A couple of weeks ago I got to spend three days with the majority of Presbyterian pastors in the de Cristo Presbytery (southern Arizona) at a conference center in Green Valley, south of Tucson. In the midst of their annual retreat, I was there to lead them all about in an in-depth exploration of the book of Galatians. (For those who don’t know, I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the book of Galatians, one of the Apostle Paul’s more contentious letters.) The only person I knew beforehand was our Grand Canyon Presbytery pastor, Brad Munroe, who is also the pastor to the de Cristo churches. The other 22 folks were all new. (One person I knew of, because his sister is a member of our congregation.)

First of all, the setting was beautiful, ringed by the Santa Rita mountains to one side and the high desert grasslands of the Sonoran Desert to the other, we were all in the need of some time away. Over the three days, we walked verse by verse through the letter to the Galatians, unpacking major theological themes and obscure references that are almost completely lost to us in time 2000 years after its writing.

Now why would a bunch of full-time ministers be willing to go on retreat, only to be subjected to a seminary-level academic dive into the conflicts of the early church? Well, Galatians harbors snapshots of the tensions active in the first 30 years of Christianity, and some of these same tensions still plague us today: can people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds sit together and worship and sit in the same church, without divisions and factions breaking out? Well, this is what happened in the Galatian churches. Those who were formerly Jews and those who were formerly Pagans were worshipping together as followers of Christ. Then someone from the church in Jerusalem got word of this and came up to Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) and said that it just wasn’t decent for folks to do this; these two ethnic groups should not comingle, even in the church!

Well, Paul, when he heard about it got quite upset (and that’s putting it mildly). He dashed off a letter to these churches to let them know that for all those who are baptized in Christ Jesus, “there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female, for all are one!” And Paul goes so far to say that if former Jews and former Greeks who are now one in Christ cannot sit together, eat together and worship together, then Christ died for nothing. Paul says, “You all are fighting over non-issues. The only thing that matters is faith energized by love.” It’s a message we all need to hear today.

So, our group of presbyterian pastors, men and women, equal in the gospel, wrestled over the implications of Paul’s letter for our churches today. And we got to spend time getting to know one another, eating together, playing games, laughing together, growing together. I feel like I made good friends in just three days. It wasn’t all easy though. Some folks wrestled with the idea that “Christ died to set all humanity free from the grasp of the present evil age.” 

“What does it mean Christ died for all humanity?”  Well, just that. Galatians tells us that all humanity was held under the grasp of the stoicheia tou kosmou (one of those obscurities almost lost to us. What we know is that this is understood as ‘the elements of the cosmos.) Christ, Paul says, emancipated the whole cosmos from the grasp of sin and evil. All humanity lives within the cosmos; certainly, all humanity has been freed. So, how come it doesn’t look like it?

Well, one participant in the conversation offered this analogy: it’s like Christ walked into a prison and opened all the doors and said, “Follow me out of here,” and only some of the folks chose to walk out with him. Other folks have just continued to live in their captivity, not aware or not caring that Christ had freed them. That image works really well for Galatians, a letter that is full of language and imagery of God’s liberating slaves from their bondage.

Sometimes, pastors need to step away from the fervid work of the church to study scripture together, and to be refreshed to go back to their congregations with the gospel of God’s faithfulness, energized by love and for love, to proclaim liberty to all who seek to walk out of whatever prison binds them. The joyful work of the kingdom goes on, so that we may all harvest the fruit of the Spirit. (Read Galatians, and you will understand.)