God Pause for Sunday

We are all created EQUAL......

Tuesday, March 20

Read Galatians 3:19-29
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. (v 28)

GOD EQUALIZES

Back in the days of Camelot, young King Arthur had an idea. He would gather up all the strongest, bravest men in the kingdom and he would band them together in a special brotherhood. He would call them knights. They would slay dragons for him, and they would advise him in matters of war and peace.

Arthur planned to convene the group for meetings in the castle from time to time, but he was bothered by the fact that all large tables built in the kingdom were rectangular. This, he realized, would lead to friction among the knights, since each would expect to be seated near the head of the table, on the right (or at least on the left) hand of the king. What to do?

Arthur solved the problem by making his table round, so that everyone seated at the table would be equal - none sitting higher or lower than the king. In fact, Arthur himself never sat at the table. Not only was there no head of the table, but no one sat at either the right hand or the left hand of the king.

And so it became a table of peers. Everyone seated at the table was exactly equal in rank. No one was greater or lesser at the round table.  (I love this analogy!!)

Tables were apparently rectangular in Jesus' time, too. People were always tsk-tsking him for socializing with tax collectors, women of ill repute, lepers, paralytics and other social misfits. Critics of Jesus were usually members of the temple elite - the scribes and Pharisees who ran the religious hierarchy - but even Jesus' own close friends got into the dispute from time to time, questioning his attention to the misfits and arguing among themselves about which of them would have the best seat at the table.

What they all missed in their self-aggrandizement is that the Table of Grace is round. There is no head other than God. There are no higher or lower places at the table. No seat is better or more prestigious than any other. There is room at the table for people of all colors, for rich and for poor, for women and men, for young and for old, for everyone born. And no one has the right to treat anyone else at the table as if they don't matter.  (A great lesson for all of us to remember!!)

Dallas Cronk