was “predestined” – as Presbyterians say – to be an artist since my parents decided to name me after a color; and it was a coincidence that my last name was Green. I love being an artist because when I’m painting it’s like… it’s indescribable. There are no boundaries. I’m free. And I feel so close to God… I’m not Presbyterian or anything. I’m still spiritual but not religious.

Anyway, I don’t want to bother you with my own way of living. I’m here to share with you an exercise of reflection based on artwork observation. This is what I do for a living – because only painting does not quite pay the bills, if you know what I mean. Today I want to share with you one of my original pieces. It is based on Galatians 4:1-11. (Shows a collage with Christ on the cross in the middle; pictures of slavery on the left and pictures of light on the right.)

Let’s talk first about the formal aspects of the collage: What do you see? How did the artist use colors? How did the artist use shapes? What immediately grabbed your attention? Notice that Jesus divides the space into two distinct zones. It’s almost a before and after portrait. The side on the left has a darker atmosphere almost sad. The side on the right has more bright colors and light.

Now let’s talk about the content of the collage: What do you think is the message that the artist wants to convey? What does this artwork tell you? What do you think God is telling you through this drawing? What do you see? Jesus looks like he is in the outer space. He is a cosmic Jesus. There are slaves of different ethnicities and ages. On the other side, there are no boundaries.

In Galatians 4:1-7 Paul paints a picture of the human history. He is sharing his Cosmo vision of a world enslaved “under the basic principles of the world” and then liberated at the right time. For Paul the right time was Jesus’ death on the cross. Then in verses 8-11 Paul applies his thought to what is going on in the Galatian churches: other preachers are asking the Galatians to circumcise as a requisite to belong to the community of believers and be heirs. In the previous chapter Paul re-defined the meaning of “Abraham descendants” to be those that believe in Christ. He used the image of a custodian or tutor to assert his point that following the Law is being without power, while they are supposed to be enjoying the freedom that Jesus gave them. In chapter 4 he is using the images of slaves and emancipation, of adopted children and heirs.

Let me ask you something, what do you think when you hear “redeem”? Salvation, right? You hear church, Christ, change. What do you think when you hear “manumission”? Slavery, right? What about “emancipation”? Could be of a slave to free person or of a minor into a person with all rights that an adult have. Well, the word “redeem” that Paul used was the Greek word for freeing a slave. He used a word usually used for legal human transactions and applied it to a Christological statement. The story in a nutshell is about humanity being in a powerless state, and then experiencing liberation because divine intervention and then supposed to be living in a free state but really looking for ways to go back to enslavement. (Shows the same collage with the addition of an image of a scroll and celestial bodies.) Paul is saying to the Gentiles hearing these words that their first period of enslavement was worshiping false gods, or the celestial bodies or the elements of nature. He is saying to the Jewish Christians hearing these words that their first period of enslavement was trying to comply with the Law as a requisite to belong to the religious community. He is telling to all of them that observing special days and months and seasons and years and requiring circumcision is going back to enslavement.

What should happen after the fullness of time, when God intervenes by sending his son as if Jesus was breaking into a prison and freeing the prisoners, is life as emancipated people. People are no longer minors; they are the heirs, with all that represents. People are no longer slaves; they are free. But what is happening according to Paul is that they are moving backwards by observing the Law as a requisite to the new state. Paul insistent exhortation is against re-enslavement.

From an African-American perspective, Brad R. Braxton interpreted “the basic elements” as cosmic powers or demonic powers, forces that operate in the world. He put the emphasis of his interpretation in the act of redemption/emancipation/manumission and the consequent freedom. He embraced Paul’s exhortation to not go back to slavery. In Braxton’s perspective slavery means the dominant ideology.

Martin Luther, defending a gospel of grace and justification by faith in the midst of a church that promoted works as a means for justification, interpreted “the basic elements” as the letters of the Law. He interpreted the fulfillment of time as the time of grace.

Following Paul’s example we are called to interpret scripture to our own context, just as Braxton and Luther did. As Galatians is a general epistle addressed to the universal church we need to reflect as a community and not as individuals. Because of Christ, the church is living in a new era. The church is supposed to be enjoying its inheritance as freed people. The church should be ensuring the state of freedom for the world. Yet there are many forces enslaving the world today. Today dominant ideologies that worship capitalism over human dignity step on fellow brothers and sisters and make them modern slaves. (Show collage on modern slavery with pictures about human trafficking, immigrant workers, sweatshops.) If the church allows this modern enslavement to continue, Christ will be of no value to us at all and it is like Jesus died in vain. When the church contributes to this reality by buying very cheap clothes made in a sweatshop or consuming farm products that came from opression or investing in companies that manufacture in other countries because they can hire lots of employees at sub-human salaries, the church is not living out the freedom that God intended by sending Jesus.

I love colors. I love people. I love freedom. I love Jesus and I want to see that the state of freedom he inaugurated on the cross is now a reality in the world. Let’s join in prayer and action for a world free of bondage.

Circumcised or uncircumcised: what is my identity? (Galatians 2:1-10)

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.

Introduction

One of his earliest writings, the epistle to the Galatians is one of the undisputed letters written by Paul. He is addressing the churches in Galatia that he founded a few years before. The purpose of the letter is to remind them of the one true gospel of grace and encourage them to stand firm against any other gospel. The letter responds to the acceptance by these churches to the teachings of Jewish-Christians that are requiring them to circumcise as the next step in their new life as Christians. Paul works toward this goal sharing some ecclesiastic history, writing sound and innovative scripture interpretation, appealing to their personal relationship, and pleading for the expulsion of the “troublemakers”. Paul uses the best methods of argumentation common during his time and each argument introduces new possibilities to the main idea of a law-free gospel.

This paper explores hermeneutical possibilities of the passages looking at the implications of the law-free gospel of grace for cross-cultural relations in ministry, identity, the role of the church in the world, and the accountability of the church’s leaders. Each passage has been studied, analyzed, and translated into a monologue in order to apply the teachings of Galatians to our current contexts.

The first monologue comes from a university professor specialized in “human relationships.” She observes human behavior and is always looking for ways to improve human relationships by providing tools for people to relate to each other. She is ugly with big cheeks and big teeth that come out of her mouth, but she has a very high self-esteem and very nice posture. She wears elegant clothes but she doesn’t iron her jacket and she wears snickers with her dress. The word “regrettably” is one of her trademarks.

The second monologue is from an artist that reflects on scripture through the lenses of visual art or she appreciates works of art through the lenses of scripture. She doesn’t attend any church but she has a close relationship with God and studies scripture by herself. She has a very up beat personality and speaks very fast but in moments of insights she speaks very slow.

The third monologue is from a very old lady born in a rural neighborhood in the mountains of Puerto Rico. She only studied elementary school but she reads and studies the Bible avidly. She reads a lot of other books and is a self-educated person with simple vocabulary from a country context. She has a son that became a minister of the word and sacraments and then obtained a Ph. D. and works as a systematic theology professor in a seminary in the United States. This monologue should be performed in Spanish with a translator, since Doña Isabel doesn’t know English. The monologue was actually written in Spanish with Isabel’s words and translated by an educated woman that tried to be faithful to Isabel’s limited education.

The assumed audience for these monologues is a Sunday morning worship service in a Presbyterian congregation, during the time of the sermon. Use your imagination to visualize the characters speaking the words of the monologue. Enjoy the reading and enjoy God’s grace to humanity as inaugurated by Jesus Christ on the cross.