GALATIANS 6 (reimagined)
Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. Galatians 6:2 NRSVUE
I reimagined the sixth chapter of Galatians as a letter Paul might write to the Christian churches of America today. I read this letter as part of my sermon at Paradox on August 23, 2025.
To the Christians who call the United States of America home,
1:2-3
Grace and peace to you in the power of our Divine Mother, in the benevolence of the Incarnate Son, and in the ubiquity of the Spirit, who, as one, eternally lavishes favor upon us from the first breath of our ancestors, to the here and now of the present and then on to our most distant descendants, forever and ever and ever, Amen.
1:6-9
And now that I have satisfied the social prerequisite of starting with polite banter, I can speak candidly about my feelings: My friends, I am dumbfounded by your faith and your resulting behavior. For when I visited you a few years ago, I witnessed, firsthand, how the Gospel of Jesus Christ led each of you away from self-righteousness, away from harsh judgments, and away from divisive religion. and, instead, I recognized the Spirit guiding you toward deeper empathy, toward generous compassion, and toward a greater understanding of unity.
But since I left, you halted your journey on the path of Christ’s Gospel, turned around and sprinted in the opposite direction back to shackles of uninspired religion, vane nihilism, and self-seeking ideologies.
I read news articles about how you elected politicians who boasted,“From this day forward, it’s going to be America first!” and you Christians stood up and cheered.
I listened to podcasts where a rich and powerful man once said, “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy,” and you Christians reposted that podcast with the caption, “AMEN!”
I consume content from those who confidently identify as progressive and then declare that no religious community exists in all of America that can possibly keep up with their own progressive mind.
And while clicks and votes and retweets and followers flood into your spheres of influence by the millions, we must press pause and examine how these ideas reveal the faith you hold in your hearts. And then consider how that faith informs your body’s behavior which impacts the health of your soul.
Because your social scientists recently discovered something alarming. They discovered that the modern American is lonely. So much so, that, in 2023, your U. S. surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy declared your loneliness to be a national epidemic. His researchers reported that about half of all adult Americans reported experiences of loneliness, and that data was collected before the pandemic which, Dr. Murthy hypothesizes, most likely led to increased feelings of isolation for Americans.
In May of 2024, Harvard’s Graduate School of Education conducted research to discover the causes and specifics of this national loneliness. They found that the highest rates of loneliness were among adults ages 30-44.
And the data about your future generations paints a picture that your way of life will only lead to this problem getting worse. Just last year, The Atlantic, published an article which cited research from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and stated that “…boys and girls ages 15 to 19 have reduced their hangouts (with friends) by three hours a week.”
My friends, the modern American is lonely.
And while researchers have yet to definitively give the specific answer to the question, “Why?”, we can confidently assert that the totality of the way you live leads you to this destination. Your modern behavior is leading you straight into the harrowing experiences of isolation, abandonment, and hyper-individualism. When Christians are asked why they behave the way they do, they often answer, “Because of my faith.” And if this is your answer, then you, by extension, testify that your faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ guided you straight into a life of misery.
This radically misrepresents the good news of Jesus Christ, for how can any news which steers us toward misery be considered, “Good”?
1:10-12
As you read my words, I imagine they weigh heavy. For if you struggle with feelings of deep loneliness, then you carry the heavy burden of heartache. And in your pain, I write you a letter. And rather than encouraging you, this letter admonishes you for the faith you clutch so tightly to and reprimands the behaviors you choose on a daily basis.
Which raises the question: Why? Why did I choose to write this letter filled with harsh words rather than a flowery message filled with vague niceties? The answer is because I love you. I care about you. I want what’s best for you. And no matter what you believe or how you behave or what building you worship in you will always, always, always, be my brothers, my sisters, and my siblings in Christ. My affection for you prevents me from electing silence as I watch you ride in the car of a bullet train barreling toward loneliness.
And I write this letter to you with a pressing urgency, as an invitation for you to pull the alarm chain disembark, and return to the Gospel of Jesus Christ once again so that you may live with a prolific sense of community, a prolific sense of solidarity, and a prolific sense of sisterhood, brotherhood, and siblinghood for all of the days of your lives.
6:1-2
And I believe the best way to change course to these greater things, begins with a well-known source. I want to encourage all of you to return, to reinvent, and to recommit to the sacred spiritual practice of church.
Before I go any further with my suggestion, I must acknowledge the suffering many of you endured at the hands of the church.
I know some of you survived spiritual, mental, and physical abuse all underneath the roof of a sanctuary.
I know some of you are queer and have only experienced discrimination, distractions, and double standards from church Elders.
I know some of you are students of history and feel you cannot possibly participate in church when it is inextricably tied to European colonialism.
I know some of you told your pastor that you wanted to be a pastor, and then he looked at you and said, “But that’s impossible, because you are a woman.”
And I know some of you are curious and you remember how much your questions, your thoughts, your ideas, and your beliefs have only been met with rejection.
To all of you who have had experiences like this I want you to know that I see you pain, I lament your pain, and I grieve with you in your pain.
This may feel shallow but as an ordained minister of the Gospel and leader of the global Church, I cannot in good conscience proceed in this letter without first offering an apology. I am sorry for the pain the church inflicted upon you. This pain should have never happened to you. And this Gospel was never meant to be hijacked by emperors, monarchs, and presidents for their own profit, their own perversions, their own power, and their own self-centered legacies. I am sorry and I am committed to making sure these evils never happen again.
When I suggest Americans return to church, I am not recommending any one returns to the same, stale, stark, and sinful congregations. Instead, my hope is that you might return to and then reinvent church. A church which ushers humankind into deeper relationships.
In this era of American loneliness, we need, more than ever, spaces in which we listen to each other’s suffering and also share the burdens we carry. For in the moments we offer help to one another through our hardships and in the moments we accept help from one another in our own pain, these are the moments in which we are living grace, in which we are living mercy, and in which we are living love. Loneliness ceases to exist in the presence of these gifts.
But church also pushes us toward radical compassion beyond our familiar walls. Martin Luther King, Jr., the greatest activist in American history, lived with the conviction that the church played a needed role in society. He said, “As the chief moral guardian of the community, the church must implore men to be good and well-intentioned and must extol the virtues of kindheartedness and conscientiousness.” And as the reinvented moral conscious of society, the church must stand up together, in harmony, whenever injustice occurs.
Church, at its best, is the space in your week, in your life, and in your city when you remember that hyper-individualism feeds people directly into loneliness, and that an essential part of being human is living in relationship with one another.
6:3-6
And before you interject to tell me about the so-called “community” you built on your social media page out of the people who eagerly dismantle church, passionately criticize church, and condescendingly demoralize the people who go to church, I must stop you and inform you of your own self-deception. You claim to be creating something but in actuality you have created nothing. For the laziest posture any human being can take is the posture of cynicism.
All of you have something valuable to offer your local church. All of you can make your local community a better place to live. All of you may rise above the temptation to hopelessness and participate in relationships with others that make life worth living. But you cannot expect any of these things to happen simply by being a passive observer. You need to jump up, put in the time, and create the spaces which foster the relationships you want to see in the world!
If you cannot see it, may I remind you that your country brims with great teachers, great artists, great scientists, great poets, and great people. And yet you have the audacity to sit in the isolation of your own homes, stare into the void of your smartphones and lament by way of Twitter your desire to return to a time when America was supposedly greater.
Open your eyes and see that greatness is all around you! Open your heart and embrace the greatness that is within you! Open your soul and share the greatness that is within you!
6:7-10
Do not be deceived, for many churches contributed to the epidemic of loneliness rather than provided you with the respite you need from this epidemic.Every church reaps the harvest they sow. And for the past couple decades, several churches gathered a meager harvest composed of despondent people, grown from the seeds of pious dogma. This must change, and this change begins with reinventing the foundation on which we build our churches.
Should our churches be built on the foundation of correct belief? No, that will always lead to control.
Should our churches be built on the foundation of membership? No, that will always lead to exclusion.
Should our churches be built on the foundation of humankind’s identity as sinners? No, that will always lead to anger.
Instead, our churches should be built on the foundation of God’s new creation as promised to us by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
6:11-13
My friends, I closed my laptop to handwrite these next words to express the urgency I feel about the Gospel’s new creation. Think of a time you personally saw the church deny someone for being human. Now tell me where did this church’s exclusion lead them? Into greater unity with one another? Most certainly not! Into a profound sense of loneliness? Almost certainly!
Is the epidemic of American loneliness really a surprise when so many churches in America profess faith in a god who only loves their small, select group of people?
Is the epidemic of American loneliness really a surprise when influencers broadcast unrelenting cynicism about the work of local religious communities?
Is the epidemic of American loneliness really a surprise when someone shows up to a community two days a year and then stops going because they “don’t know anyone there”?
Your loneliness is the result of an active choice to live in the old way of doing things, to return to the shackles of tired and uninspired religion.
6:14-16
But the Gospel promises us the good news that you and I can also actively choose to live in the new Creation.
The new creation in which we there is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male, female, or non-binary, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.
The new creation in which we are free to respond to hatred with love.
The new creation in which the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
And the new creation in which we live in deep relationships with each other, where we offer grace to others and receive grace from others in community.
If you learn to trust this new creation, you will find a life which is worth living and this life will be anything except lonely.
6:17-18
My friends, may you rise above the temptation to exclude one another, and instead focus on how we might become people of the new creation of abundant inclusion, bottomless hope, and miraculous compassion. And may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, my brothers, my sisters, and my non-binary siblings, forever and ever and ever!
Amen.