Learning to See...Again

Learning to See... Again--August 30, 2017

"You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified! The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? Did you experience so much for nothing?—if it really was for nothing. Well then, does God supply you with the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard?" [Gal. 3:1-5]

Sometimes, the things right in front of us are the hardest to see.

Sometimes, we need someone to point out to us the realities that have been staring us in the face all along... things like mercy.  Things like freedom.  Things like the grace of God.

For example... when God has worked in our lives in the past, have we ever gotten a bill?  Have we ever gotten an invoice marked with payment due for services rendered from the Spirit that has worked in our lives already?  Nope?  Guess what--that's what grace is like.  It's God's modus operandi, and it is always right there in front of us, all the time, except that so often we can't imagine it really could all be for free, so we refuse to see the free gifts before our eyes. We need someone, therefore, who can help us to see the free gift (ahem... that's what "mercy" and "grace" ARE) that was there all along.

This is essentially what everything boils down to for Paul--God is already acting in the lives and community of the Galatians for free--without waiting on them to follow religious rules first.  Free really means free.  And to hear Paul tell it, the Spirit has freely chosen to work and bless and surprise the Galatians for free--no pre-requisites, qualifications, or down payments first in terms of ceremonial or moral law-following.  And, perhaps shockingly for those first century Christians, the Spirit was doing it for all sorts of people--Jewish background and Gentile background, men and women, rich and poor, slave and free.  The gifts of God were all being given extravagantly, audaciously, to everybody... at no charge.

In fact, if there is anyone who is making a down payment, it is God who is making a down payment to the Galatians by giving them the Spirit--this is often how Paul talks about the presence of the Spirit in our lives, a down payment or guarantee of more to come from God.

But maybe the challenge for us today is that we lack the eyes to see where God has been working in our lives already.  Maybe we have been taught not to recognize any longer the fingerprints of God's Spirit which has been promised us and given to us.  It sounds like the evidence was quite obvious back in Paul's day--the Spirit was 'working miracles' in the Galatians' community.  Maybe we are led to ask where our miracles are that will convince us of the Spirit's presence.  Where is this Spirit in us, and where are the signs that the Spirit is doing anything among us, free or otherwise?

That's a harder question for us modern types compared to the ancient church, maybe in part because our world has taught us to give up on believing in such things, or to recognize the causes of all things as purely physical.  There are, of course, those who seem to be on a Christian vendetta against science for all of this, but perhaps the problem is not science giving physical explanations for events and realities in our world (from medical breakthroughs to astronomical wonders), but our assumption that physical explanations must rule out the presence of the Spirit at the same time.  We allow the Spirit to be present (in our minds) only in those places that science has not yet offered an explanation (they call this the "God of the gaps" approach), so it shouldn't surprise us if we have a hard time seeing the Spirit in our lives any longer--we have already determined not to recognize the presence of God in most of the things we face from day to day!  And on the other hand, there are those voices in the Christian community for whom "the Spirit" can only be identified with this or that religious experience, and if you have not had such an experience (from speaking in tongues to having your "heart strangely warmed" to leading you up the aisle at some altar call) you must not have the Spirit.  But once again, this boils down to so much painting the Spirit of the living God into a corner--a decree to God saying, "This is where I will look for you, and nowhere else.  Therefore, you cannot be all-surrounding and ever-present in our lives."

Perhaps Paul would have a harder time writing to us about the free gift of the Spirit--not because we are any harder to convince about the free-ness of God's grace (we all seem to have a hard time believing that there could possibly be such a thing as a free lunch from God), but because we have a harder time seeing the Spirit who is already active in our lives, and we have a hard time waiting for further action from the Spirit in the mean time.  Perhaps the problem is not with the Spirit, but with our vision.

Today, each of us has many encounters with people and many places of contact with community-can we use our faithful imaginations today to see how and where the Spirit of God is in them, present inside our conversation, working among the people we meet today, freely giving signs of power and truth and grace in, with, and under the events we might otherwise dismiss as the daily grind?

Living Spirit, come to us in all your freedom and work among us.  Bless this day of ours, bless those we meet today, and bless your world through us, in our words, actions, thoughts, and prayers this day.  And, we pray, bless our eyes that we might have the vision to catch a glimpse of your presence right in the thick of this very day.