Abide – Galatians 2
Hello and welcome everyone to Abide. Here I sit in my office with a candle lit, the Scriptures in front of me, a glass of water, some notes, and a pencil. And I'm heading into my room here and closing the door as Matthew 6:6 invites us to do to find a secret place and close the door and meet with Jesus. And so, I invite you to do that now, and that might look different for everyone. Some of us would rather take a quiet walk and listen. Some are on a commute, and some are able to close the door, sit up straight in a chair, or lying down in a bed. Wherever you may be this time is meant to be a time to relax in God, and yet to be alert. So, it's this balance of relaxing our beings in God's presence and yet being alert to hear, to see, and to know more of God.
And this space is called Abide, and “abide” simply means to stay, to remain. I often think of plugging something in. You know, if you have a lamp and it's not plugged in, it can't shine any light, so you go over and you plug it in. Or your phone, if it's dead, it needs to be put in the phone charger and charge, given that life energy to it or it doesn't work. And so, these times in prayer are meant for us to plug in to Jesus, to become reattached and to draw from this deep energy source, which is life, which is our whole self. And so, this is our desire, Jesus. As we give you this time, we want to stay, we want to remain and give ourselves to you, give our attention to you. To unplug from the world and our responsibilities and the busyness and we want to plug into your purity, your peace, your joy.
And so as we found our spaces and our desire is to abide, let's take a beautiful inhale in together. And exhale out, just relaxing, rolling back the shoulders. Let's take another inhale in and exhale out. And just become grounded wherever you are physically in the space you're in, allowing your body to relax.
And we're going to go through this breath prayer, and this was written by Thich Nhat Hanh. And so, we'll go through it twice, okay? I'll guide you with it. We're going to breathe in together and we'll say to our body, ‘I calm my body.’ And we're going to breathe out, ‘I smile.’ So, breathe in, ‘I calm my body.’ And breathe out, ‘I smile.’ You actually have to smile; you have to lift the corners of your mouth. Okay everybody. One more time: breathe in, ‘I calm my body’ and breathe out, ‘I smile.’ Dwelling in the present moment, I know this is a wonderful moment. Dwelling or abiding in this present moment right here, right now, I know that this is a wonderful moment. So, one more time, breathing in, ‘I calm my body,’ breathing out, ‘I smile.’ Dwelling in the present moment, I know this is a wonderful moment.
Jesus, thank you that you welcome us into this moment, and you smile, and you long to draw near to us as we long to draw near to you. And we can relax in this space knowing you're here.
Today our gratitude practice is a bit of allowing your life to move in slow motion. So, most of our day we're moving quite quickly in our thoughts and what's next and what are we doing next and we almost, we consume life. We sort of like eat it and just move on and eat it and move on. And we're not able to really savour or pause or taste or experience, actually what we're living in day in and day out. So, today the gratitude practice we're all going to practice: living our last few hours in slow motion, okay? So, let's all think about our last meal that we had, okay, and I want you to live through it in slow motion. What is it that you ate? How did it taste? Can you receive that food as a gift from God? Chewing, swallowing, digesting. Can this be a time of gratitude for food? For the people who have grown this food and packaged it and delivered it and now it sits at your table. Ponder this miracle, ponder this beautiful gift of food.
I invite you now to ponder in slow motion the last conversation you had. What did the voice sound like? What did the facial expressions look like of this person that you were just with? Can you once again see the holiness of dwelling in this physical life with other people? Maybe the person you just saw as a colleague that you take for granted. Or maybe it's a friend or someone in your family that you have been arguing with. Or maybe it's a beautiful relationship you're so happy with. No matter what, as you slow down and re-listen to the voice and the words and gaze at the face of that person, can you recognize that this is holy ground? Of connection. Of communion. Of fellowship. How God graciously gives himself to you in your physical life.
And lastly, I would like you to think about the last act or action that you've done and we're going to think about it in slow motion. So for me, it was just folding laundry, okay, and folding laundry of my husband and my kids and thinking about each one of them and thankful that we have a place to wash clothing and to have clothing. And the ability to have hands. And be able to sit up and fold. What a gift. Maybe you were washing dishes, maybe you were studying. Maybe you were getting groceries. I want you to ponder in slow motion the last action in your body that you were doing and recognize that this is holy and sacred ground in which God is communicating his love to you.
This gratitude practice of slow motion, I invite you to do this throughout the day. As you close the evening or even when you're sitting and waiting for something, just allow the things of your life to move slowly so that you can taste and see that the Lord is present with you.
We're going to move into the Scriptures together today and as you know, we're in Galatians. Today we'll be doing Galatians 2, but we're continuing in this letter that Paul wrote and we were discussing last week how a letter doesn't have any power unless we open it and we read it and we ponder it. And so today we're opening the letter, imagine yourself just opening a letter and we're going to see what's inside. Paul is continuing to talk to the people about the freedom of living in Christ. And also the complexity of the law and traditions and religion and this group of Galatians need a refreshment. The beauty and the purity of Jesus. And who he truly is and what he offers.
Paul is continuing to reveal to us a very open, spacious, freeing life with Christ. And so we're going to read chapter 2, verses 1 to 21, so it's a bit long. So we'll read, you can read with me if you have a Bible, and then we're going to hone in the last five verses or so together, with some of my reflections and how the Spirit might speak with you. So, let's move into this letter together.
And Paul is continuing from chapter 1, this is talking about Paul's call from God and how it has moved in his life and it picks up here in chapter 2, verse 1.
Fourteen years later, I went up again to Jerusalem. And this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along also. And I went in response to a revelation. And set before them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. But I did this privately to those who seemed to be leaders for fear that I was running or had run my race in vain. Yet not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek. This matter arose because some false brothers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves. We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you. As for those who seemed to be important, whatever they were makes no difference to me. God does not judge by external appearance. Those men added nothing to the message. On the contrary, they saw that I had been entrusted with all the task of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as Peter had been to the Jews. For God, who was at work in the ministry of Peter as an apostle to the Jews, was also at work in my ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles. James, Peter, and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the Jews. All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.
When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles, but when they arrived, he began to draw back and to separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy, even Barnabas was led astray. When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it then, that you forced Gentiles to follow Jewish customs? We who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we too have put our faith in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law. Because by observing the law, no one will be justified. If, while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not. If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am a law breaker. For though the law, for through the law, I died to the law, so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live. But Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing.”
Allow the words of this letter to come to your ears, to your mind, to your heart, to your body. And rest in the presence of Jesus in this space of quiet.
In this chapter, do you do you sense with me how everyone's trying to do the right thing. They're trying to get gold stars for everything they're doing, and it seems as though everyone is trying to figure this all out so that we can all be in the right. The way you were raised, the way that your family lies. And Paul no longer has patience for these divisions, these confusions. He starts out this letter very passionately, that we've got to remember the gospel. And here we read in verse 15: “Know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So that we too have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith.” And so we're just going to ponder these words, ‘justified by faith.’ Eugene Peterson writes: “Justification means being put together the way we are supposed to be made right. Not improved, not decorated, not veneered, not patched up, but justified. Our fundamental being is set in right relationship with God.” This setting right is not an impersonal fixing, but it's personal.
And so I invite us all to think about justification by faith, that we are put right with God by our belief in him. By our communion with him in this room, this space we're connecting and abiding with him, this vulnerability and this relationship. And I ask this Paul, are we, have we become so concerned with getting everything right and doing good and pleasing man or the world? Or are we more concerned about pleasing God? Are we more concerned with our desire to commune with Jesus? So spend some time now just pondering that.
Now that Paul encourages us in this letter that we can be made right with God at every moment because of who he is and our relationship to him. Paul writes in verse 20: “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” You know this word ‘crucified in Christ,’ you know, it's nice to admire Jesus from afar and daydream about, maybe his heroic life, maybe daydream about what it looks like for us to be crucified in Christ and to live a heroic life, but you know, Paul moves right into it here. He plunges in. I have been crucified. What does that look like? Eugene Peterson writes: “Crucifixion ends one way of life and it opens up another. It finishes a life in which the self is coddled and indulged and admired, and it begins a life that is offered to God and raised as a living sacrifice.”
Paul has let go of his successes, of how the world has esteemed him, this self-promotion. He's died to this, and he's opened himself to another way altogether, in Jesus. And so let's take this letter and this word from Paul, and where in our lives do we sense God calling us into a deeper, dying to self? Dying to our selfish desires and our dreams and what we wanted life to look like and what we want life to be. Where might Jesus be able to infuse himself into those spaces? Surrender now your life, your circumstances, your life conditions into his hands.
Paul continues in verse 20: “The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God.” I do not set aside the grace of God. Paul is reminding us that the son of God loves him, loves us, loves me. He gave himself for me and he does not want to take lightly this grace, this gift. You know, each day we wake up in this gift of grace, of life, of breath, is offered. And God graciously keeps giving and giving. Even in those earlier thoughts of our slow-motion life, we can sense that God's grace is moving. And in an atmosphere of this grace, we no longer have to be anxious about our life, about if we're, quote un-quote ‘good’ or ‘doing things right’ or if we even know what God's doing in our lives, but we can rest in this ocean of love and grace. We can live with curiosity. We can live in discovery and exploration. It's very freeing.
And so lastly together, I'm going to ask if, if we're able to think over our lives and see if there's space in your life for this grace of God. Where do you sense you need this generosity to penetrate? Does it need to come into your studies? Does this grace and compassion and deep love need to come into your relationships? Does it need to hover around, in, and through your future, worries, and concerns? Paul encourages us: “I don't take light of the grace of God.” The love of God. If we don't take this in and believe it, Christ died for nothing.
Friends, let's take a beautiful deep inhale of life, of grace, of freedom, of love. And exhale out, peace, connection, abiding in this beautiful God. I'm going to close us now in those beautiful words that Paul gives us in Galatians 1:3-5: “Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.” Go in peace, my friends. Remember to take the nourishment of this time in our closed room, into your life, into your relationships, and into all the things of your day.
