As I read this week’s text, I am taken back to a previous congregation. It was an
older congregation, living in the by-gone days before the town began its rapid
increase in minority population. We had a “mixed-race” couple that began
attending the church, and the African-American husband became one of our
ushers, and served communion. The gossipers in the back could barely hold their
tongues, until the unforgivable happened. The man did not wear a tie one day as
he took up the offering. “We can’t have that! We have to uphold the dignity of
worship?” They were allowing their latent racism to be masked by a defense of the
holiness of the place of worship.
Jesus defends the holiness of God by giving examples of God’s grace to the Widow
from Zarephath and Naman the Leper. That made them so mad that they
seemingly wanted to break the Sixth Commandment, “Thou shalt not murder.”
How do we limit the “who” that Christ came to save? The way we counter this in
the church is to acknowledge that all are welcome, and respect the Christianity of
even “those” kind of people. But we like to draw lines, set up barriers, and shun
those that we feel are not worthy of God’s salvation.
We needed a Savior for all—because I am probably one of “those” kind of people.
Galatians 4:4-7 (expanded)- But when the set time had fully come, God sent his
Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we
might receive adoption to son ship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of
his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no
longer a slave, or
· a gentile, from the wrong family,
· of the wrong gender,
· from the wrong nation,
· from the wrong side of the tracks,
· love the wrong kind person,
· raised with wrong belief,
· with the wrong kind of past,
· or just not worth loving
but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.
We need to be amazed by the scandalous grace of God, that would even save a
“sinner such as I.”
Pastor Greg