“E-ticket ride” was an expression that could be applied to a fine wave when surfing, a good movie, or any other experience that was top-notch fun and entertainment. It came from the old ticket system at Disneyland which assigned different price individual tickets for different classes of rides. An A or B ticket got you into less exciting children’s rides or attractions, while an E-ticket was the admission to the best Disneyland had to offer, the Matterhorn, Space Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc.
The best deal on tickets was to buy them in booklets of a few of each level. The problem was that one quickly ran out of E-tickets and usually had A and B tickets leftover. Someone recently mentioned to me that she remembered members of her church donating those lame leftovers to visiting missionaries.
Disneyland’s ticket system was ultimately replaced by a system they were already using for private evening parties at their amusement park, one price for admission and then all rides and attractions open without tickets as many times as you like. Of course, long lines still curtail how often one rides the best rides.
The thing is, that once one had experienced the one-admission-price-all-rides-free system, you never wanted to go back to the old, pricey, confusing ticket system. So those “private” company parties were bound to lead to the disappearance of the ticket system. Whatever nostalgia “E-ticket” might evoke, no one headed for Disneyland really wants to experience under the old system (although one could certainly wish for a lower admission price).
In our text for this coming Sunday, Galatians 3:1-15, and overall in the epistles we’ve been reading for our Community Bible Experience, I & II Corinthians, Galatians, and the beginning of Romans, Paul is suggesting that believers in Jesus who want to put themselves back under the system of the Mosaic law are crazier than a person who might seriously want to reinstate the ticket system at Disneyland. Once you’ve experienced the grace of all rides for one price, why would you want to go back to a complex arrangement of paying separately for each ride? Once you’ve experienced the welcome into God’s family by grace through faith, why would you want to go back to trying to confirm your place in that family by keeping the law?
Our text assures us that our entry into the family of God, into His kingdom, is on the same basis it was for Abraham, who, in verse 6 (which quotes Genesis 15:6) “believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” That “righteousness” is nothing less than a total welcome into and identity as the people of God, those who enjoy and will enjoy all the blessings God has for those who love Him.
With the old Disneyland system, people got into the park and enjoyed it two different ways, some under the “law” of those lettered tickets and some under the “grace” of a one-price admission to a company party. Now everyone comes in more or less the same way. The message of Paul throughout his letters is that God’s kingdom, God’s family beginning with Abraham, continuing with the Jewish people, and culminating in the Christian church, also has one system. We enter by faith, by accepting, trusting and living in the grace of Jesus Christ, who died and rose again to abolish the old system and give us the new one.