SCRIPTURE: Luke15:1-10
TEXT: 15:2b "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." THEME: Life with God is for all people. INTRODUCTION At Pentecost, God’s Spirit enables us to discover shards of light in every person and in every event. Luke’s gospel seems to do this in telling the story of Jesus’ life and ministry, as in every encounter, Jesus discovers light in persons that were labeled something else by circumstance, deed, public opinion or physical feature. In this passage Jesus see shards of light in Tax Collectors, Sinners, Pharisees and Scribes, SCRIPTURE Jesus eats with Tax Collectors and Sinners. The assumption being that those who are not following the Laws of God are not good enough to make it into the Community of God. This is what the Pharisee and Scribe adhere to. Pharisee are of the Jewish religious order that studied the Commandments of God like lawyers and controlled Judaism. The Scribe studied the scriptures in a prescribed way to teach others the same. Jesus is not perpetuating the usual way to understand the People of God. All people are loved by God and not seen by the labels of Tax Collector or Sinner, but as welcomed. Tax Collectors had a very lucrative job, but not very many friends. They would be responsible for collecting a certain amount of taxes from an area, and any more that was collected was theirs to keep as their compensation. They were seen as greedy, rich while everyone suffered financially and traitors to their people. Jesus draws these social outcasts in for a meal to draw them into a life with God. Welcoming these to the community of God creates a broadness and openness beyond the theological confines of the Pharisees and Scribes. A people of God wider than ancestral ties to Abraham and Sara. Expanding the worship of God beyond the confines of Temple in Jerusalem. People are not problems that needs to be fixed. This has been the usual way that we evangelized. We begin with the negative, getting people to admit to the wrong things they have done in their lives. Then to fix them by offering them an atoning sacrifice to erase their sin. A Sacrifice to God to forgive our debt of sin. But Jesus’ approaches us as valued by God. This is the story of the incarnation. Jesus comes, not to satisfy a debt but to love us to God. This is a love story that begin with acceptance, a wanting to know you and you know me at a meal with Jesus. Life with God is about being welcomed, belonging, without the labels, presuppositions, stereotypes or judgments of sin. Every one of us is valued, so when we have lost our way from God, God comes like the shepherd, leaving the flock behind, to find us. God sweeps the house to find the lost coin, like how God values us when we are missing. And when found, angels in heaven, friends, neighbors and God celebrates that the lost valuables have been found. APPLICATION When we affirm the love God has for all, how is our approach to our faith different? How is our life with God changed to include all people? How is our ministry, our attitude, our demeanor, and the makeup of the church changed to reflect this love God has for all? We like having church the way we are, but we are in a world that is in constant change. When we started out, our churches were language churches, but since then we all speak English. We may have to change from how things are into something new which means using our facilities in a new way. We all have our own buildings, cultures, values, and traditions. Our theologies have evolved in its own way according to our Holy Spirit experiences, things we have learned and our studies of the Bible. But is God calling us to be new, taking worship away from the form of church we have become comfortable with? Is our vision of church too small for what God is creating with the people of God? Recently we have received requests from other churches to use our sanctuary space for their worship. We had the Tongan Church in the past, we currently have a Samoan Congregation, but we have also been asked by the Pohnpeian Church, the Marshallese Church, the Chuukese Church and most recently an Anglican Church. What if God wants us to be a Worship Center? Imagine a partnership with Iao and Kaahumanu, where they would place our properties under a common property manager who would do the work of the trustees, managing our properties, schedule the uses of our facilities, taking care of maintenance, cleaning, improvements, and manage our projects. In the past we have had Concerts in our sanctuary, educational workshops in our Dodge Hall besides Weddings, funerals, and baptisms. Recently the Maui Choral Group asked about our sanctuary for their choir practices, which brought up concerns about ‘sacred space’ and the respect, treatment, specialness, and practices in our sanctuary. Sacred Space is one of those Chicken Skin places where we have history and memories of a closeness to God. A thin place where we pray, feeling the nearness of God. How do we treat and behave in this sacred space? Can we share this space with others without feeling that we have dishonored it in some way? When we started having concerts in the Sanctuary, as Music at Wailuku Union Church, I shared the history of this sanctuary, where our services were in the evenings, and began with an Organ Concert. It was equivalent to having a rock concert to bring the people in, for a worship service. I composed prayers for each event tying God, spirituality, prayer, and music together. These have not been money making events, but a welcome to our community, to come and eat with Jesus. CONCLUSION Jesus brings a shift in how to live our faith in God. It is not in judging the world between the righteous and the tax collectors and sinners, but to instead, love the world to God. The forms of Judaism give way to the church, maybe today our churches need to give way to something else, sustainable, creative, profit generating that will benefit not just one church congregation but many. Some of the churches mentioned are still language churches, but we may find shards of light that we have in common as partners in God’s mission, as God values us all.
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