All of you are one in Christ Jesus
Ordinary Sunday 12: 20th June, 2010
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's, Eastern Hill
As many of you as were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave nor free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:27-28)
This is the apostle Paul speaking at his most revolutionary, most liberating. Three huge and quite clear areas of fundamental division within the society he is part of are addressed. Ethnic, religious, and cultural first — by way of reinforcing the total shift that is recorded in the book of Acts — legitimising the whole mission to the gentiles and totally embracing people who did not have a Jewish background as potential brothers and sisters in Christ. You might remember the apostle Peter's vision of the cloth with all the unclean creatures on it, just before he was to become the vehicle for the conversion of the whole household of the Roman Cornelius. As Peter declared, I see that God shows no partiality.
The second deals with the institution of slavery. A very large percentage of the population of the Roman Empire was born into and lived their whole lives as slaves with no rights — they were property items, not people. But Paul says that a slave baptised into Christ, while remaining a slave, is as one with any other baptised person. We might remember the discomforting very short letter to Philemon in the New Testament that deals with just this problem. Two hundred years ago reformers like Shaftesbury took this very seriously, especially since the Church was itself hugely involved in the slave trade from Africa to the New World.
The third point of basic division said to be made invisible in baptism is that of gender. If this is still a matter of controversy in parts of the Christian community in 2010 — and we saw discussion of this in The Age a week ago in a major feature article — then how much more so in the world of the first century. Yet Paul is absolutely direct and clear. Controversy regarding ordination in this last generation has been argued along these lines — to put it bluntly — if they can be baptised, they can be ordained. By extension, it is obvious that this also invites consideration of the issues around sexual orientation. Is that too embraced by Paul's all-encompassing declaration of unity flowing from God's superabundant grace in Christ Jesus — or is it somehow not? Is there yet a sub portion of humanity outside?
So it has to be clear that a text like this one is pretty central. It is not just a bolt out of the blue. And central to it is an understanding of the pivotal place of Christian baptism.
What is really interesting is the renewed emphasis on this understanding over this last generation. I have been ordained for more than 30 years and throughout that time here in Australia, certainly since the introduction of a new Prayer Book in 1978 and then reinforced in the 1995 Prayer Book, this other dominical sacrament of Holy Baptism has come out of the shadows. Sunday afternoon private family gatherings are no more the norm. Inclusion in the main Sunday service, with the participation of the whole community of faith, is urged. The renewal of our baptismal vows has become a central part of a renewed Easter Vigil rite, often featuring the baptism of adults new to the faith. And centrally the vows themselves taken by parents, godparents and candidates, along with those renewed by the whole community, are considerably expanded. It is not too much to say that the 'turning to Christ and the rejecting of all that is evil, including selfish living and all that is false and unjust' can now be seen as a normative statement of what it is to live as a Christian. Immediately following that decision about how to live, there is the summary of what is accepted and believed, a declaration that is made in the form of the Apostles' Creed. This is our faith, we say.
One of the absolute hot potatoes of this moment of great controversy in the Church across the world is whether this renewed importance of the place of baptism — which we can see from this morning's epistle is actually not at all new — does in turn make a difference to our understanding of Church, our ecclesiology. That is what it is, who it might or must include, how it functions. The Episcopal Church says it most definitely does. These are part of 'the demands of our common baptism' present these last 2,000 years and certainly sharpened and re-expressed in the language of 'baptismal covenant' in this last generation.
An example of this understanding and teaching may be found in the Pentecost letter from the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, Bp Jefferts-Schori, issued a few weeks ago with particular reference to the contested place within the Church of people in committed same sex relationships:
The baptismal covenant prayed in this Church for more than 30 years calls us to respect the dignity of all other persons and charges us with ongoing labor toward a holy society of justice and peace. That fundamental understanding of Christian vocation underlies our hearing of the Spirit in this context and around these issues of human sexuality. That same understanding of Christian vocation encourages us to hold our convictions with sufficient humility that we can affirm the image of God in the person who disagrees with us. We believe that the Body of Christ is only found when such diversity is welcomed with abundant and radical hospitality.
Another expression of this same understanding might be found in the website of the liberal catholic Affirming Catholicism in the Episcopal Church website:
+ That the Baptismal Covenant, the rule of the life of the church, requires us to respect all persons. We understand that respect to mean that all ministries within the church are open to all the baptised and that the call to leadership within the assembly is dependant on baptism and the recognition of particular gifts for ministry, not on gender or sexual orientation.
The Preamble to the final form of the proposed Anglican Communion Covenant 2009 which is now being circulated around the whole Communion is though totally non controversial in this common declaration, which covers much of the same territory:
2. Our divine calling into communion is established in God's purposes for the whole of creation (Eph 1:10; 3:9ff.). It is extended to all humankind, so that, in our sharing of God's life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God might restore in us the divine image. Through time, according to the Scriptures, God has furthered this calling through covenants made with Noah, Abraham, Israel, and David. The prophet Jeremiah looked forward to a new covenant not written on tablets of stone but upon the heart (Jer 31.31-34). In God's Son, Christ Jesus, a new covenant is given us, established in his "blood ... poured out for the many for the forgiveness of sins" (Mt 26:28), secured through his resurrection from the dead (Eph 1:19-23), and sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit poured into our hearts (Rom 5:5). Into this covenant of death to sin and of new life in Christ we are baptized, and empowered to share God's communion in Christ with all people, to the ends of the earth and of creation.
3. We humbly recognize that this calling and gift of communion entails responsibilities for our common life before God as we seek, through grace, to be faithful in our service of God's purposes for the world.
What actually is 'faithfulness in our service of God's purposes'?
The question is not that God in Christ has acted in this way and that in the power of the Sprit we are called into community to believe and trust and to live this out. We are indeed all agreed on that. But when some people in the synod of the diocese of Melbourne declare that we Melbourne Anglicans are not all teaching or living the same gospel and that therefore here like elsewhere institutional division is inevitable — that we cannot remain together and that we are already not — then there is indeed a problem.
To be absolutely specific. Is a baptised person of homosexual orientation, in a committed same sex relationship, a person who is covered by the sweeping away of categories that today's epistle proclaims, or is such a person simply one who has made a life style decision for sin, separation from God, and must be forever outside the Christian community? That in a nutshell is what we are dividing over. We here are rightly seen to be clearly on one side of this debate.
This whole discussion then clearly centres on very substantial differences in our reception and understanding of what we have received and are receiving in the Scriptures and in and through the experience of the community of faith, the Church, through all these centuries. And in how we live this now, where we are, who we are.
Another major American (2006) report, One Baptism, One Hope in God's Call, again started with Paul:
"There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all" (Ephesians 4:4-6).1 The letter to the Ephesians presents this truth as the basis of the Church's unity, the inspiration for us to lead a life of humility worthy of our call, and even the source of the Church's ordering of ministry, as "each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ's gift".
This epistle this morning has left the preacher no choice but to address these substantial issues that are central to participation in the life of the Church at this time. There are resources in abundance to explore these things further, but let us not kid ourselves that this is somehow of secondary importance.
As many of you as were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave nor free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:27-28)
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