In scripture it says that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female and that we also ought to consider ourselves sojourners on the earth who are awaiting a lasting city which is not built by human hands after Abraham who his whole life was promised a nation by God but lived as nomad who died believing that God would fulfill the promise.
The promises of God focus very heavily on the renunciation of our former identity in baptism where we exchange earthly citizenship for heavenly citizenship, this is the practical result of the mystery of baptism. We are now sons to God by adoption and children of the kingdom of God. To the Apostles these pronouncements weren't just some analogy or reminder, like they example of Abraham they genuinely believed themselves to be citizens of no earthly city but rather future citizens of the lasting heavenly city sealed by the spirit of promise. The renunciations of male and female, slave and free, jew and gentile were things that they really lived out in hope. St Paul at one point criticised St Peter because he believed that he was unfaithful in living these ideals when in the presence of Jewish and Gentile believers.
The Coptic Church is our identity from the perspective of the cultural clash which is lived out in our mother nation where there is a struggle for identity and expression in an unbelieving nation. The identity is a glowing lamp amidst great darkness and oppression but it shouldn't be considered to be the ultimate identity which we present before God at the judgement - that identity must be none other than Christ Himself who died for us before a single Egyptian martyr had shed blood. I think that the most important reason we preserve Coptic identity is because it is a kind of rebellion against this non-Christian influence and any attempt to alter or deminish our true worship and traditions. The specific cultural form of worship which we offer is Coptic as much as we're Egyptian and heirs of this rich spiritual legacy but its power and importance is ultimately because it is Orthodox, Apostolic, Scriptural and Christ's.
The Church also shouldn't be thought of as just some earthly entity; the church is now the unity of heaven and earth through the incarnated person of Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit. When Christ was incarnated this was not just a new form of outward expression on God's part in the sense that He could now walk and talk; He practically and in a real way joined heaven and earth together in His most heavenly Body. This is why in some rites they say of the Virgin Mary; the heavens of heavens cannot contain the One who was contained in your womb. So we ought to think of the church as not just a human or an earthly entity; it contains all creation, both heaven and earth in the One who has united us.
