OUT AND IN

June 23, 2013
Pentecost 5
1^st Kings 19:9-13
Galations 3:23-29

(prayer)

As our planet makes our way around the sun, the angle that the sun hits our arch of the globe varies. We have just passed the solstice (winter for the southern hemisphere; summer for the northern hemisphere). The longest day of the year for us in the great white north - the most amount of minutes that the daytime sun can potentially been seen than at any other point of the year. Officially we are in the summer season, although (now that we have orbited through the solstice), each day of summer gets shorter than the one before.
When the St. David’s Church Council meets, it is a regular part of our agenda to pause in prayer for whatever the folk around the table would like to pray about: sometimes these prayers are for a particular person or a circumstance. In May, we were moved to pray for rain. Last week, we thanked God for hearing our prayer, but noted that the rain could slow down a bit.
Those of us around the table giggled a bit. And then over the next days, we all witnessed the power of rain and water in the images we have seen in newspapers, online, on TV and in the first hand accounts of friends and families.
Floods are a natural, normal occurrence. Rivers and creeks swell and drop with the rain and snowmelt. What is happening in Southern Alberta happens somewhere in the world almost every day to some degree.
What caught our attention was the sheer number of people affected and the relative closeness to home.
Even those of us far from the Bow River felt it personally because flooding happened in a place familiar to many of us.
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When we feel involved or connected to something, we could describe ourselves as being “in” - as opposed to seeing ourselves on the outside of a situation.
Any number of things affect whether we are “in” or “out”. As I just mentioned, our past familiar experiences can draw us into a situation.
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I was stunned watching the entertainment news this week to hear about the hot water that Food Network celebrity chef Paula Deen found herself in this past week, when documents from a lawsuit she is facing highlighted a history of her using racially charged language. The quotes that got most of the press were ideas she had for her brother’s wedding, where it could be “traditionally southern”, with an all black wait staff.
We have come a long way as a species, but race is still used too often to decide who’s in and who’s out. Pretty much every ism and social phobia we hear about today is rooted in dividing people one from another - who’s in and who’s out.
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Paula Deen’s excuse is that well, she grew up in the southern US in the 1960s and that was a very different time.
We have known for a lot longer than 50 years that there was an inherent “wrongness” to dividing the human race between those in and out - the superior and the inferior.
In only four years, we will celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the Alberta Supreme Court recognizing women as persons under the law. In 1916, Emily Murphy had been appointed as the first woman magistrate in Alberta, but her appointment was challenged on the grounds that women were not persons under the British North America Act. In 1917, in Alberta, at least, women were persons. A few years later, things were national and women were even allowed to run for political office. However, it took until 1929 and an appeal to the Privy Council of England (after the Canadian Supreme Court said ‘no’) before women were considered persons enough to be appointed to the Canadian senate.
And yet, while women have close to equal opportunity in Canadian society, women still lag behind men in achieving those opportunities and getting paid to do the same things when they do.
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There are still some churches I know (United Churches!) that aren’t quite sure they are ready for a female minister.
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The walls separating those in and out is still there.
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And so, how profound it is that in the 0050s, just two decades after the life of Jesus, that one of his most prolific apostles would essentially erase the barriers and walls as a hallmark of the early Christian movement:
Faith has come! In Christ Jesus, we are all children of God, having clothed ourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female.
Wow that is radical thinking. It’s only been in the last 150 years that north America has seen laws passed that said that race and gendre do not separate people as part of a good and free society. Paul wrote to the Galatians more than 1,960 years ago.
Sadly, theory always precedes practice. Even though Paul’s letters and the book of Acts describe both the leadership of men and women, within a few hundred years, Christianity would become a more exclusive movement - where women were barred from significant leadership. This legacy still exists in some very prominent modern expressions of the Christian Church.
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I don’t know if the Galatians (or even Paul for that matter) understood the far-reaching meaning and impact those simple words in Galatians 3:28 - that we are “ALL one in Christ Jesus”.
If that is seen as true, we will always find the walls of exclusion in need of challenge. Every time we take a leap forward in terms of welcoming and invitation and inclusion, we will likely uncover a new wall - fortified even deeper within our unwillingness to truly see all as one in Christ - we know that we still have work to do.
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When the Privy Council of England ruled on the case brought by Alberta’s Famous Five, it said “to those who would ask why the word ‘person’ should include females, the obvious answer is, why should it not?”
We might ask the same question when it comes to the household of God. To those who would ask, why should this person (with whatever uniqueness gives rise to her/his exclusion) be seen and treated as a child of God, the obvious answer is... why not?
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The more I explore the nature of God as 'deep love and unconditional compassion', I realize that the heart of God is great and warm and wide enough to embrace all humanity, in spite of what we think divides.
For those of us raised in a less tolerant and more exclusive environment and society and church (that’s probably all of us), we can be shocked to view God as less judgemental than ourselves.
God continues to surprise - showing us sides and aspects of the divine that continually broaden our understanding of Spirit.
I think of the prophet Elijah. He felt abandoned by God. Elijah preached against the corrupt leadership of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel and it forced the prophet to run away and hide in the wilderness. It gave him cause to question God’s loyalty. Elijah is prepared to just die alone in the wilderness.
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[the following contains material from Seasons of the Spirit]
The first clue Elijah gets to God’s presence is the com­mand to get up and eat, and discovering some warm flat­bread and water. He eats it, and then goes back to sleep. It happened again, and he ate again. This is not only a clear indication of God’s assurance but also a reminder of God’s compassionate care. It is God saying, “eat, and rest, so you will find strength for your journey.” Elijah then carries on, for forty days and forty nights (a Hebrew euphemism for “a long time”). Yet after being fed by God and journeying for all that time, when Elijah arrives at the cave and God asks him "why are you here", Elijah responds, “I’ve been very passionate for you, God, and the people’s response has been violent ignorance of you, O God; I’m the only one left and now they want to kill me, too.” God’s response is amazing. After telling Elijah to stand outside and listen. Elijah observes wind, an earth­quake, and a fire. But God is not present in any of those great, stormy, violent acts. Elijah was expecting to witness a God of power of fearfull violence.  But no.  Then Elijah noticed something else: something the original Hebrew describes as “the sound of fine silence” – “sheer silence” in the New Revised Standard Version; “…a sound. Thin. Quiet.” In the Common English Bible. You might have heard the translation in the King James Version, “a still, small voice.”
The point is that Elijah does not find God in the chaos, or the signs of power and destruction. Rather God is experienced in gentleness, and a moment of silent clarity.
That is so true in my experience as well. I feel God in those quiet, thin times and places. I feel embraced and welcomed and loved.
I wonder if the apostle Paul felt like this and that is why he couldn’t think of a reason to deny that experience to anyone else.
As Paul was asked to mediate in the debates about what the Gentiles followers needed to do to be on par with the Jewish Christians (some argued for adult circumcision, ouch); as he was being faced with comments about the place of women in the church and those from various places on the social scale - rich and poor, slave and free... did Paul simply feel there was no logic in pretending that God loved one more than the other?
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Afterall, Jesus’ life was all about radical inclusion, about welcoming the outcast and the sinner to find renewal as part of the “in crowd”.  Why should the time after the resurrection be different?
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And so, we include in our circles of care, those we may not kow personally, but view as family.  We ave compassion for the people in flooded areas; we visit the sick and help the needy. We celebrate life together because we are all children of God. We are kin in the deepest sense of the word.
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Don’t be discouraged by those who remain fearful of what true inclusion means, especially those who will use a phrase here or there from our sacred texts to justify their need to feel superior.  Don’t be discouraged by those who remain fearful of what true inclusion means.
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The big picture has been with us from the beginning. We are made in the image of God. We are God’s kin. And therefore there is no “in” or “out”.
We are ALL in! Let’s take that message out into the world!
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Let us pray:
God, in the midst of the noise and in the sound of fine silence, be with us always. Amen.

#651VU
“Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah”