A long, long time ago in England a man founded a high school.  It was the year 1552, and the school was called The Royal Grammar School, Guildford.  There are several amazing things about the Royal Grammar School, Guildford.  Cricket was invented there, for example (I don’t expect you to be especially excited by that), it was a place where many politicians, businessmen, scientists, and sportsmen received their educations (and I do mean ‘men’ because it has always been an all-boys school).  It’s also the high school I went to, but that is not the most interesting thing about it (surprise, surprise).  No, the most interesting fact surrounding the RGS Guildford is its founder.  It’s named ‘Royal’ because of the man whose idea it was to start the place.  King Edward the Sixth.  He was born in 1537 and died in1553.  Now do the math, and you’ll realize that he wasn’t a man at all.  He died at the age of 15 and was only 14 when he founded my old school.  He actually became King at the age of 9.  You feel old when policemen start to look young, and when the King of England could be your grandson. 

“Hello, sonny, would you like a toffee?” 

“No I’m the King of England.  I can have all the toffees I want.”

“Of course you are, lad, now run along before I tell your dad.”

“My father’s dead.  He was Henry the Eighth.  He started the Church of England.”

The secret to his success, of course, was that he didn’t rule at all.  He couldn’t even decide what to wear when he got up.  The affairs of state were all taken care of by his guardian Uncle Edward (Duke of Somerset).  Had the lad reached 18 he would have actually been allowed to make some decisions for himself.  But as most nine year-old boys are only interested in computer games it was felt that he should wait a bit before being given control of the national budget. 

Guardians.  The boy-king needed one, and so did the human race.  That’s according to Paul in today’s epistle reading from Galatians.  In our case it wasn’t Uncle Edward, it was the Old Testament law.  God gave it to mankind as guardian to look after us and guide until the coming of Christ and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit.  Now the Old Testament law is redundant because something better has come: “But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.  As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.  And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.”

This growing up into faith in place of religious laws, says Paul, was only possible through the death and resurrection of Christ, and our own baptism in his name.  And the consequences are that the world is a new place.  The old has passed away.  In particular, he says, the way the law used to divide people has ended.  The law divided men from women, it divided Jews from Gentiles, and it divided people according to their jobs and social background.  But Paul says now the old divisions that the law created have been demolished by Jesus and humanity is made into a new body, at least in the church.  And we, the church, of course are to model that new humanity. 

Now it’s difficult for us today to understand the radical nature of Paul’s statements– there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free.  To us that’s fairly obvious.  We all instinctively agree that these things should not divide Christians and we are all equal in stature.  (Although you can still see churches in the Eastern states where not too long ago they had separate pews for the rich and the poor.  Shocking though that is to us now.)  Let’s look at the climate in which Paul was saying these revolutionary things: 

Slavery.  In the Roman Empire 33% of the population were slaves.  People became slaves in many ways – they could be forced to sell themselves into slavery to pay a debt; they could be seized and taken from a foreign country; they could be captured in war; or they could be born into slavery, the child of slave parents.  Whatever way you became a slave one thing was almost certain- you weren’t going to be treated very kindly.

Now, to our minds the amazing thing about slaves is that Christians could have them.  And clearly, in the New Testament churches there were some Christian people who owned slaves.  Paul addresses the issue in several places, including writing a letter to his friend Philemon who was dealing with a runaway slave of his who had now become a Christian.  Now, as I said, this is pretty hard for us to comprehend.  If we were there face to face with a Christian who owned a slave we’d want to say “what are you doing?  Why are treating this person like this?  If you have the love of God in you, if you’re truly a follower of Jesus then how can you do this?  Let your slaves go free.”  But, Roman society was not like ours.  And what is unacceptable to us, and rightly so, was tolerated even by many Christians at that time.  So Paul and the other apostles, and even Jesus himself, never directly advocate the ending of slavery.  They tolerate it, understanding that the lives of everyone, including the slaves themselves, would be in turmoil if slavery were to suddenly end.  They saw that their job before God was to call for the changing of people hearts.  They preached, they healed, they talked, they served, they worked hard to lead individuals and societies to accept Christ and thereby change the world.  They did not consider it their calling to be political agitators, trying to overthrow governments and change civil laws. 

The early Christians believed that the social and political climate they lived in was almost irrelevant.  The important thing was to be faithful to Christ no matter what situation they found themselves in.  Jesus and the apostles never advocated democracy, the welfare state, human rights, or any other social and political cause which we now take for granted as being obviously the right thing.  That doesn’t mean that they didn’t care about the living conditions of men and women, just that they were born in their own time, not ours.   They were focused on changing society one person and one household at a time.  And 2000 years later we have to conclude that they succeeded, given that every social and cultural advance in the history of the Western world was achieved under the inspiration and leadership of Christian men and women.  People whose lives had been changed by the love of Christ and who then worked fearlessly to change the social and political situations of disadvantaged people.

Paul did not set out a social agenda.  He did not try to transform the unjust structures and institutions of the Roman Empire.  (And even if he’d wanted to he wouldn’t have succeeded.)  Instead St Paul helped to create a culture in which slavery had to be abolished in time.  In Britain and then in the US it was Christians, opposed by worshippers of money, who abolished slavery.  Paul did not set out to get women equal rights in Roman society.  Instead he helped to create a church in which women had an equal place, and that, in time, led to the transformation of whole societies.  And again, Paul did not attempt to change the laws of the Roman Empire to give equality to foreigners and racial minorities; but again, he did through his writing and preaching, create a worldwide body of men and women who have in recent decades around the world, changed nations to become more equal.

Women.  In the Roman and Jewish worlds women were by nature inferior.  They were not allowed an education, they were not considered reliable witnesses in court, they had separate seats in the synagogue.   Some rabbis at this time taught men to pray this prayer each day: “Blessed be God who did not make me a Gentile; blessed be God who did not make me a slave; blessed be God who did not make me a woman.”

Foreigners.  We all know how much non-Jews were disadvantaged and look down on by the people of Israel, and we have heard many sermons about how Jesus bucked that trend.   Was embarrassed by something I read the other day.  In his autobiography, Gandhi wrote that during his student days he read the Gospels and was so moved by the compassion and wisdom of the teachings of Jesus that he seriously considered converting to Christianity. He believed that in the teachings of Jesus there was the solution to the caste system that was dividing the people of India.  So one Sunday he decided to attend services at a nearby church and talk to the minister about becoming a Christian.  When he entered the sanctuary, however, the usher refused to give him a seat and suggested that he go worship with his own people. Gandhi left the church and never returned. "If Christians have caste differences also," he said, "I might as well remain a Hindu."  Isn’t that tragic?

Equally appalling were the actions of some people at a high school soccer game in Nebraska last month.  It was reported by CNN and I watched on YouTube the local TV news report with footage of the episode.   A team of mostly white boys defeated a team of mostly Hispanic students.   At the final whistle some supporters of the victorious school ran on the pitch and threw green cards into the air.  Now, of course, this is a pulpit and not a place to discuss the details of immigration policy.  But one thing is clear.  How we treat the alien among us is a matter of morality that God cares very deeply about.  Leith Anderson, president of the huge National Association of Evangelicals, said last week, "A significant part of our churches and denominations are part of the immigrant community so we have a very close connection and a very great interest ... but our interest is really rooted in what the Bible teaches how we treat people and how we treat particularly people who are aliens or strangers in the land."  He went on to mention some of the biblical immigrants Abraham, Joseph, Naomi, Mary and, of course, Jesus. Their examples, he said, "reveal God's hand in the movement of people and are illustrations of faith and God in difficult circumstances."  And a colleague of his rightly said, "I'm aware of no other public policy issue that would join together mainline (denominations), Roman Catholic, evangelicals, right and left across the spectrum," Nathan said. "Many things divide us, but comprehensive immigration reform unites us."

The society Paul was writing in was in deep pain.  The pain of separation.  Men and women separated by a chasm of inequality.  Jews and Gentiles separated by a gulf of acceptability.  Slaves and free people separated by a vast economic divide.  It’s pain.  And that pain of separation is still in our Western world today.  Men and women still often cause great pain to each other.  We might not have slavery today but we do have an economic system that still causes unbearable suffering to those who are born in the wrong circumstances.  And, of course, we still have painful separation of races, and nationalities in the nation.  

We can’t solve the nation’s problems.  Paul understood that.  But we can make sure that here in the Christian Church we eliminate the pain of separation.  Let there be no hint among us of people being excluded because of zip code, job, accent, social background.  In Christ we have been made one body.  Let’s live it out.