When I was in college, one late-night discussion amongst friends turned to the question, “what do you think heaven is like?” One friend said he believed it would be a place where everyone was robed in white and singing the same song, all together, all the time. I was horrified. What about all the different languages? The colors? The music? What about all the things that make each one of us unique?
The white-robed choir of identical voices can come to mind when we read the words of Paul, where in the kingdom of heaven all differences are erased and everyone mirrors Christ perfectly. But Paul isn’t talking about heaven; he’s talking about here, on earth. And for some reason, here on earth, God has made each of us unique, down to our fingerprints. We do not have the same cells throughout our bodies. Each of us has a unique experience of the world as we walk through it, in space and time.
In Paul’s time, as in ours, people classified each other based on surface attributes. It helps us make sense of the world. It makes us feel safe. At best, it leads to oversimplification and misunderstanding; at worst, systemic discrimination and dehumanization. Paul shared with the community in Galatia the revolutionary idea that everyone in the world has the same value in Christ. It does not matter how you were born (all the things in this list are attributes one could be born with), you are all equal in Christ, in His love and His inheritance as children of God. But you are still you, in all your marvelous complexity, from cells to fingerprints to your unique experience of each day that you are gifted on this earth.
As followers of Christ, we are offered the amazing opportunity to open our lives and our hearts to everyone around us, and Christ in them. Can we do that? Can we focus on the light of Christ in each other, and love the unique form Christ takes in that specific person, on that specific day? Can we mourn and repent for the times we and our society have flattened our differences, and in doing so, paradoxically, have also denied Christ’s equal presence in others? Anchoring ourselves in God’s love, can we be brave enough to welcome Everybody, in all their songs and colors and glorious difference?
–Laura M. Hogan
