Identity Politics: Who Are You?
July 12, 2026 - August 30, 2026
We are offered more choices than ever before about how to narrate our own unique identities. But when our loyalty to human distinctions outstrips our fidelity to God’s own narration of who we are, we fight and bite and isolate and fragment. What if the church’s role is to reassert our identity in Christ, the identity given us at bapAsm and carried with us in the weekly celebration of communion?
Paul’s letter to the Galatian church asks a big question: “Who are you, Galatians?” He’s outraged at their willingness to compromise God’s grace to please Jewish-Christians who would have them convert to Judaism (i.e. be circumcised) to satisfy a theologically misguided requirement of maximal conformity. And while he does address the big question of Galatian identity directly, he does it by probing the identities of non-Galatians: himself, Peter, Abraham, and Sarah and Hagar. We’ve added questions about the role of the Spirit and the community, too, as ways Paul talks about our identity formation in Christ.
I Am Not Only Good Enough -- I Am Enough! Ken Ehrke visits us to speak about fully embodying Sabbath Rest in Exodus 20:8-11.
Who is Joseph? From a favored child, to slavery, sexual objectification and assault, prisoner, forgotten, to finally the second most powerful person in Egypt. Joseph’s life is a traumatic roller coaster, with incredible peaks, and horrid valleys. To put it another way, Joseph is a spiritual refugee. So many of us are like him in some way. And, like Joseph, we have still held on, still hope that God’s love is real, for us, and worth it. And, we are also called to echo Joseph's life, not as one who only survives, but also works to help others, that is, build up the Kingdom of God. All that has happened to Joseph could make him hateful, vengeful, hostile, and cruel, understandably so. But none of that will help to create the world we want, the world that God wants. What if we can gather up all that we are learning in this shelter of each other, and all that has happened to us, so we might be changed into people who will live out mercy, justice, kindness, and love?
Who is Paul? Paul the Apostle had a violent, anti-Christian past. It was hard to overcome, and he might have asked for the approval of the OG apostles (i.e. the ones who knew Jesus). But he eschewed their credentialing and asserted his own identity as an apostle “through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead” (1:1). What does it take to have a strong enough sense of self that neither your past nor your peers define you?
Who is Cephas? “Cephas” is the Aramaic form of “Peter,” i.e. Jesus’s most vocal and passionate disciple. Paul has caught Peter in blatant hypocrisy: keeping kosher when certain Jewish- Christian leaders are around, but freely noshing with Gentiles when they’re not. Paul says you can’t have it both ways. What does it mean to strive for integrity (integration, wholeness) in Christian identity?
Who is Abraham? Here is the crux of Paul’s argument: that long before there was a Torah (religious law), there was a promise made by God to Abraham. Abraham had no 10 Commandments, no temple, no Leviticus, etc. All he had was faith: trust that God would keep God’s promises. And so, Paul says, that’s the only thing “required” for Abraham’s offspring, which includes non-Jews who trust God’s promises. And this dissolves the hierarchies of belonging, through our baptism into this trust.
Who are Sarah and Hagar? Well, it’s a pretty terrible allegory. Hagar was the enslaved “handmaid” whom Abraham impregnated because it was assumed Sarah was menopausal. Her son Ishmael’s descendants are all the world’s Muslims today. Sarah was the “free woman,” the wife, whose son was Isaac, and heir to Abraham’s fortune and faith. For Paul, these two women stand for religious law (Hagar) and faith’s freedom (Sarah). He really, really wants the Galatians to identify as “free,” spiritually speaking. What does our own spiritual freedom look like?
Who is the Spirit? Paul presents an unsettling (to us) duality between “flesh” and “Spirit” – a somewhat anachronistic, Hellenistic understanding of personhood. Maybe for us, his contrast would be better understood as “impulsive appetites” vs. “considered choices”? Or perhaps “self-pleasing” vs. “other-considering”? In any case, the “fruit of the Spirit” in 5:22-23 deserves our full attention.