Galatia
Good afternoon on this Fourth of July 2025. Here at 7H we have a gray, overcast day, warm and close outside. Not as many small boats on the Bay as I'd thought - - maybe everyone is waiting to turn out for this evening's fireworks display. I suppose it varies from year to year, but I remember one Fourth evening when the report was that there were over seven hundred small boats out there. I've been out there, and it was scary when, after the Grand Finale, every boat roared up its motor and set off top speed for home.
We don't need to go anywhere! Our outlook here from 7H is straight to the left, east, to where the fireworks barge is moored, or anchored, IDK how they secure it.
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Unable to change what the world around me is becoming, my thoughts today are wandering off to the lectionary propers for this Sunday, Proper 9, Year C. The Collect, or official prayer of the day, which is meant to gather the thoughts of everyone in the congregation to the worship liturgy; and the Second Lesson, which is from Galatians chapter 6, the last chapter. Chapters and verses came later, Paul did not write it in chapters and verses, but straight through from start to finish, with more or less a single theme of chiding his audience for letting themselves be led away from his teachings.
My own comments are here, and nobody has to agree with one word of what I say, and mox nix mir, nomesane?
The Collect
O God, you have taught us to keep all your commandments by loving you and our neighbor: Grant us the grace of your Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to you with our whole heart, and united to one another with pure affection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Hatchett reports this collect in the Leonine Sacramentary (5th century, called "Leonine" after Pope Leo who died 461 AD, and likely contains some prayers that he composed. This ancient collect, which totally ratifies the gospel of Jesus Christ (love God, love neighbor) also alludes to a line in Paul's letter to the Galatians, which the Lectionary for Year C has us completing this Sunday. Here's that line:
Galatians 5:14 For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Love of Neighbor as a way of life - - common human decency toward those who are different from us - - is the sole component of Love of God. Amos 5:21f
21 “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
22 Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings, I will not accept them, and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts I will not look upon.
23 Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
24 But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.
Nothing matters to God but Love, how we humans treat each other. It is a fearsome, damning fact that confronts the world we are making.
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Here's our Second Reading for Sunday
Galatians 6:1-16
My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. For if those who are nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves. All must test their own work; then that work, rather than their neighbor's work, will become a cause for pride. For all must carry their own loads.
Those who are taught the word must share in all good things with their teacher.
Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So 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, and especially for those of the family of faith.
See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand! It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh that try to compel you to be circumcised-- only that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. Even the circumcised do not themselves obey the law, but they want you to be circumcised so that they may boast about your flesh. May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything! As for those who will follow this rule-- peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.
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Our second reading for the upcoming Sunday, July 6 of the Fourth of July Weekend Holiday.
As said, it completes our weeks of reading through Paul's letter to the Galatians. From start to finish, Galatians is Paul's chastisement, upbraiding people of the Galatians church or churches that he'd founded earlier, because word has come to Paul that false teachers have come through after he left, teaching that to become followers of Jesus Christ, Gentile believers must be circumcised into Judaism. For that reason, scholars have called the false teachers "Judaizers" (whom Paul also rails at in Philippians 3, "Beware of the dogs ... ). Hearing that the Galatians are straying from his simple gospel of Grace, Paul is furious, FURIOUS, and writes this letter, which indeed shows his outrage.
Paul's "gospel" as he calls it, is that it is essential to have the faith of Christ (the Jewish faith in God the Father) in order to obtain the promises of God, a term that Paul uses throughout the letter. By the promises of God, Paul means God's unilateral covenant with Abraham, in which God promises children, land, and blessings to those who accept Him as their God.
For Paul, generations after Abraham and Moses, the promise has come to include the anticipation, popular in Paul's day, and also for Jesus, that the End of Days is near when God will overturn the world order and establish the Kingdom of God on Earth, with the Son of Man from Daniel chapter 7 being sent by God as God's regent, to rule in person. For Paul, that regent will be Jesus, returning at the Second Coming along with the General Resurrection of dead, and living, to meet Christ in the air for judgment and either salvation into that new Kingdom of God on Earth, or not. Again, for Paul and in his teaching, anyone and everyone can be thus saved simply through accepting the faith of God's Christ, who is Jesus the long awaited Messiah to the jews, and, by the Grace of God offered through Jesus, to everyone.
Again, Galatians is Paul batting down the "Judaizers" who lay the physical condition of circumcision, becoming Jews subject to the Law of Moses, on the availability of this salvation.
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Blessing Creator for yet another day, hour, and moment of life.
RSF&PTL
T89&c
photo from 7H porch looking toward downtown Panama City
map pinched online in order to show that Galatia was not just a city like Corinth or Ephesus or Thessalonica, but a large geographical area. in fact, scholars don't know who or where specifically in Galatia the letter is addressed and meant to be read.