WEDNESDAY

Scripture: Galatians 3:26-29

Access and connections. Who hasn’t discovered that it helps to have connections with people in the right places, or to be identified with a group that gives you just a little bit of an edge? Those of us in North America have lived through, or studied in our history, times when these uneven conditions were present in severe and grotesque ways. The institution of slavery and the continuing ripple effects have not all dissipated. The idea that women were not entitled to the same rights as men. The sense that one’s race or place of origin somehow allowed for different treatment. And the somewhat inexplicable realization that on some levels, many of these sentiments persist in disturbing ways, both in the church and in society’s culture in general. In ways that reflected their own time and place, these kinds of dynamics were also struggles that people faced in the first century. So when Paul makes the statement we read in today’s passage, it landed as profoundly then as it does today, as he declares the additional boundaries the Spirit leads the church to cross and the truth we are invited to more fully embrace. Powerful words to ponder!

• When you read, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile,” how might you restate this in more contemporary language?

• What are some of the ways that we (or some) might define “male and female” in ways that deny the equal standing in God’s eyes that this passage proclaims? Is it possible to embrace something in theory but deny it in how we live?

• How might we, today, individually and as a church, avoid perpetuating the disparities people still experience as a result of past inequality from our history?

• What would it look like for a church to reach out across the lines that often divide people into unequal groups in a way that embodies the sentiment of this passage?

• If God were to give us a vision on the roof like with Peter, what would be in our sheet? How might we struggle with it? Where might the Spirit be seeking to lead us?