Identity Politics & Christ

One of the phrases we’ve heard more and more in recent years is the phrase “identity politics.” This is shorthand for the kind of public dialogue and policy positions that emerge based on the interests or perspectives of various social groups that people identify with, whether by class or race or gender or ethnicity or any other number of concerns. At best, the idea is that those with similar concerns can band together to form coalitions that are able to speak together with more authority and influence the public square. But the radical claim of the Christian faith is that none of those identities are sufficient to care for needs of the human race. All of those identities will ultimately fail you. At worst, those identities will always ultimately come into conflict with one another. Not one of those identities is deep enough or broad enough to look out for them all. The radical claim of the Christian faith however is that in Jesus Christ there is room for every human care or concern. Every hurt, every pain, every loss, in every way that any member of the human race has felt lost, disenfranchised, sidelined, discriminated against, mistreated – in every way Christ has come to be the advocate of all. But He does not merely rubber stamp all our special interests and preferred identities, that would be the horror of absolutizing all our animosities. Perhaps that’s why God refused to let Adam and Eve back into the garden lest they eat of the Tree of Life and live forever in their sin. No, Christ welcomes all and promises to change all. Christ welcomes all, but He insists that all must die in Him. You must die to all of your other identities. You must die to your identity as a man, as a woman, as a heterosexual, as a conservative, as a minority, as a member of race or ethnicity. All of those identities must die, and you must live to Christ. That is what this table means week after week. This is Christ the Lord, Christ our Master, offering you His life, His identity, but comes through embracing His death, eating His death, sharing His death with one another, and this is so we all can die to ourselves, so that we might live together with all men in Him.