Pastor’s Corner: If Only It Were So

May 11, 2022

“…in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 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. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.” – Galatians 3:26-29

If only it were so.

The simple truth is that while the Church no longer fusses over whether someone came into the faith from an upbringing in Judaism or in the faith of the Greeks, religion, race, and cultural background all shape our interactions with one another. Slavery is outlawed, but do we accord the same respect to the fast food clerk as we do to a professional? It’s not hard to see how the Church, despite Paul’s words, reflects the prejudices of the world.

Let us insist upon a Church that does better.

And then there’s male and female.

Men have successfully exerted control over women for millennia. They’ve generally asserted that this was for women’s benefit. It may have fooled the men who said it. I’m sure it didn’t fool very many of the women.

Since the day of the Apostle Paul, the Church has known that it must fully respect the worth, dignity, integrity, and autonomy of women. I’m afraid that this is an example of a theology that we are still laboring to put fully into practice. The Apostle himself fell short of recognizing the full truth of what he had written. Let us choose to honor his words by insisting on a society that he could probably not have imagined.

Let us insist upon a world in which women have full citizenship, in which their integrity receives the same deference and respect as anyone’s. Let us insist upon it in the Church.

With aloha,

Pastor Eric