This past Sunday I had the privilege of preaching at my local church here in Minneapolis—Mill City Church. We’ve been reading through and preaching through the New Testament this year as a church, which in hindsight feels really appropriate in 2020.
In this sermon I tried to provide a concise overview of the main issue in Galatians (Should the Gentile males in Galatia be circumcised?) and how Paul addresses it (Nope!).
Summarizing a single text of the New Testament in one sermon is super tricky, even a short letter that typically spans three pages in most printed Bibles. It’s also particularly difficult for me since I spent several years thinking through the logic and themes of the letter for my doctoral thesis.
The task of addressing Galatians in 2020 is also distinctly tricky, and yet I believe it is massively relevant. Perhaps Galatians is the most applicable New Testament text for the racial division that we’re seeing in our country, a division more palpable than ever because of an egregious murder in my city. There’s so much in this letter that helpfully speaks to issues of cultural imposition, religious majority culture, and privilege. Through this sermon, I hope that we can see how Paul addressed some similar issues in his own day and that recognizing that fact would encourage us to be about the same work of Paul in our day.
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