The Clothing That Is Christ
"Jesus came to raise the dead, not to teach the teachable, reform the reformable, or improve the improvable." - Robert Farrar Capon
Galatians 2.19-20
For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
“Bald-headed, bowlegged, strongly built, a man small in size, with meeting eyebrows, and a rather large nose.”
That’s how the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla describes St. Paul.
Paul, the writer of the epistles, the great bearer of Good News for a world drowning in bad news, the chief architect of the bride of Christ, the church - bald-headed, bowlegged, bulbous-nosed Paul.
He writes to the church in Corinth describing his experiences, “I am a madman! Five times have I received from my people forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on countless journeys, in dangers from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my people, danger from the Gentiles, danger from the city, danger in the wilderness, toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked.”
It’s a wonder he gets around at all.
But get around he does! Corinth, Ephesus, Thessalonica, Galatia, Colossae, not to mention side trips to Jerusalem, Cyprus, Crete, Malta, Athens, Syracuse, Rome - there is hardly a place in the Mediterranean that goes unvisited, unGospeled.
Everywhere Paul goes he plants churches, like a theological Johnny Appleseed, sowing the word here and there. And whenever he has a moment to spare he writes letters. Letters that bully, coax, comfort, curse. He lays it all out, bares his very soul, puts the Word in words that are cherished and shared.
Where does all this energy come from? Why oh why does this bald-headed bowlegged bastion of the Gospel go to these extraordinary lengths?
It all starts on the road, of course.
Paul’s in charge of a Pharisaic goon squad, rounding up members of The Way, the church before it has that name. He is marching toward Damascus on a hot tip that trouble-making world-turners are on the loose.
It is about noon when he is knocked flat by a blaze of light unlike anything anyone had ever seen. Except, only Paul sees it. His compatriots stand dazed as their leader is laid out. From the light, in the light, the very light itself speaks, calls Paul by his Hebrew name, “Saul, Saul! Why are you out to get me?”
And Paul, bewildered but bold, asks, “Who are you?”
“I am Jesus of Nazareth, the one you’re out to get. Go on to Damascus as you were planning, but don’t fight my followers, I want you to join them, I want you to follow me.”
Paul is blind as a bat for three days after that. But he makes his way to the city, he is baptized by a somewhat reluctant disciple named Ananias, and Paul is not the same after that and neither, in a way, is the whole world.
From that moment forward Paul has a mission - to bowl over the human race as he had been bowled over on the road.
Who in the world could have expected this to happen? From enemy to evangelist!
For all intents and purposes, Paul died on that road to Damascus. The Scriptures are specific - it is about noon when the light comes upon him just as it is about noon when the sky turns black on Good Friday. He is blind for three days before his baptism into new life, just as Jesus is in the tomb for three days before rising from the grave.
C.S. Lewis, the great Christian thinker and writer, famously concludes his introduction to Mere Christianity with a bit of a warning - Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead.
That’s a challenging word, a word made notable by the fact that far more people show up for church on Easter than on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. But it’s true. There can be no resurrection without crucifixion, something has to die before it can be raised.
Paul writes to the church in Galatia - I died to my old life, a life built on the Law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.
We never really leave the Cross, despite the contemporary caution away from it. We have crosses in our classrooms here at the church, some of us wear them around our necks or have them tattooed on our skin. We’ve got a really big one hanging up right there.
But it’s also in our architecture - the sanctuary is cruciform such that when you come down, say, for communion, you receive it in the heart of the cross.
The Cross is the beginning, and the middle, and the end of faith. The cross is the journey. Whoever wishes to gain their life will lose it, and whoever loses it will gain it - take up your cross and follow me, Jesus says.
Paul loses his life, a life built on the Law, and gains a new life, a life built on faith. And not just faith by itself, but faith in Jesus who loved him, even him, and gave himself for him.
Faith is a super churchy word. One we throw around like grace and hope and mercy. But what are we talking about when we talk about faith?
Faith, for some, is the mental gymnastics we go through to believe in things we don’t always see. Faith, for others, is something we work on, we build up our faith with our praying and reading and singing. Faith, for some, is something to be found or discovered in a ancient book or modern experience.
Paul does not speak of faith this way. Faith isn’t something to be done or find. Faith finds us. Faith is not a work.
Notably, Paul never says that our faith puts us right with God. For, that would make us our own saviors. It would make faith into the Law. And that is what Paul died to. Paul, again and again, says its the faithfulness of Jesus that justifies us. It’s Christ work on the cross that changes everything including us.
Therefore it’s not, “Believe in Jesus Christ and you’ll be justified.” Instead its, “In Jesus you are justified. Believe it!”
Perhaps that’s why the poet T. S. Eliot called the cross of Christ the still point of the turning world. It is the gravitational force around which the cosmos spins.
The cross is a reminder that there is no perfect, eloquent, or savvy way by which we can get to God. All of our attempts to climb up to God are our pitiful efforts at self-salvation. It’s the foolish assumption that things will be perfect if we live perfectly. But that doesn’t work. It never has and it never will. In fact, it usually just makes things worse. We turn commandments into bludgeons that belittle others in order to soothe our egos, because they are bruised from our inability to do the good we know we ought to do.
And so, instead of giving us a manual for making it all come out right, God jumps down into the muck and mire with us. God takes hold of all of our sins, nails them to the cross, and leaves them there forever.
Preaching is foolishness, Paul says in almost all of his letters, because lofty words of wisdom and grandeur do not bring us closer to God. God, instead, comes close to us. So close, in fact, that we have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us.
Which means who only really know who we are in relation to, and because of, who Jesus is. We can develop and put on all sorts of identities and qualities. But our primary identity, the shoulder upon which all of our shirts hang, is Jesus. We live in Christ and Christ lives in us.
Paul expands on this in his letter to the church in Corinth saying that God is making a body for Christ. The resurrected body of Jesus is no longer a regular body so God knits a new body out of anybody God can find. God uses other people’s hands to be Christ’s hands and other people’s feet to be Christ’s feet.
Just as we put on Christ so too Christ is in us, that he might be present to and with others through us.
We all have vocations through which the risen Christ is at work.
Does God feed the world? Yes, through farmers who grow and reap the harvest, truck drivers who haul the produce to market, grocery store workers who sell it, and chefs who prepare it.
Does God heal the sick? Yes, through scientists who study our biology, teachers who impart wisdom to medical students, and doctors who listen and respond to that which ails us.
Does God preach, baptize, and preside at the Table? Yes, through churches who see the Spirit moving in particular people, seminaries who convey the wonders of the Word, pastors who engage in the ministry of prayer and proclamation, and congregations who receive gifts that are put into action.
God is at work in the world, and sometimes God works through people like us.
And yet, where there’s life, there’s no need for resurrection. That’s a challenging word for those who feel like everything is a-Okay. That’s certainly how Paul felt before Jesus commandeered his life and vocation. He was not prepared for the death that would lead to his new life - none of us ever are.
Robert Farrar Capon was a priest in the Episcopal Church and in 1974 his life fell apart. His wife divorced him and his children were estranged. On the matter Capon said that everything was his own fault and the experience was devastating. And, to make it worse, his bishop did not look kindly on the dissolution of his nuclear family and so gave Capon a resign-or-be-fired ultimatum.
He chose the resignation option.
And then, unmoored and untethered, he attended a clergy conference in 1975.
These are his own words:
Over three days the leader hammered home the message that the only reason the church cannot rise from its moribund condition is that it will not die - that for as long as it tries to hold on to the life she thinks she has, she will never enjoy the gift of resurrection from the dead that God gives in Jesus. Jesus came to raise the dead, not to teach the teachable, reform the reformable, or improve the improvable.
Only after that - and only bit by bit - did I begin to understand the tragedy.
I was not just devastated, or hurt, or broken; I was dead. Unless you have been through such an experience, you may find this overblown; but my life, as I had known it, was over, gone, kaput. If I ever lived again - and it was inconceivable to me that I could - it would not be by my hand.
But far from being a sad state of affairs, that turned out to be the best news I ever heard. My death was not the tragedy I first thought - it was my absolution, my freedom. Once dead we are free, and free above all from the messes we have made of our own lives. And if there is a God who can take the dead and, without a single condition of credit-worthiness or a single, pointless promise of reform, raise them up whole and forgiven, free for nothing - well, that would not only be wild and wonderful; it would be the one piece of Good News in a world drowning in an ocean of blame. It was not all up to me. It was never up to me at all. It was up to Jesus. It was salvation by grace through faith, not works.
Capon’s life, like Paul’s, was flip turned upside down. And for it he was grateful. So grateful that he spent the rest of his days, like Paul, telling everyone who would listen about the Good News of the Gospel.
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Amen.