Sermon preached by Rev. Wesley King on June 22, 2025
I invite you to imagine with me—and if that means closing your eyes, I invite you to do that as well.
Imagine that you are in the year, or somewhere around the year, 50 AD. That is when our text for today is believed to have been written and distributed—50 AD, somewhere around there.
You have heard about this miraculous guy named Jesus and the way that he did things that others could not, and the way that he stood up to empire but was also punished and killed for it. You are intrigued, but you're also cautious. After all, you are still occupied by Rome, based in ancient Galatia—now modern-day Turkey. You have olive to brown skin and you have these dark features.
Life is bleak, but also you don't know anything else.
You hear that this guy named Paul, who's this big deal in the Jesus movement, wrote this letter to your group of friends in Galatia, who also are very intrigued by this guy named Jesus.
So ladies, you put on your best cotton or wool dress and you begin getting ready. Fellas, you also put on something that looks like a cotton or wool dress—it is the year 50 AD, after all—but you look great, and you head to this house church to hear from this guy named Paul.
You get to this house church, and everyone's being cautious because the government isn't too keen on people speaking up and speaking out. I know it's getting really hard for you to imagine these things, but you walk inside and you stand against the back of this house. This guy walks up and begins reading these words from this Paul guy to your group:
"Before faith came, we were guarded under the law, locked up until faith that was coming would be revealed, so that the law became our custodian until Christ, so that we might be made righteous by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian. You are all God's children through faith in Christ Jesus. You all who are baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, nor slave nor free, nor male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."
You are astonished, but also shocked by this message. Perhaps you are Jewish, and you've always heard things about those people who are Gentiles. What do you mean that we are somehow the same? Or maybe it was the other way around. Perhaps you are a free person, and now you hear that you are somehow the same as someone who is not free, and you don't understand how this could be. Or maybe you're a woman, and for the first time it enters your brain that perhaps you could be equal with the sex that has all of the power in society.
These words, depending on who you are in this imaginative story, could be empowering, could be disturbing, could be confusing, could be exciting, or even bewildering.
And who is this person that is bringing us together—this person that sees us beyond these earthly labels and sees us as one?
If your eyes are still closed, I invite you to open them now, bringing yourself back to 2025, in which some things have changed drastically and some things have not.
This week, I spent time at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., attending the Center on Faith and Justice Summer Academy. And I got the full dorm experience that I never got when I was in undergrad—nor did I ever want.
I've been sleeping on a twin bed all week on a mattress—if you can call it that—living in a dorm that is musty and either too hot or too cold. I also didn't have any utensils to eat with in the dorm, so I'll give you an image. One night I had ordered takeout pad thai, and I'm sitting there in my bed, eating pad thai with my hands. It was not pretty. But it's the things that we do for the work.
Nevertheless, I was joined by people and faith leaders from all over the world—from the U.S., from Singapore, from South Korea and South Africa. Mainline Protestants, Catholics, Pentecostals, Evangelicals, and others. We were of different races and ethnicities. We had different grasps on the English language. We had different theology and different theological language.
And here I was, mulling over this text all week and seeing it lived out in real life. The labels that we gave ourselves—or that others gave us—did not matter, because we were all there to work for justice, specifically in the name of Jesus.
The executive director of the Center on Faith and Justice is a person by the name of Reverend Jim Wallace. Some of you might know who that is—you might be familiar with his work. He's a writer, a teacher, a preacher, and a justice advocate who believes that the gospel of Jesus must be emancipated from its cultural and political captivities.
I'm going to read that again because I feel like that's important: The gospel of Jesus must be emancipated from its cultural and political captivities.
Reverend Jim Wallace is a New York Times bestselling author, a public theologian, a preacher, and a commentator on ethics and public life.
At one point, Jim found out that myself and one other friend from the group were Disciples ministers, and he tells the groups, "These folks are part of the Disciples of Christ. They aren't Methodist. They aren't Presbyterian. They are Disciples of Christ." Sounds like a lot to live up to, doesn't it?
And he was obviously joking. But it did lead to a lot of conversations about who the Disciples are and why we call ourselves that. And since we have a couple of new faces in the room, I thought that it might be good to share a little bit with you this morning, too, in case you're not familiar.
Coming out of the Second Great Awakening, our founders Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone sought to return us to the early church, dropping labels like Baptist or Presbyterian and choosing to just call ourselves Christians or Disciples—thus the name of our very long denominational name: Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
Now, that information alone will not get you an A on any Disciples history and polity class—but it is a start.
And perhaps you're starting to see how this is fitting into our text for today.
Our text is a wonderful glimpse into what the kingdom of God—or, as some people call it, the kin-dom of God—can be. And I'm sure that we've probably heard this text before, either from Galatians or from one of Paul's other letters. But today, I want to challenge you to think a little bit beyond this text.
Going back to our little imaginative story—imagine that you hear this letter from this guy named Paul, but then at some point you have to go home.
You, a woman, go back into a world in which you must depend greatly on a man—a husband or male figure—for safety and financial security and shelter.
Imagine that you, a slave, must go back into the world in which you are not the same as a free person. You must go back into the context in which you are indentured or owned.
Imagine that you are a Jew or a Gentile, and you must go back into a world that hyper-focuses on you based on where you're from, what you faithfully practice, or where you were just born to be.
These words shared by this man named Paul were nice in that moment, but they also felt distant and disillusioned. They felt delusional.
But also, as you go about your week, you continue to think about this man named Jesus, who is bringing people together—creating a world in which you aren't enslaved or treated differently because of your gender, or your status in society, or your religious beliefs, or where you were born.
You know that this world he is creating is not your current reality.
But what if it were?
How do we make this so?
How do I hear more?
I've got to go back and see if he's written any more letters to our group.
In the meantime, this dream that Paul shared of a world in which all people will be one in Christ—it sustains you. It encourages you. And it empowers you.
When Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his speech "I Have a Dream" in 1963, he likely knew that he wouldn't live to see that dream fully realized. In fact, he was assassinated just five years after that speech.
And so, he never saw people of color rise and ascend to the highest offices in our land. He never saw that in large part, our schools are fully integrated, and that everyone has a protected right to vote.
Now, racism and systemic issues are still very prevalent in our world. But I think we can all agree that some progress has been made. And it was Dr. King's understanding of biblical text that allowed him to dream a better world and a better nation than the one that he had experienced.
Dr. King also said that we have guided missiles but misguided men. But that's for another sermon.
So what if this image of the kingdom of God found in Galatians isn't a description, but instead is a prescription for the kingdom of God—something that we must continuously work towards?
In our text today, Paul begins with this key component: that the law was our custodian. He writes, "Before faith came, we were guarded under the law, locked up until faith that was coming would be revealed, so that the law became our custodian until Christ, so that we might be made righteous by faith."
He's saying that Christ is our custodian. Now, the NRSV calls it our disciplinarian.
This means that, above all else, we are accountable to Christ.
Now, I'm not saying to hit 80 on two wheels when you leave the parking lot today because "Christ is my custodian, officer" will not get you out of a ticket.
But what I'm saying is that in realizing the kingdom of God, we are held accountable to Christ above all else.
Remember, Dr. King was a lawbreaker. He protested. He loitered. He disobeyed the police. He obstructed roadways. And he was arrested for it. And he eventually was killed for it.
Jesus was a lawbreaker. The law said to rest on the Sabbath—and he chose to heal on the Sabbath and break the law. The law said to stone those who were caught in adultery—but Jesus broke it by stopping them and asking, "Who is here without sin?" He broke the law. He was arrested. And he was killed for it.
But in doing so, he laid out a way of living that is higher than any human-made law. He laid out an example of living in which we are all held accountable to him—and him only—that we might be made righteous, as Paul said.
That person in our fictional story would have understood the clear injustices of their time. But whereas society told them that men and women had different rights and privileges, Jesus said, "Nope, they are the same."
Whereas society said that Jews and Gentiles had irreconcilable differences, Jesus said they are more alike than they even begin to understand.
Whereas society said that all people are indentured or owned, Jesus said, "No, you are all equal in my name."
And a lot has not changed, right?
In our day and age, when we hear society say that human beings are somehow legal or illegal, we know that Jesus says that cannot be. We are all children of God.
When we hear society say that these people are worthy and these people are not, we know that Jesus says that cannot be. We are all children of God.
When we hear society say that these people are valuable, but these people are not, we know that Jesus says that cannot be. We are all children of the same God.
But we can't just say it—we have to make it so.
I don't have to tell you that even as we read these beautiful words by Paul today, we still have injustices—based on our gender, or our status in society, or based on the identities, based on who we are, where we're from, who we love, and the list goes on and on.
But we aren't here to just do church as a hobby on Sunday. We have been called to bring the kingdom of God down to earth. To do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with God. To bring this vision that Paul had to fruition in whatever way we can—because we belong to each other.
So I ask the group today: Are we prepared to bring the kingdom of God to earth? "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
My colleagues this week sure seemed prepared.
One couple was from South Africa, as I mentioned, and they shared how they had personally been beaten by the police and counterprotesters while protesting the apartheid in South Africa.
One colleague from Singapore—she was actually preparing to leave to go to Cambodia a little bit later this year as a missionary. She had been trained as a family physician and was taking her overt skills as a medical doctor to help the people of Cambodia—and was taking her covert skills to help them organize for justice in a country where even questioning authority or critiquing the government can get you jailed or even killed.
They are prepared to do what is necessary to ensure that in Christ, there is no male or female, there is no Jew nor Gentile, nor slave nor free—but that we are all one.
And if they can make these grave sacrifices, surely we can do something, right?
Surely we can speak up when something is happening to our neighbors—for Jesus says that we are the same.
Surely we can call our legislators when they are planning to cut Medicaid, which is something that 71 million Americans depend on—1.44 million Tennesseans, by the way. Or SNAP benefits, on which 42 million Americans depend—700,000 here in Tennessee. That's the size of the city of Nashville.
If they are willing to lay down their lives, quite literally, for the gospel—surely we can do something.
And I know it's so easy to feel alone. In fact, following the COVID-19 pandemic, we entered into what the CDC called a loneliness epidemic.
But friends, I'm here to remind you that we are never alone. We are never alone because God is with us. And even if we feel alone, I guarantee you that we all feel alone together.
I leave you with this poem by Rosemary Watola Traumer titled “Belonging.” I hope that these words speak to you. They are a secular poem, but I believe within the deepest part of my being that these are sacred words:
And if it's true that we are alone, we are alone together.
The way blades of grass are alone but exist as a field.
Sometimes I feel it—
The green fuse that ignites us,
The warm thrum that unites us,
The inner hum that reminds us of our shared humanity.
Just as 35 trillion red blood cells make up one body of blood,
Just as 136,000 notes make up one symphony,
Alone as we are,
Our small voices weave into one big conversation.
Our actions are essential to the one infinite story of what it is to be alive.
And when we feel alone,
We belong to the grand communion of those who sometimes also feel alone.
We are the dust—
The dust that hopes.
A rising of dust.
A thrill of dust.
The dust that dances in the light with all other dust—
The dust that makes the world.
Are we prepared to do the kingdom work here on earth?
I believe that we are.
So may it be so—but also may we make it so, with our loving and our living.
Amen.