Clothed in Christ
“Clothed in Christ” by Pastor Rosanna McFadden
Good morning! This morning’s text talks about, among other things, that we are all children of God through faith: I’m going to share a bit about my own family. Some of you know that I come from a family of three children – I have two older brothers.
[Slide 1] This is my oldest brother, Sander. He is four years older than I am, his full name is Sander Mack Eller, named for Alexander Mack Jr., the son of the founder of the Church of the Brethren, who went by Mack Jr., or more informally Sander
[Slide 2] This is my middle brother Enten, who is 20 months older than I am. His name comes from my father’s doctoral work on the Danish theologian Soren Kirkegaard and I won’t go into all the details. Enten and I are more similar to each other in features and coloring than we are to Sander, but if you expect the three of us to be the same, or interchangeable with each other, you’d be in for a surprise.
First of all, my brothers are smart — crazy smart. Sander blew through all the advanced placement math classes at our high school by his junior year, and took math classes at the local science and engineering college his senior year of high school. He went on to get a Master’s degree in Math and Computer Science, and taught Computer Science at a local polytechnic university for 29 years until he retired last June. Enten has a college degree in physics, made national news in 1980 for his resistance to the draft on grounds of conscientious objection, and is now a Church of the Brethren pastor. He runs the livestream and helps with tech for national events like Annual Conference and National Older Adult Conference. Anybody who knows me knows that these are not my skill sets. I have always tended toward the creative and artistic, with a little self-deprecating humor thrown in, to make up for the glaring deficits in math, physics, and computer science.
Of course, my brothers and I have a lot in common.
[Slide 3] Here we are with Enten’s wife Mary and my mother. My father passed away in 2007, but we three kids have the same parents, we grew up in the same household, we spent every summer from about 1970 to 1980 driving to Annual Conference and Washington State in the same green VW bus. It turns you can attract a lot of attention walking around a retirement community in matching tie-dyed shirts. I want to be clear that matching tie dye shirts are not the same as being clothed in Christ, but I submit this by way of introduction to our text from Galatians. The passage which Karen read us from chapter 3 is hopeful, but the larger context for this letter to the churches in Galatia–we don’t know how many churches there were–is a bitter one. Paul begins the letter with a standard greeting of grace and peace, and then in chapter 1 verse 6 launches directly into the purpose of this letter, and he doesn’t pull punches: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel — not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.”
It is Paul himself who led the Galatians to the grace of Christ and he is dismayed and angry that they have turned to other teachers. These other teachers are not named, but we can tell from what Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians what they are teaching: they are Jewish Christians who are convincing the churches in Galatia that the way to follow Jesus Christ is to adhere to Jewish law, especially in the matter of circumcision. Paul is writing to these churches to tell them that although he is a Jew by birth, he has found justification not by doing the works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ and the power of Christ’s death and resurrection. This is the context he is writing out of and the teaching of justification by works which he is writing to oppose in chapter 3 verse 23: Before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law. The law was our disciplinarian. There are communities and identities which are shaped by living by and adhering to the same set of rules: military academies, sport camps, prisons. Your identity and your goal is to be the best you can be by following the rules and doing it better than everybody else. Communities like this are often defined by the uniforms — and even the haircuts — they wear. A uniform sets you apart, but it also marks you as part of a certain group, with the same values and training as other people in that group.
In this passage, Paul changes up the defining characteristic of the group. Instead of Christians being people whose identity is that they all follow the same rules, Christians are folks who are all part of the same family. Verse 22 says, But 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. Christian identity as a family is both simpler and waaaay more complicated than following rules. Family is a pretty simple concept to grasp, after all, since everyone has a family of some kind. On the other hand, everybody’s family is different. Families are experienced differently even by members of the same family — my brothers and my mom and I highlight different things when we reminisce about all those summers of bus camping. Being part of a military academy (I’m speculating here) is hard work, but there is a lot of structure and a clear chain of command. A family, at least generally speaking, is more nuanced than that, and usually more complicated. People bring and develop different gifts, there’s not always agreement about who should be in charge, folks grow and change — and mature, hopefully — in the context of their family.
Paul writes, “as many as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ.” He is probably referring to the ancient church’s practice of baptism, where believers who had renounced their old lives and identities and confessed their belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior entered the water of baptism as a symbol of death and rebirth, and when they emerged, they were clothed in white robes. This is a great image to help me understand what it means to be part of the family of God. It is not adherence to the same set of rules and being uniform. I do not believe that we are called to be indistinguishable from one another. Paul knows that there is variety, and he is fighting for variety in the church: Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female. But he is saying that our identity is in neither uniformity nor variety; we are one because we belong to Christ. The reality that we belong to Christ is an act of grace. We don’t belong to Christ because we have followed the law; we don’t belong to Christ because of our amazing and varied gifts; we belong to Christ when we realize that neither the law not our hard work with save us, only the unearned gift of Christ’s love, shown to us by his death and his power, demonstrated in his resurrection. When we believe and commit to be part of that cause, and that family, we are clothed in Christ. We no longer belong to ourselves alone; we belong to Christ.
Being clothed in Christ does not mean wearing a uniform, but people should still be able to tell if you are a child of God. Betty Snyder has a yellow t-shirt which reads “The fruit of the Spirit is not a banana.” This refers to a passage later in this same latter, Galatians 5:22. I’m sure it’s familiar to many of you, but verses 23-25 are pretty good too, so I’m going to highlight that whole section. It begins by listing the fruit of the Spirit, and of course by ‘fruit,’ Paul doesn’t mean a banana, he means the gifts, or the manifestation of the Spirit. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us be guided by the Spirit.
It may shock you to know that there are people in this family of faith here at Creekside who have different opinions and convictions than you hold. There are also people who have different gifts than you do: I appreciate and esteem folks who are good at math and physics and computer science, but the world also needs people who are creative and have a good sense of their own limitations. My goal as a pastor has never been to get everyone to agree about everything, or behave alike. Partly because of my sense of my own limitations, but mostly because I don’t think that’s where the Spirit is guiding us as children of God. But if we can be people who are clothed with peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, then we are part of a family which belongs to Christ. We are part of a sprawling and diverse family of Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, men and women who are united because we have accepted Christ’s grace. God bless you.