Neither Nor
Galatians 3:28
Carrie Burnett


People like categories.  Our brains require us to make sense of the world and we often do that by putting things in little boxes.  Things with wheels go in THIS box.  Things without tails go over next to the box of things with spots.  It’s a normal, natural, human, necessary, response. Even now you may have seen Galatians 3:28 and thought ‘that scripture was already used in this book – put it in the category marked done”   But the Bible doesn’t like to fit in our neat little categories, and God’s not done transforming us through this scripture, so let’s get into it!

The thing about this Bible verse from Galatians is that Paul, the author, is hoping to teach people that once they find, know, and love Jesus, we don’t always need the same tools to interact with the world anymore.  I don’t think any of us REALLY think that Paul LITERALLY meant that in the Kingdom of Jesus, men and women are now some blend of the same thing that isn’t separate and unique.  We see Paul frequently reference his Jewish ethnic heritage and his Roman citizenship, so he knew he was those things!  We also know that no distinctions, no diversity, and no variety is not God’s ideal. There are multiple entries in this devotional talking about that exact thing! So, knowing all of that, what does it mean to be one in Christ? 

Paul, the apostle and author, was once at odds with Jesus.  He was totally convinced that anyone who believed in Jesus was completely wrong, even blasphemous.  He believed people who looked to Jesus were so dangerous that they should be punished: stoned or imprisoned.  He was utterly convinced that he could see Christians clearly and that he was doing the right thing.  Maybe we would even say that he had put an entire people group into a category…that to make sense of the fact that Jesus had just turned Paul’s way of thinking upside down, Paul was making sense of the world by putting Christians into little boxes.  These people go with the heretics…the people over here are God-fearing…those people go with the heathens.  People who get killed or imprisoned.  

But then.  Paul had an encounter with Jesus.  This changed everything.   

The ruler of measurement is no longer any of these human things…these boxes or categories or attempts to make sense of the world.  Paul no longer needs the tools the world has given him to interact with the world.  All he needs…all we need…is Jesus.    

Audre Lorde, a poet and civil rights activist said, “We have all been programmed to respond to the human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways:  ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate.  But we have no patterns for relating across our human differences as equals.” 

We feel this.  We know this.  This world doesn’t have the tools we need to relate across our differences as equals. 

But Jesus has the tools.  Jesus came and walked among people who were different; who were considered less than; who weren’t religious; who other people were convinced were sinful; who were systematically oppressed and disadvantaged; who were from different cultures, different beliefs, different races.  And so when people trust in Jesus, what’s true of HIM becomes true of THEM.  It becomes true of  US.  There is neither “us” nor “them”…only WE.  There is neither separation nor disconnect because of our differences…only connection and celebration.  There is neither republican nor democrat…neither right nor left…neither black nor white…neither good people nor bad people…neither immigrants nor aliens…neither dark nor light.  Only Jesus. 

With Jesus, we have the tools to connect despite our differences.  With Jesus we have the humility to admit when we were SURE we had it right, but turns out we were way off.  With Jesus, we have the grace to open our hearts to people completely different from us.  With Jesus, we have the tools to be ONE, in Christ.