No Longer Subject

6/22/2025

Galatians 3:23-29 and a Prayer of Consciousness by Paula McCaslin

It is a mistake to think all wisdom is “out there!” Thank you Paula! I invite

you to join me now, taking some deeper breaths, remembering one of the

oldest names we have for God is Ruah, breath, something we cannot be a

part from… So let us allow ourselves to arrive a bit more fully, giving thanks

for the gift of being alive for this day, in this beautiful place, among this

incredible people. And as you are moved join me in Psalm 19. God may the

words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in

your sight, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Repelling down the middle of a damp, dark cave I could feel myself being

internally unsettled, stirred up. Not just because I was only 15 and

wondering if I would make it home, but because I was in another world and

unsure if it was the world, I believed in. My mom, (who is here with us

today); she was insightful and could see that I was the sort of kid that

needed to explore, to seek and to follow my curiosity, or I would just shrivel

up.

So the summer before I started high school, after saving money from

myriad jobs and tons of planning and preparing, my mom let me travel to

Irian Jaya, Indonesia to stay for a month with the family of a then dear

friend. They were missionaries, installing hydroelectric power in remote

areas and spreading the word of God to save people. But I will never forget

that day when we all climbed up out of the cave. Because it was that day or

around then that I had asked my friend what would happen to the people

they couldn’t get to.

The area was so remote it could only be accessed by a tiny plane and the

runway was a short grass strip. And when we arrived, the most beautiful I

had ever seen greeted us. You young kids might not know about National

Geographic, but before Instagram, that is how we traveled in our minds,

with the beautiful glossy pages opened up. I felt like I had landed in the

center pages of a National Geographic magazine. But when I asked my

friend what she thought would happen to the people who wouldn’t hear

their message about Jesus, without hesitation I was told, they would go to

hell. If God wanted to get to them, he would get to them. That was the end

of the conversation. It was evident that more probing was not a good idea.

This tribe had buried a pig in the ground and cooked it for days in

preparation to welcome us. They were kind and hospitable and what they

cared about more than anything was engaging the soccer ball we brought. I

couldn’t get my mind around God being unhappy with them. Why? What if

they had some good ideas about how to live? What if they had their way of

connecting with the Divine? What if they knew some things we didn’t? The

way they were living seemed better for the earth and their connections to

each other than some of what I experienced in 90’s America. Have you

noticed the younger kids love the 1990’s? But questions were not really

allowed. Especially the questions that challenged the power they felt from

seeing themselves as right amidst a world where they believed most

everyone else was wrong.

The trip changed my life in lots of ways, but one of the primary ways I was

forever changed was realizing that there are Christianities. There are

Christians who see following Jesus as a ticket to an afterlife and there are

Christians who see Jesus as following a path, a way of being here and now

and probably Christians who fit everywhere in between. And I have

experienced and maybe you have too that there is no hate like Christian

love! For some Christians, feeling right and judging others and tell

everyone else how they are not measuring up is almost like a sport.

I would be labeled the wrong kind of Christian and I as I have joked about

before every summer at vacation Bible school, they would tell me I had to

ask Jesus into my heart. I would say that I did that last year and be told that

I had to do it again. Almost like it’s a spell that you need to say right. It feels

like it has been reduced to a spell to be rescued from hell. But that’s not

what it’s about.

In America right now, we could easily be fooled into thinking that

Christianity is about preserving a white Jesus. Jesus was brown! But you

might not know that. And you might not know that Jesus cared about

women, the poor, immigrants, people who are sick, whoever is on the

margins. But he did! We could easily be convinced that Christianity is about

winning, about dominating and controlling others, using whatever is at ones

disposal to tear down whatever and whoever they don’t believe in, don’t

agree with.

But just for the record, dominating bodies, countries, alliances, is not

Christian. Just because those in power are saying it, doesn’t mean it is

true. In fact, one of the key components of Jesus’ teaching, one of the core

elements of the whole enterprise, the very thing he was challenging at its

core, was the hierarchy of worthiness manufactured by men.

Because as we heard in Galatians in Jesus, a new order is created. He

reminds us that whatever name we have for God, it is in us all and

available to us all equally. As scholar Robert Bryant wrote, “In Christ, a new

people is formed. God’s act of grace through Jesus has broken through the

barriers of race, social position, and gender- partitions that ordinarily foster

inequality and injustice among communities…social distinctions are

obliterated…” Isn’t that beautiful?

It was radical in the first century and doesn’t it feel radical now too? Holding

space for all to experience liberation from social distinctions is so

expansive and abundant that with time t seems some Christians got away

from that message. Because liberation is messy. Being in this room filled

with beautiful people who think differently is complicated. Liberation can

ask something of us. It can unsettle as it de-centers. It equalizes. That is

scary! We humans like to have things in tidy categories that we can

manage. So some churches have sanitized out disagreement and

difference, adding theology focused on conformity and control, removing

Jesus’ core principle and turning the Gospel into a spell to be rescued from

hell instead of a spiritual path for here and now.

In the Gospel of Mary Magdalene we read that after Jesus shares a

teaching, he says this, “Go then and preach the Good News about the

realm. Do not lay down any rule beyond what I have determined for you,

nor promulgate law like the lawgiver, or else you might be dominated by it.”

It was as if Jesus knew that we humans tend to create structures to

dominate whether they be of theology or of policy. We are susceptible to

trying to control and be controlled, exacting, and seeking authority from the

wrong places, creating subjects out of someone or groups of people.

But let us never forget, we aren’t in need of power over, it is power with.

And here’s the other thing, if something is really true, it doesn’t need to

dominate to prove it is so, it is just true. Jesus offered us a way beyond the

hierarchy of holiness, beyond the need of one group to dominate another,

beyond the created order of the day and what a gift that we get to live that

out here and now. Let us reclaim this truth that we can all be set free. The

path that Jesus modeled and taught is not about controlling anyone. There

is no need.

As our own poet Paula said to us so beautiful, the spiritual path we are on

is about breaking free, being transformed internally, leaving one world

behind to greet another, going forward into the fullness, so we can see

clearly the heaven that is here right now. Look around!

A new order is created right here, each time we gather in fact. Social

distinctions fall away. We are no longer subject to any Empire, let us

remember that especially now, let us claim who we are, remembering

whose we are, that no one has power over us. They will not and shall not

get our devotion. The new order is practiced, learned, and grown into. That

is Church. That is us- we who are no longer subjects. What a gift to be in it

with all of you!

Communal Reflection

How are you liberated by the teachings of Jesus? What does collective

liberation look like in 2025? Why is it so difficult to accept a liberating and

inclusive message?

Beloved of God, don’t forget we are no longer subjects to the Empire, we

are free! May that be so for each and all of us, let it be. Amen.