Divisions in society are probably as old as time itself. In the time of Jesus there were three fault lines that divided people from one another: Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free. That was just the way that it was. But then Jesus arrived on the scene and drove a coach and horses through the accepted norms of his day. He didn’t care who he hung out with and he caused scandal and offence at every turn by spending time with the ‘wrong’ sorts of people. In everything he said and did he repeatedly drove home a very simple message – all lives matter equally to God and therefore all lives should matter equally to us. We are all created to reflect the image of God in which we are made, and we are all invited to become children of God through faith in Christ. It is this new identity that supersedes any other and provides the basis for a unity that transcends any other difference. As St Paul declared in a letter written to the church in Galatia two thousand years ago, ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’.
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