St. Aidan's Anglican Church, Kansas City - weekly talks

Galatians 4:1-7

Throughout the letter to the Galatians, Paul clarifies the Grand Narrative of the Gospel, rescuing and restoring creation out of the bondage of death and decay.

Paul covers three broad categories for his exhortation in chapter 3:

Spirit (1-5); Scripture (6-26); Sacrament (baptism, 27-29)

The first five verses deal with their experience of the Spirit

(previous sermon: https://soundcloud.com/st-aidans/receiving-the-holy-spirit-galatians-3-vv-1-5-fr-michael-flowers).

He then appeals to Scripture and begins with Abraham. Why Abraham?

Abraham and Sarah … chosen, elected by God, to become the Father and Mother of the One People of God … to become Israel, chosen to be a light and blessing to the nations of the earth.

Abraham was chosen to be the Father of a people who’s seed (sperma) would undo the consequences of Eden, and to reverse the division, disintegration and disorder of Babel. Of course, Pentecost is the fulfillment of this. The Promise, the Spirit, comes and reestablishes communion among the nations … as the company of disciples in the upper room were filled with the Spirit, they spoke in the various languages of the nations. Babel is reversed and the Kingdom of God is moving forward.

Lastly, Paul deals with the sacramental reality of baptism and the resulting equality of all people in Christ. In Christ it is no longer possible to be primarily identified and type cast as Jew or Gentile, servant or free, male and female for all are ONE new people in the Messiah. The inheritance is given freely to all who believe.

Luke 10:1-12,16-20

Gospel passage: Luke 9:51-62

Deacon Aaron Williams is a Ph.D. candidate at Catholic University of America in Washington D.C. and a friend of our community.

Today's message draws us into the deep heart of the Father for his children. Our identity is firmly placed in Christ as sons and daughters of God.

Being a child of the Father has been our identity and destiny from the beginning of creation – because humanity was created in Christ – with the coming of Christ our calling and destiny were made clear for Christ is the revealer of the human person.

All people are made in God’s image, so that all of humanity, all the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, are children of God by nature. Sin is a rejection of that for which we are made. It is first a rejection of our identity, as children created from the Father, and second a rejection of our destiny, as children made for life with the Father.

Aaron concludes with a call to live all of life as a gift. May your heart be drawn close to the Father through the presence of the Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.

In Galatians 3 Paul begins a series of arguments posed to the churches of Galatia and the false teachers, a Messianic Jewish sect, who insist that Gentile Christians be circumcised and follow Jewish festivals and food laws. His first argument, verses 1 - 5, appeals to their experience in receiving and witnessing the manifestations of the Holy Spirit. After he questions them about their former experience in receiving the Holy Spirit, he asks why would they feel the need to doubt their new identity in Christ through believing the Gospel.

The fog of faith had settled and they began to doubt the simplicity of faith in Christ. They were eager for Jerusalem's validation, thus coming under the spell of the sect who sought to bring them back under the Law.

The presence and purpose of the Holy Spirit is to make Christ present, to empower and transform God's people for mission, and to bring conviction of sin, revealing Christ as Lord and Savior of the world.

Moving forward, our aim is to intentionally honor the presence and purpose of the Spirit in the work of salvation, to be truly Trinitarian and full recipients of the Promise to Abraham. We shall ask and expect that signs will follow the preaching of the Gospel. Holy Spirit, come and empower your Church ... for mission as much as renewal. May renewal be unto mission for the lost and the least.

Questions:

Does your understanding of salvation include experience with the Holy Spirit?

(Consider Galatians 3:1-5)

How do you handle the fog of faith?

Do you find simply trusting God challenging?

In today’s passage, Galatians 2:11-21, we see the tensions between the old order and the new age of the Kingdom working out between Peter and Paul. Peter is stuck. He’s acting inconsistently with the truth of the Gospel … that Gentile Christians are full members of the one people of God and the old food regulations, which depict the social barriers, a part of the wall erected between Jew and Gentile had been broken down. He’s eating with Gentiles … he’s having table fellowship … but when certain men from James pay a visit, Jewish Christians who seek to Judaize Gentiles, demanding circumcision, etc., Peter falls back into the old order. This is foundational for Paul’s argument.

Will there be two separate churches, divided along ethnic lines, or one church, united as one people?

Join us as we walk through a summary of Paul's letter to the churches of Galatia.

Part 1 of 8: Galatians 1:1-10

Verse 1: He begins with an immediate defense of his apostolic authority … sent NOT from men nor by man, but by Jesus …

… who raised him … and all the brothers with me.

Paul is not suggesting that we become independent and unaccountable to anyone … that he was not. He is simply stating the origin of his apostolic calling. Afterwards, Paul functioned in teams … “and all the brothers (and sisters) with me.” To the churches in Galatia:

v. 3 - Grace to you and Peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Greet (Gentile) and Jewish – grace & shalom foreshadowing …

Jesus gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us …

In Jesus, the Kingdom of God has broken into this present age, evil because it’s still under the reign of sin and death.

Those who receive the Gospel are transferred into another realm, the Kingdom of God – Where Christ is King and shares his righteous, peace and joy – in the Holy Spirit.

v. 5 - Paul’s AMEN is both his own expression of praise AND a plea to say the AMEN with him, a reaffirmation of the Gospel that’s being contended by false teachers infiltrating the churches of Galatia.

Saying AMEN in sincere faith affirms the power of transformation in the Gospel, the power of God for those who believe (Romans 1).

Now he comes out swinging! Verse 6

v. 6 Deserting the Gospel is not only walking away from a point of view, a set of beliefs, a creed, an opinion among many religious options … Deserting the Gospel is the same as deserting God.

In our age of relativity and pluralism, where one’s faith is viewed as a mere personal opinion, with no absolute or exclusive claims, this verse sounds very narrow and judgmental …

This present evil age seeks to pull us away … where sin and death still have sway on many … such talk it too much to handle.

Gospel – a subversive event … in the Roman world and in ours. The Gospel is about who the ruler of the world, of this age and the age to come, actually is. When we say that Jesus is Lord, we are saying that he is the one in charge …

Gospel was a secular term co-opted by the Church to describe the victory of Jesus over the powers of sin and death. Paul was an envoy, an apostle sent out into the Gentile world proclaiming this subversive message.

To alter this message, but adding to it, Jesus PLUS … was to risk cutting oneself off from the God of the Gospel. They are united in the Holy Spirit … God’s Word is breathed out by God’s Spirit.

Receiving the Gospel of Christ as it was delivered to the Church is how we are rescued from this present evil age into union with God, forgiven, restored and in process of transformation.

Paul’s children in the Lord are on the edge of rejecting the pure message and are being upset by false teachers who say that Jesus isn’t enough. Why?

People pleasing … the fear of man … fear of being shamed, ostracized, ridiculed … the false teachers are trying to please the sect in Jerusalem that wants the Gentiles to come under certain demands of the Torah … circumcision, jewism calendar & food laws … we’re going to see this play out in the coming weeks.

Baptism is being supplanted by physical circumcision …

How do we view this present age … friends or in tension (in it not of it?)

- continual AMEN to the pure Gospel … not cultural Christianity

- being confident and secure in the Gospel without fear or shame

As a community in worship, we have completed six months of the liturgical cycle from Advent to Pentecost, a time of contemplating and experiencing the story of our redemption.

Today, on Trinity Sunday, we reflect, in light of the Christ event, the way in which Christians speak about God and, thus worship God.

Trinity is a word the Church came to use to speak about the unity of God, that God is one in essence yet producing three distinct divine persons. And it is Jesus who reveals the Tri-Personal God. Jesus is the icon of the Father who in his Ascention sends the Holy Spirit. Thus, only in Christ do we come to see the reality of the Trinity, one God in three persons.

In John 13 - 17 Jesus teaches us that the Trinity is the inner life of God. To be a Christian is to enter this divine interior. This is what it means to be "in Christ."

We enter the inner life of God through baptism in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. We enter liturgical worship in the same triune name. We enter into prayer as those who pray IN GOD rather than merely TO God. We experience reciprocal koinonia (fellowship, communion) in community from our common communion with the Holy Trinity. The Church is birthed in the activity and life of the Holy Trinity (John 17, etc).

May you be drawn into the inner life of God, the beauty of holiness.

We gather on the Eve of Pentecost to be nurtured in our rich Anglican heritage. St. Aidan’s Anglican Church, KC, MO is a member of the Anglican Church of North America and a part of the Anglican Diocese of the Upper Midwest, a regional collective of churches called to foster a renewal of Word and Sacrament infused by the Holy Spirit (Scripture, Sacraments, Spirit).

The Great Commission of Jesus calls us to the mission of making disciples through Word and Sacrament — (baptizing in the name of … teaching them to observe …). We believe there remains a great spiritual hunger in our secular age. Atheism is not so much an issue as the desire to be spiritual, not religious. Since our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God (St. Augustine), we affirm any spiritual hunger as a gift to be nurtured. Our task is to help connect this spiritual longing back to the historic roots of classical Christianity infused by the Holy Spirit. To this end, we are blessed to host Canon Dr. Stephen and Dr. Barbara Gauthier.

Stephen is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America, a member of the preaching team at Church of the Resurrection (Wheaton, Illinois). He holds a Ph.D. in French from Vanderbilt University and has devoted a lifetime to the study of Scripture, theology, church history, liturgics, the early church fathers, canon law, and Carmelite spirituality.

Stephen also is a recently retired certified public accountant and has served for more than a quarter century as the Director of Technical Services for the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada. He is the author of numerous books and articles on accounting, auditing, and financial reporting, including Governmental Accounting, Auditing, and Financial Reporting, commonly known as the “Blue Book,” which is the standard manual for state and municipal accounting in the United States.

Barbara holds a Ph.D. in French from Vanderbilt and teaches Greek and Latin in the Wheaton area. Over the past decade she has gained wide recognition for her insightful e-mail updates on developments affecting the Anglican Communion. Barbara is responsible for the daily offices at Church of the Resurrection, and serves each Sunday as a prayer minister. She also teaches adult classes, both for Church of the Resurrection and for the Greenhouse Movement.

Stephen and Barbara have been married for more than 30 years and are the proud parents of three adult children, Marc, Paul, and Gregory.