Daily Worship

What has happened?

James Cathcart September 19, 2024 0 0
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Galatians 4: 12-16 (NRSVA)

12 Friends, I beg you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You have done me no wrong. 13 You know that it was because of a physical infirmity that I first announced the gospel to you; 14 though my condition put you to the test, you did not scorn or despise me, but welcomed me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus. 15 What has become of the goodwill you felt? For I testify that, had it been possible, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me. 16 Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?

Paul really cares and you can hear how much it matters to him in these words. He’s spluttering: “You’d have torn out your own eyes and given them to me, what’s happened?!” It could precede the classic Eastenders beats, or come just before the Play next episode? prompt on Netflix. Picture an actor you admire giving it big guns going for the Oscar and saying this, “had it been possible, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me. Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?”

It’s brutal, it leaves you shaken, but it’s relatable. We’ve all been let down. We have all experienced relationships that change and become unrecognisable over time. We have all got a bit dramatic when confronting someone who has let us down.

Paul’s letter to the churches in Galatia is not a dry essay on good churchmanship. It’s not twee, inoffensive, and largely irrelevant. It’s passionate, spiky, and resonates with our own experience — whether’s that’s Paul frustration or the Galatians’ desire to try and do the right thing when different voices are vying for their attention.

We have let the Bible become something that for a lot of people is something bland, unremarkable and hardly relatable to everyday experience.

That’s not the Bible’s fault.

 

Prayer:

 

Dear God,

help us to communicate the everyday drama

of living

in a way

that embraces the emotion, colour and vibrancy of your Kingdom.

 

Amen.