Things Above and Below

Colossians 3:1-11
Luke 12:13-21

Christmas Eve, 2021. My sister and I had stayed up late—like, really late—so that I could finish wrapping the gifts that I would be giving to my family in just a few hours. As we sat together on my bedroom floor where I was hastily throwing the things I’d purchased into gift bags and loosely covering them with tissue paper, my sister looked me in the face and said “hey, I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I’m actually a woman.” I like to think that I responded as well as you can when someone comes out to you as transgender, especially when you have the honor of being the first person in their family to know. I smiled, said something like “dude, that’s awesome!” and we hugged it out. She cried. I cried. A lot. She explained how scary it is to carry that inside, even in a family that she knew would be affirming of her. But I could tell that she also felt a sense of relief, having told someone else, and in the months, and now years, that followed, she really did become a new person. 

She’s still the same witty, charismatic person I’ve always known, who despite being almost three years younger than me is definitely smarter than I am. But she is visibly freer, more comfortable with who she is, and happier. She knows who she is, probably more so than many other people in the world who have never had to do the level of self-reflection that she has done. And she has chosen to live into that self knowledge, having been clothed with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of the creator, as the author of this letter to the Colossians puts it. Because being transgender, or being gay, or bisexual, or queer in any way is not to say that God has made a mistake, or that those who identify in these ways are rejecting God’s role as creator. On the contrary, living out these identities, or however it is that you are as your authentic self, is evidence of God’s grace. The ability to claim who you are in a world that sets a different standard, a different default way of being, can only be something divine. To come out into the fullness of who you are called to be is not hubris, but an act of co-creation, and a realization of the transformation to which each of us is called.

It also takes courage that many do not possess. I remember when my sister sat down with the rest of the family to catch everyone else up. To no great surprise, she was met with resounding affirmation, which is not the experience of everyone. And while that support has never wavered, our parents have acknowledged that they’re afraid of her existing in a world that seems to constantly be looking for ways to stop her from existing. In the midst of a federal pressure campaign against hospitals and doctors who provide gender-affirming care to transgender youth. A pressure campaign that has led many healthcare providers, even in states where trans people are legally protected, to stop offering gender-affirming care for fear of losing their jobs, their credentials, or their funding. This is a campaign that is driven by fear—fear of the unknown, fear of change, fear of self-realization. And it is fear, too, that drives complacency. Fear of risking our own well-being, fear of being judged for our association with those on the margins, fear that we might actually learn things about ourselves or others that we didn’t know—or didn’t want to know. Or perhaps it’s the fear of losing status in society, the same fear that drives many white supremacists and many of those seeking to completely close off our country to refugees and immigrants. 

The same fear that leads some to build bigger barns, because someday we might need that surplus grain. Even when we try to reason with ourselves that it’s just good, common sense to have great big reserves stored up, because we know even in times of abundance that another famine is just around the corner. Still Christ tells us, over and over and over again, to not be afraid. He tells us to take a step back and gain some perspective. To fix our sight not on our human means of trying to stave off fear, but on Kingdom means of overcoming fear. He doesn’t tell us exactly what the Kingdom looks like, but he does tell us what the Kingdom values: abundance, selflessness, fearlessness, and, in all these things, living contrary to the ways in which we are taught by the world that we ought to live. We are called to live fully and vulnerably, to love recklessly and in ways that don’t always make sense for our position in the world or our net worths. To be rich towards God, though, is to live fully into the transformed life to which we are called. Lives that authentically and fully show off who we are and how we have overcome our fear. There is nothing about this that is incompatible with Christian teaching—it’s actually at the very center of the resurrection faith that we proclaim. 

This passage from Colossians is also a statement on how the early church understood baptism. It ends with a phrase similar to one that we also see in Galatians, that “there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, enslaved and free, but Christ is all and in all!” Many scholars believe that this is part of a first- or second-century baptismal liturgy, and is still present to some extent in our own liturgy, when we describe the church as something which Christ has opened to people of all ages, races, and nations. Through the sacrament of baptism, we become a part of the church. We covenant with one another and with God, to care for those in the community as we grow in faith together. Not erasing the identities that we bring with us to the community, but embracing them as a part of the Body of Christ, which transcends our human ideologies and fears. It is a call to live differently, to reject the ways in which we are told we ought to live and exist and identify. And to embrace fearlessness and wholeness in community. Because coming out is a lot easier when you have a community that will be brave with you.

In our baptismal liturgy, in this covenant we make, we also say that we will “accept the freedom God gives us to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.” This part might sound a little more familiar, since it’s the line that makes it onto t-shirts. We are called, and we covenant, to resist, to struggle. Not to let fear or hatred rule, but to embrace in loving-kindness and in sacred solidarity. We are called, and we covenant, to put all that we have and all that we are on the line—each of us in community. We are called, and we covenant, to create the space that our siblings need so that they don’t have to hide who they are, but can proudly be clothed in new selves, according to the image of the creator. That is who we are called to be as a community, as those who share in this universal baptism as a part of the community of Christ. 

So on this day, and all days, remember your baptism. I was 11 when I was baptised, so mine is a little easier to remember. Remember the call to new life in Christ that is placed on each of us. Cast off your doubts and fears, and claim the courage to live authentically—in the fullness and vulnerability that that entails. And may we live into our shared covenant to live in the struggle for new life, until we are living the Kingdom values that we profess. May we do so this day and all days. Amen.