Pastor's Ponderings: Bible Study on Paul’s letter to the Galatians 6:1-5 (March 17, 2025)

March 17, 2025:  Monday Bible Study on Paul’s letter to the Galatians 6:1-5

Good morning. I am so glad that you are here to study Paul's letter to the Galatian church. Prayers this week for all of the people who are seeking employment. Our son Jesse has gotten a part time job working at Park Place Mall before Easter. He has been hired to play the Easter Bunny who will greet the children and be with them for photos. He is pretty excited about this first job. We know that he will be great at this work. Please include the people in the government who are being laid off in the downsizing that is taking place right now. Pray too for peace in the east. Israel, the Gaza, the West Bank, people in Syria, and both the people in the Ukraine and Russia who continue to be at war after Russia's imperialistic attacks on this nation.  Please pray for the confessing church as we celebrate the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicea at which the confessional creed by the same name was established as the standard of faith for all Christians. Please pray for Pastor Ron and Becky as they travel back to Minnesota for the celebration of life for a pastor who Ron knew as a friend and a preacher and teacher of the Gospel. Please continue prayers for the victims of cancer, as well as Teri, who is faced with troubling mobility concerns as she has decisions to make about how to fund the necessary surgery and implant to restore her mobility. Pray too for our middle school-aged children, Jared, Levi, Cora, Patience, and Marc, as well as High School Senior Logan, and HS students James, and Fiona, so that these last two months of school will be productive for all of them. I thank God for your prayers, and for you as my Bible Study Community.

Today we move into chapter 6 of Paul's Galatian Letter. Lately I have been watching quite a bit of basketball on TV. I have some teams I am interested in, especially the Lakers, the Suns, and the U of A men's and women's teams. I guess it all started with James, my son, who plays HS Basketball for a small downtown school.  I am very proud of how he conducts himself as he plays. Logan Burt is also a teammate of James. As I have watched these teams play, I have noticed that even big names like Lebron James and Luca Doncic are the power duo on the Lakers, but I see in both of them something that I don't always expect from these big name, high scoring, older men.  Though both are basketball STARS in their own right, neither of them could win a championship on their own merit without using the high-level play of their teammates, and for both of them to really be an integral part of that five-man team that is on the competition floor. When people who are really great at doing something, and are filled with their own aura of superiority, forget that they are part of a very talented group of players, who are all team members, then the team suffers in its play. Competition and success are not about having a few overpowering, ego-centered, greats on a team who play only for themselves. It is every player remembering that they each have an important contribution to make, and then the team play is greatly improved. and makes it possible for the gifts of every player to be used. Gosh, I bet you never thought that you would hear a sports analogy from me. I never played, basically because of a birth defect in the muscles attached to the lenses of my eyes. I can see small things that are coming rapidly toward me, which includes catching balls, and quickly judging distances for shooting and throwing too. It is still a problem today when I play piano and must look from my music to my fingering and back quickly. So how does this basketball analogy fit into the passage for today?

When we live together in the church, every member is called to keep the "law" of Christ's example for living. Every member without exception, with all of their eccentricities, are called through Baptism to interact with one another, with a sense of equality. A great ego about oneself does not fit. If the wealthy try to control everything, which was the case at American when I first arrived 34 years ago, where is the sense of equality with a person's brothers and sisters in Christ? When we talk about the gifts of the Spirit, all of which are present in members of the Body of Christ, the Church, then we can begin to understand that for the sake of the Gospel, all the gifts are necessary. It is true even for pastors called to serve the Gospel in a congregation, I only know of one pastor who had all of the gifts of the Spirit, but he died on the cross over 2000 years ago.  Though we might try to place a pastor on a pedestal, it is best if we all know, that like us, the pastor only has some of the gifts and certainly needs their flock of believers to share their own gifts for the sake of the Gospel.  Every one of us, just like the Galatians, must learn that the loving kindness of Christ is always to be our guide. The Galatians kind of lost their way in Paul's absence when others tried to lead without Paul's sense of the equality we have in Christ.  We can always see this kind of leadership in the world. But for the work of God's Kingdom to succeed on earth, every Christian Community must know the equality in which we all stand before our Savior Jesus Christ, and the equality of love will shine as a beacon to God's world. We must always be ready to bear the burdens of our sisters and brothers in Christ, but we must also be ready to bear the burdens of our lives, those burdens that Christ has told us we can give to Him and then move forward carrying the burden of His love for all of His children, as well as for ourselves. 

With Grace and Peace in Christ, Pastor Kim