Wednesday, May 18th - Christians Shouldn't Argue(?)

#thestruggleisreal - Day 3

Over the next six weeks, Toni Ruth and I will be preaching a series based on Paul's letter to the Galatians (called #thestruggleisreal).  During this series, I'm going to make every effort to post every day with some brief thoughts on various passages from Galatians.  I hope that you follow along as we look for God's grace in the midst of some very real struggles!

It's a typical response whenever Christians fight with one another, especially those belonging to the same denomination or local church.  "Don't fight in public! It will damage our witness - the world needs to see a unified church!"  Apparently, nobody told Paul about this. He was not shy about airing the early church's dirty laundry for everybody to see. By publicly confronting Peter "to his face…before everybody", Paul showed that he wasn't too terribly concerned with how that would impact the wider world's impression of the Church. Paul was more concerned with the Church being consistent in how it dealt with Gentile followers of Jesus.

Since I hoping to keep these blog posts relatively short, I'm going to simply post some random thoughts that have risen for me this morning as I've studied Paul's conflict with Peter at Antioch. 

1. In his commentary on Galatians, Bruce Longenecker briefly discusses some attempts by various early church Fathers to deal with Paul's public confrontation of Peter.  Tertullian thought that Paul was overreacting.  Clement of Alexandria argued that the Cephas in Galatians is not Peter the apostle, but another disciple. Origen, John Chrysostom, and Jerome all argued that the whole thing was staged(!) by Paul and Peter in attempt to bring the contested issues out into the open.  A number of Christian thinkers worked really hard to lessen or even deny the conflict between Paul and Peter.
2. We often do something similar as we think about the early church and its leaders.  For example, Christians throughout history (especially those starting new churches or movements) have made the claim that they are 'getting back' to how things were done in the early church. The thing is, the early church wasn't any holier or unified than the church has been throughout much of its history.  (I'm talking about routine local church conflicts and disputes - not those times when the Church has been truly atrocious, such as the Crusades or the Inquisition).  It's a mistake to think that the 1st century church was free from conflict and disputes and division.  And I'm guessing that they handled the aftermath much like we do: occasionally forgiving, frequently dividing, often holding on to anger, awkwardly trying to clean up the messes we make, pointing fingers, sometimes taking responsibility.
3. Paul's confrontation of Peter at Antioch has the feel of "real life" to it - we aren't told about any resolution. Hurt feelings abound and deep friendships are strained.  There are personal, theological, and political considerations in how both Peter and Paul act at Antioch. And how often do we forget Jesus' command for us to love one another or the teaching of Paul that says that "if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness"? 

That's Galatians 6:1, by the way. It seems that maybe Paul forgot about getting up in Peter's face in front of everybody, telling him that he was a cowardly hypocrite. Sounds kind of like when we talk about how much we love one another and then tear each other down behind our backs or on social media.  Conflict is part of what it means to be humans having differing experiences, differing gifts, differing weakness, etc.  

There are some questions that we might think about: how might the Holy Spirit be at work even in the midst of our conflicts? Since conflict is inevitable, how do we handle fights and arguments while staying faithful to Jesus' command for us to love one another? Where is God leading us to greater humility and loosening our grip on the dehumanizing need to "win" and the insistence on always having our point of view vindicated?

Just a quick note (in an attempt to show that I'm not totally oblivious) - I'm aware that I'm posting this during the middle of a very contentious General Conference. I definitely have thoughts and opinions about all of that, but it doesn't 'fit' very well with the spirit of this series of posts. And besides, I'm hoping to keep these posts kinda short  (relatively speaking - I know I'm long-winded) and any post about my thoughts concerning General Conference would be REALLY long. I'm also trying to keep these posts tightly connected to the sermon series that will be starting at Harrisburg UMC this coming Sunday.