The Scandal of Inclusion (Revisited): From Purity Codes to Divine Embrace
Originally preached in 2017; revised in light of new insights from Terror Management Theory.
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When fingers cross and we say “God forbid,” what are we really protecting — God’s realm or our own sense of control? Two words that have policed countless bodies and identities under the guise of holiness. But what if the real scandal isn’t our embodiment, but grace itself? |
Introduction: An Invitation to Be Scandalized (Again)
Eight years ago, I stood before an affirming congregation and delivered a message I titled The Scandal of Inclusion. At the time, I framed the Book of Acts as a collection of scandalous stories — narratives so disruptive that they caused people to trip, question, and reimagine what God’s grace could really look like.
Since then, I’ve come to see those same stories through an even richer lens, one I wish I’d had back then: Terror Management Theory (TMT). I now can’t help but see existential issues we are struggling with today through this lens; so much so, I fear I am beginning to sound like a broken record in my writings and reflections. But I make no apologies.
TMT helps us understand how our unconscious fear of death drives us to construct systems of meaning — religions, ideologies, purity codes — that give us a sense of control and immortality, literal or symbolic. When those systems are challenged, we experience what psychologists call “mortality salience,” and we react. Not always with curiosity. Often with aggression, denial, or shame.
When I look again at the stories in Acts — Philip among the Samaritans, the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch, Peter’s vision of unclean animals — I now see people having to let go of old religious scripts in order to make room for something deeper, truer, and far more inclusive. And that is terrifying — unless you’ve already faced down your fear of death and what lies beyond the systems you’ve trusted.
I want to revisit that original sermon, but this time, through the lens of TMT and my own story as a transgender woman who once clung tightly to evangelical theology as a bulwark against her own terror. Maybe you’ll recognize your own journey here too.
Purity Codes and Their Comforting Illusion
Let me begin with a confession: I once loved the idea of being pure. Not because I was especially holy, but because purity meant belonging. It meant safety. It meant I didn’t have to face the chaos of my inner world — the terrifying truth that I didn’t fit the categories I was told were divinely ordained.
Evangelical purity culture gave me a map, a checklist, a structure. But what I now understand is that these weren’t tools of spiritual freedom. They were defences — what TMT would call death-denying worldviews — that helped me avoid the terrifying realization that life is unpredictable, ambiguous, and uncontrollable.
But God — thank God — keeps breaking through our defences.
Skandalon: When Inclusion Trips Us Up
In my original sermon, I explored the Greek word skandalon, usually translated “stumbling block” or “offence.” It’s where we get the word scandal. And it shows up everywhere in the New Testament, often in connection with Jesus, whose embodiment of love kept offending the gatekeepers.
TMT tells us that when we are reminded of our mortality, we cling more tightly to our cultural worldviews. We become less tolerant, more punitive, more rigid. So it makes sense that stories of inclusion — stories that expand who belongs — can feel like a threat.
Consider Philip in Samaria, or Peter eating with Gentiles, or the Spirit leading Philip to baptize a eunuch. These are stories that broke open boundaries that had once been unquestioned. No wonder they were remembered decades later. They were scandalous, yes — but they were also sacred.
And that is still true today.
A Personal Scandal: My Own Baptism by Spirit
When I transitioned a few months shy of my 58th birthday, I was not trying to reinvent myself or make some bold public statement. I was simply trying to survive. After decades of wrestling with an inner truth I dared not speak — especially within the walls of my evangelical faith community — I had reached a point where the cost of denial had become unbearable.
It wasn’t that I lacked faith. On the contrary, I prayed for healing, for deliverance, for anything that would make the dysphoria go away. I memorized scripture. I led Bible studies. I raised a family and built a respectable life. I did everything I thought God required of me.
But none of it quieted the ache.
Terror Management Theory has since given me language for something I didn’t have words for back then. My faith — sincere as it was — had become a fortress against my fear. Fear of rejection, of failure, of not being “enough” in God’s eyes. But beneath it all, there was a deeper fear: the fear of death — not just physical death, but symbolic death. The death of an identity I had spent a lifetime constructing. The death of belonging. The death of certainty.
Transitioning felt like a kind of death. But it was also a resurrection. Not into someone new, but into someone real.
And that’s why the story of the Ethiopian eunuch hits me differently now. Here was someone who had crossed borders — geographical, cultural, bodily — only to be told, “You don’t quite belong.” They had done everything right. And still, they had to ask: “What prevents me from being baptized?”
That question has echoed through my life. And for too long, the answer I heard from others — and internalized myself — was: everything.
But by the time I stepped into my truth, I realized the real answer was: nothing.
An Invitation to Unlearn the Fear
If you’ve made it this far, perhaps something in you is already stirring. Maybe you recognize, in your own story, echoes of the eunuch’s question. Or maybe it’s Philip’s response you’re still working up the courage to offer — to yourself, or to someone you love.
So let me gently ask:
What if the “Christian morals” many of us inherited around sexuality and gender were never moral absolutes, but fear responses — crafted in times when the body was misunderstood, when desire was pathologized, and when scientific knowledge of human sexuality was still in its infancy?
What if what we’ve called holiness was, in many cases, just habitual shame — disguised as virtue?
And what if it’s time to let that go?
This isn’t a call to abandon faith. It’s an invitation to reclaim it — to unlearn what was built on fear and to rediscover the God who has always welcomed our bodies as sacred ground, not as battlegrounds.
Because here’s the truth: you are not a stumbling block.
Your body — whatever shape, history, desire, or expression it carries — is not a threat to someone else’s holiness.
You are not too much.
You are not disqualified.
You are not a theological problem to be solved.
You are a person, made in the image of God. And if the Incarnation means anything at all, it means that God is not afraid of bodies. Not yours. Not mine. Not anyone’s.
So if the rules you’ve been taught are crushing your spirit, if they demand your silence or shame in order to belong, then maybe — just maybe — those rules are the problem, not you.
What prevents you from being fully seen, fully known, fully loved?
If the Spirit still speaks, I think She’s saying the same thing today that She whispered through Philip all those years ago:
Nothing.
The Book of Acts as a Manual for Deconstruction
TMT teaches us that when people feel their worldview is under threat, they often double down on their group identity. We see this in modern Christianity’s growing obsession with control — of bodies, identities, and narratives. But the Book of Acts shows us a different way.
Acts isn’t a celebration of uniformity. It’s a record of disruption. A chain reaction of scandals that forced the early followers of Jesus to rethink who God could love, call, and include.
That’s why I now say: read Acts like the National Enquirer. Imagine how shocking it must have been for a first-century reader to hear that the Holy Spirit fell on uncircumcised Gentiles, or that a castrated foreigner could be baptized without hesitation.
Scandalous? Yes. But also liberating.
What the Eunuch Knew (That We Still Need to Learn)
One of the most poignant moments in all of Acts is when the Ethiopian eunuch — reading Isaiah’s Suffering Servant — asks, “Is the prophet speaking about himself, or someone else?”
The question is theological. But it is also existential.
As someone who lived in a liminal body — gender non-conforming, sexually marked, socially excluded — the eunuch recognized himself in the one who was “despised and rejected, cut off from future generations.”
That’s not just empathy. That’s identification.
And when he asks Philip, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” I hear the longing of every person who’s ever been told they’re too other to belong.
Thanks to TMT, I now recognize that those who impose the boundaries — those who are most scandalized by inclusion — aren’t necessarily evil. They’re scared. Scared of a world that is not as ordered or rule-bound as they need it to be to feel safe. Scared of grace that’s too big. Scared of a God who might include people they themselves cannot.
A Closing Reflection: What If the Real Scandal Is Grace?
So much of what passes for Christianity today is just fear in religious clothing. It’s death anxiety dressed up as doctrine. But Jesus showed us something radically different.
He touched the untouchable. Ate with the scandalized. Welcomed the outcast. And in doing so, he shattered purity codes that had calcified into moral absolutes. His body — seen, touched, wounded, and raised — became the ultimate stumbling block for a system that couldn’t tolerate such unfiltered grace.
I still believe in scandal. But not the kind that shames. The kind that frees.
And when I hear the eunuch’s question echoing across centuries — “What is to prevent me?” — I still want my answer to be Philip’s:
Nothing.
Come and see. Be scandalized. Be free. It’s that simple.
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