A Race Apart

Proper 13 The Sunday closest to August 3
Colossians 3:1-11

About two weeks ago, I received a call from a very pleasant lady who announced that she was an employee of the recent decennial census. She had apparently stopped by Briarwood while Rebecca and I were at Nashotah House for Margaret’s second birthday party. Apparently, my four decade’s old custom of reporting only constitutionally mandated information had prompted the call. She worked through each of the remaining questions very professionally and politely, and did not seem surprised or annoyed by my increasingly predictable answers. The following day, I found myself pondering the fourth question: “What is your racial or ethnic identity?” My consideration was not related to the census, or to any other modern political or sociological conflicts, real or imagined. Rather, I found myself wondering how an early Christian would have answered such a question.
Archbishop Rowan Williams, in his 2005 book “Why Study the Past?”, demonstrates conclusively that early Christians viewed themselves as “resident aliens” who sought to be good citizens of Rome, but acknowledged a higher sovereignty, that of Jesus Christ. In their letters to each other, they often used the Greek word paroikoi, which means “resident aliens” or “settled migrants.” They saw themselves as a people transformed by God and set apart for his use as a nations of kings and priests. From this transformation flowed a rigorous self-accountability and rather puritanical morality. While the members of the Roman Senatorial and Equestrian classes approved of the Christian’s high moral standards, they could never come to terms with the fact that these Christians would never subordinate the sovereignty of Jesus Christ to that of the empire and it’s representative, the divine Augustus. These Christians, who were set apart by the sort of morality St. Paul admonishes in today’s second lesson, were so committed, so fanatical in their devotion to this Jesus, that they counted martyrdom as their highest crown and as the greatest proof of the power of God in the world.
His Grace Lord Canterbury points out that in the second-century Letter to Diognetus, Christians are described as “a foreign group living in the cities of the empire (and elsewhere, ‘spread throughout the world’), distinguished by no special ethnic costume or alien language but by their allegiance and their consequent behaviour, at home everywhere and nowhere…Christians behave differently…they forswear promiscuity, infanticide (including abortion), fraud and violence; and of course, in the most public counter-cultural witness of all, they will face death for their commitment. This is not just a claim for moral superiority… More important is the role such descriptions have of defining the separate identity of the ekklesia.” (the Church) (Williams p37). You see, in the early centuries, the Church of God, the people of God, were not merely seen as a religion apart, or even as a people apart, but as a separate race, a unique ethnicity; knowable by their rather odd and unique ethical system, set apart from their non-Christian neighbors not by jewelry or clothes or language, but by how their transformation in Christ was lived out in everyday life.
And so, to return to the fourth question on this year’s census form, I suppose that I should have answered, if I was to answer, “Christian.” And yet such an answer seems strange to us today, living as we do in a culture where questions of race are so charged with passion and even violence. We are accustomed to defining race primarily by color, or hair type and texture, or certain physical characteristics. We are prone to lay aside our well intentioned national ideology of individual work and opportunity and to accept, reject, or distance ourselves from a man or woman based on the degree of their physical resemblance to our preconceptions of some group of strangers that we have observed from afar, and which we have never really tried to know. But imagine a world, or even a parish, where race is defined in terms of St Paul’s admonition to the Colossians. ‘You have been raised with Christ. You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. He is your life, and when He is revealed in glory, you will be revealed with Him! Therefore, set your minds on things that are above, not on earthly things. Put those things to death! Fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry) will bring the wrath of God on their practitioners. You used to be like that, but you are now changed in Christ Jesus. Get rid of those things which characterized you old life: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language. Do not lie to each other, because you have stripped off the old self with its ways and have clothed yourself with the new self! And you are being constantly renewed in knowledge according to the image of your Creator. IN THAT RENEWAL, THERE IS NO LONGER GREEK AND JEW, CIRCUMCISED AND UNCIRCUMCISED, BARBARIAN, SCYTHIAN, SALVE AND FREE; BUT CHRIST IS ALL AND IN ALL!’ (Colossians 3:1-11 paraphrased from NRSV, emphasis mine).
Does my behaviour as a Man of God define me in this world as much as does my white skin and blue eyes? It is a disturbing question, but one that is indicative of the nature of my relationship with God in Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is a question which confronts us all, and which calls us to consider what it means to be raised with Christ in baptism, what it means to identify with Him in the sacrament of Holy Communion, and what it means to go forth from this Holy Place to remember the poor, to pray for the sick, and to be kind to one another.
A caveat is in order at this point. We must never allow this rigor of the early Christian community to become an excuse for feeling that we are better than others, or for looking down on those who do not share our commitment to Jesus Christ. To do so would constitute the worst kind of Pharisaism. Rather it should call us to see our own shortcomings and need of God, and encourage us to ever growing maturity, humility, and godliness. We are called by God to acknowledge the radical transformation that He has accomplished in our lives, and to receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit that we might live into this holiness to which we are called. In such a way, the power of God to transform lives will be shown to all who are willing to see His mercies in the world. Surely we will fail from time to time, because we are but sinners, trusting in Christ alone for salvation. But as the consistency of our character becomes evident to those among whom we sojourn, they will come to see us as a race apart, a community of resident aliens. They will at first reject us for our differences, but ultimately, drawn and convicted by the power of the Holy Spirit, they will come to Name Him as Saviour and Lord, and they will join with us in that eternal priesthood which is the free and unmerited gift of a loving God to all who will believe. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN.