Same-Difference

A Homily for Pentecost 2024

“It’s the same difference.” That phrase often greeted me whenever I attempted to correct my mother. She might say something like: “That’s a nice red car.” And I would respond, “That car’s maroon!” Then she would reply, almost automatically, “Same difference!” Which meant she knew her statement wasn’t completely true but it was close enough!

The colloquial phrase “Same difference” is used usually when you agree that what you said was not exactly correct, but you think that the difference is not really important.

St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, “There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit; there are different forms of service but the same Lord; there are different works but the same God who produces all of them in everyone.”

And as we see in the Acts of the Apostles today: It’s the same Spirit but heard differently, and as needed, by each listener.

Notice what is the same and what is different: The Spirit is the same, the Lord is the same, God is the same; it’s the gifts that differ, the service that differs, the works that differ, the words spoken that differ. It’s all the “Same Difference but with a very important difference and a very important sameness.

Jesus is the Same Difference! He is fully human and fully divine. Completely like each and every one of us and at the same time profoundly and utterly different from us. He’s the “Same Difference,” with a difference you could say: His sameness can never overcome his difference and his difference can never overwhelm his sameness. And so the same must be true of each of us.

We live in a world obsessed with, and possessed by, Identity Politics. And the regular danger in Identity Politics is that people are constantly attempting to either highlight difference to the detriment of sameness or they seek to highlight sameness and thereby disintegrate any difference.

As people consecrated in the truth of the Holy Spirit and in Christ, the very embodiment of the “Same Difference,” as people who have staked our lives on the fact that the Incarnation is real and it matters; we are simply not free to sacrifice sameness for difference or difference for sameness. We rather are called to live in the creative tension between the two, where the Holy Spirit can swope in and teach us again and again that we don’t ever need to sacrifice one for the other. We can abide securely in the sameness that binds us as one as we can celebrate, be challenged by, and get curious about the differences that make life a whole lot more interesting!

As people who know Christ, we know the “Same Difference’ because he abides in each of us. Therefore, we are called today, more than ever, to resist the urge to unnecessarily differ the sameness or same the differences. We are called to live in the space in between Sameness and Difference because it is exactly there where Christ makes himself creatively known and the Spirit emerges as an energy and a fire that everyday desires nothing more than to renew the face of the earth! As well as the faces of each and every one of us!

When people use the colloquial phrase: “It’s the same difference” they are basically saying the difference isn’t important enough to matter. And in saying so they overplay the sameness as well. We know the One who is the “Same Difference’ with an important difference and an important sameness. Our task, as his disciples, is to know when to highlight the sameness that makes us one and respect that differences that challenge us to grow and open our hearts and minds to how the Spirit wishes to perhaps invite us into something completely new!

As Christians we must wear our differences with a sameness and our sameness with a difference. As the Spirit Descends anew this Pentecost, let us each recommit ourselves to live in that in-between space of energy and fire where the Same Difference dwells and is making himself known anew though us each and every day!