Sunday, January 1, 2012: Galatians 4:4–7

With all of the pressures of preparing for Christmas Day—the coming and going, the parties and presents—the Sunday following Christmas is welcome indeed. It's a time to stop, take a deep breath, keep one's slippers on a little longer and do nothing. There is good reason people traditionally refer to this Sunday as "Low Sunday," and good reason too that the lectionary writers chose St. Paul's treatise on the primacy of God's unconditional, unmerited, universal, relentless and eternal grace.

Imagine the leader of a major Christian institution declaring on CNN that from now on, before one can become a Christian, one must first become a Jew, submit to the ritual of circumcision and vow to abide by the disciplines of the Mosaic law. Even those who had become Christian Jews without circumcision would have to comply with the new requirements. For many viewers, the announcement would invoke ridicule and create a whole new flood of circumcision jokes. The thoughtfully religious, however, would reject the pronouncement as heresy. It would be heard as law taking precedence over grace.

That is precisely the cultural-religious context in which Paul found himself in Galatia. The Galatian church saw circumcision as a required act that validated one's faith; without it one could not be included.