It’s an odd thing,
this day, because we celebrate and we grieve at the same time. We celebrate the
accomplishments of our young people, the seniors who have served as acolytes
for several years, as they graduate from high school. Each of them is beloved by
their family and by us. We can tell stories about Sara’s sweetness, Melissa’s
quiet intelligence, Megan’s incredible focus as a horsewoman, Stark’s
fearlessness (and juggling), and Garrett’s musical talents and scouting
accomplishments. Each of them has unique gifts and abilities, and we have been
blessed by their presence among us.
We are a little bit
sad, too, because one of the inevitable parts of their growing up means that
our relationships with them are changing. They are going off to college now. Some
are attending schools near to us, some further away, but they are all moving to
a different place in their life journeys, and we will not see them as often as
we have in the past. That’s the hard part, even as we wish them well.
But as they go from
us, they carry something of their time with us with them and they leave
something with us, and that something is encapsulated in the last phrase in
today’s reading from the Letter of Paul to the Galatians: “They glorified God
because of me.”
Now, before I explain
how this applies to our five senior acolytes, let’s think a little bit about
this letter, and who the Galatians were, and what Paul was doing in this
letter.
Galatia was an
interesting place. It was a Roman province in Central Asia, and had been settled
by a group of Celts from Gaul (modern day France) in 270 BC. This group of
foreigners, even in Paul’s day, still retained some cultural and linguistic
practices of those Gaulish roots. So they were strangers in a strange land,
even almost three hundred years after they had emigrated from what we now might
know as the region of Brittany in western France.
Paul had visited
Galatia and started a church there. He converted a number of these Galatians
from their pagan religions. This was a common practice for Paul – he was an
itinerant evangelist, going from place to place as the Spirit led him, to
convert people (especially non-Jews, what we call Gentiles) from their old
religions to the way of Christ. Then, once the church was started up and
running, he left.
That was the norm
for Paul. It was also the norm that his churches would send him letters every
now and again. Sometimes they had questions, sometimes they had disputes that
needed settling, sometimes they were simply reported on what was happening, but
there was a pattern of letters.
We have none of the
letters sent to Paul, but we do have copies of the letters Paul sent in
response. We have none of the original letters, but we do have copies. In the
case of the letter to the Galatians, the earliest known copy is from around 200
CE, about 150 years after the original was believed to have been written.
What was going on in
this letter? It appears that there were some new teachers who came to Galatia
after Paul founded the church there. These new teachers were teaching a
different approach to the way of Christ – they said that converts had to
conform to all the rules of Jewish law. In other words, they had to become Jews
first, and then they could become Christians. And those whom Paul had taught
wrote to him and told him about this, and this letter to the Galatians was
intended to set them straight. The new teachers were wrong. Paul had received
Jesus’ words in a revelation when he was converted, and there was nothing in
that revelation about having to become a good Jew before you could become a
Christian. So Paul was writing to set the record straight.
And he set the
record straight in a very unusual way: he started out by talking about his
credentials as a “good Jew.” Paul was a Pharisee and a persecutor of Christians
prior to that revelation when he was knocked off his horse. His argument was
that if he, even this very observant Jew, believed that it was not necessary to
adhere to Jewish law, to become an observant Jew, before one became a
Christian, and that if he followed this belief because of Jesus’ own revelation
to him, then these new teachers’ arguments were wrong. And if, as most Biblical
scholars believe, this letter was written after Paul had argued with Peter
about this very same question at the Council of Jerusalem and had gotten
Peter’s concurrence that Gentiles did not need to become Jews before becoming
Christians, Paul was arguing from a position of great strength and these new
folks were very wrong.
And after Paul
establishes his credentials, he notes that the Jewish Christians who heard
about him rejoiced – “this is somebody who came from Judaism to Christ and is
converting many people to the way of Christ” – and they said that God was
glorified because of what Paul was doing.
So what does that
have to do with these graduating acolytes?
Well, the fact is
that they are an integral part of our worship each Sunday. Their focus and
precision, their ability to contribute beauty and grace to each thing we do
during worship, are well known. Folks who are new to the parish are fascinated
by their intensity. All of that is to say that they glorify God in their work
as acolytes, and we glorify God because of the mood that they set in our
worship. We pray together immediately before the service, that we can shine a
light on God by our work at the altar, and it is clear that the prayer works:
these young people are a light to the nations when they serve as acolytes.
But it is not just
as acolytes that they and we glorify God. Some of them have participated in our
mission trips, and I’ve seen them work incredibly hard at helping others, and
I’ve also seen them treating the folks whom we help with respect and dignity.
They see the grace and humanity of Christ in those whom we help, and those whom
we help see the love and care of Christ in those teens. I’ve seen them work to
help with younger children, who see them as the cool older kids. They always
are kind and generous to the little ones, and when they teach the acolyte
procedures to newer participants, they do it with care and good humor. God is with
them, and God is glorified by their work.
Although I haven’t
seen them in school, I would imagine that they live their faith in their
kindness to other classmates, in their willingness to lend a helping hand, in
their use of their God-given intelligence in their class work. God is glorified
by their work.
In a few months,
they will be starting in a new school, a college or a university. They may have
part-time jobs as well. They will be among different people, doing different
things, engaging in different tasks. But one thing remains the same: we pray
that in all they do, they can say “God was glorified because of me.” They
already know how to make that happen – they merely need to continue being the
wonderful young adults they already are. They merely need to center their lives
and their work in what God has made them for. We pray that this time next year,
or five years from now, or a decade from now, or a lifetime from now, they will
be able to say what they can truly say today: “God was glorified because of
me!”
Amen.
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