“When All Else is Washed Away”

Fourth Sunday of Pentecost

Sunday June 20, 2010

1 Kings 19: 1-15a

Psalm 42

Galatians 3: 23-29

Today is Father’s Day.  It is a day when we are invited to remember and give thanks for our fathers.  As we do so, we cannot help but ponder how our fathers have affected our lives – hopefully for good, but sometimes in more challenging ways.

Whether that influence was good or bad, it is interesting to reflect on how much of our identity is shaped by our fathers, and by our ancestors in general.   It is from our ancestors that we receive important distinguishing characteristics – our height, our eye colour, our skin colour, our cultural identity, our linguistic heritage.  For many of us, our fathers, and our ancestors in general, were also important influences in shaping our religious identities, our educational and vocational goals, sometimes even our economic health and social status.    

In light of those strong influences that others have played on the formation of our sense of identity, it is always interesting to ponder what words, what adjectives, what categories we choose when we are asked to identify ourselves to others.

Some begin by mentioning an identity that is connected with their ancestral, or cultural or ethnic heritage – I am Canadian, or I am an immigrant, or I am an Chinese – Canadian or I am a native Canadian. 

Others identify themselves in relation to some form of family relationship or sexual orientation -- their marital status, perhaps whether or not they have children or grandchildren, perhaps whether they are gay or straight.

Others define themselves in terms of what they do for work or career – I am a doctor, I am a teacher, I am a stay-at-home parent.

Others define themselves in relation to some sense of loyalty to an external cultural group.  This is perhaps most evident, these days, in relation to the little flags that hang out of the windows of the cars on the streets of our city, and whether a goal scored at a soccer game on the other side of the world fills a person with a sense of elation or with a sense of despair– you might have heard something about those games over the past few weeks...

Still others might even choose an identity that reveals something of their spiritual commitments – I am a Christian, or I am Muslim, or I am an atheist (or, hopefully with a great deal of justifiable pride in their voice – I AM A PRESBYTERIAN!!) 

Of course, the choices that are made about how people identify themselves are dependent upon who is asking, or what the context of the conversation is – but regardless of the conversation or the context, there are so many adjectives, so many categories, so many words that we use to describe who we are to others.

We live in a culture which sometimes seems preoccupied with the adjectives that we attach to ourselves, or that we attach to others, which seek to provide some clues about who we are.  In many ways, recent years have only seen an increase in the amount of attention that is focused on these various identities and groups.  And there has been a corresponding increase in the amount of sub-dividing that has been going on in those various groups.

Some examples.  It used to be that one might speak of homosexual people as a group; that category then divided into gay and lesbian people; then further into gay, lesbian and bisexual people; these days, it is not uncommon to hear people refer to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, transsexual, two-spirited, and queer communities. 

And what is true of these various descriptions of the subdivisions of sexual orientation is equally true of almost every other category and group of people.  Feminist thought used to be a sub-category of philosophy, sociology and theology which sought to pay particular attention to the insights and perspectives of women – until it was pointed out that most people who were speaking for the feminist community were well-educated, usually fairly affluent white women, who did not and could not speak for the experience of poor black women, or disadvantaged minorities, or new immigrants, or the socially challenged.  From there, the categories of feminist thought began to unfold. 

And what is true of these other categories and disciplines of human experience certainly is true of the church. The fragmentation of the church, particularly in the Protestant tradition, has led to a host of sub-categories of Christianity.  When I was in school, I had a good friend whose family constantly seemed to grow dissatisfied with whatever church they belonged to, and were instrumental in forming new congregations with other dissatisfied members of their various churches.  Each time that they formed a new congregation, it seemed that they would simply add an adjective to the name of their previous congregations.  They started as members of the Reformed Church, and then became part of the Free Reformed Church, then the Orthodox Free Reformed Church – and the adjectives just kept getting added. 

Even though attention to contexts can help us to better understand the influences that must be taken into account when we seek to understand one another, the sad reality is that these identities can betray us.  We all know that categorizing ourselves, or others, can lead to terrible situations of racism, of intolerance, of misunderstanding, and even of terrible violence.  In recent years, to identify oneself as Sunni Muslim in a Shia area; or to be Tutsi rather than Hutu in Rwanda; or to be a Protestant rather than a Catholic in Northern Ireland; such categories can sometimes be a matter of life and death.

And what is equally dangerous is that the way that this tendency to construct identity on the basis of arbitrary categories tends to fuel prejudice.  That is, the categories into which we have placed others can lead us to fail to see the other person in the fullness of who they are, or in the true fullness of their potential. 

The most heinous examples of such categorization are known to all of us.  When we see a young black man walking down the street, do we see him as a potential gangster, or as a potential president of the United States, or simply for who he is in the fullness of his own life and his own humanity?  Or when someone shares with us that they are gay, what assumptions do we make about them?   Or if we meet a resident of Rosedale and a resident of Regent Park, do we view them, and the value of their insights and ideas, differently?  When a person self-identifies as a liberal, or a conservative, a Christian or a Muslim, an immigrant or a citizen, what assumptions do our minds begin to make about who they are and how we are to act around them?  How quickly do we stop truly listening to what they have to say on the basis of our assumptions about the category of people that they come from?

There are times when the categories that we place on ourselves and on others might be useful, but the reality is that they usually fail us.

It is interesting to ponder this tendency to attach identities and adjectives to ourselves, and to others, in light of today’s reading from the letter to the Galatians. 

At issue, in this passage, is the question of the basis for justification before God.  The wider context for this reading reveals that the issue that was being pondered was what role the Law played in one’s justification and acceptance in the eyes of God.  Was obedience to some set of rules necessary in order to receive the blessings and grace of God?

The passage argues that such a notion was being challenged in light of the coming of Christ.  We read “now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed.  Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith.  But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.”  

Lest we think that this idea of justification by our actions is an archaic and outdated idea, it is good for us to remember that we continue to justify our existence on the basis of a whole set of activities, events and criteria in our lives.  Where we grew up, where we were educated, what we do for a living, what our cultural background is, what our family income is – all of these things are used to offer some justification for our lives and actions, some reflection of the value that we want others to see in us.

But the subsequent words in this passage from Galatians challenge this idea of justification on the basis of some external criteria.  “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” 

The types of distinction that this passage identifies are interesting to ponder.  The differentiation between Jew and Greek was based on race and culture.   Both in the Book of Acts and in other parts of the New Testament, there are indications that one’s racial or cultural background – whether Jew or Greek – were viewed as lines of division in the community.  But these words from Galatians were a protest against such divisions in the community of faith, and continue to remind us that racial or cultural divisions in the community of Christ’s followers have been washed away in the waters of baptism.

In a similar way, the author’s identification of the difference between slave and free was an attempt to challenge any divisions in the Christian community that were based upon levels of economic or social status.  In the culture of the time, there was a powerful hierarchical structure to society – with different people, from the emperor down to the common slave, assigned to different levels of power and authority in society.  There were some who were free, and some who were enslaved under the power and authority of others.  And not much has changed.  We may not have an explicit slave trade – though there continue to be forms of slavery that persist in our world today – but the meetings and the protests that will take place outside of the walls of this church over the coming week will remind us that there are those with access to economic and social power, and those who do not feel that they have an equitable and reasonable access to such power. 

The author then addresses divisions based on gender.  The statement that there is no longer male or female is not intended to imply that baptism creates some level of biological androgyny in the Church; but it does require that there be a deep and profound respect for equality between the sexes in the Church community.

When we realize that this passage addresses issues of racial, cultural, economic, social and gender-based division in the Church, we begin to realize that this passage challenges and, ultimately, de-legitimizing many of the different identities and categories that we tend to use.

And what is it that has undermined all of these various levels of division and differentiation? 

It is our baptism into Christ.  In the Christian community, we are called to see the person before we see the category that we have placed them into.  As a result, we may honour and celebrate the gift of diversity, but we should never allow diversity to be a justification for discrimination or for division.  Our baptism binds us together in the unity of Christ, in the unity of the Spirit, in the unity of knowing that we are all children of the one God. 

This is the unity for which the Church must strive and struggle; for this is the unity into which we were baptized; this is the unity that we come to know, to celebrate and to cherish when all of the labels, all of the identities, all of the categories are washed away in the waters of baptism. 

May we embrace that unity that invites us to see ourselves, and every person that we encounter, as equally and eternally beloved children of the living God.