Notes on the First Readings for the Fourth Week of Lent

NOTES ON THE FIRST READINGS FOR THE TWENTY-SEVENTH WEEK OF ORDINARY TIME (Cycle 2)

(if a festal day falls on any of these days, the readings of the feast are used instead)

For the next two weeks we read from St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians.

Who were the Galatians? The name is a tribal name (linked to ‘Gauls’ and ‘Celts’) for settlers of parts of what we now call Turkey. There is dispute as to whether Paul was writing for Christian communities in the Southern Galatian region (towns such as Derbe, Lystra and Iconium, which he evangelised on his first missionary journey) or for Northern communities in the region of the modern capital Ankara. An understanding of the letter hardly depends on this, however.

The letter was probably written in 54AD when Paul was in Ephesus and about to embark on his Third Missionary Journey. News reached him that some, probably Jewish converts to Christianity sent from Palestine, had come among his newly converted Christians in Turkey and told them that (a) Paul’s authority was bogus, because he was not a true apostle and (b) it was necessary for them to maintain traditional Jewish ritual practices such as circumcision and the celebration of Jewish feasts.

This radically conflicted with what Paul had taught about freedom in Christ, and he replied with full vigour, refuting this teaching and criticising the Galatians for having accepted it so readily and so soon.

Certain themes encountered in Galatians are also found in Romans (especially that of our being justified by faith), though the context of the letter to the Romans was quite different. Primarily, though, Galatians is a defence of the notion that in Christ we are made free.

The debate over whether Jewish practices were necessary for pagan converts to Christianity is also covered by the Acts of the Apostles, though St. Luke, who wrote the Acts, brings in the issue of dietary laws as well; these receive no mention in Paul’s letter. Also the sequence of events as given by Paul is different and is more likely to be authentic; Acts tends to iron out some of the arguments and disharmony in order to heighten the picture of the early Church being built up in regular steps by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Monday: Galatians 1: 6-12. Normally after the initial greeting in his letters, Paul proceeds to give thanks for the spiritual progress of the community to whom he is writing. Here he launches straight into an expression of shock that the Galatians have succumbed to false teaching. There is only one Gospel message. Traditionally, the ‘Old’ Law of Moses was believed to have been brought to the people of Israel by angels; Paul says that even if this new false-Gospel were brought to the Galatians by angels, those angels would stand condemned. Paul’s opponents had accused him of watering down the Gospel message to gain converts, by not insisting on circumcision, etc. Paul says that the only time he did ‘water down’ the Gospel to gain human approval was when he was actually opposing it and persecuting its followers. The Gospel message is that salvation is possible for all through faith in Christ.

Tuesday: Galatians 1: 13-24. Paul turns to the first accusation made against him: that he is not a true apostle. His preaching, he says, comes as a result of a direct revelation from Christ at the time of his conversion. Given his background as a devout Pharisee, he would never have been able to make it up. Nor did it depend on the influence of other apostles with whom he might have been in contact; he did not go initially to Jerusalem, for example, so as to be in the apostles’ circle, rather he went off by himself to “Arabia” (not Saudi-Arabia, probably Transjordan) in order to mull over the implications of his conversion. Only then did he go to Jerusalem to see Cephas (=Peter) and enquire into details of Jesus’ life and ministry. The only other influence on him there was James the “brother” (=kinsman, relative) of the Lord, who was not strictly an apostle either; at least, he had not been one of the Twelve, which included two other Jameses, and yet he was entrusted with the overseeing of the Jerusalem church. Thereafter, when the persecution at the time of Stephen broke out, Paul was back in his native “Asia” (i.e. Tarsus, his birthplace, and thereabouts).

Wednesday: Galatians 2: 1-2, 7-14. This is Paul’s account of his journey to Jerusalem at the time of the so-called Council (see Acts 15) which decided on the question of pagan converts and Jewish practices. Again Paul is at pains to stress that the initiative for this, on his part, came directly from the Lord by revelation, and not from a summons from the other apostles (Acts tells us that he was sent as a delegate by the church in Antioch). He then describes his dispute with Peter, when Peter stopped eating with pagan converts and so seemed to suggest that Jewish dietary laws were still valid. Peter, said Paul, was making out that only Jewish Christians were real Christians. But, continues Paul, Peter had already taken the step from ‘Israel’ to Christ, and there could be no going back or half-measures now.

Thursday: Galatians 3: 1-5. Paul reminds the Galatians in very strong language that in Christ’s death all are made free. He had stressed the crucifixion in his preaching to them, in order to bring this point home. Deeds done in obedience to the Old Law could never be on the same level as the Spirit. Still, Paul hopes that not all is lost. By saying “if this were so”, he leaves room for the Galatians’ return to the right path.

Friday: Galatians 3: 7-14. This leads Paul on to spell out the primacy of faith. He refers back to Abraham, who lived before the Law came into existence, who was saved by his faith, and who by remaining faithful opened the avenue of God’s blessings to generations of those to follow. Paul now uses various Old Testament quotations to support his argument. In the sense that it is virtually impossible to keep all the Law, the followers of the Law are “cursed” (“Cursed is the man who does not uphold the words of this law by carrying them out” Deuteronomy 27: 26). The righteous live through faith (Habakkuk 2: 4); the Law has nothing to do with faith but with obedience (“The man who keeps my decrees and laws will live by them” Leviticus 18: 5). The Law says that anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse (Deuteronomy 21: 23). By treating Christ’s crucifixion as a ‘hanging on a tree’, Paul can say that Christ died as one on whom the curse of the Law fell. But Christ has defeated death, so the Law is now invalid. The practices which the pagan converts were being told to adopt were now quite unnecessary!

Saturday: Galatians 3: 22-29. Before Christ, sin was everywhere, in all creation, not just in humanity (a notion also found in Romans). The Law was only intended by God to prepare for Christ; Paul calls the Law a guardian, literally a paedagogos, a slave who used to take a child to and from school and look over his education. Now in Christ we are grown up! We are adopted as children of God, all incorporated into the Body of Christ without regard for distinctions of custom; in Baptism, we are “clothed” in Christ according to the imagery which we find in Job 29: 14, “I put on righteousness as my clothing”.