Sermon by Mr. Paul Dominiak, Seminarian Intern

July 8, 2007 * Proper 9

Lessons

Second Lesson:   Galatians  6: 7-16

+ In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!

Earlier this week, we celebrated – or should I rather say you celebrated? – what I affectionately call the Day of Colonial Aggression, known to you all as Independence Day.  Independence Day celebrates the declaration of freedom from British colonial rule; it celebrates the new creation of independent American states, which later became the United States of America.  The 1776 Declaration of Independence offered certain fundamental principles to define this new creation: most of all, the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  But what does St. Paul mean today when he describes Christians as a “new creation”?  What might be the fundamental principles which define Christians as a new creation? 

Today’s reading from Galatians with its talk of fleshly corruption, circumcision, law, and new creation greatly confused me because it is difficult to know what on earth Paul means.  So, I did what any God-fearing Episcopalian would do: I poured myself some Jack Daniels and turned on the tv.  Thank goodness!  My favourite movie was on: Dead Poets Society. Have you seen it?  As I watched the movie, I began to see links between it and Paul’s letter to the Galatians for today, especially that “a new creation is everything!”

            In Dead Poets' Society, Robin Williams plays an English teacher called John Keating. Keating teaches at a 1950s, conservative, strictly-by-the-rules, boys' boarding school in Vermont.  Keating inspires his students to make changes to their lives of conformity through his teaching of poetry.  Keating challenges his students to become a new creation, able to embrace their passionate, god-given gifts rather than merely conform to what their teachers, parents, and society expect of them.  Keating exclaims to a startled bunch of students at one point, “We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race….And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”  Keating then quotes from Walt Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”  What a challenge to be creative, to be a new creation in a broken world!  Ever since I first heard it, I have been inspired.

            In today’s reading from Galatians, we find St. Paul as a Keating-type figure with his passionate talk of new creation.  New creation has been a major theme of the entire letter, a new creation which overturns both what the world expects of God and what human beings expect of themselves. For Paul, Jesus gives us a new, poetic relationship with God.  We are no longer slaves; we are recreated as his children and are free to address him by the Spirit as Father, Abba (4:6). We also have a new, poetic relationship with one another.  We are no longer imprisoned and divided by barriers of race, gender, class, or sexual orientation; we are now recreated, free from sin and division, one in Christ (3:28).  And what is the fundamental principle of this new creation in which we share?  Not life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness.  No, Paul earlier tells the Galatians that the fundamental principle of our new creation is that we should love our neighbours as ourselves (5.14).  In a few moments you will share the peace with one another, that very forgiveness and love, just before the eucharist.  The eucharist itself is the food of that love, seen most poetically in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. In the eucharist, we become what we eat, a new creation of divine love seen in flesh.  This Eucharistic Love is the poetry of our new creation, the verse we may contribute to the powerful play, the divine love that beats through to and beyond the endless trains of the faithless, the cities filled with the foolish.  We today hear Paul asking us, ‘What will your verse be?’

Dead Poets’ Society especially focuses on one relationship: that between Keating and one of his students, Neil.  Neil is an incredibly gifted actor and writer, but his domineering father does not respect these gifts.  No, Neil’s father wants his son to go to medical school, to live a life of respectable conformity rather than listen to and act upon his God-given gifts, no matter how unusual that calling.  Yet, Neil decides to pursue acting which he loves and excels at, rather than medicine.  Quoting Thoreau, Neil says, and how much I admire them both, “I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life... to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”  Yet, Neil’s father forbids him from acting.  He tells Neil of his plan to enrol his son in Braden Military School as a punishment. Unable to cope with his feelings and equally unable to stand up to his father, Neil commits suicide with his father's revolver.  The gunshot rings through a sleeping house, through the snow-clad hills, and through his parents’ dreams to a waking nightmare.

So it is that today, we hear St Paul now sounding like Neil in many ways.  As Neil’s father opposes his desire for freedom, so too is Paul’s gospel opposed by some other Christian missionaries.  In today’s reading, Paul tells us of his rival Christian missionaries who insist that the Galatians follow Jewish cultic requirements such as circumcision in order to show they are a people saved by God.  These false teachers prefer boasting in their own status as a saved people to the risk of being a new creation in Christ, open to all.  Being a new creation in Christ weaves together, of course the joyful freedom of love with the crushing pain of the Cross, of rejection and pain endured in the hope that God’s grace can break down our sinful divisions.  What an inspiring and frightening thing.  How much easier it would be to conform to what the world, the flesh, expects of us: to ignore God’s dangerous call and exclude others; to believe in a God who will be satisfied with worship only on Sundays, five dollars on the collection plate, with circumcision, the outward shows of faithfulness, the God who requires no inward change. 

But how much more dangerous and thrilling it is to be the new creation which St Paul describes: to accept God’s bountiful grace like a wellspring within us, to suck the marrow out of a life of love, to live deliberately for Christ.  Like Neil, our earthly fathers may reject us.  But, do not despair or fall back: you live, move, and have your being in your Heavenly Father, for Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation. Belief in Christ, after all, leads you not to the death which poor Neil feels he cannot escape, but to the life of a new creation, and that life abundantly.  Put to rout all that is not life through the love of Christ.  When you come to die, know that you have died with Christ, and will rise with him, as we pray in the coming eucharist.  Seize Christ today and become a new creation.

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