“Oh, you people all look alike – and your names all sound the same! I can’t keep track of who is who and who is what name with any of you!” So exclaimed an exasperated Korean pastor who kept mixing up names as he tried to tell a group of clergy about a situation he had experienced while serving in an Anglo church. In other contexts we hear, “Those ________  (fill in the blank with the identity of those who are “other”) all look alike! I can’t tell one from the other!”

After worship in a suburban congregation, one European American woman walked up to the only regularly attending African American woman and asked, “Did you just have your hair style changed? I like it!” She responded, “Thank you for noticing! Most don’t. To most people around here, I am just a shadow, recognized only by the color of my skin.”

As three teens walked in to church, blue hair, black clothes, with tatoos and multiple piercings on each of them, two adults watched and commented. “Kids these days! Who knows what they’re going to do with their hair next!  Look at all their piercings! Makes me wonder what else they’ve pierced!  Look at his pants, underwear showing – wonder how he keeps them on! Well, look at the girls! They don’t leave much to the imagination!”

We separate ourselves from one another into “us” and “them” far more readily than we like to admit. Of course, those who are “us” are the ones who are on the inside, the favored ones — those with whom we are comfortable,  with whom we identify.” “They” are different from us, by age, gender, life-choices, economic circum-stances, nationality, sexuality, even religion. ”They” are outsiders and out of favor. We are so uncomfortable with our differences.

Why do we consider our differences to be dangerous and threatening? Why are we so negative and critical about our differences? Why do we love conformity to our own way so much? This isn’t what our faith teaches us! We worship the Creator of difference and imagination.

We worship God of open adoption — God who files adoption papers for each and every human one of us. God in Christ Jesus redeems us all, and through the Spirit, welcomes each and every one of us into this wondrous, diverse household of life. God not only loves us all equally abundantly, but God delights in our differences. God pays attention to us and sees us as unique individuals, noticing us for who we are, not for our physical differences, recognizing us in our ways of living and loving, not for how we dress or for our superficial behavior. God loves us — just because God loves naturally and abundantly and has adopted us as direct heirs of this love.

It is this God that our hearts recognize and cry out to in the joy of being adopted.

It is in this household of faith that we look around us and learn to delight in our differences and to recognize in each other, the sisters and brothers God has given us to live and love with, together in our earth-home.

In faith, we look to God and cry, “Abba! Father! Amma! Mother!

Redeemer! Beloved!”

In faith, we look to others and cry, “Sister! Brother! Friend! Companion! Beloved!”