June 24, 2007 - Pentecost 4, Year C
Saint James Episcopal Church, Saint James, NY

One of the things that happens
when you get to know the bible a bit
is that you begin to think
that you know what it all means.
You get to a verse that sounds familiar
and skip over it, thinking, "Yes, I get that."
It happened to me
when I was reading our second reading this week, our reading from Galatians.
It includes one of the most quoted verses in the bible
in recent years.
"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. "
It's a verse that has been prominent in some of the biggest social issues of our lifetime,
the civil rights movement, feminism, poverty, and even the debates about immigration.
It's quite straightforward:
we shouldn't discriminate in the church,
not on the basis of race, or religion, or economic background.

There's nothing wrong with that conclusion. It's justified by the text.
But as I began to think about it,
it occurred to me
that we tend to focus on the first half of the verse
and read the second half
only in passing.
In other words, we tend to read this
as if its intention is to talk about the things that divide us
and how to overcome them.
But what if
that's not the primary point
at all?
What if this passage is not first and foremost
about race and gender and social standing
but about who it is we belong to?

Because that's what the second half of the verse
seems to be about.
Who we belong to,
as Christians.
We belong
to Christ.

Because as Paul sees it, in the old way of faith, what we know as Judaeism,
in that faith, the way you belonged
was by keeping the rules of the group.
There were very clear boundaries;
keep these rules, and you were in;
fail to keep them
and you were out.

But this new way, the way of Christ,
it was different.
No longer was it rules that defined membership.
It was relationship, your relationship with Jesus.
Being connected with Jesus
was all that mattered, belonging to Christ.
And as we belong to Christ, Christ lives in and through us, and we live in Christ;
that's what being Christian
is all about.
The very core
of what it means to be Christian
is to belong to Christ.

The New Testament describes it in numerous ways. It talks about following Christ, about turning to him, about proclaiming that Jesus is Lord.
It talks about taking up the cross, about losing our lives in order to save them.
All of it, ways of talking about belonging to Christ.

That's what baptism is all about. It's about joining the church, the ritual of belonging. But even more importantly,
it's about belonging to Christ, living in and through Christ and Christ in us.

"Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your
Savior?" we ask. "Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love? Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?"
And when our answer to these questions is yes, we are baptized, and we are marked with oil, the sign of the cross on our foreheads,
marked as Christ's own for ever.
We belong to Christ.

And there is no room for half-heartedness
among those who claim to follow Jesus.
If you belong to Christ
then everything else
takes second place.

Remember the story of the rich man who came to Jesus and asked
"Teacher, what must I do
to inherit eternal life?"
"Just go take everything you have
and sell it
and give the proceeds to the poor."
And the man went away sad,
because he had many things.
Jesus is uncompromising.
If we want to belong to him
there's no room
for half heartedness,
no room
for divided loyalties.
If money is getting in the way of following Christ
then get rid of it.

It's not money itself that's bad;
there were a number of women who traveled around with Jesus
and paid his expenses out of their own pockets.
The problem is
when money becomes more important
than belonging to Christ.
The problem is
when anything becomes more important
than belonging to Christ.

When someone asks you who you are, asks you to tell them about yourself,
what do you say?
It seems to me
that what Paul is saying in Galatians, what Christ is saying
in the gospel,
is that the first thing we should think of, whether or not it's appropriate to blurt it out in the context of a conversation, the first thing we should think of
is that we belong to Christ.
Because for all of us who are baptized
that's what matters, that's what matters most about who we are.
We belong to Christ.

One of the things that was new to me when I came to the US
was the recital of the pledge of allegiance.
We don't do that in Australia; it's just not part of our culture. Most Australians are lucky to know the national anthem.
But the pledge of allegiance is very important in American culture. It defines, it reminds us
of who we are.

But if we take the bible seriously — and I know this is controversial —
there is one allegiance
that supercedes that allegiance.
It is our allegiance to Christ. We belong to Christ.

And maybe, maybe what we should be doing
is every morning when we get up
is pledge allegiance to Christ.
To remind us
first and foremost
of who we belong to.
We belong to Christ.

What would happen
if every morning
each of us stood up and said
I pledge allegiance to Christ.

Because nothing — nothing — should get ahead of our faith in, our relationship with
Christ.

But belonging to Christ
is not just an individual issue.
It's also something
that defines us as a community of faith
that defines us as the church.
We are the people who belong to Christ. That's what brings us together each Sunday morning,
that's what has us coming to paint Mills Hall together
and work at the Strawberry Festival
and go to Sunday School
and participate in Bible Study
and hang out at coffee hour,
and remember a former Rector's death.
What holds us together, what makes us belong
is that we belong
to Christ.

And this is where the first part of Galatians 3:28 comes in.
Because what holds us together
is that we belong to Christ
and anything that threatens to tear us apart
has to be jettisoned,
because it gets in the way
of our belonging to Christ
and because of that
to one another.

In Galatians, it seems that for the people Paul is writing to,
what's getting in their way of belonging to Christ
is divisions over gender, and race, and social status.
And he says
that that
is simply not acceptable.
Those categories, the categories that shape the rest of our lives,
they simply aren't important in the church. That do not, can not
define
who belongs.
We belong to Christ.

In the church all that matters,
all that matters
is belonging to Christ.
It doesn't mean that those differences don't exist.
They do. We don't shed our gender, our racial background, even our socio-economic status
when we become Christians.
I'm going to be a white well-educated woman to the day I die, whether I like it, whether I deny it, or not.
The issue is whether those things
ever become more important than,
ever get in the way of
my belonging
to Christ.

It's something that I think is particularly important for us to remember
at this time in our church's history.
We're at a point
where some people want to say
that some things
mean that we cannot stay together as a church.
They think that issues like whether gay and lesbian people should be bishops,
or whether women can and should be ordained
are so divisive,
that where you stand on those issues
determines whether you belong or not
to Christ,
and therefore, whether you belong or not
to the church.

But as far as I can tell
at least from the passage we read to day,
that's not true.
Whether we belong to Christ, whether we belong to the church
depends on Christ,
and Christ has invited all
to come to him.

None of us has the right to make that assumption,
that just because someone differs from us
that they do not
belong to Christ.

One group I belong to has a bunch of core values that we have agreed upon. And among them are these:
We are Christ-centered.
We value our relationships in Christ over issues that divide us.
We value restoring all people to unity with God and each other in Christ

We belong to Christ, and nothing, nothing
should get in the way of that,
whether it's parts of our own lives, our backgrounds, our possessions, our nationalities,
or things that might divide us as a church. All that matters is that esential question:
Do you belong to Christ?
If your answer is yes, then you belong to Christ.
It doesn't matter whether you are male or female, slave or free, Jew, Greek, American or Iraqi, gay or straight, conservative or liberal.
If you belong to Christ
you belong to Christ.
And you belong in the church.

We are the church. We belong
to Christ.
Thanks be to God.

©Raewynne J.Whiteley, 2007