Today's Daily Lesson comes from Galatians chapter 2 verses 11 through 14:
11 But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned; 12for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. 13And the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. 14But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel.
The truth of the Gospel is that "in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female."
Categories of segregation like race, sex, gender, class, have no place in Christ. Neither are there categories of exclusion for gay and straight, binary and nonbinary. These simply aren't definitive categories in Christ -- nor are they in the kingdom. As someone once said, "There will be no men's room in heaven."
Paul's problem with Peter, called Cephas, was that Peter was acting one way -- open and accepting towards Gentiles -- in one place and then closed in another. He was sharing the table with Gentiles, but then folks came from Jerusalem and he started acting another way. So Paul called him a hypocrite.
And my big question is, how many folks in America are the very same way? Accepting of gays in the workplace but not in church, just fine to use undocumented folks to build their houses but willing to build a wall to keep their sons and daughters out, completely for women breaking the glass ceiling in politics and the boardroom but still not willing to call a woman pastor?
It's 2021. Time for us to live with consistency. Time for us to live out the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
Ryon Price is the Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
No comments:
Post a Comment