Posted on: 3rd October 2024

In the UK October is designated as Black History Month. There is some disagreement within the Black community as to whether that is a good thing but it does bring diversity (or its absence) into sharp relief. Although I am white, I grew up in Bangladesh and for many years I would have taken foolish pride in saying, “I don’t see colour”. It took me a while to figure out that I should see colour.

This came mainly from reflecting on Paul’s declaration in his letter to the churches in Galatia
(chapter 3, verse 28): “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

This is Paul, not ignoring diversity but putting it second to our identity as children of God. The apostle insists that our identity comes first and foremost from our relationship with Jesus (“So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith” - verse 26) and thereby also from our relationship with each other – as sisters and brothers.

To mandate an identity, even one given by God, is deemed offensive in a world where we are
permitted, nay, encouraged, to choose our identity as we choose an outfit from the clothes rack. Our culture’s deification of self-selecting identity(ies) is revealed as the false and mortifying danger that it is by its inability to produce healing or a redemptive moment to bring us closer to our creator God. It’s an inadequate bid to address our desperate need to be known and loved for who we really are - behind our masks.

Paul would have committed to memory the life-giving and liberating words of the psalmist which hum gently and poetically behind Paul’s rather plain theological declarations about who we are: “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. … Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” (Psalm 139, verses 13,14,16).

In his sweeping decree Paul alludes to three contemporary “identities”: ethnicity, gender, and status (which we recognise today and could probably add to – race, politics, class, education); not in order to deny them or delete them but to call them to bow before our foremost identity. He is not advocating destruction of diversity but integration and celebration of difference within our primary identity.

The gospel message for Black History Month, and for all parts of our diverse community in Leeds, is that in Jesus there is redemption for our brokenness and transformation into Christlikeness – but also the retention of our created extraordinary uniqueness.

In Revelation the Apostle John sees this coming, “After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9).

So, as I wander around Leeds in October I am learning to see colour, and gender, and ethnic difference. To see them as God-given and glorious, to be celebrated and enjoyed and to be reminded that we are all invited into a kingdom where our kaleidoscopic differences are not destroyed but redeemed and integrated into God’s eternal family.

David Flowers, Leeds Vineyard