LENT DAY 25: You Belong

 Day 25 Wednesday - Mar 22, 2023; Mar 13, 2024; Apr 2, 2025

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. -Galatians 3:27

I remember my first day at John Muir Middle School in Milwaukee. It was my first time in an inner-city school, and the first time I was a racial minority. To be sure, part of my identity and much of my life was shaped by the color of my skin already, but I did not feel it until that day. But when your color stands out from the vast majority of the class, you all of the sudden feel the difference. To think how many of those people of color I knew prior to that, what it must have felt like for them (I wouldn't be surprised to learn it was far worse), and I never had even a clue.

In Galatians, Paul mentions how the church in Antioch had Jews and Gentiles, and when more Jews - specifically from Jerusalem - came, it became noticeable that the Gentiles were not Jews (Galatians 2:12-13). And now some Jews had come to Galatia and made it clear to the Gentiles in that church also that they were not Jews, and if they really wanted to be a part of this whole church thing, they better do something about it (like get circumcised - ouch!). So Paul, as he insists it is not through keeping the law but faith in Christ that we are a part of God’s people, shows them how God makes us one in Christ. He says, 

[I]n Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:26-28)

Our baptism declares to one another that the things that would divide us are no more. What God sees when he looks at us is Jesus. And it’s time we see the same thing too. These differences about us, we can celebrate the diversity they offer, but we will not use them to put one another down. That has been taken away by Jesus when he covered us all in baptism.

Sometimes we are the ones who feel like we don’t belong. Other times we are the ones who make others feel that way. But whether you’re a woman among men, a poor man among the rich, a black man in a white church, a young girl in and elderly church the message of baptism is the same: child of God, clothed in Christ, one of us.

Help me to believe it, Lord, when I feel so strange or inadequate. Help me to believe it, Jesus, enough to treat every baptized person as a sibling. Help us to share it, Holy Spirit, to every person you baptize: that we are one in Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen.

This post is a part of my daily Lenten devotional on Baptism. You can read more about it here.