Beyond Division

We come to this place with the baggage of inequality. We can’t simply escape the divisions of race, gender, orientation, class and education that separate us from each other. Some of us are richer and some poorer, some better fed than others, some more powerful than others, some live with the shame and humiliation of being failures in the eyes of the world. And too often the patterns of our church life simply end up reproducing the patterns of privilege and shame that are so common in the world around us. But in a faithful community, those who are humiliated and disgraced by the ways of the world are treated as beloved children of God and experience good news and deliverance and satisfaction. In a faithful community, the privileged follow Jesus in the difficult and demanding work of self-emptying so that they can be in a community of equals. In the process of that self-emptying the privileged lose the anxiety of trying to stay on top and gain the joyful awareness that they are always – for richer or poorer in sickness and in health – they are always children of God.