Freedom to Recieve
Freedom: Part 2
July 12, 2026
Galatians 3:6-29, Acts 15:1-11
You are all God’s children through faith in Christ Jesus. All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
~ Galatians 3:26-28
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Ann Hutchinson was a well-educated and deeply committed Puritan in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. She began teaching Bible studies for women in her home, but they eventually drew men and even prominent figures in the colony. Some saw it as a threat to the established religious order, but Hutchinson was convinced that all people had direct access to God through the Spirit without the mediation of the institutions that sought to control them.
The Puritan establishment emphasized obedience as proof of belonging, but Hutchinson leaned into Paul’s conviction that Abraham’s faith, not his works, established his identity as a child of God.
She was ultimately banished from the church and the colony for “being a woman not fit for our society.” Notice the charge is as much about her breaking of traditional gender roles as it is about her theology. She settled in Rhode Island near the community founded by Roger Williams. Both were pushed to the margins for taking grace too seriously and undermining the performance-based system that kept certain people in power. Their experience mirrors the tension Jesus faced with the religious authorities of his day.
In Galatians 3, Paul recites what was likely an early baptismal formula: no Jew and Greek, male and female, slave and free. The differences did not go away, but they no longer determined one’s standing before God or place in the community. The barriers of superiority and inferiority had been broken down.
Yet these same barriers existed for Ann Hutchinson and later for the women at Seneca Falls in 1848, who echoed Paul’s vision in their fight for voting rights, insisting that all men AND WOMEN were created equal.
Even as the United Methodist Church celebrates seventy years of women’s ordination, there are still religious and secular movements attempting to rebuild walls that generations of faithful people have worked to dismantle. Many leaders still feel threatened by a grace that welcomes every person to the table, regardless of identity, status, or achievement.
Consider where you still notice inequality or a lack of hospitality in our society, in the church, and even in your own life. Where do categories of performance or identity still determine who is fully accepted? What is one way you can extend grace to someone carrying guilt or shame because of standards placed upon them by others?
Practice: This week, stop keeping score. Think of someone you have been quietly waiting on before fully embracing them. Maybe you believe they need to return to church, get their life together, or change their mind about something important to you. Pray for them each day this week, not that they will change, but that you will stop waiting. Grace was never meant to have a waiting room.
