Gospel in the Margins

Texts:

Psalm 147:1-11, 20c

Proverbs 12:10-21

Galatians 5:2-15 (read 5:1-15; verse one is a gem!)

Verse 1 and verse 13 highlight each other in today's reading.  "For freedom Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery... 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's chief concern in his letter to the Galatians is that they not be identified by anything other than Christ.  It is through Christ's action and not anything the Galatians have done, that they have received adoption as children of God (Galatians 4:4-7).  They have been freed from slavery that they might be freed for the other: "only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another," (Galatians 5:13).

It is difficult to understand Christian freedom.  It seems it has been swallowed up by the American dream, in which one can pull oneself up by one's proverbial and spiritual bootstraps, able to force oneself to work one's way through the middle class, and to work one's way right up to the pearly gates.  Freedom has come to mean personal freedom.  It has come to mean only freedom from our neighbors, but not so much freedom for our neighbors.

The truth is, I think most of us, deep down, want to be freed from our neighbor, not freed for our neighbor.  We want to be freed from relationship, freed from the guilt when we fail to care for the least of these, freed from sharing this subversive grace we have received.  But we have not been freed from relationship, we have been freed for the sake of relationship.

We have been made free so that we might see the least of these among us as our brothers and sisters.  We have been made free so that we might see the margins as the place where the Gospel happens.  We have been made free that we might be continually surprised by where Christ shows up.  The Word comes to us from the margins of the page and the margins of society, reading between the lines of text and societal stratification, with layers of meaning and relationship that deconstruct our walls of separation and indifference.  We have been made free so that we might be continually surprised by the God who frees us from ourselves for the sake of freeing us for the Other.