WHEN WILL WE START SAYING "YES"?

My brother was welcome when he attended the Metropolitan Community Church, but not so much in other churches...because he was gay. Indeed, the leaders of a small church near me, upon hearing that two gay men would be attending their church on communion Sunday, held a meeting before worship and voted NOT to serve them. Many years ago, a teenage girl visited my own church pastor for support because she was about to give birth to a baby. He had a chance to embrace her in Christ's name, but he drove her away instead. Because she had a need that tested his understanding of Christ's love, he let her slip away, and she has seldom attended church since. Over the years, I've seen many people enter church and sit in the back row by themselves. Often, it seemed as if they were almost hoping that no one would say "hi" to them, but they didn't need to worry... because, generally speaking, no one did, especially if they looked as if they were poor. In the book of James (2:3), we're reminded the poor have always been seen as second-class citizens, but they haven't been alone. Women have been silenced and undervalued since the church's beginning, and as recently as 1976, the church we joined in Omaha did not allow women to hold any leadership role. Prior to the Civil War, all of our churches were segregated and what is more- many of them, in the North and the South, believed that it was God's will because black people didn't have "souls." In ancient times disabled people were thought of as sinners and even in our time, I've known several disabled people who resented the notion that Jesus needs to make them "whole."

There is more order than ardor in our churches- more rules than grace- more reasons to say "no" than "yes," even though we profess that there is no male/female, no black/white, no slave/free, and (I would add) no gay/straight in Christ. Even though most of us would agree that God made each of us in God's image, we violate the image of God in others. Even though we are a forgiven people, it can be difficult for us to be "forgiving" people. As people who want others to see the best in us, we ought to quit judging our neighbors. In short, even though we are invited into God's kingdom by grace, we keep others out based on our own rules and biases. Legalistic rules have always been at odds with grace, which brings us to our passage in the Book of Acts. The early church was a Jewish church. Its members followed Christ and they were filled with the Holy Spirit, but they measured their faithfulness by the way in which they (and others) adhered to orthodox Jewish laws. Faithful Jews and, in the beginning, faithful Jewish Christians, were expected to avoid food that was not kosher and people who were unclean. They were judged by the food they ate and the people with whom they dined, which is one of the arguments that Jesus had with his critics throughout his ministry. Even though Jesus made it clear that sins starts in the heart and not the stomach and even though he dined with sinners, his first followers followed their  ancestral traditions.

It might have stayed that way to this very day, if God hadn't done a "new thing." Peter was a champion of Jewish orthodoxy himself, but one day, God gave Peter a vision in which he was tempted three times to eat his fill of unclean foods. Despite the fact that an angel was involved in the vision, Peter refused to eat what he was offered because he had never done it before. Meanwhile, there was a gentile named Cornelius who also had a vision at about the same time... in which he was told to invite Peter to meet him. Their visions paved the way for a meeting, and when Peter saw that Cornelius and his family were filled with the Holy Spirit, he baptized them, noting that these Gentiles had received the very same Spirit that he and others had received at Pentecost. Peter saw that there were faithful and righteous people among the Gentiles- people who would receive Christ as their Lord and Savior if they were given a chance. He came to the conclusion that it was not fitting for him to reject the very people whom Christ had died to save. Despite their differences, the Gentiles were invited in, and the rest, as they say, is history. Or is it?

How long will we struggle to accept those whom God has made? How long will our own fears and prejudices be the roads that we travel upon? How long will it be before we act as if there really are no human-made boundaries in Christ? When will we feed the poor ourselves and shower the lost with love, even if they don't deserve it? When will people be invited in, simply because they want to meet Jesus, and with no other qualification? When will we ever come to see that, as forgiven sinners, we ought to give other sinners the same opportunity? Peter was right, of course- we cannot call anyone "impure" and "unclean." Amen!