[00:00:08] Speaker A: Welcome to the Collective Table, where we celebrate the intersections of Jesus, justice and joy.
This podcast is brought to you by Oceanside Sanctuary Church. Each week, we bring our listeners a recording of our weekly Sunday teaching at Oceanside Sanctuary, which ties scripture into the larger conversations happening in our community, congregation, and even the podcast. So we're glad you're here, and thanks for listening.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Good morning. For those of you who don't know, my name is Jason Coker. I'm one of the co pastors here at the Oceanside Sanctuary, and this is our adult teaching time. And so we've been working our way through a series called Setting Collective Tables. This series is in conjunction with our podcast season this fall, of course, because everybody has a podcast. It's 2024. I'm sure you all have podcasts, but we do have a podcast called the Collective Table. And this fall we've been really focused in our teaching and in that podcast series on the divisions that exist between us in our communities right now, especially as we approach yet another exhausting election season. And so, see, I'm hearing the music in my head, like the Ewok music. Anyway, so our series has been like, how do we wrestle with that? How do we wrestle with our differences? How do we come together in spite of those differences? What does it mean for us as Christians to cultivate a different sort of inward way of being so that we are open to people who are different than us? Not a historical strength of Christianity, in case you didn't know. Right. And so I want to talk today a little bit about a very particular way theologically, that this becomes characteristic of Christianity, even though we have fallen woefully short of that ability to do what Tyndale led us into with communion this morning. This comes from Galatians, chapter three, verses 23 to 29. We're just going to put verse 28 up on the screen because that's sort of the crux, no pun intended, of this particular passage. But I'm going to read a little bit longer section to you, starting in verse 23. And I want to share with you just what I'm noticing about this passage and invite you to consider what you might be noticing as well. Galatians 3, verse 23 begins by saying this. Now, before faith came.
Before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore, the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith.
But now that faith has come, we're no longer subject to a disciplinarian for in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith, as many of you were baptized into Christ, have clothed yourselves with Christ. Then. Verse 28, there is no longer a Jew nor 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 and heirs according to the promise. All right, I'm going to ask you just to take a moment. We're going to, like, settle ourselves and pray, if that's okay, before we jump into this. God, we thank you for today. We thank you for this space.
We thank you for each other and for what it means that a group of people have been gathering in this way, in this congregation for 149 years and looking to you for hope, looking to you to experience something beyond ourselves that helps us get over ourselves so that we might find peace and wholeness and goodness in our lives and relationships.
We ask that you do that miracle in us today. We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.
Well, this morning as I came to church, I wondered what little story I might tell that would illustrate my message today. And fortunately, when I turned on my computer this morning, I got a nice little note from somebody who actually used to lead music here many years ago, pre pandemic. That seems like 50 years ago. I know, right? It was just before the pandemic. And this isn't somebody that I've been in contact with. It's not somebody that I've had any kind of correspondence with in a number of years. But out of the blue, a little Facebook message popped into my screen. It was a message sent through our church website. So what that means is that this person went out of their way to, like, log on. Not log on, to, like, type in the URL to our website. And then there's a little bubble that pops up and says, hey, if you have any questions, let us know. And this person popped into that little box, simply this.
My parents are both Democrats.
Glad I decided not to vote the way I was raised.
I have a conscience now. Like, I don't know if you noticed, but when you arrived here, there's no banner outside that says, this is a Democratic church.
There's nothing to indicate that we have any kind of political affiliation that we advocate for certain political parties. I certainly, I personally am not a Democrat or a Republican, Just FYI.
Not because I'm, like, too liberal for Republicans and too conservatives for Democrats. I don't occupy any kind of ambiguous middle. But My point is that there was something about this person that made them reach out and sort of insinuate, not so thinly veiled, that we don't have a conscience, or that I don't have a conscience, or that our church somehow represents a lack of a conscience, conscience, lack of morals or ethical commitments because they perceive that we advocate for the wrong politics.
And if you haven't been hanging around here for a while, then you might know that we do often advocate for local policy changes. We are politically active as a congregation. We often show up at city council and do horrific things like advocate for the poor.
Or say, for example, that people who live on the streets ought to have a robust system of support to help them realize their dignity as human beings.
Or, for example, to suggest the possibility that when police encounter people on the streets and attempt to enforce the law, that they ought to do so without resorting to violence unless it is absolutely, unquestionably necessary. Or, I don't know, for example, advocate that the local school board ought not to be banning books from the library.
These are the kinds of things that we sometimes advocate for as a church.
And for that reason, somebody who used to be here and on the stage believes that we don't have a conscience.
And this, I think, is a pretty good example of what Paul is getting at and what Tyndale so eloquently shared today. When Paul says, there is no longer Jew nor Greek. There is no longer slave or free. There is no longer male or female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. Paul is, I think, speaking against a particular binary way of seeing the world. Now we know that Paul is upset because all the way back in chapter three, verse one, he begins this section of his letter to the Christians in the Galatian Church by writing, you foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?
It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified.
And the only thing I want to learn from you is this. Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law? Or are you believing in what you heard? This is a kind of familiar narrative. If you were raised in a church, it's the narrative between the Law and the Spirit. And I want to suggest to you today that what Paul is coming against in his very familiar narrative against the law, that what Paul is doing is. He is not saying that there is something wrong with Judaism. He is not saying that there is something wrong with the Jewish law. He's saying that the Law represents something that is present in all of our lives. At all times. That is very subtly but very materially oppressing you. And that is the existence of a kind of power binary.
That the whole notion of the law exists in order to put somebody else on the other side of the law, and that somebody else are people who transgress.
And when you establish those definitions, people who follow the law versus people who transgress, that there is a deliberate power imbalance being created.
Those who follow the law are those who are good, those who have a conscience, those who belong, those who are a part of the right identity, the right group, the right ethnicity, the right crowd.
And then by definition, those who are on the other side of that definition, on the other side of the little hash mark or the slash, those who transgress are those who are out, those who are wrong, those who are immoral, those who don't belong, those who are other.
Paul's point is that we tend to do this.
We tend to create definitions and categories, not necessarily for the purpose of accurately describing our differences, because if we wanted to accurately describe our differences, we would need way more than two options.
But when we create two categories and one of them is either implicitly or explicitly good, and the other is not, it's a way of enforcing power.
Paul is very upset about this, because what Paul has done at this point in his ministry is he's gone into these Gentile nations and he's established little communities of people who follow Jesus. It wouldn't be right to call them churches, because at this point, there's no such thing as Christianity, there's no such thing as churches. At this point, there are simply followers of Jesus who are a part of this sect of Judaism.
But what becomes a controversy in the early church is that Paul especially has gone into non Jewish communities and created little communities who are followers of Jesus. And what's happened is other followers of Jesus who are Jewish, who are associated with James in Jerusalem have started to show up at these Gentile congregations and say, hey, it's really great that you are trying to implement Jesus teachings, but you're missing a few things. If you're a guy, you've got to be circumcised.
And also you're eating the wrong things. To be a good Jewish person means that there are things you don't eat, and also you're celebrating the wrong holidays. To be a good Jewish person means to celebrate certain holidays. So what's happened is that people who are very sincere, very strong in their beliefs about what it means to follow God, which means to be Jewish, are Going to non Jewish cities and communities and saying this isn't okay.
It's not enough to follow the teachings of Christ, you must also become ethnically Jewish.
Paul is very upset about this because what he sees is not that there is anything wrong with Jewish laws. Paul sees that Jewish laws are being used to create second class citizens.
You must become part of us in order to be included.
And so Paul says this is a real problem and he doesn't just limit it to the binary of law and transgression. He Also in verse 28 says, if you are followers of Jesus, not by the law, but by the Spirit, if you believe these good things, if you believe these good teachings, then that is enough. That's all you need. You don't have to also become Jewish.
And he said, and this is true for all the other binaries in your life.
If you are, by the Spirit a follower of Jesus, then there is no longer any such thing as Jew or Greek. There is no longer any such thing as slave or free or male or female. Or perhaps he might say citizen or alien or Republican or democrat or Christian or heathen or gay or straight or Dodgers versus Yankees.
No, no, that one stays.
Paul's point is that binaries, dualistic ways of defining people tend towards harm and oppression.
We use them to create power and shove others down.
These kinds of strict dualistic black and white ways of seeing the world exist specifically to gain power and that results in harming others.
Differences, on the other hand, are good.
Paul's not saying there is no difference between people who are Jewish and people who are not.
Paul's not saying there's no difference between people who identify as men and those who identify as women. Paul's not saying that there are no differences between people.
There's lots of differences between people. Differences are good. Later, in another letter, Paul uses the metaphor of the body to say there are way more than two differences. There are so many versions of what it means to be human. There are so many different ways for us to be in the world. There are so many different cultures, so many different ethnicities, so many different ways of cooking food, so many different ways of organizing the family we might today. So many different ways of being gendered.
Differences are good when we use them to humanize people, when we recognize that their differences don't detract from their inherent goodness.
But binaries tend towards harm and oppression.
Paul's answer to this is simple. That we should reject the dehumanization of those kinds of binaries and that we should embrace the Spirit Instead, that as we encounter difference in the world, we should remember that it is the spirit of God, not any written laws or practices or rituals or cultural artifacts. That it is the spirit of God that first drew us to what is good. And it's the spirit of God that will continue to lead us into what is good.
And I would say this is why having differences is so important.
This is why I think it's an incredible gift to a congregation like ours to have people who exist outside of binaries.
This is why it's incredibly important to have members of the LGBTQ community, why it's important to have people of different races and different ethnicities and different cultures. It's why it's important to have people who vote differently and think about God differently and express different desires and visions for the world. Because none of us knows what is truly good, what is truly God by ourselves.
I can only know God in full by knowing you, by knowing how you see God differently, how you express goodness differently.
And so people who are different are a great gift to us, a gift that reminds us that the world is far more than just two options on a census form that asks us to define ourselves as a male or a female.
Now, this solution, this way of being in the world by the Spirit, the Spirit that helps us to encounter difference, to see difference as good as a gift that helps us to be together in spite of those difference, to recognize the image of God in every person that we sit across the table from, no matter how odd or strange or threatening they might be to us. This way of being in the world that I would argue is thoroughly, completely 100% Christian, somehow has not permeated to Christianity.
So Paul is just famous for having fights and arguments with everybody he ministers with. In the New Testament. Paul had a public fight with Peter over these very issues. Paul had a spatula with his missionary partner, Barnabas, and they parted ways and never ministered together again. As far as we know. Paul in these very letters, the one who says that we ought to be united with each other by the Spirit says he hopes that these people from Jerusalem who are claiming that the Galatians have to be circumcised. He goes on to say, I wish they would go all the way and cut themselves off.
Paul is not exactly the model of non violent speech.
This church belongs. Some of you don't know this. It's fine with me if you don't know this. I don't talk about it very often, but we're part of a denomination called the Disciples of Christ. The Disciples of Christ was not a denomination for nearly the first century and a half of its existence because we're part of a movement called the Restoration Movement that doesn't believe in divisions, doesn't believe in denominations. The Restoration Movement was begun at the turn of the 19th century to eradicate all denominations and divisions, and within 40 years had promptly divided over the use of a miniature piano in worship, really, at a small church, Midland Christian Community Church in Midland, Kentucky.
Somebody had the nerve to bring a little miniature piano to worship in order to make the point that God could actually work through music.
And it was a furious and contentious like debate that permeated like the entire movement became incredibly controversial. This is in 1860 when the pastor brought a piano to church and it was called Satan's Instruments.
And one night in the middle of the night, one of the elders crawled through the window with the help of his friend named Reuben, and they passed the piano through the window in order to get Satan's Instrument out of the building.
And that erupted in a division that resulted in two different denominations, the Disciples of Christ and the Churches of Christ.
And some of you might know that to this day, Churches of Christ are known for not having any instruments in worship.
It's fascinating to me that that was a subject of fierce debate in our denomination in 1860, the presence of a piano in the church.
But what we don't talk about is that the elder's friend, whose name was Reuben, that helped him move the piano out of the church, was actually his black slave.
And at this time in 1860, the country was fiercely dividing over slavery.
But instead of engaging in an important political debate about whether or not it dehumanizes people to enslave them because of the color of their skin, our denomination was instead engaged in debating over the presence of music in worship.
Now, that way undersells it. Slavery was a big debate in our denomination, but the defining debate in our denomination was pianos, not slavery.
Our key leaders said we probably shouldn't talk about that. That's too divisive.
And so there's no cure for this problem. Talking about the Spirit of God as the thing that unites us is not a panacea to fix our political issues, whether it's in our congregation or outside of our congregation. It's not just the Disciples of Christ that have these embarrassing little things in our history. Christianity has divided itself 40,000 times since these letters were written.
And I actually don't think that's a problem.
Because the extent to which Christianity has continued to divide itself and separate itself and express itself in different cultures in different ways all across the planet is again just an expression of difference.
The problem is not the differences.
I need my Christian siblings in Asia and Africa and South America to reveal images of God to me that help me to become a fuller expression of the goodness of God in my own life. I need those differences. It's okay for us to worship differently. It's okay for us to think differently. It's okay for us to gather differently. In fact, it's a strength. The problem is when I judge those who worship differently and think differently and gather differently to be non human.
And that's what we do.
Our boundaries of difference have a very strong tendency to become borders of dehumanization.
We tend to look on the other side of the border and vilify and condemn and dehumanize those on the other side of those borders and boundaries.
Paul's challenge to us in Galatians 3:28 is can we embrace those differences as good by the spirit of God?
For now there is Snow, Jew, nor Greek, slave, nor free, male nor female, gay or straight, Republican or Democrat, Osider or whatever it is they call people who live in Carlsbad.
Can we embrace our differences?
Can we learn to be curious about each other because the spirit of God transcends the dehumanizing boundaries we tend to create in order to preserve our power?
That's my question for all of us today. Amen.
Would you pray with me?
God, we thank you again for today for this opportunity for us to gather to rub shoulders and build relationships and friendships with people who are different from us.
We ask that by the spirit of God that you would teach us to be curious about differences, to value our differences, to embrace our differences, and to resist those differences becoming borders of dehumanization and power.
We ask that you would do this work within us by your spirit, by your grace, help us to become people who see your image in each other. We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:27:09] Speaker A: Thank you for joining us for this Sunday teaching, no matter when or where you're tuning in. To learn more about our community or to support the work we do, Visit
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