The Inclusiveness of the Gospel: Part II

As we discussed in the previous post, from our earliest days, we know what it’s like to be excluded. Some of us spend too much of our lives trying to be included in whichever group is important to us. And far too often, that exclusive group is the church.

But that’s not the church as Jesus designed it. And that’s not the message of the gospel. You see, the gospel only makes sense if I realize that it’s written for people who know what it’s like to be excluded, and that Jesus is, in fact, right there with us. And he is putting his arm around the one who has been excluded, walking this person over into the group and saying, “They, too are mine. They too, are mine.”

One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism
The true family of God is about finding ways to literally enjoy each other’s company, not just, “How are you? I’m fine.” And getting to know one another and forming a life together based on what we have in common in Jesus. And that becomes more important than politics, race, economics—you fill in the dividers that have so infected our culture. That’s what Jesus is talking about.

And so, if you’re saying yes to Jesus, what you’re saying is, if you’re excluded and you know it, guess what? In the kingdom of God, you’re not excluded. You come to Jesus and say yes to him, he puts his arm around you, and he brings you in. And before him, before the cross, you can in fact be transparent about everything that’s going on in your life—even the stuff for which you feel the strongest amount of shame and guilt. He already knows anyway. And therefore, he is willing to receive you just as you are. With him you do not need to pretend.

Jesus’ deep desire is to form a body of people who are crafting their life together around those principles—around acceptance and understanding and of care. And that those transcend everything else, because as we say, “There is only one baptism.”

So if you’ve been baptized, and the person over there has been baptized, you cannot say that you’re not brothers. And you can’t say what we tend to say: “Well, you know, they’re really not my kind of Christian.” That is a sin against the very body of Jesus himself, who pulls us all into one body, because we belong to him.

The world is longing—longing—to know about a congregation of people with that kind of open door. It doesn’t mean you don’t find places of disagreement. But what it does mean is that when you talk about those places of disagreement, they’re not deal-breakers. Because we’re all one body, and we’re finding a way to wrestle through our disagreements in genuinely honest ways. The level of acceptance has already been extended.

In other words, my affiliation with you is not going to be predicated on whether I’m for one candidate or another, or whether I believe this or I believe that. In other words, what we hold in common—one Lord, one faith, one baptism—is what holds us together, and everything else is up for grabs.

One Body (Not a Club)
There are plenty of places where churches are clubs. And what a club looks like is where everybody thinks, believes and acts and looks exactly the same. I know lots of clubs who call themselves churches. So do you. But that’s not the body of Jesus. The body of Jesus is every tribe, tongue, people, language, and nation. As well as, within that framework, Republican, Democrat, Independent, people who think this way about an issue and people who think that way about an issue. Young and old, poor and rich, middle-class, economically and educationally diverse, all finding ways to be healed and care for one another amid all the brokenness and the desire to stick with people who are just like us.

Which is, in fact, all of us. You see, it’s human nature to want to be in a club. It is supernatural to be in a church that isn’t a club, that in fact looks like the body of Christ.

Our world needs to see a body of people who look like that: a church, and not a club. The place where we are all leveled is the foot of the cross, where we all belong if we have said yes to Christ. To say, “Yes, I will, with God’s help” to this almost-impossible task of building a body of people not based on culture or politics but only on the blood of Jesus that is cleansing all of us from all sin. That’s the shorthand of what Paul writes when he says, “Let mutual love continue” (Heb. 13:1).

And that’s shorthand for this series of posts. That God might help us for the sake of a world that needs to hear the good news of what we know in Jesus, and that we might learn to be less critical, laugh more, and pray deeply as God is making us into a new people in Jesus Christ—a people who are not about club, gossip, and criticism but about love, generosity, deep forgiveness, and great mercy.

Will you be that kind of church? Will you be that kind of people? Will you be that kind of salt and light in your community?

How can you help your church be more like a body and less like a club? Share this blog and your comments on Twitter and include my username, @revgregbrewer.

(This post is an adaption of Bishop Brewer’s sermon on August 28, 2016, at St. Luke and St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, St. Cloud, Florida.)

Unless otherwise noted, scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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