Bootstrap Paradox

This is the sermon preached by Rev. Don Van Antwerpen to the congregation of Unfinished Community on Sunday, July 6th, 2025, drawing from Galatians 6:1-16.

Life can be….complicated. And painful. And confusing. 

And we, flawed and broken humans that we are, all too often respond to the complicated, painful, confusing experience of life by redefining it, trying to make the world make sense to us. We literally rewrite reality in our heads so that it functions on our terms, so that we don’t have to face the cold and terrible idea that sometimes…we screw up, and we have no idea why. 

If you think about it, most of human history, most of human society, most of our community experience is designed to bring some of us together so that we can have a shared structure of reality.

Some…but not all.

We lay out ground rules, set boundaries, draw lines in the sand, all so we can say that this is the point at which good becomes bad, this is the fixed point beyond which anyone standing is an evil person, not worthy of love, mercy, or inclusion. 

Because it’s hard, really, really hard, to love someone who has crossed one of those lines. It’s almost impossible for us really, to looks at someone who has truly done harm and see them as a person; flawed, scared, suffering, maybe even a victim themselves in one way or another. Once we find that transgression, once someone has crossed the lines we draw in the sand for our communities, our countries, or our world, we tend to feel like there is no turning back.

And we just gotta throw the whole person out. 

Every group has their own shibboleth, of course; their own lines drawn in the cold, hard dirt, each with their own ideas of what right and wrong are, of what acceptable and unacceptable are. Some of these things are great and understandable - like murder, infidelity, stealing, and things like that. Others can be smaller things, like speaking too loudly or too much, eating the wrong way, looking different, or even using the wrong word, which is what a shibboleth literally is. 

In our communities we set these shibboleths, and when others fail the test, or cross the line, we withdraw our love and support, sharpen our knives, and look upon them with a cold, merciless gaze thinking to ourselves, “they should have known better.”

And we do this because this fiction, the myth of the irreparable sinner, this idea that a person cannot be saved if they cross this line, or fail that test; this is the only thing keeping us from facing a great and terrible truth. 

We are the sinners. 

Because you see if one person, once in a while, is broken, it gives us someone to blame, someone to point to and say this person is not deserving of our love, our compassion, our our mercy! If one person, once in a while is broken, we can pretend that we aren’t broken.

We’re ok. We’re fine. We’re safe, and secure, and normal; good, worthy, people who deserve to get what we want from this life, and from this world.

And just as long as we manage to maintain that appearance, as long as we are able save face, then we can keep telling ourselves that we are good people. 

Because we looked good by the standards of the world. 

This is, of course, what is at the heart of the conflict in Galatia to which Paul is speaking in today’s scripture. There were a goodly number of people in the Galatian church - as well as the surrounding community - who felt that circumcision was the true mark of one who righteously and “correctly” followed God. This was their line in the sand, the yardstick - or, perhaps more appropriately, the inch ruler - which used to discern who was “good” and who was “bad”.

Who had “face” in the community, and who didn’t. 

Into this, Paul is writing - with an almost uncharacteristic amount of compassion and tolerance - two very specific theological points. 

The first, coming right at the head, speaks to how we deal with people who have “transgressed”; that is, crossed those social boundary lines, and his response is not, in fact to punish the transgressor for their sin.

“…if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted.”

This first part is obvious enough, I think; we are called to respond to someone who has crossed these lines with a spirit of gentleness, to be kind, compassionate, and even forgiving, acting with love and mercy rather than judgement and condemnation, no matter how deserved that might be. This is incredibly hard of course, and it’s not something any of us ever want to do, but it’s the second part of this that I really want to call attention to, since it’s the part we tend to skip.

“Take care that you yourselves are not tempted.”

Tempted to what, exactly?

Well, tempted to reject the spirit of gentleness, of kindness, of mercy, and of love. Tempted to rest the fullness of social retribution upon the one who has transgressed, tempted to reject mercy, discount forgiveness, and abandon the principles of grace because actually acting in love also transgresses the social boundary, and makes us stand out.

When we treat a transgressor with love, we lose face. Because the world expects us to punish the transgressor. 

So the temptation is to be stingy with our love instead, and to save it only for those who deserve it, those who haven’t transgressed, or violated our social rules. 

But…a love that limited, a love that cannot reach beyond boundaries, a love that only connects to people in the warm light of day when affection is easy and there is little conflict to speak of, a love that is conditional, a love the lives in fear of losing face…

… that isn’t love. 

This is the great paradox of Christian love, the challenge we all need to fight to overcome if we are to love as God tells us we must. 

True, Godly love, requires that we first reject the fiction that our brokenness can remain hidden, that we can remain safe and invisible while loving others from a comfortable remove. 

True, Godly love requires that we first reject the fear that others will condemn us for showing it.

True, Godly love requires that we first admit a fundamental truth about ourselves that we have been hiding for as long as we can imagine:

We all need help.

We’re all broken. We’re all flawed. We’re all messy people struggling to get by, wishing that we could be loved for who we are, and not for who this world thinks we ought to be. We’re all struggling to fit into these social boundaries, living our lives afraid of the day where someone stands up, and points at us like a middle-school bully in the lunchroom, and tells the world that we don’t belong.

So like Paul we draw our big, flow letters, make everything look nice and pretty, and fight through our days to push down any admission of brokenness, any hint that we’re struggling, any indication that we have ever, ever sinned or harmed anyone. We hide every rough edge, every mistake, every transgression, and sand ourselves down to nothing so that the rest of the world can only see a tiny, smooth, unobjectionable little thing that fits in perfectly and unquestionably.

But…what then?

Let’s say we succeed at that, we manage to hide our brokenness completely, convince all the world that we’re fine and good, that we don’t have any problems, and that anything we struggle with in life is the result of some outside force or some other person instead. We twist and bend, dodge and weave, paint ourselves into social perfection; we manage to save face completely, and nobody ever sees just how broken we are.

What then?

We’re still broken people. We’re still struggling as things get worse, and worse, and worse. If we convince the entire rest of the world that we don’t need anyone to help carry our burdens, if we convince ourselves that our own flesh is sufficient to the task when it so obviously isn’t, if we truly sell the lie that we don’t need anyone or anything, where does that leave us?

When we succeed at saving face, we deny ourselves the opportunity to hear the three most healing words in the English language; three words that all of us, in our darkest moment, in those times where we’ve done things that feel so terrible, so unforgivable, that we can’t imagine anyone loving us ever again, so desperately need to hear.

I forgive you.

You see, love means more than caring for others. It means exposing your own vulnerabilities too. 

Love means owning our brokenness, facing it, and doing the work of lifting each other up as a community, together. 

We can have all the appearance of following the law, following the rules, presenting a good face; we can convince the entire world that everything is totally fine, and that we’re really just living our best life full in the blessings of God, but there is no mistaking the impact we have on the world around us, on the people in our lives. 

Conversely, one can be feared, even shunned for their looks, or for the way that they speak, or dress, or fit in, or just…rub people the wrong way socially, but still invest themselves in quietly doing the work of love for the people in their lives, forgiving again, and again, and again without ever considering whether it's "socially acceptable" to just…have their hearts so visible and vulnerable like that.

That’s the paradox; actually loving people means we’re almost certainly going to lose “face”, and there is no point at which “doing the right and loving thing” equates to us being safe from the world calling us a “transgressor” because showing love makes us look like transgressors ourselves. 

Showing love is transgressing.

Being a Christian means doing the work of love while understanding, paradoxically, that no amount of us giving love will can ever save us, make us secure, defend us from the world, or even convince others to love us back.

When we love, like Christ, we make ourselves easy to take advantage of, easy to ignore, easy to dismiss. We make ourselves vulnerable rather than safe, visible rather than hidden; we make ourselves targets when all we want to do is point the finger at someone else, anyone else. 

Christlike love is hard work, and it requires a profound vulnerability, a willingness to stand in public and say that this broken, imperfect, person who crosses social boundaries is worthy of love no matter what the rest of the world might think, and to be willing to stand alongside them and say I am broken too.

I am broken. I stand in the pulpit with education and ordination, and all the trappings of social acceptability…but I am just as broken and flawed as the rest of us. I am imperfect, socially unacceptable, loud, annoying, brash, and frustrating. I  talk far too much, and listen far too little. I have said and done things in my life that have hurt and harmed, and for all that I try to bring love, and compassion, and kindness into the world around me, the truth is that I fail about as often as I succeed.

But…even despite all that, God loves me. I don’t know why, and I don’t need to, because it is enough for me that it is true. God loves me, even though I by no accounts deserve it. 

So that’s why I stand here, every time we worship, preaching and preaching until my voice runs out. This is what I’ve been trying to say since long before seminary, long before ordination, and long before the first handful of us gathered in that lakeside chapel all those years ago to try and figure out what a church might look like that actually loved people like this.

You don’t have to try and be perfect anymore. 

You don’t need to save face anymore. 

You don’t need to convince the world that you’re righteous, unblemished, pure and problem-free anymore. 

You don’t need to lie, and cheat, and hurt to find acceptance anymore. 

You don’t need to hide the worst parts of yourself anymore.

You’re a transgressor. 

So am I.

So are all the rest of us. 

I forgive you. And God forgives you too, no questions asked.

So come home. Embrace love. Build together, work together, and make a world where no one needs to be cast out, and where everyone can be forgiven. 

Because we’re never truly loved until we’re truly vulnerable, and we can never truly love others until we allow ourselves to be loved for who we truly are, warts and all.