Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost; Octoechos Tone 5; The Holy Martyrs and Notaries Marcian and Martyrius.
Galatians 6:11-18; Luke 16:19-31.
Read Galatians 6:11-18
Anger and powerlessness filter down social hierarchies. It is a psychological defense mechanism called displacement, illustrated through a chain reaction called “kick-the-dog.” The boss yells at the parent. The parent returns home with pent-up anger and displaces it onto their child. The hurt child displaces their anger onto the bottom of the household hierarchy and kicks the dog.
It is important to notice that Paul’s persecutors – those Jewish Christians in Galatia who would compel the Gentile Christians to observe Jewish dietary and ritual cleanliness laws to be justified before God – were themselves afraid that they would be persecuted. They wanted “to make a good showing…only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.” The stakes here, though, are eternal rather than temporal; the truth of the gospel was at stake. Paul’s conviction as an Apostle was that this must stop and that it would stop with him.
Paul had been passionately and effectively engaged from the outset of this epistle, but he enters the fray more directly the moment he begins writing with his “own hand.” New Testament authors did not physically write their own works. Someone whose skilled trade was to make writing materials and take dictation did that. His penultimate statement amounts to the spiritual equivalent of, “Don’t mess with me on this.”
The practice of a legalistic spirituality is not effective in recreating us anew in Christ – “Even those who receive circumcision do not themselves keep the law” – and it engenders a legalistic attitude toward others – “They would compel you to be circumcised.” It is noteworthy that Paul extends grace to all his readers, those whose faith he is defending, and those whose faith he is trying to correct.