Galatians 5

Deviled Eggs

Posted on by Betsy

If you know me in real life, you know that I have a particular weakness for deviled eggs. I blame my United Methodist upbringing, where weekly pot luck suppers are as ritualized as monthly communion with Welch’s Grape Juice. We joke that the Catholics wear crucifixes around their necks, the Jews wear a Star of David, and the Methodists wear a miniature casserole dish to display our denomination. I love everything about deviled eggs and when I retired, my church celebrated with an entire table of deviled eggs. It was heaven, I tell you! Deviled eggs are the only place the devil is welcome in a church.

The recipe for deviled eggs is pretty basic, with some interesting variations. The cooked yoke is mixed with mayonnaise, salt, pepper, mustard, and possibly relish.(Only dill, please!) From there, cooks use their regional imaginations to add flare and personality. First and foremost in my heart are any and every kind of church lady deviled eggs, but if I had to do a power ranking, I would go with the lobster deviled eggs on an NCL ship next, the avocado and bacon deviled eggs my friend Teresa makes (she is a retired United Methodist minister: She has eaten a lot of deviled eggs in her life!) in third place and finally Art Smith’s creamy confections at the Homecoming Restaurant in Disney Springs coming up in fourth place.

One of my favorite Scriptures is Galatians 5: 22-23 because I think it reads like a recipe for good Christian living. If you mixed this things together and placed them in the center of your heart like the yoke of a deviled egg, you wouldn’t fall short of God’s expectations. Paul sent this recipe to his church in Galatia, hoping to teach them God’s ways and God’s hopes for the fledgling church.

Galatians 5 (Common English Bible)

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against things like this.

Savor that list again. Of course Paul starts with love, as love is the very definition of God. Joy follows, and it is through our joy that others are curious to learn more about God. Love and joy mixed together result in peace, something that the world is terribly lacking today. When you embody these three ingredients, kindness and goodness follow naturally. Faithfulness is that part that expands and flourishes with practice. Gentleness is a result of combining the rest together, sprinkled with the paprika of self-control. This last ingredient is the hardest to use properly and often ends up spilled on the edges of the plate until you learn to use a firm hand with it.

Write this list of ingredients on an index card and tuck it into your pocket today and refer to it often. When we can check each one of these things off with the flair of a good cook, we will find ourselves closer to that image of God in which we were made.

Yes, please!

Happy Freedom Day

Posted on by Betsy

I have a weird confession. When I took my first Bible survey course in seminary, I developed little memory tricks for remembering the themes of each of the New Testament books. For example, for Hebrews, I remembered “HE (is) B(ett)ER (than the)RESt, which roughly spells out HEBREWS, if you misspell it. Hebrews is based on the superiority of Christ over angels, Old Testament prophets, etc. So, he indeed is better than the rest!

For Galatians, I tapped into my love of science fiction and especially Battlestar Galactica. What was their mission? To free humanity from the evil robot Cylons; thus Galatians is about freedom. Laugh if you will, but I got an A.

Let us see what Galatians has to say about freedom, as we celebrate freedom today:

Galatians 5:16-18  (The Message)

My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don’t you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?

19-21 It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.

This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom.

22-23 But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.

23-24 Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified.

25-26 Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original.

There is so much meat on this bone, we may need to come back to it another day. But for now, look again at first three verses.

The writer of Hebrews is contrasting freedom with self-interest. “There is a root of self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit.” That is pure genius. Think of all the situations in life where people imprison themselves; the genesis of those places is likely to be rooted in some selfish, self-absorbed, self-interested behavior. Addictions begin when we indulge in a dangerous behavior. Adultery starts with that need for the adrenaline rush of someone’s flattering interest. Family disputes happen when one family member feels entitled to what the all the rest should receive. Arguments ensue when we think our opinion is more valuable, right, and superior to someone else’s opinion. Betrayals happen when self-absorbed desires assert themselves over the common good. Basically, nothing good comes from selfishness.

In contrast, Christ offers a life of freedom. He came to set us free from sin, from death, and mostly from ourselves. We are encouraged to pursue a life lived fully in the Spirit, which teaches compassion for others, exuberance for life, and serenity .

So before the parade-watching, flag-waving, fireworks extravaganza begins, ask yourself this: where am I lacking freedom in my life? I bet that if you trace that back, there will be selfishness at the root; either your own, or somebody else’s.

The cross is as much a symbol as the flag. As we lift one high today, let us lift the other one higher.

Long May She Wave

Street Cred

Posted on by Betsy

Letter writing has become a thing of the past. We have lost this art to emails, texts, PMs, DMs, and communicating through social media. I needed to write a letter to my uncle, and I procrastinated for weeks. Why? Because my handwriting has become almost illegible from years of neglect. Think about it: other than your signature, do you do much long handwriting anymore?

 Reading Paul’s carefully crafted letters is like stepping back in time. There is a letter writing etiquette that is foreign to us, especially in the greetings. Today’s reading is no exception, as we see Paul working hard in the beginning sentences to establish his “street credentials” with the churches in Galatia. We can feel his passion for his churches and his desire even in the greeting to establish the fact that he has a God-appointed mission that was not the work of any human council or board. By establishing himself as approved by God, he hoped to engender the trust and respect of the Christians who would read this letter.

Galatians 5:1-5 (Common English Bible)

From Paul, an apostle who is not sent from human authority or commissioned through human agency, but sent through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead; 2 and from all the brothers and sisters with me.

To the churches in Galatia.

3 Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.4 He gave himself for our sins, so he could deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father. 

5 To God be the glory forever and always! Amen.

This is a marvelous reminder to us when we take a stand and proclaim the good news of Christ. We are also divinely appointed to this task and that appointment comes with God’s strength and power. Whether it is volunteering to hold a baby in the church nursery, preaching from a pulpit, or leading an international mission trip, the credentials we bring as people who have been tasked by God help people to trust and receive our ministry. When we proclaim Christ, we are not alone.

Note the beautiful language in verse 3 where Paul gives his apostolic greeting with the words “grace and peace to you.” He used this phrase five times in the New Testament, and one could argue that “grace and peace” describe Christianity in a nutshell. Grace, from the Greek, and peace, from the Hebrew, consolidate everything we know and want to share about the life Christians lead. We are the blessed recipients of Christ’s grace, an undeserved favor that is bestowed upon us in the form of unconditional, forgiving love. And peace is what Christ came to give us, confirmed in the fourteenth chapter of John: “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you” (John 14:27, Common English Bible). Could we find any better credentials than this?

Paul ends his greeting by outlining Christ’s credentials. His letters always focused on the centrality of the cross, and he clearly explains that Christ gave himself for our sins. It is by this authority and the authority of the will of God that we go out into the world in Jesus’ name, and for Jesus’ sake. Is God calling you to use your own street cred in your witness? Take the authority and go.

Greetings by Michelle Robertson

A Life of Freedom

Posted on by Betsy

I have a strange way of memorizing things. When I took my first Bible introductory survey course in seminary, I developed little tricks for remembering the themes of all 66 books. For Hebrews, I created the phrase “HE (is) B(ett)ER (than the)RESt, which roughly spells out HEBREWS, if you misspell it. Hebrews describes the superiority of Christ over angels, Old Testament prophets, kings, etc. So, he is better than the rest!

For Galatians, I tapped into my love of science fiction. One of my favorites is Battlestar Galactica. What was their mission? To free humanity from the evil robot Cylons. Thus, Galatians is about freedom.

Laugh if you will, but I got an A!

Let us see what Galatians has to say about freedom as we celebrate freedom today:

Galatians 5:16-18 (The Message)

My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don’t you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?

19-21 It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.

This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom.

The writer of Hebrews contrasts freedom with self-interest. “There is a root of self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit.” That is pure genius. Think of all the places in life where people imprison themselves. These situations can be the result of some selfish, self-absorbed, self-interested behavior. Addictions are triggered when we indulge in a dangerous behavior. Adultery starts with the need for the adrenaline rush of someone’s flattering interest. Family disputes happen when one family member feels entitled to what the all the rest should receive. Arguments ensue when we think our opinion is more valuable, right, or superior to someone else’s opinion. Betrayals happen when self-absorbed desires assert themselves over the common good. Basically, nothing good comes from selfishness.

In contrast, Christ offers a life of freedom. He came to set us free from sin, from death, and mostly from ourselves. We are encouraged to pursue a life lived fully in the Spirit, which offers affection for others, exuberance for life, and SERENITY.

22-23 But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.

23-24 Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified.

25-26 Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original.

So, before the parade-watching, flag-waving, fireworks extravaganza begins, ask yourself this: where do I lack freedom in my life? I bet that if you trace that back, there will be selfishness at the root … either yours, or somebody else’s.

The cross and the flag are both symbols of our freedom. As we lift one high today, let us lift the other higher.

Happy Fourth by Michelle Robertson