All are welcome

Friends in Christ,

"All are welcome" That is the underlying motto of every church that claims to preach the gospel (at least it should be). Since the gospel--the messages of Jesus Christ crucified and risen to forgive and save--is for everyone, a church that preaches it should be too. 

So are we? While it's a nice sentiment, it's much easier to build a church with people exactly like us. You know, 'church people.' People who look like us, think like us, and match our demographic. People who aren't too liberal or too conservative or too political in general. People who aren't too old or too young or too poor. Many of us have been in a church for so long that we actually view ourselves as part of the establishment. We know how things work and how things are supposed to go. And when someone tries to come in who doesn't, well, it just shows that they're on the outside. 

Sadly, this view insider vs. outsider has always existed within the Christian church. It's difficult to overstate just how divided the Jewish and Gentile Christians were in the beginning years of Christianity. Neither thought the other really belonged. The Jewish Christians thought the Gentiles were too heathen, and the Gentiles thought the Jews were too old-fashioned and stuck in their ways. So which are we? 

I think we tend to view ourselves as Jews--people who've always been a part of God's people. In our second Scripture reading this Sunday from Ephesians 2, however, St. Paul will remind us that we were actually once outsiders. No one is naturally born into Christ's church. This birth only happens through water and the Spirit (i.e. baptism). We must be adopted into God's family. We must be grafted in through the work of Jesus Christ. Thankfully, by the grace of God, we were and we are. 

You see, there are things that unite us whether we are Jews or Gentiles, insiders or outsiders. We are united in sin and the just condemnation it deserves. Which means we are also united in our need for a Savior. Paul will talk about how Jesus came to knock down the barriers between God and people and also between Jew and Gentile. Jesus came to form one body, united in Himself. Paul writes: "Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone" (Ephesians 2:19, 20)

Jesus is the one who alone makes us outsiders no longer. Knowing that, we have absolutely no reason to view someone else any other way. Jesus made me an insider, one who is a part of Christ's church and in whom the Holy Sprit dwells. If we see or know someone who is an outsider, it's not a reason to look down on them. Rather, recalling our own gracious journey, we rejoice that in Christ, "all are welcome." All sin has been paid for and all guilt has been removed. 

This is what Christ's church is to be about. Just as we were mercifully brought from the outside to the inside, so we look for others in whom God can accomplish that same miracle. No one is so far gone from Jesus that His grace cannot reach them. It once reached you and has yet to let you go. 

There's plenty of division going on in the world right now. May we preach the opposite. "All are welcome" at Prince of Peace because "all are welcome" in Christ. That kind of far-reaching, all-encompassing grace is the only reason we're on the inside and the only reason why anyone else will be too. God has brought us close to Himself. It doesn't get any better than that. 

May God richly bless your weekend and I look forward to seeing you on Sunday.

In Christ,

Pastor Bater