The eloquent preacher Tom Long tells the story of a small church-related college that held an annual event called Christian Emphasis Week. It was the task of the Christian club on campus to invite a speaker who would come and lead a college revival. This particular year they invited a preacher who had come highly recommended. They were told of his dynamism and his unique way of communicating the gospel.
The first night of the revival the chapel was filled with the faithful. There were no "animal house" type fraternity characters in attendance, just the faithful. The speaker began the service the way most preachers would: he read a passage of scripture. But when he finished reading, he did something which shocked the audience. He closed the Bible, threw it across the stage and out an open window and said, "There goes your God." Then he proceeded to preach a sermon on the difference between worshiping the Bible and worshiping the God of the Bible.1 Imagine the surprise those students had when the preacher turned their bibliolatrous religion upside down.
I am sure the "circumcised believers" were no less surprised when Peter threw their understanding of the Law out the window. Peter's adversaries stated that the Law was the only way to be saved. Peter responded, "I used to believe that way too until God got a hold of me and showed me that his love was not limited to a set of rules or laws." Peter continued with a compelling testimony of how God had stretched his boundaries and threw out his understanding of what was clean and not clean, dissolving his pre-conceived notions about who could be saved. What's more is that God not only revealed this radical truth to Peter through a vision, but God wanted Peter to experience its reality. So God created an opportunity for Peter to experience the boundless love of God. Peter became a vessel of the Holy Spirit, and a household of Gentiles were converted! After sharing this incredible story, I suspect Peter was prepared to run for the hills to avoid being stoned to death. But he did not have to run for the hills. After Peter's compelling testimony, the critics were speechless and had a change of heart. They all agreed that God's saving love and power is intended for the Gentiles, as well as God's chosen people.
I imagine Jesus had wished it to have been as easy to convince people of God's boundless love. Unfortunately, Jesus was unable to avoid the wrath of those who felt that they and they alone were the exclusive recipients of God's love. It all began when Jesus returned to his hometown of Nazareth. It appeared to be a regular Sabbath service. Jesus opened up the scriptures and read these liberating words from the prophet Isaiah:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. -- Luke 4:18-19
Then Jesus preached. And it must have been a very good sermon because the people were proud of their local boy's eloquence. They were proud until Jesus began explaining the implication of Isaiah's words being fulfilled in him. They were proud until he threw their nostalgic understanding of the scripture out the window.
What Jesus did that remarkable day in Nazareth was tell his hometown crowd that Isaiah's words, which they had heard a hundred times, were now finally coming alive for them and everyone. He told them that he was the manifestation of God's radical love to all, the outsiders, the poor, the least, last and lost, and even to those not part of the in-crowd. Jesus told them he had come to challenge their privileged theology by erasing any lines of distinctions. How did they respond? These hometown friends of Jesus drove him out of the synagogue and attempted to throw him off a cliff!
This atmosphere of anger toward "outsiders" still exists today. Everyone has their "Gentiles"! Everyone discriminates against and draws lines of self-righteous distinction. You would think, by now, our world should have moved passed such archaic and cruel ways of thinking. But even after Martin Luther King's prophetic call for equal rights and all those years of many singing, "Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight," racism still runs rampant, and hate crimes are on the rise. And as outrageous as it may seem, some extremist groups discriminate in the name of God and Holy Scripture! People continue to make distinctions between who does and does not count.
I once went into a barber shop on a Saturday afternoon. The people in the shop were pleasant enough. I sat down in the chair to get a haircut and join in the conversation. We talked about sports and favorite restaurants. Then the conversation turned sour. I'm unsure how it began, but all kinds of racial slurs spewed out of the barber's mouth. He said, "Don't you know, they are all animals." I was silent. And my thunderous silence was heard. The barber said, "You sure got quiet all of a sudden." And I nodded my head. "Am I offending you?" he asked. And before I could respond, one of the patrons who knew me said, "He is a minister." Suddenly, there was an awkward pause, and the conversation shifted to a different subject. As I left the shop, I kept asking myself, "How could a person be so obtuse and cruel?"
Lest I become too self-righteous, I want to take a scalpel to my own heart. You may want to be included. Think of the person you cannot stand to be around. If you are poor, maybe it is the rich man who drives down the road in a shiny sports car. If you are rich, maybe it is the unrefined person who drives a clunker with the radio blaring. Perhaps it is the sloppy neighbor down the street who never cleans up his/her yard. Perhaps it is the eccentric co-worker whom everyone loves to ridicule. Maybe it is the foreigner who cannot speak very good English. Maybe it is the teenager who has tattoos and piercings all over his body. Try to feel your irritation when you are around those kind of people. Now, as you have them in your mind, hear these words of our Lord: "I choose to give to [them] the same as I give to you ... are you envious because I am generous?" (Matthew 20:14-15).
How does that make you feel? -- Like telling Jesus to go jump off a cliff? Like telling Jesus he's crazy? You're not alone. In fact, you are in a lot of good company. The Bible is filled with people who thought our Lord was crazy. In the Old Testament, Jonah thought God was crazy. Interestingly, God gave Jonah a similar vision to Peter's, but Jonah was more stubborn than Peter.
Jonah was the man who wanted to do God's will until God told him to go to Nineveh -- wicked, wicked Nineveh! What was he supposed to do there? Persuade the Ninevites to turn from their evil ways and be saved by God. Jonah responded, "You want me to do what? Go to where? Go to whom? Those awful, evil Ninevites who live across the tracks? And I am to save them for you? Lord, you must be crazy or kidding! Tell me you're kidding. Obviously, you have mistaken me for someone who cares about those kind of people. This is where I came in, and this is where I get off!"
So Jonah thought that if he left Israel he would be free of Israel's God. He got as far as the shore of the Mediterranean, hopped on a ship, and said, "I am free at last! For I am free of God!" But soon Jonah found himself turned upside down and inside out in the belly of a large fish. And, to his surprise, he found the God of Israel there, as well. So Jonah repented and decided not to run from God anymore. God led Jonah into Nineveh and did a mighty work, through Jonah, in the hearts of the Ninevites. Jonah's boundaries and barriers were obliterated.
What God did for Jonah and what Jesus commanded Peter to do in Joppa, our Lord now commands us to do in our world today. God commands us to erase any lines of negative distinction between human beings and destroy our exclusive boundaries and barriers which we have helped to maintain. God commands us to turn our institutions, ideas, and paradigms upside down and inside out by reminding our world that every human being, red, yellow, black, and white, is a child of God. For when we are cut, we all bleed. When we are tickled, we all laugh. And when we hurt, we all cry. We are all God's children.
Years ago, a newspaper carried a story of a reporter who was covering the war in Sarejevo. The reporter noticed a little girl walking slowly in front of him. He was surprised to discover she had been severely wounded by sniper fire. Before the reporter could react, a man rushed over and scooped up the little girl and pleaded with the reporter to drive him to the hospital. Without hesitating, they loaded her into the back seat and took off for medical help.
After a minute or two, the man said urgently, "Please hurry; she is dying!" The reporter drove faster. A few minutes later, the man in the back seat said, "Hurry, please, my little girl is still breathing!" The reporter sped on. A minute or two later the man said, "Hurry, please, my little girl is still warm." Soon they pulled up to the hospital, but it was too late. The girl had died in the man's arms.
The man and the reporter walked somberly to the restroom to wash the little girl's blood from their hands. As they were washing, the man said, "Now comes the hardest part." "What is that?" asked the reporter. The man said, "Now, I have to go find that little girl's father and tell him she is gone." The reporter was stunned and said, "But I thought you were the father! I thought she was your child!" The man replied, "Aren't they all our children?"2 Aren't they? Aren't we all God's children?
God never intended God's boundaries to be less than the whole world. Therefore, none of us have a monopoly on God's love. We may feel like we do when we look down on someone different than we are, or when we snicker at someone's misfortune, or when we say, "Thank you, Lord, that I am not like them," or when we say, "It's too bad they do not believe as we believe." But woe be unto us whenever we reek of such arrogance! For when we try to restrict God's grace to ourselves, we cut ourselves off from that very grace. Why? Pierre Teilhard de Chardin may have said it best, "It is impossible to love Christ without loving others, and it is impossible to love others without moving nearer to Christ."3
I first learned about God's limitless love through a man named Walter. I met Walter while serving as a hospital chaplain during seminary days. Walter was a patient on the floor to which I was assigned. One day a nurse approached me and said, "Excuse me, Chaplain, but you see the man in the room across the hall?" I said, "Yes." She said, "His name is Walter and he has been in the hospital for two weeks. He is dying of cancer, and no one ever comes to see him." I responded, "No one?" She said, "No one." She continued, "I don't normally do this, but would you mind going in to see him?" I said, "Sure." As I approached Walter's room, the nurse said, "And, Chaplain, Walter is a very bitter man."
When I entered his room, I said, "Hello, Walter, my name is Charley, and I am one of the chaplains of the hospital." He said, "You are, are you? Well, I don't need a chaplain, and I certainly don't need God! Can't you see I'm dying?" I replied, "Well, you don't need God, and you don't need a chaplain. Do you need a friend? Because I can be a friend." He retorted, "Charley, I don't need anyone. Just leave me alone!" So I proceeded to the door with my tail tucked between my legs. Yet before I could leave the room, Walter said, "I have not always been this way, you know. There was a time when I grabbed hold of life with both hands and could do anything. I was good at my job. I was good at my marriage...." It was obvious that Walter wanted to talk, but, truthfully, I had such disdain for him that I did not want to listen. However, like Jonah and Peter, God had something different in mind for me. So for the next thirty minutes Walter talked about the joy of his life before cancer and the anger and bitterness he felt toward God because of his cancer.
After we talked, I asked if I could have a prayer. He said, "I don't think it will do any good, but if you want to, go ahead." So I took his fragile hand and began to pray. At the conclusion of my prayer, I said, "Lord, wrap your arms around Walter like a warm blanket. Amen." When I opened my eyes, I could not believe what I saw. There were tears streaming down Walter's face, and his hands were up in the air, waiting for a hug. I leaned over and hugged him, and he began to rock me back and forth. As he rocked me, he kept repeating, "Yes, Lord, cover me like a blanket ...Yes, Lord, cover me like a blanket ...Yes, Lord, cover me like a blanket."
I had no control over what happened that day. But God moved through me and into Walter, making that day an event I will never forget. As I embraced Walter, I felt so intimately connected to Christ, for my eyes were opened once again to the fact that all of us are God's children; and all of us need prayer; and all of us need each other; and all of us need the radical, life changing, world changing, barrier breaking, boundary busting love of Jesus Christ! I left Walter's room saying with Peter, "Who was I to hinder God?"
The world says, "No!"
Jesus says, "YES!"
The world says, "Not yet."
Jesus says, "Right now!"
The world says, "Shorter."
Jesus says, "Longer!"
The world says, "Narrower."
Jesus says, "Wider!"
The world says, "Smaller."
Jesus says, "Bigger!"
The world says, "Shallower."
Jesus says, "Deeper!"
The world says, "Punish."
Jesus says, "Mercy!"
The world says, "Hate."
Jesus says, "Love!"
The world says, "Just a few."
Jesus says, "Everyone!"
The world says, "Threaten him!"
Jesus says, "That won't stop me!"
The world says, "Arrest him!"
Jesus says, "That won't stop me!"
The world says, "Ridicule him!"
Jesus says, "That won't stop me!"
The world says, "Wound him!"
Jesus says, "That won't stop me!"
The world says, "Crucify him!"
Jesus says, "That won't stop me!"
The world says, "Shut him up in a tomb!"
Jesus says, "That won't stop me!"
Jesus is relentlessly in love with the world. And thank God for such love. Where would we be without such love? For if the truth be known, all of us, to one degree or another, are on the outside, where it's cold and lonely, yearning for Christ to pull us inside and wrap his warm arms around us. And would you believe there is enough room in his arms for everyone? There is room. There is plenty of room.
1. Thomas G. Long, Pulpit Resource, ed. by William H. Willimon, 29.1, p. 16.
2. Ibid., p. 18.
3. Quoted in Long, p. 18.