The "In" Crowd

The "In" Crowd
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
September 10, 2006
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23; James 2:1-17; Mark 7:24-37

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23
A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold. The rich and the poor have this in common: the Lord is the maker of them all. Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of anger will fail. Those who are generous are blessed, for they share their bread with the poor. Do not rob the poor because they are poor, or crush the afflicted at the gate; for the Lord pleads their cause and despoils of life those who despoil them.

James 2:1-17
My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, "Have a seat here, please," while to the one who is poor you say, "Stand there," or, "Sit at my feet," have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?

You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For the one who said, "You shall not commit adultery," also said, "You shall not murder." Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

Mark 7:24-37
From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." But she answered him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Then he said to her, "For saying that, you may go--the demon has left your daughter." So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."

BEGINNING

I recently had a high-school reunion. I am reluctant to tell you what number it was because it makes me feel old. But let me just say, it's a number that rhymes with " qwenty."

One of the best things about this reunion was that none of the old divisions had survived. All the cliques were gone. I went to small high school, and sometimes you had to do double-duty and be a member of a couple cliques, but we had them nonetheless. And it's fair to say, that when I was in high school, while I didn't exactly get stuffed into any lockers, I wasn't exactly one of the 'cool kids' either. I know. Hard to believe, isn't it?

I was not a member of the 'in' crowd.

And so, at this reunion, cheerleaders hung out with the math team, prom queens with band kids, jocks with the yearbook staff, and there was a feeling of celebration and joy that was incredible. So much so that even after the nine hours of scheduled reunion, many of us--from all our varied walks of life--decided to keep the party going out on the town. For those of you who are freshmen and are still smarting from the wounds of high school, I wish you a 'qwentieth' reunion like that.

Because there are far too many divisions in the world. Far too many people considered 'in' while others are considered 'out. Far too many 'us and thems'. It was refreshing to see all those barriers disappear.

THE TEXT

And so when we read in our Gospel lesson for tonight Jesus seemingly affirming those boundaries, it is jarring. In it we encounter a Syrophoenician woman who comes and asks Jesus to heal her daughter, who has an 'unclean spirit', that is, a demon. She isn't Jewish and Jesus' response is "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."

She answers him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." And his response is, "For saying that, you may go--the demon has left your daughter." And when she returns home, she discovers her daughter is healed.

The reader of this text gets a strange feeling because it seems so unlike Jesus. What does he mean by saying, "Let the children be fed first"? That doesn't sound like the kind of thing we expect Jesus to say. We certainly don't expect him to follow up by comparing gentiles to "dogs".

As striking as this is, perhaps as striking is that the woman is not deterred. She reminds Jesus that even dogs get to eat the children's crumbs.

There have been many interpretations of this curious exchang e. Was Jesus testing her? Was his statement to her about children and dogs rhetorical? Was the woman actually teaching Jesus something? It is curious because while the story has a happy result, it seems that both Jesus and the woman--who accepts the designation of 'dogs'-- are reinforcing the divisions then existing in society between Jew and Gentile.

THE STATUS QUO

The Jew/Gentile divide was the biggest us/them divide in Israel's understanding. And certainly, there was cause for it. The Israelites had, after all, received a covenant from God, they were a people apart, a holy people, worshipping the One God. The gentiles were pagans, idolaters, worshipping a multiplicity of gods. They had often caused hardship and despair for the Israelites.

The Philistines had harassed and attacked the tribes during the time of the Judges. The Assyrians had destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel and dispersed the Ten Tribes, who were never to be heard from again. The Babylonians had conquered the Southern Kingdom of Judah, destroying Jerusalem and the Temple and sending the people off to seventy years of Exile. The Persians let them return from Exile, but after the Greeks conquered the Persians they began to impose stricter rules on the Jews, requiring them to conform to Gentile custom. The Maccabees kicked the Greeks out and created an independent Jewish kingdom, only to invite the Romans in, who never left. The same Romans who taxed the Jews brutally, who crucified those who did not obey, and whose Empire denied the Jewish people their dream of self-determination.

It is easy to see why the Jews of Jesus' day would have looked at their relationship with Gentiles as an Us/Them relationship. Is it possible that Jesus himself was prone to thinking this way? Is Jesus reinforcing the status quo?

JAMES

The reading from the Epistle of James that we read earlier is certainly a challenge to the status quo. James issues an exceptionally harsh critique of those Christians who show favoritism. He writes:

My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, "Have a seat here, please," while to the one who is poor you say, "Stand there," or, "Sit at my feet," have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?

Here James writes about attitudes within the Christian community. He asks whether it is really possible to 'believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ'--that is, to be a Christian--and yet engage in acts of favoritism. Particularly favoritism that favors the rich. Partiality, favoritism is a sin, James tells us. And he lifts up the same scripture that Jesus himself did when issuing the Great Commandment: 'You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."' But continues, "But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors."

According to the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus lifts up this Old Testament injunction to love your neighbor as yourself, he is challenged by a listener to define who "neighbor " encompasses. He does so by telling the story of the Good Samaritan, another "them" in the "Us/Them" paradigm.

For the Samaritans were a people who were the result of the forced intermarriages between the Northern Tribes that the Assyrians had conquered and other subject peoples who were imported into the region. They were never considered true Israelites by the Jews, and there had long been enmity between the two groups. If we were to understand the power of this story to Jesus' listeners in our own terms, we'd have to rename it and call it the "Good Palestinian"--that would capture the shock value.

And Jesus' teachings about considering an enemy a 'neighbor' certainly took root in the early Church. James is reflecting an early Christian ethic that the rules of the world that provide favoritism to one group over another--that judge one group worthy, and not another--that identify some as being in the 'in' crowd and others as being 'out'-- no longer apply to the Christian. Paul thought this way, too. He wrote that in Christ there was no longer 'Jew or Greek (i.e., Gentile), slave or free, male and female.' The early Church was radical in its attitudes toward traditional barriers between people.

THE INVERSION

And they did so for an important reason.

In the Gospel lesson we read tonight, when Jesus has healed the deaf and mute man, the crowds remark , "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak." To understand the power of this statement we look back to the writing of the prophets.

In the 35th chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah we read the words of the prophet:

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus 2 it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. ...

5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; 6 then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert;

Isaiah is describing for his readers the coming reign of God, the peaceable kingdom. A time of peace and justice, when the violence and division of the present world will no longer exist and God will lead the people into a new reality.

So that when we read of Jesus unstopping the ears of the deaf and giving speech to the mute, we understand that these healings are not just healings in and of themselves. They are not simply instances of Jesus' curing people's ills. They are signs of the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.

Indeed, that is the context in which we understand Jesus' entire ministry. And so it is that we understand the breaking down of barriers among us.

For the Gospel itself is an inversion of the way things are. In fact, Mark's telling of the Gospel routinely turns things on end. In it, it is outsiders who understand more readily than the insiders. The twelve disciples in Mark's gospel are usually the last to understand, while the demoniacs, the Centurions, the women, and even here a Syrophoenician woman, understand who Jesus is and what his message means.

Was Jesus testing the woman or was he reflecting the prevailing attitudes of the times? It is hard to say. What we can say is that he responded to her challenge to tear down the barriers between insider and outsider. Between the 'us' and the 'them'. Indeed that is what the Gospel is all about. Jesus responded to this challenge by demonstrating that the love of God is available to anyone who would receive it.

END

Tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of the September 11th attacks. On that day, we learned all to well that a great many people in this world view the world in terms of "us" and "them." In the ensuing five years, we have seen a lot of polarization. 'Us' and 'them' talk abounds.

There is polarization between Americans and others around the world. There is polarization between Democrats and Republicans--with a considerable amount of name-calling beside. There is polarization between liberals and conservatives. Between one brand of Christians and another. The world is divided up into 'us and thems'. "In" crowds and "out".

We are reluctant to break down barriers. Perhaps Jesus himself echoes this reluctance in his own statement. Perhaps he echoes our sentiment, in order that we might more easily follow where he wishes to lead us. For, we want so desperately to be in the 'in' crowd that it makes us feel better to know there's an 'out' crowd.

And yet, the message of the Gospel is this: we were all in the "out" crowd and through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God has brought us into the "in" crowd.

Our salvation does not owe itself to any merit on our part. It is owed to the grace of a loving and merciful God who invites us into relationship in spite of ourselves.

Our responsibility as Christians, is to live into that reality. To live our lives in ways that reflect the in-breaking reign of God. To invert the world. To turn things on their heads. To bring 'in' those who were 'out'. When we live out lives that break down barriers among individuals, peoples, nations, we live out a life that testifies to the love and power of God.

I have told you of the joy that was had at a reunion where all the old barriers had been broken down. What joy awaits us when all the barriers of the world are broken down. When we see all the divisions cease. When bitter enemies are reconciled as friends. When we no longer see 'us' and 'them' but 'neighbors'. When all are considered to be in the 'in' crowd.

That is the promise that we live for. That is the reality that we testify to. That is the life we are called to lead.

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*The "In" Crowd* Rev. Mark Schaefer Kay Spiritual Life Center September 10, 2006 Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23; James 2:1-17; Mark 7:24-37 Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23 A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold. The rich and the poor have this in common: the Lord is the maker of them all. Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of anger will fail. Those who are generous are blessed, for they share their bread with the poor. Do not rob the poor because they are poor, or crush the afflicted at the gate; for the Lord pleads their cause and despoils of life those who despoil them. James 2:1-17 My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, "Have a seat here, please," while to the one who is poor you say, "Stand there," or, "Sit at my feet," have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you? You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For the one who said, "You shall not commit adultery," also said, "You shall not murder." Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment. What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. Mark 7:24-37 From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." But she answered him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Then he said to her, "For saying that, you may go--the demon has left your daughter." So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone. Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak." BEGINNING I recently had a high-school reunion. I am reluctant to tell you what number it was because it makes me feel old. But let me just say, it's a number that rhymes with " qwenty." One of the best things about this reunion was that none of the old divisions had survived. All the cliques were gone. I went to small high school, and sometimes you had to do double-duty and be a member of a couple cliques, but we had them nonetheless. And it's fair to say, that when I was in high school, while I didn't exactly get stuffed into any lockers, I wasn't exactly one of the 'cool kids' either. I know. Hard to believe, isn't it? I was not a member of the 'in' crowd. And so, at this reunion, cheerleaders hung out with the math team, prom queens with band kids, jocks with the yearbook staff, and there was a feeling of celebration and joy that was incredible. So much so that even after the nine hours of scheduled reunion, many of us--from all our varied walks of life--decided to keep the party going out on the town. For those of you who are freshmen and are still smarting from the wounds of high school, I wish you a 'qwentieth' reunion like that. Because there are far too many divisions in the world. Far too many people considered 'in' while others are considered 'out. Far too many 'us and thems'. It was refreshing to see all those barriers disappear. THE TEXT And so when we read in our Gospel lesson for tonight Jesus seemingly affirming those boundaries, it is jarring. In it we encounter a Syrophoenician woman who comes and asks Jesus to heal her daughter, who has an 'unclean spirit', that is, a demon. She isn't Jewish and Jesus' response is "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." She answers him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." And his response is, "For saying that, you may go--the demon has left your daughter." And when she returns home, she discovers her daughter is healed. The reader of this text gets a strange feeling because it seems so unlike Jesus. What does he mean by saying, "Let the children be fed first"? That doesn't sound like the kind of thing we expect Jesus to say. We certainly don't expect him to follow up by comparing gentiles to "dogs". As striking as this is, perhaps as striking is that the woman is not deterred. She reminds Jesus that even dogs get to eat the children's crumbs. There have been many interpretations of this curious exchang e. Was Jesus testing her? Was his statement to her about children and dogs rhetorical? Was the woman actually teaching Jesus something? It is curious because while the story has a happy result, it seems that both Jesus and the woman--who accepts the designation of 'dogs'-- are reinforcing the divisions then existing in society between Jew and Gentile. THE STATUS QUO The Jew/Gentile divide was the biggest us/them divide in Israel's understanding. And certainly, there was cause for it. The Israelites had, after all, received a covenant from God, they were a people apart, a holy people, worshipping the One God. The gentiles were pagans, idolaters, worshipping a multiplicity of gods. They had often caused hardship and despair for the Israelites. The Philistines had harassed and attacked the tribes during the time of the Judges. The Assyrians had destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel and dispersed the Ten Tribes, who were never to be heard from again. The Babylonians had conquered the Southern Kingdom of Judah, destroying Jerusalem and the Temple and sending the people off to seventy years of Exile. The Persians let them return from Exile, but after the Greeks conquered the Persians they began to impose stricter rules on the Jews, requiring them to conform to Gentile custom. The Maccabees kicked the Greeks out and created an independent Jewish kingdom, only to invite the Romans in, who never left. The same Romans who taxed the Jews brutally, who crucified those who did not obey, and whose Empire denied the Jewish people their dream of self-determination. It is easy to see why the Jews of Jesus' day would have looked at their relationship with Gentiles as an Us/Them relationship. Is it possible that Jesus himself was prone to thinking this way? Is Jesus reinforcing the status quo? JAMES The reading from the Epistle of James that we read earlier is certainly a challenge to the status quo. James issues an exceptionally harsh critique of those Christians who show favoritism. He writes: My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, "Have a seat here, please," while to the one who is poor you say, "Stand there," or, "Sit at my feet," have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Here James writes about attitudes within the Christian community. He asks whether it is really possible to 'believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ'--that is, to be a Christian--and yet engage in acts of favoritism. Particularly favoritism that favors the rich. Partiality, favoritism is a sin, James tells us. And he lifts up the same scripture that Jesus himself did when issuing the Great Commandment: 'You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."' But continues, "But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors." According to the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus lifts up this Old Testament injunction to love your neighbor as yourself, he is challenged by a listener to define who "neighbor " encompasses. He does so by telling the story of the Good Samaritan, another "them" in the "Us/Them" paradigm. For the Samaritans were a people who were the result of the forced intermarriages between the Northern Tribes that the Assyrians had conquered and other subject peoples who were imported into the region. They were never considered true Israelites by the Jews, and there had long been enmity between the two groups. If we were to understand the power of this story to Jesus' listeners in our own terms, we'd have to rename it and call it the "Good Palestinian"--that would capture the shock value. And Jesus' teachings about considering an enemy a 'neighbor' certainly took root in the early Church. James is reflecting an early Christian ethic that the rules of the world that provide favoritism to one group over another--that judge one group worthy, and not another--that identify some as being in the 'in' crowd and others as being 'out'-- no longer apply to the Christian. Paul thought this way, too. He wrote that in Christ there was no longer 'Jew or Greek (i.e., Gentile), slave or free, male and female.' The early Church was radical in its attitudes toward traditional barriers between people. THE INVERSION And they did so for an important reason. In the Gospel lesson we read tonight, when Jesus has healed the deaf and mute man, the crowds remark , "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak." To understand the power of this statement we look back to the writing of the prophets. In the 35th chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah we read the words of the prophet: The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus 2 it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. ... 5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; 6 then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; Isaiah is describing for his readers the coming reign of God, the peaceable kingdom. A time of peace and justice, when the violence and division of the present world will no longer exist and God will lead the people into a new reality. So that when we read of Jesus unstopping the ears of the deaf and giving speech to the mute, we understand that these healings are not just healings in and of themselves. They are not simply instances of Jesus' curing people's ills. They are signs of the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God. Indeed, that is the context in which we understand Jesus' entire ministry. And so it is that we understand the breaking down of barriers among us. For the Gospel itself is an inversion of the way things are. In fact, Mark's telling of the Gospel routinely turns things on end. In it, it is outsiders who understand more readily than the insiders. The twelve disciples in Mark's gospel are usually the last to understand, while the demoniacs, the Centurions, the women, and even here a Syrophoenician woman, understand who Jesus is and what his message means. Was Jesus testing the woman or was he reflecting the prevailing attitudes of the times? It is hard to say. What we can say is that he responded to her challenge to tear down the barriers between insider and outsider. Between the 'us' and the 'them'. Indeed that is what the Gospel is all about. Jesus responded to this challenge by demonstrating that the love of God is available to anyone who would receive it. END Tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of the September 11th attacks. On that day, we learned all to well that a great many people in this world view the world in terms of "us" and "them." In the ensuing five years, we have seen a lot of polarization. 'Us' and 'them' talk abounds. There is polarization between Americans and others around the world. There is polarization between Democrats and Republicans--with a considerable amount of name-calling beside. There is polarization between liberals and conservatives. Between one brand of Christians and another. The world is divided up into 'us and thems'. "In" crowds and "out". We are reluctant to break down barriers. Perhaps Jesus himself echoes this reluctance in his own statement. Perhaps he echoes our sentiment, in order that we might more easily follow where he wishes to lead us. For, we want so desperately to be in the 'in' crowd that it makes us feel better to know there's an 'out' crowd. And yet, the message of the Gospel is this: we were all in the "out" crowd and through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God has brought us into the "in" crowd. Our salvation does not owe itself to any merit on our part. It is owed to the grace of a loving and merciful God who invites us into relationship in spite of ourselves. Our responsibility as Christians, is to live into that reality. To live our lives in ways that reflect the in-breaking reign of God. To invert the world. To turn things on their heads. To bring 'in' those who were 'out'. When we live out lives that break down barriers among individuals, peoples, nations, we live out a life that testifies to the love and power of God. I have told you of the joy that was had at a reunion where all the old barriers had been broken down. What joy awaits us when all the barriers of the world are broken down. When we see all the divisions cease. When bitter enemies are reconciled as friends. When we no longer see 'us' and 'them' but 'neighbors'. When all are considered to be in the 'in' crowd. That is the promise that we live for. That is the reality that we testify to. That is the life we are called to lead. Back to Sermons page Back to AU UMC Home Copyright © 2006. Mark A. Schaefer No part of this text may be reproduced or otherwise disseminated without the express written consent of the author.

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