May 19, 2019     Love that Heals a Broken World                  

         A few weeks ago on Good Friday, I preached a sermon on the question, “Was it Necessary for Jesus to die?” In that sermon, I spoke about the jewish ritual for the cleansing of the sins of the people. How they brought two goats to the temple, and one of the goats was slain, it’s blood sprinkled on the altar, and on the people. In this way, God and the people took responsibility for their sins. The priest then laid his hands on the second goat, and prayed that this second goat would take the sins of the people away with it, and so the second goat, the scapegoat, was driven out into the wilderness. In the gospel of John, this theme of the scapegoat and the goat that was slain, now termed the lamb of God slain for our sins, is a large part of the John’s passion narrative.

         I then went on to explain, that scapegoating is still very much alive today. Throughout history, people have always scapegoated the new, the different, the stranger among them. In America, the Indian, the Italian, the Irish, the Chinese, the African American, the LBGT person, have all at one time or another been blamed for the problems of the nation, or if not the nation, our communities and our lives. And similarly, the Jewish people of Jesus day did the same thing. They scapegoated the Persians, Ethiopians, Syrophenecians, Greeks, Romans and etc. They were to blame for the presence of sin and suffering for the Jewish people. Now in the bible, some of these nationalities are mentioned as Jesus interacts with them, but on the whole the Jewish people had just one word for them, Gentiles.  And Jesus, because he preached to these Gentiles, and healed these foreigners, was to blame for corrupting the Jewish religion. Which brings us to our reading in Acts this morning.

         In the book of Acts, the early church, including Peter are still stuck in this Jewish mindset, so they spend most of their time, trying to convert Jews into Christians. But in this story, God speaks to Peter in a vision on the roof of the building in which he is staying. God sends a vision of unclean animals, animals that the Jewish Law forbids Jews to eat, and tells Peter to eat of these animals. Three times, Peter refuses before the vision vanishes, and then there is a knock on the door downstairs, calling Peter to come and preach the gospel to a group of  Gentiles. So Peter goes, and preaches the gospel to the Gentiles, and to his amazement, the Holy Spirit is poured out upon them. And at this point, Peter gets it, that the gospel of Jesus Christ and salvation are not just for the Jews, but for the Gentiles as well.

         Now as I mentioned before, the scapegoating of foreigners, strangers, and sinners, continues on today. But it is through our faith in Jesus Christ, that we are called to recognize the way in which the world scapegoats people, and we are called as followers of Jesus Christ to preach to, minister to, and welcome into our lives those who are scapegoated by the world. And if I may boast in the United Church of Christ, over my lifetime, our church has indeed done this, preaching and ministering to African Americans, immigrants from foreign lands, and even those broken people and sinners among us in our own nation. Standing up for the rights of Jews, Muslims, the handicapped, and others in the face of a world that would blame them for the fear and prejudice that are the source of sin, suffering, and death in human life.

         In many a Christian church, this struggle also continues, between the newcomer and the longtime member, the older member and the newly confirmed, between those we choose to invite and those we decide should not be invited, between those with a family history in the church, and those with no history, those who we see regularly and those we see rarely.  And we are called to find a way to include all of our members, and even those who aren’t members in the mission, ministry, work, and celebration of the church, so that we might be the “one body” in Christ, that Jesus calls us to be. That is the constant struggle of the church in every generation.  

         And that is why, God’s love for us, in Jesus suffering and death upon the cross, is the love that leads to the healing of a broken world. And that is the Good News of Jesus Christ.