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It was exactly two years ago this past Friday. Peter and I were in Paris for our 15th wedding anniversary, a lifelong, long-deferred dream of using my high school French come true. We were walking off some wine and foie gras along the Seine. It had been raining for days, and the water level seemed unusually high to me, the walkways underneath the bridges deluged, and getting higher every hour. And then, out of nowhere, a tiny European police riot van suddenly raced by. Which in itself was a surprise. I thought the French police had long ago beaten their billy clubs into baguettes. Then another went by. Then another. Then another. I counted, and I’m not exaggerating, 43 riot vans went by over the next 20 minutes. 43!

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When I first starting reading the Bible as an adult, I really didn’t like Paul. He was so fussy and swirly; he could be so emotionally manipulative and had such pointed opinions about women in leadership; he countenanced slavery, and then there was that unfortunate oblique verse about same sex relationships in the first letter to the Corinthians that has fuelled 2,000 years of bigotry against queer people. Thanks a lot, Paul.

There’s a story that gets told on Martin Luther, father of the Protestant church. It’s said he preached a sermon on Love Thy Neighbor one Sunday. His congregation said to him on their way through the receiving line, good sermon, pastor. Good sermon pastor.

Our scripture reading this morning comes from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia. Let us now hear the word of God:

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