When Progress Doesn't Feel Like Progress: July 6

 Year C, Pentecost 4                                                             Galatians 6:7-16                                                                                                                

            As you will see noted in our bulletin and have heard many times if you are a member here at Christ Church—the vestry of Christ Church voted to remove the prayers for the king and his family from the prayers in our worship service.  They made that decision on July 4^th, 1776.   In 1776, Christ Church was a part of the Church of England. Our clergy were ordained in England as all Church of England clergy were­—by Bishops of the Church of England. Therefore, there was deep connection between the clergy here and the leaders in England.

Today, when Episcopal clergy are ordained, we take certain vows, kind of like a marriage.  In this day and age, we only vow to respect the authority of the bishop, not anyone in government.  However, starting in the 1600s and continuing to 1787, men who wanted to be ordained in the Church of England had to take an Oath of Allegiance where they acknowledged the King of England as the supreme governor of the church in all spiritual and temporal matters. 

This became a problem for all the Church of England clergy who were living in the colonies at the time of the revolution.  Where did their loyalties lie? The rector of Christ Church at the time was Jacob Duche and he decided (along with the vestry ) to align Christ Church with the patriots and stop praying for the king and his family during worship. It was a bold move (although a necessary move given who attended the church at the time.) It’s a great story and one we tell often, which gives credence to our tag line—a church with a revolutionary spirit.  The part of the story that we don’t often tell is that a year after this momentous action, the British occupied Philadelphia and we added the prayers for the king back in.  Sometimes progress is not as linear as we would like.  Sometimes progress, looks a lot like survival.

            This is our third Sunday reading from the Book of Galatians.  Chapter 6 focuses on what it is to live in a community, specifically a Christian community.  This will shock you all, but church has always had conflict, primarily because it’s made up of humans who are trying to understand God’s will and often disagreeing on what that looks like. Paul (the author of Galatians) had visited the community of Galatia and formed a bond with them as he was recovering from an injury.  He introduced them to life with Jesus, life as a new creation.  He had taught them that the most important law was to love your neighbor as yourself. 

Yet Paul had to move on as there were more people to share the Gospel with. He could not stay with the Galatians forever. It would seem that after he left, others moved in and told the Galatians that if they wanted to be real followers of Christ, the men had to be circumcised. Many were convinced that they had to follow the Jewish law to be Christians. That seems counterintuitive to us now, but at the time, it probably made a lot of sense. Jesus was after all…Jewish. This wasn’t an unusual belief at the time.  Even so, Paul was ticked off because they should have known better. He had been with them, sharing his wisdom.  He had told them that they didn’t have to keep all of those laws.

            So when he heard that they were not following his words, but the words of another, he was frustrated. In the beginning of his letter he wrote, ^“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—  not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.” Of course the community of Galatia wasn’t the only community that had fallen away from Paul’s message, but I am sure it was frustrating to him, having given so much, risked so much—only to see people who he had ministered to, be so easily corrupted by other erroneous messages.  Progress wasn’t linear then either. 

Today we heard from the conclusion of Galatians.  Paul wrote, “Let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all…”  Paul’s letters were often a combination of admonishment and encouragement.  His letter to the Galatians is no different.  While he was clearly frustrated with the community, he understood that following Jesus was not an easy calling.  He knew that there would be times when even leaders like himself would wonder if this Gospel message was ever really going to stick.  After all, Paul knew the Hebrew Scriptures.  He knew what it had been like for God and the people of God…ever since the beginning of creation.  God would shower humans with love and compassion and they would turn away from God, again and again. William Sloane Coffin referred to this cycle as “God’s eternal lover’s quarrel with the entire world.” 

Yet Paul also knew that God’s love was more powerful than any human resistance to that love. Paul had faith not only in God, but in the people of God.  In some ways I feel a little ambivalent about this text. Most of the time, I find it encouraging. But sometimes when I read this I think— but I am weary. I am so weary of it all.  I think that most of us are weary in one way or another. Maybe it is something going on in our own lives.  Maybe it’s the state of our nation. Maybe all of the above. We are weary.

 Paul never said that we can’t be weary. He said, “Let us not grow weary of doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.”  There is no doubt that doing what is right is exhausting. (Sometimes just avoiding doing the wrong thing is exhausting.) Maybe we have been doing the right thing for a long time and we aren’t seeing the changes we want.  Perhaps it even seems like things are getting worse rather than better.  Any of you feeling that way?

That’s when we have to play the long game.  Paul said that we will reap at harvest time.  Some people think that harvest time means the end of our life or even the end of the world.  I am not really sure.  But what I know is that harvest time always comes, but rarely when we want or expect it.  Progress isn’t any more linear today than it was 250 years ago or 2000 years ago.

You might note that we don’t pray for the King of England anymore. We removed those prayers, then put them back in again. Then we removed them again for good.  Our reactor, who was the first chaplain of the continental congress ended up coming out against the independence of our nation and left the church and the country in disgrace.  Yet change still happened. Almost 250 years later, we are still an independent nation, arguing about the ideals we were founded on.  While it seems that we may have backslid a little, we have made tremendous progress since the Declaration of Independence was adopted.  We will continue to make progress, as long as we don’t have give up…as long as our response to weariness isn’t desolation, but reliance on the God who created us, loved us and continues to be with us in the darkest of times.  It’s ok to be tired, frustrated, maybe even a little angry, but we can’t give up.