Tuesday, August 25, 2026 7:44 PM

We Are One: There Is No Other

For most of my life, I have believed that we are one.

Not because it sounds nice. Not because it was the theme of a sermon series. But because it has always seemed to me to be at the heart of everything Jesus taught:

Love God.
Love your neighbor.
Love one another.

Simple words.

Yet somehow, we make them very complicated.

The Faith That Formed Me

I grew up in the Lutheran Church, Wisconsin Synod.

That church was my home. It is where I learned Scripture. It is where I learned to pray. It is where I learned who Jesus was. It is where my faith began.

And for that, I will always be grateful.

As I got older, my faith didn’t disappear. It deepened. I wanted to serve. I wanted to lead. I wanted to give more of myself to God and the church.

Through all those years, one belief stayed with me: we all sin. Every single one of us. We all fall short, and every one of us depends on God’s grace.

Because I believed we all needed grace, I also believed we should extend grace to one another.

I believed that if we could simply treat each other with love, kindness, compassion, and understanding, this world would be an incredible place.

Not because we would all agree, but because we would remember that we’re human. That we’re connected. That we’re loved.

And that we’re all trying to find our way home to God.

When Grace Felt Conditional

As I got older, however, I found myself facing a difficult question:

If God’s grace really is for everyone, why do some people seem to receive more of it than others?

Eventually, I was told something I have never forgotten.

God loves me.
God accepts me.
I am welcome.

As long as I am not a practicing gay person.

That confused me.

I had spent my whole life hearing that God’s grace was for sinners. I knew I was a sinner, just like everyone else.

But somehow, it felt like my sin had been placed into a different category—one that was less forgivable, less understandable, and less welcome.

I could never reconcile that message with the Jesus I encountered in Scripture.

The Jesus who continually moved toward people.

The Jesus who crossed boundaries.

The Jesus who chose love over exclusion.

The Jesus who never seemed afraid of the people the world called different.

A Conversation With My Dad

One of the people I love most in this world is my dad.

He’s the one who taught me faith, hard work, and perseverance. I love him dearly.

Even today, there are times when I don’t feel completely understood by him.

But perhaps that’s part of what love is.

Love isn’t always understanding everything about another person. Sometimes love is choosing to remain connected anyway.

A while back, my dad and I were having a conversation. I don’t remember exactly how we got there, but we were talking about church attendance and his disappointment that fewer people seem interested in church today.

Eventually, I said something I had been carrying for a long time.

“Dad, I don’t understand.”

I started naming the brokenness that has existed in our family, just as it exists in every family. Alcoholism. Divorce. Failed relationships. Children born outside of marriage.

Every one of us has fallen short. Every one of us depends upon God’s grace.

Then I told him that I was in a loving, committed relationship—now a marriage. I go to church. I pray. I try to follow Jesus. I try to show God’s grace to other people.

“But somehow,” I told him, “it feels like my sin is the one that bothers you the most.”

I wasn’t angry.

I was sad.

Because what I wanted wasn’t approval.

I wanted understanding.

I wanted my dad to see me the way I believed God saw me:

A beloved child.

Not an issue.
Not a controversy.
Not a disappointment.

A son.

I don’t share that story to criticize my dad. I love him, and I know he loves me.

In fact, maybe that’s why these things can hurt so much. Sometimes the people whose understanding we desire most are the people we love most.

The Question I Was Asking Was Wrong

That conversation stayed with me.

Recently, as I’ve spent more time thinking about what it means to say “We Are One,” I’ve started seeing that conversation differently.

I’ve had something of an aha moment in my own faith.

In that conversation with my dad, I was trying to defend myself using the very idea that had wounded me:

Sin.

I was essentially saying:

Yes, I’m a sinner—but so are you.

Yes, I’m a sinner—but so is everyone else.

So why is my sin worse than yours?

For years, I thought that was the right question.

Now I wonder whether I was asking the wrong question entirely.

What if the question isn’t, “Whose sin is worse?”

What if the question is, “Why are we so determined to put one another into categories in the first place?”

And this is where my thinking has really started to change.

I’m beginning to realize that I don’t believe sin exists—at least not in the way I was taught to understand it.

That’s a new realization for me, and I’m still wrestling with what it means.

It doesn’t mean I don’t believe people can hurt one another. Of course we can.

We can be selfish. We can lie. We can betray trust. We can ignore suffering. We can allow fear to become hatred.

Our actions matter.

How we treat one another matters.

But I’m beginning to question the idea of sin as a divine list of offenses separating good people from bad people, righteous from unrighteous, acceptable from unacceptable.

Because the more I think about Jesus, the more I notice something:

Jesus didn’t seem particularly interested in maintaining those categories.

Jesus kept crossing them.

He touched people he wasn’t supposed to touch. He ate with people he wasn’t supposed to eat with. He spoke with people he wasn’t supposed to speak with.

Again and again, Jesus moved toward the people others had pushed away.

What If Sin Is Really About Separation?

That has led me to another question.

What if what we’ve called sin is really about separation?

What if the real problem begins whenever I forget that you and I belong to one another?

When I hurt you, I create separation.

When I refuse to see your humanity, I create separation.

When I decide I’m more worthy than you, I create separation.

When I decide who belongs and who doesn’t, I create separation.

And whenever I look at another human being and see a label before I see a person, I create separation.

Suddenly, my conversation with my dad looks different to me.

I don’t need my dad to decide that my sin isn’t as bad as somebody else’s.

I don’t need being gay moved a little farther down somebody’s list of sins.

I need the list to disappear.

Because I don’t believe God looks at me and sees a category.

I believe God looks at me and sees Jacob.

A beloved child.

God looks at my dad and sees a beloved child.

God looks at you and sees a beloved child.

And God looks at the person you understand the least—the person you disagree with the most, the person whose life, beliefs, experiences, or traditions look nothing like yours—and God sees a beloved child.

Maybe grace isn’t God reluctantly forgiving us because we’re terrible people.

Maybe grace is God continually reminding us of something we keep forgetting:

We belong to God.

And because we belong to God, we belong to one another.

There is no us and them.

There is no person beyond the reach of love.

There is no human being outside God’s image.

There is no Other.

There is only us.

Learning to See the Other Differently

This realization has challenged me, too.

Before becoming part of Excelsior United Methodist Church, I didn’t spend much time paying attention to politics or everything happening in the world around me. Truthfully, I’m an introvert. I’m pretty happy sitting at home, watching television and spending time with Noah.

When I first encountered the church’s Social Justice Team, I wasn’t always sure what to make of it.

Then one day, I saw our pastor at an ICE rally.

My first thought was: Why?

Why put yourself in that situation? Why get involved? What does that have to do with us?

Without realizing it, my thinking was:

That’s their issue.

That’s their struggle.

That’s their fight.

It was an us-and-them way of looking at the world.

Eventually, I saw the contradiction.

How could I ask people not to make me an “other” while I was doing exactly that to someone else?

If I know what it feels like to be treated as “other,” to wonder whether I belong, or to have people talk about me instead of listening to me, how can I turn around and do that to somebody else?

Suddenly, it wasn’t about immigration.

It wasn’t about politics.

It wasn’t about agreeing on every policy or every solution.

It was about people.

It was about recognizing God’s image in another human being.

When we say “We Are One,” we can’t mean only people who look like us, worship like us, vote like us, or love like us.

If we do, we’re simply drawing a bigger circle around people who are already like us.

Jesus was always expanding the circle.

The Samaritan.
The tax collector.
The leper.
The foreigner.
The outsider.

The people everyone else overlooked.

There Is No Other

Recently, I encountered a passage from the Gospel of Mary that deeply moved me:

“Every nature, every modeled form, every creature exists in and with each other.”

Those words stopped me.

Author Meggan Watterson, reflecting on this passage in Mary Magdalene Revealed, describes a love in which we are not separate from one another—a love that reaches everyone because our lives are inextricably connected.

There is no Other.

That’s the phrase that stays with me.

If we truly exist in and with each other, then perhaps separation is the illusion.

Perhaps the categories are the illusion.

Perhaps the idea that one of us can somehow be more deserving of God’s love than another is the illusion.

So much suffering begins when we decide who belongs and who doesn’t. Who is worthy and who isn’t. Who is inside and who is outside.

But God’s love doesn’t create outsiders.

God’s love creates family.

Christ Is All and Is In All

Paul writes in Colossians 3:11:

“Christ is all and is in all.”

Not Christ is in some.

Not Christ is in the people who agree with us.

Not Christ is in the people who look like us.

Not Christ is in the people who make us comfortable.

Christ is all and is in all.

Christ is in me.

Christ is in my dad.

Christ is in the immigrant.

Christ is in the stranger.

Christ is in the person who agrees with me and the person who doesn’t.

Christ is in the straight person.

Christ is in the gay person.

Christ is in every human being.

And if Christ is in all, then there truly is no Other.

God’s Doors Are Open to All

On the front of Excelsior United Methodist Church are rainbow doors.

On those doors are words I have come to love:

“God’s Doors Are Open To All.”

Those doors matter to me.

There was a time when I wasn’t sure every church believed that.

There was a time when it felt like being both gay and deeply Christian was somehow incompatible.

There was a time when I wondered whether there would ever be a church where I didn’t have to choose between my faith and who I am.

Those doors remind me that God’s grace is bigger than our fear.

God’s love is bigger than our categories.

And God’s family is bigger than we imagine.

For me, LGBTQ+ inclusion isn’t fundamentally about politics.

It’s about recognizing God’s image in every person.

It’s about recognizing that there is no Other.

Only beloved children of God.

We Are Already One

Perhaps that’s what “We Are One” really means.

Not that we’re identical.

Not that we agree on everything.

Not that we understand everything about one another.

My dad and I don’t always understand each other.

But we love each other.

And we remain connected.

Because love is stronger than disagreement.

Grace is stronger than judgment.

And Christ is stronger than division.

Maybe our calling isn’t to decide who has sinned and who hasn’t.

Maybe our calling isn’t to decide who is worthy of God’s grace.

Maybe our calling is much simpler:

Love God.

Love your neighbor.

Love one another.

And recognize the Christ that is already there.

In me.

In you.

In the stranger.

In the person we understand.

And in the person we don’t.

Because there is no stranger.

There is no outsider.

There is no Other.

There is only us.

Beloved children of God.

Held together by one Spirit.

One grace.

One love.

Maybe “We Are One” isn’t something we’re supposed to become.

Maybe we already are one.

Our work is learning to see it.