Feb. 29 - Susan Allison-Hatch

For freedom Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit to a yoke of slavery.  Listen!  I, Paul, am telling you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you.  Once again, I testify to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obliged to obey the entire law.  You who want to be justified by the law have cut yourselves off from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.  For through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.  For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love.
Galatians 5:1-6

A Reflection on Galatians 5:  1-6
     (With apologies to Robert Frost)
 
"Good fences make good neighbors,"
            the saying goes.
 
Lines we humans draw to
separate us from them
                 and theirs from ours
 
Lines of color
            class
                and kin
 
"Good fences make good neighbors"
     So we keep drawing lines:
            lines marking borders between those we like
   and those we'd rather just avoid
 
Some as new as yesterday
and
Some going back two thousand years or more
            Jew or Greek
              slave or free
                male or female
                  circumcised or not
 
Lines demarking who is in
            and who is out
                 whom to trust and
                           whom to fear
 
Because, we are assured,
            "Good fences make good neighbors."
 
First we draw the lines
     and then
             we throw up walls-
                 that keep us safe and keep them in their place.
 
But "something there is that does not like a wall"                
            Forces of nature conspire
                 to remove the divides we humans like to build and keep
 
            Posts decay, boards rot, stones crumble
                        the ground remains
                             unencumbered
                             and undivided
 
There underneath the detritus of collapsing walls and decaying fences
 
The ground in which "we live and move and have our being."
 
Susan Allison-Hatch