Galates 3.23-4.7 Genèse 41.25-45 Psaumes 11 Jean 5.1-18
Matt Bispham
26 So
in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were
baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor
Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for
you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s
seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Discussions
around gender, equality, or the lack of equality, take up a noteworthy amount
of space on my Twitter feed and news subscriptions. Identity Politics permeates
our zeitgeist. Because of its importance to our age, how the church responds to
the questions and challenges that are posed receive a significant amount of
attention. Archbishop Justin, speaking to Synod on this topic last Easter,
called for radical Christian inclusion in the church. Jesus’ ministry is the example of radical inclusion.
Whether speaking to the woman at the well (John 4), the Roman Centurion
(Matthew 8), or Zacchaeus, the physically small tax collector (Luke 19), the
Gospels show us that Jesus went out of his way to meet with those who were on
the fringes of societal norms. In this passage to the Galatians we see Jesus’s
ministry of radical inclusion co-existing alongside our requirement to become a
child of God; of the need for faith and for baptism.
Traditionally, “All one in
Christ” has underpinned teaching on salvation; we are saved by virtue of all
being equally unworthy and all in need of adoption. For the Early Church “All
one in Christ” had far reaching implications for how believers understood how
they were both continuing and diverging from the Jewish traditions of which
Paul himself had been a fully-fledged member. For me “All one in Christ”
impacts how we must treat one another in the church; “clothing ourselves in
Christ” is a mindset for loving those whom I find it difficult or hard to love.
In our era of rapid technology development, shifting social norms and political
change, how much we converge and diverge from the world around us requires
wisdom and sensitivity. When applying
this scripture to modern debates it is central that we do not forget to “clothe
ourselves in Christ”, that we recognize that we all “Children of God” and that
we are all dependent on the Spirit who calls out “Abba, Father”.
No comments:
Post a Comment