In preparation for this sermon I read some new books entitled “Roots of Christianity” and “Religious Diversity in the Graeco-Roman World: A Survey of Recent Scholarship.” There were chapters on the “Early Church” and “Diversity in Paul” which were helpful relating to this sermon based on the last chapter of Galatians. The theme suggested to me was: “The Responsibility of Freedom” and it comes from the author of another book. I will not develop the theme because it does not directly reflect Galatians 6:1-18. Instead, I will discuss legalism, freedom with responsibility and salvation by faith with works.

When I read this concluding chapter of Galatians I could have taken the easy way and just allow Paul to preach to you his sermon in his own words. All I have to do is to identify the different verses and put some sub-titles and voila here is a scriptural and biblical sermon a la Paul. It is a simple straight-forward presentation of the responsibilities of a believer when he or she is saved by faith.

Paul the preacher in his conclusion to his letter to the Galatians continues to offer directions to Christian living. It is a matter of the believer’s relationships and responsibilities. He listed five areas:

Relationships with others (6:1-2) with ourselves (6:3-5) with our mentors/pastors/teachers (6:6) between present and future (6:7-10 with the gospel (6:11-18). Here you have it - Paul’s sermon that you can read in your leisure.

But I have been tasked to prepare and preach a sermon. I have to reflect how Paul’s sermon and his teaching relate to our contemporary context. Our location and time is not the same as that of the Graeco-Roman world where Paul lived and served and was beheaded. Traditional principles have to be applied to contemporary settings. This is what a sermon is supposed to be all about.

Let us first examine Paul and the historical context in which he was in and the specific issues that he was addressing.

Paul was a Diaspora Jew and that is to say he was a Jew in Dispersion. He was born in BCE 10 and grew up in the city of Tarsus in the southeastern part of what is now known as Turkey. Tarsus was under Greek influence. As a Jew he was a traditionalist. He was sent to Jerusalem to be trained by the distinguished rabbi Gamaliel. He claimed to be the Pharisee of Pharisees and naturally was opposed to Jesus and His followers. He did not accept Jesus as the Messiah until he was converted on the road to Damascus and joined the Jewish sect of the Nazarene. From a persecutor of the Jewish Christians he became a proclaimer of the Christian faith and a pioneer missionary to the Gentiles in the Graeco-Roman world.

Paul was the inclusive Jew who freed the Jesus movement from the narrow confines of Judaism to become the universal Christian faith. Those who opposed him were not just Jews themselves but Christian Jews and he had to negotiate with the super apostles like Peter, James and John – the leaders of the early Jewish Christians. He brought the dimension of diversity and the principle of inclusivity into the Jesus movement. Paul almost single-handedly managed to prevent the Jesus movement from becoming a Jewish sect and propel it to the wider Gentile world to which he was moving in. Christianity gained universality.

Paul was stretching the message of the Jesus movement from its base in Middle East culture to that of Rome and Greece. From Jerusalem in the East all the way to Rome in the West the message of Jesus traveled and impacted and was in turn influenced by the dominant cultures in the West. Paul encountered the diversity of religious thought and beliefs in the Graeco-Roman world and sought to understand their value and significance in the proclamation of the gospel in the non-Jewish context. Even the language of the New Testament was cast in Greek and not in the language of the Jews in Palestine. He incorporated into his message of the Jesus movement thought forms and organizational structures which led to the development and expansion of the Christian movement.

He used a wide range of images or metaphors to communicate the gospel in his preaching and in his writings. He affirmed the need for diversity or adaptability to the different contexts and to the different people he met. Just look at I Corinthians 9:19-22 where he admits that he becomes a Jew to the Jew, and likewise with those under the law or outside the law, and to the weak. “I have become all things to all people, in order that I might by all means save some.” Not only is Paul the First Christian but he also shaped Christianity in the direction to which we have inherited today. A Professor of Divinity in the University of Durham, James Dunn describes Paul as the apostle of Christian diversity.

In his time there were Jews who like Paul who accepted Jesus as the Messiah. In all intents and purposes they remained Jews who had been circumcised and followed the Jewish laws. Gentiles were soon attracted to the synagogues and Paul met them in Antioch and the issue arose whether the Gentiles have to become Jews – undergo circumcision, follow Jewish dietary requirements, and observance of the Sabbath to become members of the Jesus movement.

The traditional Jews are of the opinion that the conversion of the Gentiles must entail the rite of circumcision. When Paul was opposed to the necessity of the ritual of circumcision of the Gentiles he was accused by the traditional Jews to have abandoned the Jewish religion altogether. The Jewish believers “have been told about you that you teach all Jews living among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, and that you tell them not to circumcise their children to oppose the customs.” Acts 21:21.

The controversy was resolved and a compromise was struck in the Council of Jerusalem in CE 45 when Paul met with the apostles and leaders of the Jesus movement. The Gentiles who accepted Jesus were not required to be circumcised and Paul was recognized as the missionary to the Gentiles while the others continued to spread the gospel to the circumcised. However, there was this traditional group of Jewish Christians who continued to insist upon it and was known as Judaizers. This was the issue that surfaced in Galatia and the primary purpose of Paul’s letter to the Galatians.

The Judaizers are the Jews who have accepted Jesus as the Messiah but still regard the special position of the Jews as the Chosen race. No Gentiles are allowed to inherit the promise of God. If a Gentile wants to follow Jesus the Messiah he or she must become a Jew first and therefore the insistence of the initiation rite of circumcision to mark them off as Christian Jews.

Paul was convinced of a different interpretation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Salvation is not dependent upon the act of circumcision and other human efforts. Salvation is entirely an act of God and upon the grace of God. Whatever we do cannot earn salvation. It depends upon human acceptance of the love of God and an act of faith. Humankind can never be able to keep the law completely because of our sinfulness. Ultimately our human works can never save ourselves for we are finally saved by grace through faith in the love of God.

How then do we relate Paul’s theme in the letter to the Galatians to our time. What is the form that legalism takes now? In Paul’s time the Judaizers demanded circumcision, dietary laws and Sabbath observances. We have different forms of legalism today that excludes other people from the Christian churches.

Let me just indicate a few. There are those who claim that unless baptism is by immersion it is not legitimate. But there are also those who insist that even though you have been baptized you must be baptized in the spirit and be born again. Further you must experience the Holy Spirit and that is evidenced but being slain (falling down), or receiving the gift of tongues, healing, prophecy, and even laughter as in Toronto blessing.

Another form of legalism that excludes certain people today is the way we are saved. There is the tendency to talk about salvation by faith alone and disregard good works. The most important and the only thing necessary is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith alone is required in following Jesus. Jesus did not appear in this world just to have a group of followers who believe in Him. Jesus did not die on the cross because of his set to beliefs or religious ideas. He died a criminal under the Roman form of justice because he was threat to the power and stability of the Roman rule. He died because he was recruiting people for the Kingdom of God. It was not an earthly kingdom that He came to establish but a rule of God in the daily lives of the people who undermine the power of Rome and the authority of the High Priests and the Temple. It was a new way of life as a consequence of faith.

The message of salvation by faith by Paul to the Galatians is often contrasted with the message of the importance of works in the Letter of James. Chapter 2:18 puts it precisely when James asks the probing question: “But some will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.” Faith by itself is unseen and not easily detectable. Works are obvious and visible. It is not an either-or situation.. It is a both-and proposition. Faith and works must go hand in hand. It is not a matter of one as a person of faith and the other a person of action. The person of faith must turn his faith into deeds and action. The person of action must be guided and motivated by faith. The person who spends time in praise and worship must be engaged in deeds of love and justice.

In the last few weeks I was enlightened and encouraged after visiting Istanbul and Paris and saw how two other faith communities put their faith into deeds. We met members of the Muslim community in the historic city of Istanbul who are inspired by their Islamic teacher, Fethullah Gulen, to engage in education and at the same to promote inter-faith understanding. Here is a group of Muslims who are focused in providing the highest quality education to the best students to ensure sound leadership in society. Concurrently they offer religious and spiritual formation with the dimension of inter-faith relations for a multi-religious society in the 21st century. They believe that no one religion can completely displace other religions around them and that we will always be living in a multi-religious society where no one is to be excluded because of faith or race. They embrace modernity in science and technology. They oppose secularism, materialism and consumerism. They promote spiritual and moral values in educating the whole person instead of just teaching them skills.

The other event is when the Pure Land Buddhists held an international conference in UNESCO headquarters in Paris and invited me to be part of an inter-religious delegation to symbolize that there can be no peace and harmony if we do not engage and relate to one another across religious boundaries. A Cambodian Buddhist monk made the observation that the conference did not talk about Nirvana in the hereafter but about peace and harmony in today’s world. They discussed the need to have peace within. But the conference also emphasized the need to make peace. Thich Nhat Hanh further proposed the calling of a summit of religious leaders for peace-making and appeal to the audience to address the issue of global warming.

Back here in Singapore early this year some Muslim organizations held a conference to promote inter-faith relations and invited leaders of other faith communities to the meeting. The Christian church leaders were noticeably absent in spite of some personal approaches to attend. My Muslim friends urged me to attend and I did even though I was on crutches. In the meeting I declared that in my retired state I am an “extinct volcano” and cannot represent the Christian leadership. They subsequently asked me for an explanation about the attitude of the Christian leaders. All I could say to them was that their theological orientation prevents them from relating to other religious leaders for they are more concerned with conversion rather than dialogue. They view engagement as a betrayal of their own faith.

This was an effort to respond to the government’s call to religious leaders to get engaged to promote racial and religious harmony in the Common Engagement Programme. Unable to organize themselves voluntarily it fell upon the authorities to organize the Steering Committee on Racial and Religious Harmony. The church leaders had no choice but to participate and found themselves recently standing with other religious leaders in the dedication of the Harmony Centre in the new mosque in Bishan.

A news reporter interviewed me and asked for my response over the Prime Minister’s comments on that occasion: “The observation was made about the fact that more people are becoming religious While it is true that there is more fervour but it can also result in social conflict instead of cohesion if they do not engage and enter into dialogue with one another across different faith communities.” I heartily agree with the danger when faith is not matched with inter-faith engagement.

My response was that with religious fervour within each religion the people will become segregated from one another and stay in their separate faith communities. There will be less common spaces. As a result there will be reduced social interaction and less social cohesion. Society will be fragmented along religious lines and the result is more social conflict. It is already happening especially in schools and in housing estates in spite of the fact they were forced to live with one another without developing the neighbourly spirit. The danger is that we will not be able to build a multi-religious society. The country will not survive unless we more actively promote religious dialogue and social interaction between people who belong to different faiths.

No one religion has all the truth or the monopoly of truth. No one religion has the chance to dominate and displace other religions in our globalized world. For our common survival we need to relate to one another. Our faith and belief must necessarily lead to works for peace and harmony.

Then closer home to us is the legalism that excludes gays and lesbians from church and society. You have personally experienced expulsion. Some of you were told to leave the church and stop whatever ministry you were doing. They wanted you to cut off communication with their exclusive Christian community. I wonder how anyone can remain in the churches which officially condemn you. You have to don on the mask of heterosexuality when you relate to such churches. Their kind of worship and the sermons and the teaching have not changed their views and they continue to assert that homosexuality is a sin or fallen nature. Their homophobia is still in place and reinforced. Where is this gospel of grace that they market so vigorously?

We in FCC have to consider the form of ministry and service to the GLBT community. This is the only one Christian church that open wide its doors and welcome the GLBT When you reach out and minister to the GLBT people who are suffering what will profit them if one of you says. “Have faith and accept the Lord Jesus Christ without helping them to reconcile their faith with their sexuality.” The best of churches outside can say: “I recognize your sexual orientation but to practice same sex acts is sinful. The only alternative is to lead a disciplined life of celibacy.” What kind of response can one expect from the GLBT? They can only reject the church and its message if that is what they only offer. We have to re-look at the forms of our ministry and service to the community.

I feel for so many of you when you are not freed from the legalism of our church on the issue of homosexuality. I know it is difficult struggle for you to go against what the church had taught for so long and how the Bible was thrown in your direction. I appeal to you to continue to struggle and not evade the issue and escape to other forms of service in the church. You need to come to terms with your sexuality. I hope that you can arrive at the stage when you can honestly affirm that homosexuality is a gift and a blessing. I wish as a straight I could do more to help you to be proud and gay. For those who have been able to relate your new understanding of faith and biblical teaching to your homosexuality, may I remind you to support others who are still immersed in their struggles. It does not help to say that since we are an inclusive church we can include contradictory views of sexual orientation and will not make a clear stand on whether homosexuality is a sin or not.

Paul finished Chapter 5 with what it means to walk in the flesh and walk in the Spirit. Salvation by faith leads to walk in the Spirit and to display the characteristics of Jesus – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Then in Chapter 6 Paul goes further to talk about our responsibilities and relationships. These are all good works which arise from our faith in Christ. Paul in preaching about salvation by faith attaches importance of good works. The deeds he opposes are those related to Jewish legalisms.

In Romans 2:6 Paul speaks of God who “will render to every man according to his works.” And in I Corinthians 3:8-9 “He who plants and he who waters are equal, and each shall receive his wages according to his labor. For we are all fellow workers for God…” Our beliefs or our faith must be lived out in our everyday life. Our salvation by faith is to be saved for God’s work in the world here now and not just for passage to heaven in the hereafter.

“What do you do” is what Paul talks about in Galatians Chapter 6. It was preceded by extensive teaching on the nature of salvation by faith. He reminded us of the fruits of the Spirit. Then there are the relationships that we have to establish and the responsibilities that we have to assume. These good works all flow from the salvation by faith. This then is the gospel of grace.