Growth Beyond Binaries

A sermon on Galatians 3:23-29 and Luke 8:26-39

[for an audio recording of this sermon, click here. Photo by Alexander Sinn on Unsplash.]

On Pentecost Sunday, I included a little sidenote in my sermon about today’s reading from Galatians and how it supports transcending binary categories of gender.

In full transparency, I had not looked ahead at the readings, so I had no clue that the passage itself was coming up so quickly in the lectionary.

I only made the comment because the prophecy from Joel referenced by Peter in his sermon on the church’s first Pentecost very clearly rejects the kinds of demographic distinctions so often used to sort human beings into insider/outsider categories – which naturally evokes this passage of Galatians that does the same thing with its “no longer Jew or Greek… slave or free….”

What Galatians adds to this rejection of distinctions – and the reason I mentioned it in passing on Pentecost – is that it does something interesting with the sentence structure when we get to the third category: male and female.

If you’ve been listening carefully, you might have already noticed the switch: it relates to the conjunction used to connect the pairs.

Paul’s first two proclamations of erased distinction use the binary conjunction of “or”, suggesting exclusive categories:

In the first two pairings, this makes sense.

In the first Century Jewish worldview, there were two essential ethnic categories that were mutually exclusive: Jew and Gentile, for which the classification of “Greek” was interchangeable.

The next pairing is similarly binary: slave or free. The same person cannot be both at the same time (unless metaphorically).

But then we get to the third pairing, the conjunction changes: “there is no longer male AND female.”

“And” is the conjunction used to link any number or things in a series, with no presumption that they are the only options.

Just as in the creation account in Genesis 1, when God creates day and night, and we all understand that this creation includes dusk and dawn, which land somewhere between the two.

Similarly with land and sea, which are inclusive of estuaries, wetlands, and swamps.

What is more, the literary pattern of threes should lead us to expect a shift with the third pairing.

We see these pattern in other ancient near eastern literature, including the accounts of Jesus’s parables.

When we get a series of three parallel formulations, the last one is going to violate the pattern established by the first two in some way, and in that change is the key to the lesson.

And so it is in this teaching from Galatians.

Paul is making a point about freedom from constraining categories that limit our expectations about what is possible in Christ.

And we get that with the “there is no longer” formula: we recognize the need to stop putting people into categories that exclude them from grace, whether religiously (as in the Jew and Gentile distinction) or socially (as with slave and free).

Jesus is for EVERYONE, regardless of demographic categories or distinctions of socioeconomic status.

But then, with the third pairing, we get the unexpected turn:

It’s not just the putting-people-into-categories that we need to let go of… it’s our assumption that our presumed categories are the only possibilities.

The “and” is a challenge not just to the ways we use binaries to shut people out; it’s a challenge to binary thinking as our framework at all, when reality is so much more beautiful and complicated than we try to make it.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that just before his list of eliminated distinctions Paul talks about the law, before faith “imprisoning” us.

And not just imprisoning, also “guarding” us.

The rules make us feel safe. Binaries draw a line that promise us we can be “good” and “right” as long as we are on the appropriate side of the inviolable line.

But those lines are actually prison walls that trap us under the rule of a disciplinarian that requires our conformity.

And that means we can’t ask questions, or lean into ambiguity, or grow in new directions. Conformity might feel safe, but it’s not free.

Reality, however, and especially faith, is a whole lot messier than the binaries would have us believe.

We see that messiness (and the human resistance to it) in today’s gospel story of the demon possessed man.

In this highly dramatic account, Jesus and his disciples cross the Sea of Galilee from the Jewish side to the Gentile side (maybe a little foreshadowing of blurring boundaries there).

They immediately encounter the town outcast, naked and raving, and Jesus, we learn, commands the tormenting Legion of spirits to come out of the man.

The spirits know they cannot remain with the man after this command, but they do not want to be sent back to the abyss, so they beg Jesus for a third option (again, pushing against neat binary categories).

Jesus agrees to let the spirits enter a nearby herd of pigs and the destruction of the swine is the result.

The story could have ended there as another of Jesus’s acts of power and authority, albeit with some quirky details. But the second half of the story is the one I find most instructive.

The people of the town come out to see what the commotion is, and they find the result of Jesus’s miracle.

On the one hand, a man who has acted and been treated as a beast for years is now sane and restored.

On the other hand, a herd of actual animals has taken on his affliction and been lost as a result.

It’s a miracle, and it is also frightening.

Before Jesus came, they knew what to expect.

The demons were contained where they were not doing any harm (except to the one man, of course, but his suffering was the price of everyone else’s safety).

But once Jesus freed the man, the demons had destroyed a whole herd of animals on which many in the town likely depended for food and income.

If Jesus were to stick around, who knows what other damage he would cause, and what other boundaries he might blur.

And the people of the town apparently do not want a miracle-worker if his power is going to make them adjust and adapt.

So, they ask Jesus to leave to prevent any more disruptions.

Again, the story could have ended here, but there is one more bid for clear dividing lines that Jesus rebuffs.

The man whom he had freed begs Jesus to take him along.

It’s understandable. The man knows his town. Their reaction to his healing is probably no surprise. Him staying there will constantly remind his neighbors of the disruption from which they want distance.

It’s safer for him to go with Jesus. To accept his hometown’s commitment to their boundaries and safe binaries by removing himself from the tension his existence represents.

But Jesus says no. He will not force himself on the community, but neither will he enable their resistance to God’s miraculous work among them.

He tells the man to go home, and to declare how much God has done for you.

The man’s presence is a living challenge to systems of division that try to shut out God’s life-giving work, and so Jesus tells him to witness. To reject the rules about who belongs where. To tell his story.

It is a witness that we could use today.

Our culture, too, is committed to restrictive, imprisoning binaries: Republican and Democrat, immigrant and citizen, white and black, gay and straight, transgender and cisgender, law-abiding and illegal…whoever we are tempted to hate or despise, I bet there’s a binary at the root of that instinct.

We draw lines, and allocate ourselves and others to sides, and we look for clarity and safety in these divisions. We think they can tell us who to trust and who to other, as though our faith allowed such distinctions.

But “there is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

And, anyhow, the categories are never as simple as the either/or formulas would suggest. There are always spectrums or one kind or another.

And, regardless, each of us contains multitudes that cannot be so easily categorized or split apart. We are certainly none of us all good or all bad.

And the binaries and their associated biases will only ever imprison us with lies that promise safety at the expense of love.

But Jesus has freed us, so we get to live in that freedom.

We get to “declare how much God was done for us.”

To let our lives bear witness to the growth and joy to be found in looking for nuance, and seeking to learn from what we don’t understand…

And, perhaps most importantly, to witness to the freed found in rejecting the use of fear to control us.

“For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.” What is left to fear?

Thanks be to God.