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In the last reading from Paul's letter to the church at Galatia, he addressed the ongoing feud in the early church and reminded the folks that salvation comes from faith alone, and not from working to follow some collection of man-made laws. This week's reading continues Paul's warning to the Galatians. But if he faced strong resistance over the issues of clean and unclean foods, and the issue of circumcision, it was just a dress rehearsal for the real battle he faces now. As we did last week, it might be wise for us to keep an ear tuned to the conversation, and see if Paul's words have any meaning for our attempts at church-building here today.

Let's begin by accepting the reality that the church was originally created by a group of good Jewish boys. I mean absolutely no offense in making that comment, but it is important to start there as we try to understand what is to come. The twelve disciples selected by Jesus were all from the Jewish tradition, and all from fairly well-established families. When they decided to follow Jesus, they left behind boats and businesses, some of them giving up rather sizeable and respected positions. They each would have been well-reared in the traditions of the Jewish community, and most likely all full practitioners of the matters of the faith, as were their ancestors before them. We see this fact demonstrated several times throughout the gospels. We see it most clearly in those situations when the disciples are faced with interacting with those people who come from outside the Jewish faith; the unclean.

On one occasion, Jesus sent a group into town for food, and he was met with real protest. The protest was not because it was a long walk to town, or they just didn't want to go shopping, but because they would probably run into unclean people there, and they just didn't want to do that. It is interesting to remember that to finally get them to go, Jesus sent twelve of them to go do the shopping for only thirteen people. The old security in numbers thing?

Even Jesus himself seemed, at times, to follow that lead. Jesus spent years living and preaching around the northern country of Galilee. There were seven major non-Jewish cities around the Sea of Galilee, yet we have absolutely no biblical reference of Jesus ever entering one of those cities. It would not be at all uncommon for that to be intentional, and for Jesus to avoid visiting the unclean cities of the Gentiles. Whatever he personally believed at the time, his visit to those places would have raised so many religious and political issues that it may have interfered with what he understood that he had to be doing.

The gap between Jew and Gentile, or anyone non-Jewish, was tremendous. The disciples would all have been raised to believe that if the shadow of a Gentile fell upon you as you walked by, you must go take a ceremonial bath to remove the uncleanliness from you. If you had to pass through Gentile land, you did so quickly and without turning to the left or right. You did not enter the home of a Gentile, and you most certainly would not sit at a table with them. Each disciple knew that you just don't mix with non-Jews.

Most despised among the Gentiles were the Samaritans. Now living in the area just below the Sea of Galilee, the Samaritans were descendants of the Jews who stayed in the land of Israel during the Babylonian exile many years before. While the rest of the Jews were sent off to live in Babylon, the Samaritans stayed behind, and worked with, and intermarried with the non-Jews who moved in. Their offense would be carried down from father to son, and was cause for the breach between the two groups now.

If you ran a business and a Samaritan was to pay for your product or services, rather than touch the money they had held, you had them drop their money into a bucket of water, to remove the uncleanliness before you handled it. In some parts of the country even today, if a Jew happens to walk across the property of a Samaritan, the Samaritan will run outside, throw a handful of straw on the spot walked upon, and set it on fire to burn away the uncleanliness.

This may help us to understand some of the outcry of the disciples when Jesus approached the woman at the well. First of all, she was a Samaritan, and the disciples simply could not understand why in the world Jesus would want to be seen talking to a Samaritan. Secondly, it was a woman.

Yes, the disciples had just as clear an understanding of the role of women. Though we today fully understand the depth of the misperceptions they held, let's suffice it to say that the disciples were as seriously in error with this as they were with the issue of the Gentiles.

But there were more.

This group of disciples had very clear understandings of people such as those who were called the "demoniacs." The term refers to a large group of people who would have suffered from a wide spectrum of illnesses, both physical and mental. Their symptoms were seen not as that of illness, however, but as signs of possession by spirits or demons. And the possession was clearly understood as the result of some behavior or act that was being punished. They were clearly unclean beings, and definitely to be avoided. The fact that Jesus not only sought to heal these demoniacs, but actually went to the places where they hung out, and had the nerve to even touch them, was just too far beyond the comprehension of our good collection of disciples.

Of course, they knew about Romans. Every Jew knew about the Romans. Unless you were a Sadducee, making a good living in support of the Roman authority, there was not one positive word in the entire Jewish vocabulary that could be used to describe a Roman. That one group of Jews, known as the Zealots, had as their number one goal in life to take the life of a Roman soldier, and they always carried a dagger under their cloak just in case fortune would smile upon them. It is good to keep in mind that at least one of these Jewish disciples of Jesus was a Zealot.

I tell you all of this background on the disciples and the people around them to simply set the stage for what happens when the beginnings of the new church is placed into their hands. They have spent years following and listening to Jesus, and they met his Spirit in the upper room and received his command to create the church. But inside, in their heart-of-hearts, however much a disciple they may have been, some of them were still Jewish disciples.

As long as newcomers to the church were like them, there was no problem. They did pretty well when the women got more involved, but then, there were plenty of tasks for them to perform that were more appropriate for women to perform. In fact, since the women were there, it would spare the disciples the embarrassment of having to perform those tasks themselves. Yes, sometimes God works in mysterious ways.

When the Gentiles started attending, some of them even Samaritan Gentiles, we had some problems. Then a few of the disciples, and people like Paul, went out there running around, opening the membership to all sorts of people, even, if you could imagine, to Romans.

Houston, we have a problem.

As you would expect, there was a split. Some of the disciples had left Jerusalem, and along with Paul, Silas, and many others, preached a gospel of salvation to all. They offered baptism to any and all who would come. The disciples who remained in Jerusalem, those well-healed traditional boys, fought this move tooth and nail, and insisted that all newcomers first be circumcised as Jews before being allowed to join the church. They also insisted that Christians could not eat unclean Gentile food, eat any food with a Gentile, and definitely not enter the city or home of a non-Jew. They also kept up their attitude toward women and demoniacs, in case you were wondering.

The church at Galatia was one of those that Paul had started some time ago, and it had received Jew and non-Jew into the fold. But they were now under attack by the Jerusalem group, and were being told that they were not only wrong, but condemned because of their acceptance of the unclean.

So Paul wrote to the Galatians about God's rules of grammar.

For those unfamiliar with those rules of God's grammar, let me explain them. Most groups, including the early church members from Jerusalem, spend most of their time using nouns. Nouns are words that declare things. Things like Jew, Gentile, Samaritan, Roman, woman, and demoniac. These are words that define things. If you are described as a noun-Gentile, it establishes boundaries and limits for you, and it puts you in a little box that determines not only your past but your future. Although few of us have used the word Gentile as a noun, perhaps you have used the noun woman, or black or white or rich or poor or sick or crazy. When we use those words as nouns, we kill the individual, and replace it with a concept.

God is in the business of changing nouns into adjectives.

Adjectives describe something about an object, but not the entire object. Something might be big, and yet be many other things as well. Adjectives don't limit like nouns do. In God's perspective someone might be a Gentile, and be a number of other wonderful things as well. Someone might be a woman, or homeless, or even mentally ill, and still be many other things of great value besides.

As a church, it might be an interesting way to spend our energy. What if we accepted Paul's challenge, and began teaching the world some new lessons in grammar? I invite you to accept the challenge to turn nouns into adjectives. I challenge you to no longer see people around you as Christian, as Arabic, as women, as men, as homeless, as sick, as democrat, as republican, as any noun; but to see them as God's creation with many tremendous abilities and gifts.

Come on, try God's grammar and change some nouns into adjectives. Let those people out of the box.