Sunday, June 16, 2019 - 9 AM

Custodian – Galatians 3:23-29 Bascomb UMC / June 16, 2019 / 9AM & 11AM Focus: Our full claim as mature disciples – brothers and sisters of Christ. Function: To get on with the business of the church – to BE the body of Christ! 5 Purpose Outcomes of the Church: Worship, Fellowship, Discipleship, Evangelism, Service Galatians 3:23-29 (CEB) 23 Before faith came, we were guarded under the Law, locked up until faith that was coming would be revealed, 24 so that the Law became our custodian until Christ so that we might be made righteous by faith. God’s children are heirs in Christ 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian. 26 You are all God’s children through faith in Christ Jesus. 27 All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 Now if you belong to Christ, then indeed you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to the promise. A Time For Children - Object: a bag of differently colored marbles - Do you know what I have here? (Pour some of the marbles in your hand.) Marbles! (Hold them up one by one as you speak.) Are they alike or are they different? Yes, they all look very different. There are a lot of different colors; in fact, no two are exactly alike. Would you like to see them? (If appropriate, pass the marbles around for the children to examine them.) You may have one you like best -- perhaps you like one color better. Perhaps there's one that just feels special when you hold it. But the marbles aren't really different. Even though they look different, no one marble is more special than any other. We use them all the same way when we play games. People are like marbles. At first, we all look different. We are different sizes and colors. No two people are exactly alike. Even identical twins have different fingerprints. But you know what? When God looks at us, he doesn't see the differences. We are all wonderful, special people to him. We've learned in our lessons that God even calls us his children. It would be easy to decide that some people are better than others. Lots of people think that way. But in God's eyes it doesn't matter if you are a girl or a boy, rich or poor, tall or short. It doesn't matter what color you are. You are one of God's precious children, and so is the person sitting next to you. So is the person who is homeless. So is the person in jail. So is the person living in a village on the other side of the world. One of Jesus' biggest lessons was that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. We are to love all people the same, just as God loves all of us the same. We are all God's children, and we've learned that that makes us brothers and sisters to each other. It isn't always easy to see the world the way that God does, but God can help us. We should ask God to help us see the things that make us the same and not the things that make us different. Prayer: Help us, God, to love each other the way you do. Please show us that our differences are wonderful, but also help us remember that we are all equally special. Amen. Custodian is the word I want to focus on in this text. Now we don’t use that word the same way Paul intended. We use custodian as an alternative for janitor and that’s not quite accurate. A true custodian would be responsible for the care of the building, not just cleaning the building. That’s what Paul means by custodian – a caretaker, someone who looks after the entire well-being of something or someone. I said an “Au Pair” or “Nanny” would fit better what Paul is talking about. A babysitter comes close, but babysitting is such a temporary assignment. A babysitter seems more like a teenager being an adult for a few hours so that the parents can go out and try to be like teenagers. And I know it’s hard for first-time parents to turn over our precious child to a custodian. With my first child, Emily I called to check like 5 times while I was out. But it does get easier. Do you find that by the second child you just leave your cell number and if there is a third child, well, don’t call me unless they need stiches? The true custodian fills in for the parent as the rule-keeper, the boundary-maker. Is that why we go from teenagers being told by parents what time to be home to adults being told by the babysitter what time to be home? We need boundaries. Without them, we are never sure when we’ve gone to far, when we are out of range of Daddy’s voice. Paul says the Law acts as a boundary, a custodian, if you will. Pentecost was a Jewish festival before we Christians co-opted it. One important aspect of the festival was the giving of the Law through Moses. Paul had a lot to say about the Law. Pai-da-gogos is where we get the word pedagogy – instruction. But a translation of the word as “tutor” or “teacher” mistakes the law as educator. According to Paul, God gave the law “because of transgressions” (3:19). The law exposed selfishness and self-righteousness, it uncovered rebelliousness against God’s will. Paul did not think people were learning “how” from the law, we were just being condemned by it. The Law had the negative function of putting the bar too high. We had to see success in our own strength as impossible – you can’t keep the law. The law did not have the power to make people holy. It was not a remedy for sin; its work was diagnostic. Even if it could be obeyed perfectly, it did not seal our hearts with a love for God and neighbor – the two greatest commandments. Paul was therefore convinced that, faced with such an impossible task, we would forget about self-righteousness and come to trust in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. We realize the law’s impossible demands, realize our inability to EVER leap that bar, and we can finally appreciate and receive the healing and forgiving grace of the gospel. Jesus jumped the bar, completed the mission, did what NO other human could do - fulfill the law and remove its curse. That made the Law’s custodial function obsolete. The purpose for the law was to train infant Israel to prepare for Messiah — but with the coming of the crucified Lord and the Holy Spirit’s release in us after the ascension, the LAW’s purpose was no longer necessary. “…now that faith [Paul means faith in Christ] has come, we are no longer under a custodian” Galatians 3:25 (CEB). Now how do WE understand the place (and the misplacement) of the LAW in the church? One negative and two positives I offer today. First, the LAW can no longer be a wedge to divide people. Paul opposes Judaizers and advocates for a place in the church for Gentiles, for anyone who’ll come. Second, the LAW is no longer a threat. Its curse is gone; its custodial role is at an end. Don’t be terrorized by demands and condemnation. Christ has taken its curse and (the third and positive thing), we now rely upon the Holy Spirit by faith for the motivation we need to behave and live together. We receive a desire to love one another (as Jesus loved), not some list of requirements to make us acceptable – Christ makes us acceptable, period! So, let us extend Paul’s metaphor of the law as pedagogy - those who are “in Christ Jesus” have graduated from the law’s training. We reach forward to maturity when we acknowledge our failure to stand on our own. And if none of us can stand on our own, then distinctions between the obedient and the disobedient (we are both – are we not?), the mature and the immature (why YES I am – BOTH), AND the accepted and the rejected must break down (if I want to be accepted, then I can’t reject anybody). Seeing each other as “clothed in Christ” means the basic human distinctions of race, class, gender, and you name it…..just break down. Don’t be naïve now, baptism does not mean shedding all group-identifiers. Instead, being a member of the family of God is our CORE - Number ONE group-identifier. Distinctions do not disappear. Jew, Greek, … slave or free, … male and female distinctions still stare us in the face. But the distinctions lack bearing for our faith because we are “clothed in Christ” and shaped by the Holy Spirit. The way we relate in the church should mirror the relationship inside the Godhead, the Trinity. Three distinct persons are nevertheless one God. Many distinct Christians are nevertheless one church. This raises the question of how we understand adulthood - developmentally and theologically. For the sake of the Father’s will: the kingdom’s growth as God’s will on earth as it is in heaven, you and I should become an adult in relation to Christ—to use Paul’s language—to become a (wait for it……) grown-up -- child of God. Are we truly grown-up or do we need a babysitter? Are we trustworthy and faithful to obey God? And BTW – I have the Holy Spirit same as you. I don’t need you (unless I ask you) to tell me how to obey God. You (and the HS) figure YOU out and I’ll figure ME out using that same Holy Spirit. If we really believe and follow, we could never prefer to be looked after by a babysitter. Being an adult person of God calls upon us to behave as if we are free, trustworthy, responsible, faithful people of God and yet, different in our expressions of Christ. The need for a disciplinarian parent is long past. The whole of Israel’s history from Moses to the Messiah has been a time when Israel was either enslaved or under a custodian. Now that we live in the time of deliverance, we should be excited to develop a family of God here - year after blessed year. Why would we go back to being a child when we can live in God’s kingdom as a grown-up? Why would we want to go back to living in bondage to the LAW, when we can be free in Christ? The sign of the grown-up child of God, the badge of God’s free people, is that God can trust us with responsibility: the act of loving God and loving others. WE are people of faith and trust in God for everything else. WE believe and trust the gospel and in our Abba Father, our loving God. So, let US build a family of God in this place! Let US build a church at Bascomb like fully-grown brothers and sisters of Jesus would do – that’s serving the will of our good, good Father………. let us pray…………..