Galatians 3:23-29

Galatians 3:23-29 
English Standard Version (ESV)

  I know, I know -- we just finished Galatians.  Well... tough. 

  I was thinking the other day about how our greatest cities take place at intersections.  Usually they're the intersection of a river with the sea, or perhaps a river and a major crossroads.  They formed this way due to trade -- people brought their goods to these intersections where they could trade their goods for others, and the gathering and trading of goods led to services developing, and soon there were cities growing up based on this trade.
  Well, trade is an intersection of different kinds of people with different gifts -- that's what makes trade successful.  It requires a blending of different types of people in order to be successful.  People from the outlying areas collide with people in the city, where there are often people from different parts of the country and the world, and they all intersect to trade, depending on one another for a successful economy.  Throughout this trade, different ideologies collide, and we learn from one another, being stretched by differing views of how the world works, learning and questioning and yet depending on the trade to continue to bring people from different walks of life into the city.  As an economy, as a country, we are the strongest when a diverse group of people intersect and figure out how to live together, and our strongest cities thrive.
  In the current economy, I believe we've stopped intersecting as much.  Our worlds have become smaller, more custom to our own wants and needs.  We can filter our media to only take in what we want, and we don't interact as well with one another.  We've entrusted so much of our trading to corporations, and what we've lost is the richness that diversity promotes.  When faceless others do our trading, we never interact with people who are different than we are, and the danger is that more and more of us end up isolated, either alone or only with people who think like we do. 

  The church should be a great place where we intersect our lives with one another.  As Paul states, there is no status in the church -- we are all equal before Christ.  The richest man in the world can say to the poorest in the church, "I'm just like you.  I was condemned to die as an unworthy man, and I was only saved due to the grace of Christ.  I know what it means to be lost, and together, Christ has found us."  Where else can people of disparate wealth and worldly status gather on an equal playing field?  The church should offer that.  At our best, we see people intersecting with people wildly different, and doing so with gratitude that God is at work in so many different lives  At our best, we celebrate the diversity, because we are reminding that God's selfless love touches every life, no matter what.

  But our churches are often segregated, too.  Not just by race, but often by economic class or along political fault lines.  It's sad, but some people aren't made to feel welcome, depending on the church.  Most churches are guilty of this in some small way.  And when our churches aren't diverse, we don't intersect, and when we don't have those collisions, we miss out on hearing about so many wondrous ways that God is at work in the lives of others.  We don't learn as much about God, and our theology isn't as rich, as deep, as it could be. 

  So here's something to think about over the weekend, if you're still reading.  Over the rest of Lent, how can you intentionally expose yourself to an individual, a line of thinking, a group of people, who are different than you?  How can you be stretched and enriched by learning about, by experiencing, what God is doing in the life or lives of another?  How can you collide with others, stretching the limits of our common lives, and learn about the wild and free grace of God, that will not be confined to what we can contemplate?