Discrimination makes me angry if it is based upon a person's appearance alone. Some of my medical colleagues from overseas who are highly competent and skilled have been abused just because of the colour of their skin. They are caring and dedicated individuals and I speculate how we ourselves would react if our attempts to care were were spurned abusively. Then there are the handicapped folk I know, intelligent but deformed and how folk embarrassed perhaps turn away and make cruel remarks like 'spastic'. Worse still the remarks about newcomers to church who turn up in fashionable frayed jeans or microskirt, much mascara and multicoloured hair.
Alternative fashions seem outrageous and threatening to many.
So may we when we put on our spiritual fashions of godliness, purity, caring and sharing. They challenge and reject old ways of behaviour. A punk girl in her plastic scarlet minidress dished out the soup. We joked afterwards for they at first could not understand why a hospital consultant would dirty his hands in this way. Our bond was faith in Christ.