(Galatians 3: 28)

By Kim Thoday

While travelling separately through the countryside late one afternoon a Hindu, a Rabbi, and a Critic were caught in a terrific thunderstorm. They sought shelter at a nearby farmhouse. “That storm will be raging for hours.” The farmer told them. “You ought to spend the night. The problem is there is only room for two in the house. One of you must sleep in the barn.”

“I’ll be the one” said the Hindu, “a little hardship is nothing to me.” And he went to the barn.

A few minutes later there was a knock at the door. It was the Hindu. “I’m sorry,” he said to the others, “but there is a cow in the barn. Cows are sacred creatures and I cannot impose.”

“Don’t worry,” said the Rabbi, “make yourself comfortable. I will go sleep in the barn”

A few minutes later there was another knock at the door. It was the Rabbi. “I hate to be a bother,” he said, “but there is a pig in the barn. In my religion pigs are unclean, I wouldn’t feel comfortable sleeping near a pig.”

“Oh, all right,” said the Critic, “I’ll go sleep in the barn.”

A few minutes later there was a knock at the door. It was the pig and the cow.

(Benjamin Hoff, The Tale of Piglet)

So often Christians are known for their criticisms. Let’s also be known by what we stand for: the positives as well. It seems to me that while Jesus made it very clear what he was against – this did not define his ministry. What defined Jesus’ ministry? From whence did Jesus primarily source his identity?

One time in our Church a person said to me quite seriously: “Why does our Church always attract the weirdos?” I paused for a moment and nodded in agreement and then said, “Well just look at the minister.” Although I found the person’s criticism to be full of self-righteousnessness, I let the question become a catalyst for spiritual reflection. We are all weirdos, I guess, from some particular point of view. We are brought up on comparing. We define ourselves and justify I ourselves in relation to the ‘other.’ Our identities, whether individually, sexually, racially, nationally, politically, socially and so on, are constructions; distinctions of identity usually in the form of an hierarchical order. In many ways we are taught, trained and tantalised into developing a ‘critical eye’ for viewing others who are different. Western ‘Christian’ culture has not been good at handling difference. My experience is that criticism of those who are different is for many, the main mechanism for self-identity.

Criticism is of course a slippery term. In its formal meaning, criticism is positive, for it means carefully evaluating something; testing something’s validity. However, criticism has also come to mean a critical attitude and it is obviously to this usage I am referring.

Jesus of Nazareth had a telescopically clear focus on the source of his identity. In the Gospel accounts we see this focus time and again. The source of his identity was God. Indeed God and Jesus were connected like the mountainous source of a river is connected to its mouth. They are really one and the same; like parent and child. In Jesus’ earthly life some people were able to see that Jesus reflected the very nature of God: a love for his creation; a love so deep for humankind that he would be willing to sacrifice himself for that love. In Jesus we see the outworking of his identity with God – the divine task of offering himself as that living sacrifice for the salvation of the whole of creation.

When we become Christians, the critical self is put to death. We are no-longer defined by the critical evaluations of our differences. We are now defined in the way that Jesus was/ is defined. Through Jesus, we are the people of God. We are new creations. We are now born of the Spirit. In Christ we are One; the old differences that once held us in states of disunity and hierarchy have been removed. They have been removed from every facet of human existence. This, my friends, has enormous consequences if we think through the implications. The Apostle Paul is perhaps the first, after Jesus, to look upon the horizon of the salvation that has come in Jesus, when in his Epistle to the Christians in Galatia he declares that when we have become Christians, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for you are all one in Christ” (Galatians 3:28).

This does not imply that we are all now clones in Christ! No, not at all. The Apostle Paul’s example of the human body and its different parts as a metaphor for the Church explicitly shows the need for difference (1 Cor 12 and Eph 4). It is the self-righteous, self-interested, self-justifying dimension to difference that is now absent for the Christian. There is no place for this kind of criticism amongst Christians. If anything the Christian life is a celebration of difference. It is the Spirit of Christ that now justifies and sanctifies the difference/s. It is the Spirit of Christ, that now gives us our identity and that identity carries with it two large planks of wood, some big sharp nails and a crown composed of thorns.

Blessings in Jesus’ name,

KIM THODAY, HEWETT COMMUNITY CHURCH OF CHRIST, SOUTH AUSTRALIA

http://www.hewett.org.au