“Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?” (The Baptismal Covenant, BCP page 305)
To seek and serve Christ in all persons requires that I see clearly. It demands that I see in the other more than I see of Christ in myself. It calls me to see difference, to acknowledge diversity, to apprehend that while I belong to Christ, Christ does not belong to me. There is more to Jesus than meets my eye in the mirror each morning.
Difference is important, it is holy. To seek and serve Christ requires that I am not colorblind, for Christ is not monochromatic, His Gospel does not dissolve or deny difference, it reconciles it, binds it together into a community of genuine love—a communion of peace and justice.
The work of justice and peace, therefore, also demands that I see in full color, that I notice who is missing, who is left out, excluded, denied, or suffering. And since my hope and faith is grounded in God’s unearned, unmerited, love for me (I love because He loved me first—1 Jn 4:19), I am free to confess my own complicity in structures of injustice and oppression that colorblindness might otherwise allow me to deny, or worse, to bless.
To see injustice, I must see Christ in full color.
As our nation prepares to celebrate Independence Day, I pray that we continue to work at becoming a nation of liberty and justice for all, and a people of brave and clear vision that is willing to seek and serve Christ with humility, with penitence, with sacrifice, and with love.
