When our children were small, they liked to play games with us. But they liked it best when they could win. Whether it was crazy eights, or chutes and ladders, or just hide-and-go-seek, our children loved to play games as long as they could win. If they lost too much they would burst into tears and jut out that lower lip and pout, "I don’t wanna play anymore"
Now, of course, winning was very seldom possible in games of skill. Our adult reasoning just outstripped the children, and so they would lose lots of games. However, my wife, bless her compassionate heart, decided to rig the games so that mom and dad would lose. The real rules were cloaked in new rules in order to make things come out right for the children.
Did the roll of the dice turned out badly? The kids got extra turns. The children got the right cards slipped into their hands when they needed them. And when we played games that involved running or jumping, mom and dad suddenly were hobbled by a sudden disease or temporary blindness or some such fictitious handicap.
Now you must know that all of this was Margaret’s idea and not mine. I was used to winning, or, if you must know the complete truth, I was used to getting my own way. I don’t like to throw competition to anyone, not even a four-year-old. However, as much as it pained me to do so, I did agree that we would set aside the old official rules; that we would conceal and cloak them with new rules of our own invention, so that the children could have the pleasure of winning their games.
Wherein lies a parable. The meaning of which is that if you think of life as a game, a competitive game, in which there have to be winners and losers, then you are going to be locked up in old rules, rules that dictate that someone will be victorious and someone else will be defeated. But if you scrap the goal of winning, if you get beyond the need to compete, if you start to think first about being a family, you are glad to exchange the old rules for new rules. If your dream is not winning, beating somebody else, but if the dream is living in community, then it’s imperative to throw away the old rules and get some new ones.
Somewhere along the way all of us learned certain rules for relationships that go across life differences. We learned that young people were supposed to treat older people in certain ways, "Yes, sir; no, sir. Yes, please, ma’am; no, thank you, ma’am" (This last one to be said when a lady offered you another piece of pie, even though you wanted it desperately!)
We learned that men and women had rules for interacting, and that when the old boy network gets together they say things they wouldn’t say in front of women, children, preachers, or other frail things! And, lately, we’ve even learned that when "the girls" (in quotes) gather, they too have language that is never used in public. Just whisper it in my ear, Mrs. Gingrich!
And, dare I say it? We also know that whites and blacks have very selective behaviors. There are certain rules to follow when the others are around, rules you don’t necessarily follow when they aren’t around. Do you know what I’m talking about? Do you have an idea how many times I’ve been asked what it’s like to work with "YOU"?
Much of the world is still caught up in following those old rules. Much of the world is still playing by the old rules of interaction. I think it might be helpful this morning to uncloak those old rules. Let’s see if we can expose the old ways. Can we play a new and different game? On this Martin Luther King Sunday, 1995, can we dream again his dream of a place where black and white, young and old, rich and poor, female and male, and all the other groupings, play by new rules? The rules of family rather than of competition.
In the ancient world, there were plenty of rules about how people of different kinds were supposed to relate. In the world in which the Apostle Paul lived, the rules were very rigid, the categories very hard. Right here in our text Paul mentions just a few: Jews, the religious elite, versus Greeks, the cultural elite. Slaves, the lowest of the low, mere property; versus free persons, by which he probably meant free Roman citizens, persons like himself who enjoyed a variety of rights and privileges. And of course Paul mentions the most fundamental divide of all, male versus female, at issue ever since Adam said, "Eve made that apple stick in my craw!"
But now what Paul offers us is a vision of playing by new rules. He uncloaks the old social rules and then tells us that someone has come along and rigged the game in our favor.
Galatians 3:25-28
I
First, let’s see that Paul uncloaks the old rules. Let’s discover the label that Paul puts on the world’s way of relating across differences. Paul says that when we play by the old rules, we are imprisoned. Using old stereotypes on each other is imprisoning; it shackles the victim, of course. But it also shackles the oppressor.
"Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed." That phrase: imprisoned and guarded under the law.
You will remember that when Paul speaks of "The Law", he is, of course, talking about the Jewish ritual code. He is talking about all of the ritual commandments you find in the Old Testament, plus all of the extra interpretations that had been loaded on over the years. For our consideration today, think of the Law this way: the Law was the instrument that allowed the Jew to think that he was spiritually superior to everybody else. Because the Jew had the Law, he thought that everybody else was unclean, unwashed, and maybe just a little less than human.
Now Paul says, "That’s a prison. That shackles you. That keeps you from being free. Not only does that put down other people and imprison them; it also puts you down when you think that way." "Before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed."
We need to understand this morning that a great many of the ways in which we have learned to relate to one another are prisons. And everyone is affected by these prisons.
The old rules of the game, you see, were based on the idea that somebody is superior and somebody is inferior. Somebody is to win and somebody is to lose. Somebody is entitled and somebody is to be the servant. Somebody is to be up and somebody is to be down. That’s a real prison. But that’s the way the world still works!
No one said it better than Dr. King, who wrote from the Birmingham jail that no whites would be free until all blacks were free. We are imprisoned, all of us, when we play by the old over-under rules.
Several years ago, some of you will recall, we had an exceptionally moving Youth Sunday service. Our youth had been asked to read and respond to the parable of the Good Samaritan. They were to tell us which character they identified with: was it the priest and the Levite, passing by on the other side? Some did identify with those characters. Some identified with the Good Samaritan himself, believing that they had helped somebody. We were glad to hear that. But several said that they identified most with the victim, with the man who had been beaten and robbed. We were deeply moved by their stories and felt compassion for the pain of young people. It was truly a moving service.
But for me on that Sunday there was another dimension. I had had some experiences that I could mesh with what our youth were saying. Years ago I used to go around to churches in Kentucky doing youth retreats, and one of the things I would do with these youth … all of them white and most of them rural or small town kids ... one of the things I would do was to give them that same exercise, that very parable, and ask them to rewrite it in their own words as if it were in our time.
Inevitably, every time I did that, those Kentucky youth would think of the victim as black and would cast themselves, invariably, as the Good Samaritan. Though they had had little contact with African-American folks, their stereotype, which they meant to be compassionate, was that black folks are the down unders, the victims, the oppressed. And they, good people that wanted to be (after all, this was a church retreat) ... these youth saw themselves as the bountiful saviors of the poor and the lonely.
So what!? The problem is that in their thinking this way, they were more part of the problem than they were part of the answer. There was still, for all the right words they said, an over-under assumption. There was still the notion that they, white and middleclass, had the answers that other folks needed. And that is a prison. Those are the old rules, uncloaked and exposed. The prison is the assumption that we are superior to someone else.
So every time I say, I may not be perfect, but at least I’m not a hardened sinner, I am contributing to the over-under mentality. Every time I suggest, look at what somebody else does; she drinks, he womanizes, they spend compulsively, I’m so glad that’s not what I do. Every time I do that I am playing by the old rules. I am trying to win. And as Paul says, the Law has imprisoned me.
The issue is, I say, that as long as we live thinking that the game has to have a winner and a loser, we are trapped by the old rules prison.
II
But Paul has good news for us. Good news indeed. Because Paul now insists that someone has rigged this game. Someone has changed the rules and fixed it so that all of us can win. The old rules don’t apply anymore. The old ways of relating are overridden by something new.
"Now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or fee, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."
Someone has rigged the rules! Just as my wife had pity on the weaknesses of our little children, Christ Jesus rigged the rules. Christ Jesus, in His cross, brought to our lives the gift of grace, and because of His sacrifice, He has changed everything.
No longer do we have to put somebody else down in order to feel that we are somebody. He tells us, "No; that rule is gone". Now children of God, all of us who receive Him, no matter what else we may be.
The truth is that we all have one fundamental thing in common, and that is that we are forgiven sinners. The great common ground on which we all stand is that all have sinned, all, and all have fallen short of the glory of God, yes, but the forgiving, loving embrace of the Lord Jesus takes us in and loves us, no matter who we are, what we have done, or what we have not done.
So it doesn’t matter any more whether we are Jew or Greek, whether we’ve been in church since Day One or whether we just got here. It doesn’t matter whether we can barely read or have lined up after our names PHD, EDD, MD and Fiddle Dee Dee. We need to know only one thing, and that is Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
It doesn’t count whether we are slave or free, whether we are unemployed and on welfare or whether we are pulling down eighty grand, because we all have the same debt, and it’s all been paid. Jesus paid it all in the sacrifice of His blood.
It makes no real difference to be male or female, to be black or white, to be poor or wealthy, to be educated or ignorant, to be a buoyant extrovert (though I wish I could be) or to be an unassuming introvert. The fundamental truth about us all is that Christ has died for us, for every last one of us.
And therefore now we are in a family. We are not in competition, but we are in a family. We are not in a win-lose game, but in a beloved community. The old rules have been uncloaked and exposed; now there are new rules, and we call them love.
Friends, the answer to the ongoing issues of racism and sexism and classism and whatever other isms you can name … the answer is the church of Jesus Christ, where His name is lifted up and where His Spirit abides. The world will continue to play by its old win-lose rules. Apart from the church, under the cross, there is no other answer.
Nearly twenty years ago now I was called to be Director of Ministries in Higher Education for the D. C. Baptist Convention. That meant, among several tasks, that I was to serve as Baptist Chaplain at Howard University. Well, I got started very readily with my work at George Washington University; I got started with supervising my staff at several other campuses; I found my way into the churches to consult with them on their ministries with students. I got going on every part of my assignment, but the one thing I kept putting off was going to Howard. I had this sense that I was going to be treading on somebody else’s holy ground, and I was afraid I might not be very welcome there.
But eventually I did go, of course, and began to organize and carry out our Baptist ministry at Howard. In the process I began to cooperate with the campus ministers of five other denominations, all of whom were African-American. Our campus ministers group received one day an invitation to conduct an ecumenical communion service for a religious group having a convention in the city. We accepted in good faith and prepared for the day when we all six of us would conduct that service.
On the day of the service I received an urgent message. It said, "Do not go to the hotel. Do not go to the meeting. The service has been canceled." Of course I wondered what had happened, and went to campus the next day to find out.
The convention group had assumed that all the chaplains from Howard University would be African-American; when they found out that one of us was of paler hue, they told my colleagues, "Don’t bring him. We don’t want him."
What do you think happened then? Had they gone on to lead the communion service without me? No, they had not. They had said to that group, "The ministers at Howard University are united. We are together. If you don’t take all of us, you don’t get any of us." My brothers, you see, had refused to go and misrepresent the cross of Christ, who had died for all of us.
I wept for joy on that day, for I knew the glory of the new rules. And I felt free at last. Somebody rigged the game so that all of us could be winners and nobody losers. It wasn’t about competition any more; it was about the family. Somebody had uncloaked the old rules and had rigged some new rules. Somebody named Jesus.
