Galatians 3:25-28
John 3:16-18
Seminary of the Southwest, Austin, Texas

Every August my friend Kara shares this bit of advice for seminarians, which I still return to frequently in my life as a priest: “If you’re going to share the Gospel with others, you need to hear it for yourself, as good news for you, first.” She goes on to say, “No one will be a priest” (and here you might substitute your own vocation) “exactly like you will. Being a priest is full of joy, but it is not a means towards your own self-actualization.” There’s a tension here: search for, find, and trust in God’s good news for you, in the fullness and particularity of who you are… and keep in mind that this is not the most interesting thing about the Gospel.

As I was preparing to preach this evening I found myself facing a similar tension in our liturgy. We gather tonight to celebrate God’s love for “the whole human family” across sexualities, races, ability, genders, migration status, you name it. But even as we do so our readings from Galatians and the Gospel of St John are pointing us to something more interesting about what God is up to. The verses we heard this evening are snippets—bordering on the verge of prooftexts—from longer examinations of who is in God’s family. Paul writes to the fledgling community of believers in Galatia, who seem to be confused about the relationship between what God had done through Abraham and what God had done through Jesus. To be part of God’s people does not mean one needs to look like the other. In John, Jesus and Nicodemus are having a conversation about birthing processes, similarly focused on whether physical lineage is what makes the difference, or whether it is the condition of the heart that unites one to God’s family. In both of these discourses, St John and St Paul come to the conclusion that our material condition—which in both passages very specifically includes our bodily state—is not what bring us into right relationship with God, but rather trusting in the work of Jesus is the key that opens the door behind which redemption lies.

You may recall that St Paul is responding to a specific physical marker of conformity in the practice of circumcision, and he emphatically rejects the idea that everyone (or at least the men) needs to be the same: “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” But instead of pausing to exalt the value of unity across diversity he subverts the argument of his opponents to remind the Church that our identity lies beyond those we bring along with us. He does not revel in how the Body of Christ is made of Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free, but rather that the distinctions have been obliterated in the eyes of God for those who have put on Christ. These differences do not actually matter for the purposes of figuring out who we are as the Church— unilaterally redeemed by the God who created us and welcomed us into the primordial promises made to Abraham. Elsewhere of course Paul is happy to go to great lengths to celebrate the many gifts given to the one Body, but even then he is focused on the idea that the lordship of Jesus Christ in our lives is the only thing that makes this discipleship project possible, because we the whole human family have proven time and again our inability to get it right on our own. The collect that lends its name to tonight’s service takes a pretty dim view of humanity. It portrays us as arrogant, hateful, separated, struggling, and confused… and yet for all that: redeemed and destined for harmony through no accomplishment of our own.

The most interesting thing about the Gospel is not that God has created and called together a diverse body of people so we can hold hands and sing Kumbaya while still clinging to our differences. Rather, the most interesting thing about the Gospel is that through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ God has broken the chains of sin, separation, and death as you experience them in all of your uniqueness, so that you can know and trust this good news for yourself and invite everyone else around you, in all of their uniqueness, into that life unfettered by death.

God has called a chosen people, the children of Abraham and members of the Body of Christ our great high priest, to intercede for this fractured world and to labor on Christ’s behalf until he should come again in glory. Even as we acknowledge the goodness of what God has made us to be, we must remember that our differences will not save us, but they can be tools for redemption if we let them. Our differences are an interesting part of the Gospel to the extent that they are gifts from God that equip us to do the work that no one else can do. “No one will be a priest exactly like you will.” Our differences are interesting to the extent they allow us to reach others who see we are like them and trust us long enough to hear the message that separation and death are not the final word for God’s children. Because if God can free you, then maybe that means God can free me too.

Of course the Church fails at living this out, left, right, and center. Why do we need gatherings like this if not to remind ourselves that God does not use only those who look like the powerful? The Church has much to repent of by ignoring St Paul’s exhortation that we cannot be saved by conforming to a single way of being human. But we cannot tell God something she doesn’t already know. We cannot make the love of Christ any bigger than it ever was. The marginalized do not need to be welcomed into the Church as if they have been offered some right or claim they have not had since the beginning. Rather those of us who have been happy to take up space and insist on conformity need to get out of the way; to tear down the dams and let the river of life flow where it will. Elsewhere Paul reminds the Corinthians: “Look at your situation when you were called, brothers and sisters! By ordinary human standards not many were wise, not many were powerful, not many were from the upper class. But God chose what the world considers foolish to shame the wise. God chose what the world considers weak to shame the strong. And God chose what the world considers low-class and low-life—what is considered to be nothing—to reduce what is considered to be something to nothing. So no human being can brag in God’s presence. It is because of God that you are in Christ Jesus. He became wisdom from God for us. This means that he made us righteous and holy, and he delivered us” (1 Corinthians 1, CEB).

Honoring the diversity of humanity is not “the high calling angels cannot share.” It’s not even the most interesting thing about the Gospel. But it is the cradle in which God invites us to know the good news for ourselves first, so we can share it with others and bring the whole human family into that song of harmony that flows from the throne of grace, world without end.