Sometime last week I strayed across the movie, Resting Place on one of those all-movie channels that sometimes puts up a real treasure – this was one!

It is 1972. The fallen body of Lt. Dwyte Johnson is brought back to be buried in Rockville, Georgia. However, there is one problem.  Lt. Johnson is black and his family wants to bury him in a cemetery where only white people are buried. I won’t spoil the outcome if you haven’t seen it. It’d be worth the rental fee.

All of that is a long lead in to our text with week – Galatians 3:1-9; 23-29. One of the commentators I read put it like this. Imagine that you are living in the South before desegregation and just about everything was segregated. White folk, you drink here. Black folk, you drink over there. Or, as was often the case, there was nothing at all for the black folk.

Now, continuing the same illustration, imagine you’re in the eastern Roman Empire in the province of Galatia. Most of the town is worshiping various gods and goddesses and who you worship depends on your tribe and ethnic group. Others have begun to worship the emperor and the power of Rome. There is a sizable minority of Jews in town who have their synagogue and are struggling to maintain their identity in the face of pagan idolatry.

Into this mix comes this strange Jewish man named Paul. As Paul says, “Jesus of Nazareth, crucified by the Romans was raised from the dead confirming by the God of Israel that he is the world’s true king. And now the promise God made long ago to the very first Jew, Abraham, the God’s people, God’s family would reach around the world is being fulfilled.”

Paul provided the answer to who we are.  How do you know who you are?