(2 Kings 5:1-14; Ps. 30; Galatians 6L1-6)7-16; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20)
I started coming back to church in the early 1980’s, and at first it was slowly, once or twice a month; but before too long I was showing up most every Sunday. And one of the main reasons was that I had coming to see something: whatever I thought I’d learned about life, to that point, and about the way the world works, was being described most clearly, and truthfully, in the language of Christian faith: in what I was experiencing in church: in the scripture readings, in the sermons, in the prayers, in all the things we do together in the liturgy. And an example of this – something that happens in the world that’s made clear in Christian faith – occurred to me as I was thinking about a verse in one of the readings for today. Maybe because it was the Fourth of July last week, it’s an example from the world of baseball (our national pastime.) And I apologize in advance to any Yankee fans here for the painful memories this will bring up.
Even those of you who care nothing about baseball (or maybe just flat-out hate it) may remember that in 2004, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series for the first time in 86 years. There was a popular superstition that this long drought was caused by what was called the Curse of the Bambino: in 1918, right after winning their last World Series, the Red Sox traded Babe Ruth (whose nickname was “the Bambino”) to the Yankees. Gigantic mistake: Babe Ruth went on to become the greatest player in baseball history. And not only did the Curse of the Bambino mean that the Sox failed to win another World Series in all those years (sometimes coming heartbreakingly close), during that time the Yankees were their special tormentors, year after year turning up to beat them at the most crucial times, and in the most painful ways.
And in 2004 it looked like it was going to happen again: the Sox and Yankees met in the playoffs (which were best-of-seven) to determine which American League team would go to the Series; and the Yankees won the first three games. All they needed was one more, and the Red Sox now had to win four in a row. No team in baseball history had ever come back from a 3-0 deficit to win four straight, but that’s what the Red Sox had to do. And had to do it against the Yankees, who had beaten them so consistently in so many crucial situations, for so many years. The Curse of the Bambino hung heavily in the air.
But these Red Sox had a particular mindset. That year, they had taken to calling themselves “the Idiots.” One of them put it this way: “We’re just idiots this year. We feel like we can win every game, and we feel like we have to have fun. We want to keep the thinking process out of it.” Idiots: too idiotic to be aware of the Curse of the Bambino; too idiotic to know they couldn’t do something no one had ever done before.
And – because they were idiots – they did it. The Red Sox won those next four games, and went on to win the World Series in four straight. Embracing their identity as “The Idiots” gave them a freedom that did away with the Curse of the Bambino. People don’t talk about it much anymore, and the Red Sox have won two more World Series since then.
Now. This is all silly, yes? It’s just baseball: trivial, meaningless (except to people who think it’s not.) But to my mind, “The Idiots” meeting the curse of the Bambino is a tiny little vibration of a much larger and more profound movement of the Spirit, which Paul talks about in a verse from his letter to the Galatians, in the passage we heard today. It’s at the very end of the letter, when he’s summing things up: “For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything, but a new creation is everything.”
In this letter, Paul is writing to the church in Galatia which he had founded and then moved on from, keeping tabs on it through the mail (that’s what Paul did), He has recently been informed that there are now leaders of the Galatian church who are insisting that circumcision is a requirement for all baptized Galatian Christians, as specified in the book of Genesis for all children of Abraham.
This news drives Paul crazy, because it’s completely counter to what he taught them (and because all his hard work there seems to have gone down the drain.) So he writes to them to say, You’re abandoning the gospel which I passed on to you, you’re throwing away the fundamental truth about what God has done: about the way the world works. (Paul even opens the main body of the letter by saying, Even if I, or an angel from heaven, tell you something different than the gospel I communicated to you back then, don’t listen.) Paul is saying, Circumcision – and uncircumcision – is completely irrelevant. There is nothing you need to do – there is nothing you possibly can do – for Christ to live in you, and for you to live in Christ: Christ is alive: God has already done this, for you. The world has changed.
This is the new creation which Paul talks about: a new creation that does away with the dead hand of the Law, and its human requirements which choke the Spirit; a new creation that does away with the ways we divide ourselves (“There is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave nor free, there is no longer male and female; there is no longer Red Sox fan nor Yankee fan (for some people that’s the most unthinkable of all); for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
And there’s one other little touch in the passage we heard today that’s subtle, but very important. Paul dictated his letters: they were put to paper by a secretary, a professional scribe. We know this because at the end of a number of his letters he announces that it is he himself who is writing those particular words (“I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand”, or some variation of that.)
But – uniquely – at the end of the letter to the Galatians he does it in a different way. What we heard today was this: “See what large letters I make when I write in my own hand!” What he’s saying is: See how totally stupid my handwriting is? Aren’t you glad someone who’s actually good at it wrote the rest of this letter? So what he’s really saying is: I’m an idiot – just like you: a flawed human being – just like you; in the language of faith, a sinner – just like you: someone who is completely dependent on God’s love, and mercy, and goodness. And the seal of that love is God in Christ.
That’s a fact of life. And it doesn’t matter that we’re idiots. We’re free: free from our ignorance, free from our fear, free from our sinfulness. The only difference between us and everybody else is that we’ve been made aware of this; we try to stay aware of it; we try to live by it. Let us then say with Paul, May we never boast of anything but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to us, and we to the world. And peace, and mercy be upon us all. Thanks be to God.