All Inclusive - 6-19-22
All-Inclusive
1 Kings 19:1-7; Gal 3:23-29
1 Kings 19:1-7
Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah; he left his servant there. But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God. At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there. Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” He answered, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” He answered, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” Then the Lord said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king over Aram.
Gal 3:23-29
Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.
Prayer – God of inclusive grace – we live in a world that is all about dividing, separating, exclusivity. And yet, again and again you surprise us in your love of all of your children – regardless of their faith, the color of their skin, the language they speak, the beliefs they hold dearly. Help us to be mindful that we all are offspring of the covenant and that your love for each human being is not up for debate nor for separation. Grant us the understanding to realize and recognize that your inclusivity is for all – amen.
Now that I have moved to Texas, I understand a few things about Texas that I didn’t before – things like brisket, Dallas is its own entity, and everything in Texas is big – especially Buc-ees. And even though I’m a relative newbie, I have heard that Texas means football. I have heard that small-town life just as much as big city life is centered around football – from high school, to college, to the Cowboys or Texans. Everybody has a football team in Texas from what I’ve heard and I can imagine that is not too different from me growing up along Tobacco Road in NC where college basketball is king – Go Heels!!!
As I can imagine many of you know there are fans and then there are FANS! Most people are loyal supporters whether it is for the home town team, or college inspired team or one of the professional teams. Big time fans will travel both near and far to cheer own their beloved team. Growing up in NC we hated to see Clemson come to Chapel Hill cause there was almost as much orange as baby blue in the stadium. And boy were they obnoxious. I can imagine some of you can speak to those obnoxious fans from some of your least favorite teams. It was like in the 2019 NBA playoffs when Kevin Durant tore his Achilles tendon and the Toronto fans cheered – perhaps not the finest display of sportsmanship. It certainly reflects the ‘us against them’ that seems to dominate football in Texas, basketball in NC, the Yankees versus the Red Sox, Tiger versus Phil, and countless other sporting events across the world.
That ‘us against them’ thinking seems to pervade human culture. It would seem that regardless of time or place, regardless of status or faith, the human family has a deeply ingrained need to differentiate from others they can look down on. Whether it surfaces between nations, ethnic and racial hatred, or social discrimination, it seems that we are obsessed with defining our own worth in competition with others – which means some are included and many are excluded.
I’ve never really understood the blatant, mean-spirited racism that seems to infect so many people in our country and world today. I don’t understand how anyone can look at another person and think of them as some kind of sub-human animal. And yet, I have to admit that I share that human tendency to look down on Duke fans, thinking that I’m perhaps a little nicer and smarter because they wear dark blue and I wear Carolina blue. I’m not particularly proud of that fact since my wife went to Duke, I just acknowledge it about everyone except my wife. Perhaps because I’ve tried to overcome it has kept our marriage intact. Seriously though, what disturbs me deeply is when people take those notions of better than because of skin color, or ethnicity, or faith tradition, or anything else we use to define differences and scapegoats, all the while turning their beliefs into a badge of loyalty or a mark of patriotism, or even a medal of faith, that is where I get pretty uncomfortable. For far too many people today, it seems that Christian faith just becomes another way of justifying cherished prejudices.
That is not the way in which scripture presents the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or the God of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The God of scriptures, both Hebrew and Christian, was and is concerned about “all the families of the earth.” (Gen 12:3) With that in mind, and given Jesus’ inclusion of all people, we might want to believe that the church would be a ‘hate-free’ or ‘discrimination-free’ zone. Unfortunately, that is not our 2022 experience. Apparently, it wasn’t even that way in the days of Paul either. Far too many preachers and churches are taking stands against some other group of people today and for me it is both disheartening and unfaithful.
Part of our NT passage this morning is when Paul is addressing the church in Galatia in which Jewish Christians joined together with Gentile converts. In order to understand the problems that caused, we have to understand that one of the fundamental aspects of first century Judaism was the belief that they were the chosen people of God. It would seem that many Jewish people in that day and time thought that their election as God’s chosen meant privilege rather than call, perhaps not too different than many people of faith across the spectrum today. So they tended to believe that God’s special relationship with them meant that they must be particularly special, and therefore better than those ‘gentile dogs’ – that is all non-Jewish people. Of course, if the gentile sinners wanted to, they could convert and become Jewish and then they would be part of the privileged people. Otherwise they remained outsiders and should remain excluded.
When the Christian gospel started making a difference in the lives of everyday people in ancient Palestine outside of Judaism in the first century, Jewish Christians had some real life challenges with it. Many of them insisted that they convert to Judaism before they became Christians. Paul saw it for what it was – not only an affront to the gospel but an affront to the God of Abraham and Sarah and all of their descendants for the benefit of ‘all the families of the earth.’
I can only imagine Paul’s response to present day Christianity in our western world. I can imagine he would be speaking out against the all too frequent diatribes against one group of people by another. It doesn’t seem to make a difference whether one is conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican, male or female, black or white, gay or straight, the idea of privilege and exclusion is just as prominent today as it was during Christ’s time, during Paul’s time, throughout human history.
My wish, my prayer for our current world is that perhaps we should follow Paul’s lead and extend his thinking to include the whole human race as God’s chosen people. If we’re honest with ourselves, and each other, we would have to admit that we have taken Paul’s scandalous overturning of the system of privilege and discrimination and turned it into a whole new means of scapegoating and exclusion. We have turned Christian faith into an exclusive mark of superiority over ‘non-believers or different believers.’ It would seem to me that the God who created all things and all people and proclaimed goodness to all, the God who called Abraham and Sarah and their descendants for the benefit of all people, the God who in Jesus Christ came into this world to redeem ALL people, is the God who has chosen to love the WHOLE human family. Truly I not just remind you, but proclaim to myself and to you, that we ALL are beloved children of God, we are all chosen ones so as to be ‘one in Jesus Christ.’
When it comes to this whole notion of faith, just as much in life and work and all other areas of human endeavor, we are all in this together – and that includes the Muslim imams and Catholic nuns and Jewish rabbis and Buddhist priests and Hindu monks – along with people of every stripe and variety, no matter their race, their color, their language or orientation. We can no longer look at others as ‘other;’ we can no longer look down on people who look, think, act, dress, speak or love differently as not included in God’s plan or God’s love. Rather, when we look at another human being – any and every human being – we must see that person as one whom God has created in God’s image, who God choses to love every bit as much as you or me or anyone else. The radical and amazing news of the gospel is that God has chosen, chooses and will always choose to love us all without exception! Our task is to do the same. God’s love is all inclusive - Thanks be to God – amen.