What's So Special About Galatians?

Paul's letter/epistle to the Galatians, that is, from the New Testament.

This is an exciting time for Bible geeks, such as myself, as new finds from Bible times reveal new insights into Jesus' world; the world in which most of the New Testament documents were written.

A quarter century or so back, when I really started getting into this sort of thing, the scholarly consensus about Bible writings was based on the views of 20th-century theologians, building on the work of 19th-century writers, responding to 18th-century thinkers, developing the ideas of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation from the 16th- and 17th-centuries, and so on.

It was all very clever, but such a long way away from the simplicity of, say, Mark's Gospel, and it left Galatians itself appearing confusingly inconsistent with the timeline of Acts and the rest of Paul's letters.

Now the translation of high-profile documents like the Dead Sea scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library, along with vast numbers of lesser-known smaller finds - individually less-important but cumulatively highly illuminating - have changed all that. They allow us a more direct view of what was going on in and around Judea, to help us understand Jesus' words, as well as in the world of the North-Eastern Mediterranean, which Paul wrote into.

In particular, as far as our understanding of Galatians is concerned, we know more about the southward expansion of the Roman client kingdom of Galatia (which became the Roman province of Galatia in 25 BC) to incorporate Antioch and the planned Via Sebaste (completed in 6 BC), along which Paul travelled on his first missionary journey.

This links Paul's letter to the Galatians to this first missionary journey (around 46-48 AD). Its subject matter - passionately arguing that God's grace supersedes the Jewish Law for non-Jewish Christians - makes it a part of the controversy which led to the Council of Jerusalem (around 49/50 AD). This pins the date of the letter to around 48/49 AD, some 3 years earlier than Paul's next letter, to the Thessalonians around 52 AD.

Which makes Galatians special:

- It is the earliest written New Testament document;

- It is a pivot between the Old and New Testaments;

- It sketches out what it means to be a church, a community united by God's Spirit;

- It is the background and foundation for understanding Paul's later writings.

In theory the Protestant Reformation, back in the 16th century, marked a rediscovery of Paul's message (particularly from Romans) that following Jesus is about God's grace, received through faith, not about following rules. In practice it mostly just changed the rules, particularly once Calvin got involved.

Galatians is about freedom. Maybe, just maybe, a focus on its simpler, more Spirit-focussed, message could lead to a new reformation in our churches: one actually about God's love and grace rather than power politics. You never know ... it's certainly about time.

Alzheimer's At Easter

The morning mist hangs

shapeless, without detail,

but clearly there,

 like the memories

which peel away to swirl

about me like a shroud.

But I don't mind

my life has been good,

by and large,

my memories are warm

and colourful, misty,

comforting around me.

I hear a voice,

in the distance,

very like mine,

swear words and crudity,

unwanted anger.

So I stay in here

where the small light shines

warm and comforting

like a candle

pushing back the dark.

Who was it who said

"I'll be back"?

I don't remember

Seeing & Believing

“Thomas, Thomas, Jesus is alive! The tomb is empty and the women have seen him!”

“Come off it, John, the women are deluded. I saw him with my own eyes: he’s dead!”

“Thomas, Thomas, Jesus is alive! The tomb is empty and now we’ve all seen him!”

“Don’t be daft, Peter, you’re all deluded. He’s dead, we were wrong, it’s over!”

“Thomas, Thomas, I am alive. Come and see, come and feel.”

“Jesus, my Lord and my God!”

“Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe.”

...

Thomas, ‘Doubting Thomas’, gets some unfair stick, it seems to me, largely because people get confused about doubt and faith thinking they are opposites. But the opposite of doubt is certainty, and church history shows only too well that blind certainty has little to do with faith. Faith is about trust, active trust, and the Bible’s use of ‘believing’ carries the same meaning, more often than not.

I know a lady whose life was kicked apart a few years back, from many directions at once, like Job’s. Her beliefs about God were smashed with it. Yet, somehow, in all the fog of doubt, there remains a spark, and still she is able to continue to follow God, with tiny faltering steps. She is amazing! Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe.

I used to know a man, some years back, who was a recovering addict. He became clean at a Christian rehab, and picked up there a simple faith of hard certainties. It was necessary: addiction is an evil, horrible thing, which will attack and exploit any weakness, any uncertainty. It makes for a difficult walk in the outside world, with all its complexity and ambiguity, but he walked that line, through the glare of crystalline certainty, with precise, carefully placed steps. Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe.

Sometimes people have no choice, but what about the rest of us? How diligently do we investigate our doubts, how humbly do we see other points of view?

...

Thomas, Thomasina, Jesus is alive! The tomb is empty. The women have met him, the men have met him, hundreds have seen him, most of whom were still alive when the bulk of the New Testament was written. The disciples were persecuted, tortured and killed, for claiming that Jesus is alive, raised from the dead, yet they carried on doing so. Most of all, as Jesus once told John the Baptist: 

“The blind receive sight,
The lame walk,
Those with leprosy are cleansed,
The deaf hear,
The dead are raised,
And the good news is preached to the poor.

...

Blessed are those who have not seen, yet have believed.

... Happy Easter ...

Harvey Andrews - Glad To Be Grey

 

Another weekend, another concert ... and another long drive and another late night. I wonder why this CFS flare-up is taking so long to clear! Yesterday was Within Temptation and Delain at Wembley - booked ages ago and postponed from January, so not really to be helped. Last Saturday was Harvey Andrews at Portishead.

Harvey Andrews is a singer-songwriter who was a major influence on my teenage self. I had a friend who played the guitar and had Andrews' Writer Of Songs album on constant repeat as he gradually learnt the guitar accompaniment, for what seemed like months. Angry songs, happy songs, sad songs: songs that told stories, often songs that took an unusual point of view.

There's a song about one of the students shot at Ohio Kent State University by the local national guard; a song about a British soldier in Ireland (see the link); a song about an early morning 'knock on the door' in any of the many totalitarian countries which go in for that sort of thing; a song about a bitter and angry gossip, questioning how she got that way (see the video at the bottom of the page); a song about a teacher who put his hand on a young girl's knee.

As I say, Harvey Andrews was a major influence; he retired a few years back, and now only does the occasional charity concert in the area he lives, around Shrewsbury. So for him to be as far south as Portishead is an unmissable treat (actually he'd been in Thame the previous weekend, but even I'm not that daft).

These charity concerts, under the banner Glad To Be Grey, are advertised as  “A celebration of maturity, with songs, stories, humour (and the occasional rant)”, which is an accurate enough description. Harvey Andrews gigs always included a fair amount of chat and stories mixed in with the songs (see the video at the top for a typical example). Now there is a bit more reminiscence, and a couple of stories from his autobiography replace a couple of songs, but he remains consummately entertaining and a fantastic singer (the very first song, I thought his voice did show slight signs of age, but after that it warmed up and was as good as ever).

At Portishead he sang a mixture of songs old and new, told stories, and played his guitar. The sound was good, and the atmosphere brilliant. A lot of people there had never heard of him before (they were there for the fund-raiser) but I think everyone enjoyed themselves enormously, singing along with the chorus songs, listening to the music, joining in the nostalgia (it was a church-organised event, so the average age was older than me), and laughing at his humour. Harvey and his wife, Wendy, were friendly and approachable as ever after the show, and I was able to pick up a fresh copy of Writer Of Songs to replace the old vinyl one I cleared out when we moved house.

All in all an excellent gig, long may he continue.

Unfortunate Timing II

So, was my last post, Unfortunate Timing I, just a moan about a difficult weekend? Whilst I reserve the right to moan and rant on my own blog, in this case no, it was always intended to be a lead-in to thoughts about, well, difficult weekends, or rather difficult times in general. It was also a bit of a review of a live show (most of it, grrr!), and the two themes didn't really work in the same post - hence parts I and II.

Who was to blame for the rough weekend? It is hardly reasonable to blame the family I helped move: they were at the mercy of their landlords and moving house always takes longer (and is more stressful) than you expect. Myself, for overbooking? Not really, my original schedule over the last few weeks was fairly busy, but not unreasonably so - one really can't duck out on life 'just in case' something else turns up and blows my CFS. The RAC route planner mistake didn't help, but that's why I normally look at both map and directions so I understand where we are going before we start ... in this case I had no time and BlackLin couldn't get the map to print. Maybe it's easiest to just blame God: he has broad shoulders.

Why blame anyone? By and large I don't trust the blame game and try to avoid it: sometimes bad stuff happens, that's life. But there's an inconsistency there: if we had made it on time, in spite of the tightness of the timing, I'd have said a quick "thank you" to God. Gratitude is a good thing. So surely it's only fair to respond to it all going wrong with a sarcastic "thanks a bunch"? Especially since I had been helping someone out.

But then, we did get all the furniture and stuff moved successfully, in the end. And we did safely get from Reading to Brighton and back, through some very heavy traffic, without accident or breakdown. Although we missed most of The Dirty Youth's set, the other two did get to do their fangirl bit and had posters signed by the band. One reason I try to avoid that blame game is that there's always more involved than my initial focus, and in the heat of indignation it is easy to get priorities topsy-turvy.

Anyway, I don't actually believe that every single thing that happens to us is because God made it happen ... not in that simplistic a way. I believe that we live in a world which was made beautiful but has become flawed, damaged so that things no longer work as they should. One day it will be fixed, but in the meantime good things should never be taken for granted and when things go wrong, that's the way it is. It's always worth considering if there are lessons to be learned, of course, but we have no entitlement to an easy ride, sometimes garbage will happen and we just need to pick ourselves up and get on with it.

Just perhaps God occasionally tilts things a bit in our favour, when it doesn't mess some other situation up, so it is still always good to be thankful, I reckon.

There is a balance, it seems to me, between being fatalistic, not even trying to make the world a better place, and taking everything too personally, obsessing about every little problem. An elderly rabbi once said, talking about far more serious issues, that the Jews have never believed that God will save them from going through difficult times, but have never stopped believing that He will always bring them through to the other side. That, for him, is a central part of what it means to be God's people.