I begin today with a story. Several years ago I was staying in a motel in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, the kind of motel you want to keep the lights on low because the level of cleanliness is not particularly high. I had been invited to speak to a panel of leaders concerning Christian unity in this time and this place. Now I worked very hard sitting in that motel room reading, studying, writing, trying to prepare for as constructive a presence on that panel as I could bring. I then showered and dressed, and as I stepped out of the motel room, I felt a little bit like a glass of water too full. I had a lot of information that I wanted to hold on to. I just didn't want to be distracted; I didn't want to be tripped up.

But there sitting on a low wall right outside my room was a man. A man, who was clearly disheveled, clearly in the midst of a morning after, and although I tried to step around him, he said, "Excuse me sir, excuse me, are you with the music industry?" Now here I am in Nashville, Tennessee, I had on a suit and tie, what else would I be doing in Nashville? "No," I responded, "I am not with the music industry." And then he asked me that question that I dread, "Then what do you do?"

Now when I tell people what I do, it tends to either shut down conversations or take conversations to places that I don't want to go. When I'm on an airplane, I try hard not to engage my seatmate in a conversation. So here I am-standing before this disheveled man feeling like a glass of water too full, and I'd rather be able to say to him, "Well, I'm the CEO of a small firm or I'm an administrator in Human Services," but I chose in that moment to take a risk, and I said to him, "I'm a preacher."

"Okay, then", says the man, "Okay, preacher, I have one question for you." My heart sank; usually that one question is the one that opens up to too many others. "And here's my one question preacher", he said, "Is it possible to lose your salvation?" Now I want to tell you that if it is possible to lose your salvation, the evidence was pretty clear before me that this man may have the night before lost his salvation. I gave him a one--word answer. I wished him well, I blessed him, and I went on to my panel discussion about the state of Christian unity in the United States.

Now I could tell you what that one word answer that I gave to our disheveled musician was this morning, but then I would have to end this sermon and sit down. And that one word opens up complicated levels of new understanding, so I'd like to take time to explore these levels through this text from Paul's letter to the Galatians. Now the Apostle Paul is a complicated man. My mother used to say to me, "Tim, I hate that you like that man so much." Because, you see, my mother and I, we listened to two different sides of the Apostle Paul. My mother listened to the side of Paul that was a man who was never married and was ambivalent about women at his best. I listened to the Apostle Paul who wrote those familiar, marvelous, almost poetic words, "If I speak in the tongues of mortals or of angels and have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. Love is patient, love is kind and envies no one."

My mother listened to the Paul who said, "Women, be subject to your husbands." My mother was not a woman to be subject. I listened to the Apostle Paul that wrote, "In Christ there is no Jew nor Greek, no slave nor free, no male nor female for all are one in Christ Jesus, our Lord." My mother listened to the Apostle Paul who frankly whined in his letter to his congregations about how hard he worked and how people didn't listen to him, but I listened to the Paul who reiterated time and again to the congregations that he established, "It is by grace and grace alone that we are saved." My mother thought of the Apostle Paul as a man who persecuted the early church, a man who performed acts of great wickedness. But I listened to the Apostle Paul who gave us the words that he was sure "That neither life nor death, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

The Apostle Paul is a complicated man. I remember in a New Testament class in seminary, I undertook the daunting challenge of writing a Freudian analysis of the Apostle Paul. Now, my New Testament professor was very taken with this paper; in fact, he asked me if he could quote portions of my paper in a book that he was writing. Some 20 years after I wrote that paper, I found it in one of my old files and I pulled and I read it, and I'll be frank with you, I couldn't understand a word of what I had written. And that, my friends, is how complicated the Apostle Paul is. You know, there are answers in faith, and there are ways to understand salvation. But too often we look for answers in the wrong way; we're not looking for answers as much as we're looking for formulas.

What we know in Paul's letter to the people in Galatia is that the people were looking for easy answers. There were preachers who were coming through and saying to the church, "If you only observe the laws, if you are only are circumcised, if you are only willing to eat in certain ways, you can be a follower of Jesus." I was raised as a child in the country of Thailand. Now there were clear ways in which devout believers in Thailand would seek to live out their faith. I understood as a young child that a devout believer would seek to gain merit by the performance of good deeds and hoped that in the end the merit they gained was greater than the demerits that they had somehow accumulated. And if, indeed, their merits were greater than their demerits, they could be reincarnated in a higher form.

So, as a child, I remember being intrigued as I walked through market places to find a vendor with sparrows in small cages, one sparrow to a cage. You could buy a sparrow and then immediately release it from its cage, and you would pay a nickel to do that. By giving the sparrow freedom, you earned merit. I often wondered what happened to the poor soul who had captured those sparrows in the first place. So, you see, I understand how often we seek pat answers and formulas to the profound questions of faith. But, dear friends, as Christians, we are not about formulas; we are about freedom. We are not about easy answers; we are about being a people of mature faith, a people who make decisions, a people who asks questions. A mature faith does not hesitate to raise doubts. You see, to follow a law is not meaningful. To be able to trace your way from one dot to another through a succession of oughts or should-be's is not deciding for Jesus. By grace and by grace alone we are saved.

Now, in Galatia, Paul makes it clear-by God's grace we are free, but it's an interesting kind of freedom, a freedom that is not just, "Okay I can do anything I please." It is a freedom that leads to more questions. Here is another easy answer to what it means to be saved. St. Augustine once said, "Love God and do as you please." Is that easy or is it complex? Our freedom in faith is framed by a covenant, by a love of God. Freedom is not license. It is freedom to act within the context of a relationship with God, a relationship of love. Paul reminds the people of Galatia that we are called to respond to a loving and graceful God by loving our neighbor as ourselves. That means that we are to show esteem for our neighbors and ourselves. We are to desire to help our neighbor. We are free not simply to be at liberty, but we are free to be more freely loving; and if we are more freely loving, we will be a people who seek a more just and supportive society in which people, to use Paul's words, "no longer bite and devour one another."

So why is it that we are called to live by this ethic of love within our newfound freedom in Christ? Many years ago, a dear friend of mine, a Roman Catholic nun by the name of Sister Virginia, came to my congregation, and she brought a children's message. She gathered the children around her on the step in front of the altar, and she held up a plant. It was a sorry looking plant, wilted, and clearly damaged. And Sister Virginia said, "This plant was given to me by a dear friend who loves me very much, she wanted me to have a living thing, a remembrance of her, and then Sister Virginia said, "You know what I did? I left it in the car over night on a cold winter evening and look what happened to it. It froze, and now it has died." Virginia looked at the children and said; "A world without love is like this plant, all frozen and dead." As the Apostle Paul ends our text for today, he writes, "The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self control." These are not laws for behavior, but these are the characteristics of those who in their freedom are open and responsive to the creative spirit of God. There is no law but freedom. But that freedom is framed by a context, by a covenant of mutuality and of love.

So, dear friends, return with me to our disheveled, hung over, disappointed musician who met me, a preacher, instead of an executive from the music industry. Can a person lose his or her salvation? There is a simple answer, you know, but that simple answer is only the beginning, and it opens up a lifetime journey of faith.

Let us pray.

Gracious God, close to us as breathing and distant as the fartherest star, we give you thanks for your many gifts to us; but, above all today, we give you thanks for the gift of grace, the gift through which the Apostle Paul reached out to the people in Galatia and a gift with which you reach out to us through Jesus Christ and each generation. By that grace, O God, transform us, renew us, and call us again to be a people of your purpose, children of your righteousness. We pray this in the name of Christ. Amen.