To Whom Do We Belong

1 Corinthians 3:1-9

February 12, 2017

Most of the time most of us still mostly don’t get it. We cannot answer the most basic human question – who am I. Even if we know the catechisms and answer, “I am a child of God,” we really don’t understand it. We are not fully grasped by the weight of that answer until we stand under it and know that we belong to God – each and every one of us, in the fullness of our lives. Not to Apollos, not to Paul; to the United States, not to Mexico; not to the Democrats, not to the Republicans; but to God.

Or, perhaps, we really do understand it and are terrified by it and, in our terror, we have created every human hierarchy as violent resistance to the simple truth of that belonging.

In other words, to say that we belong to God is to say that we are – each and every one of us – fundamentally equal. We stand equally as creatures before our Creator. We are all children of the same God.

If this is true – if we belong to God – then nothing else matters. It no longer matters that you come from the north and I come from the south and someone else comes from south of the border, for in Christ there is no east or west, in him no north or south. It no longer matters that I identify as male and you identify as female and someone else is sorting that out, for in Christ there is no male or female. It no longer matters that that one calls herself a Jew and that one calls himself a Greek and someone else is something else altogether, for in Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek.

In other words, through incarnate love God says “yes” to all humankind and calls us all out of the dimness of our tribal caves into the bright daylight of our common humanity. In still other words, the Incarnation is the end of hierarchy and, thus, the end of patriarchy, the end of racism, the end of heterosexism, the end of classism, the end of nationalism, the end of every human system of domination.

That’s why Jesus scares the hell out of so many of us. We enjoy our privilege. We enjoy our power. We enjoy our position. We are terrified of the notion that, somehow, the last shall be first, the mighty shall tumble from their thrones, and that the meek shall inherit it all.

That is why powerful men seek to silence women. That is why white nationalism hangs on stubbornly. That is why the rich cling desperately to their wealth. They still believe maleness, whiteness, and money are somehow special measures of ultimate worth.

But none of that mattered to Jesus, and none of that matters in the Beloved Community.

To be sure, we still live a long way from the kindom of God, but it has begun. The reign of God’s love is breaking in.

You may be forgiven for hearing me say “kin-dom” and thinking it’s just my southern tongue gliding past the “g.” But the word I almost always use is actually “kin-dom,” as in we are all kin here, we are kindred spirits, as it were, but also this: we are all children of God. We belong to God.

The world continues to say otherwise, perhaps it always will. The powers and principalities will warn us. They will give us all manner of explanation. Nevertheless, we will persist. Amen.