A Fourth Church Sermon by Joann H. Lee

May 2, 2010 | 4:00 p.m.

Visions of Inclusion

Joann H. Lee
Pastoral Resident, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Acts 11:1–18

From its very beginning more than 2,000 years ago, the Christian faith has been about inclusion. It started with Jesus, who walked this earth eating with sinners and tax collectors; welcoming children and women into his company; healing and touching lepers, the blind, the sick, the hungry, and poor. Jesus surrounded himself with those considered unclean and profane.

His followers, the apostles, continued that trajectory of inclusion as they began the early church. Their efforts, made possible through the work of the Holy Spirit, are chronicled in the book we heard from today: the Acts of the Apostles.

In today’s scripture, Peter, one of those apostles, shares with his fellow followers his vision of inclusion. In his vision, a sheet comes down from the heavens filled with food forbidden for consumption by the purity codes of his time and tradition. A voice tells him to eat, but concerned for doing what’s right, Peter refuses. He is only being a devout follower the best way he knows how.

And yet this voice challenges him: “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” What Peter thought he knew, the boundaries and divisions he assumed existed, is defied by this vision. This vision alone doesn’t change Peter’s mind. It’s supplemented, backed up, by experience and the community—Peter’s very own experience, as well as the testimony and life of Cornelius. Cornelius, a Gentile, an outsider, one who is not part of the Jewish Diaspora, accepts the word of God and is welcomed and baptized into this new band of followers. “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

From its very beginning more than 2,000 years ago, the Christian faith has been about inclusion. And today’s scripture tells us of one those groundbreaking, pivotal moments of inclusion: the inclusion of the Gentiles. For most of us sitting here today, we’ve benefited from that act of inclusion.

I believe that God’s plan of redemption for this world follows that trajectory of inclusion. It began a long, long time ago, and I believe it has always been God’s intention to include. I do believe this.

But when I look around us today, when we look at our churches today, oftentimes it seems that we have wandered far away from that trajectory.

Martin Luther King Jr. recognized that the most segregated hour in the United States was Sunday morning. That still holds true, but we are divided by a lot more than race. We continue to create divisions and can’t seem to live with the ones that already exist: progressive and evangelical, liberal and conservative. Christians on either side seem to talk right past each other.

And rather than challenging our culture, we seem to simply mirror our divided society: with our red states and blue states, rich and poor, Chinatown and Bronzeville, citizens and immigrants, even White Sox and Cubs.

While verse 12 from today’s reading calls us to not make a distinction between them and us, that us-and-them mentality seems dominant and pervasive throughout all our systems.

Just recently, Arizona passed a law reiterating that us-and-them mentality: we are the citizens, the ones who belong; they are the illegals, the ones with no rights. Except, like most divisions, it’s not that cut and dried, because if you also suspiciously look like an illegal immigrant, then you could easily become a “them” if you’re not carrying the right paperwork. It’s hard for me to imagine this law at work without racial profiling, and yet again the divide widens, seeming even deeper and wider than the Grand Canyon itself.

And in our churches, we struggle with similar us-and-them issues: they can’t be ordained; they can’t lead our churches; they can’t possibly be part of God’s plan for redemption.

We’re so good at excluding. After all, it feels good to belong to an inner circle; it feels nice to know that not everyone can make the cut; and holding a monopoly on truth and salvation gives us power.

One of my favorite popular teen movies is Mean Girls. It came out when I was in college and is actually set in the suburbs of Chicago, the North Shore. Cady Heron arrives as a new and naïve student to this high school that is run and dominated by an inside circle of girls called “The Plastics.” These girls are the richest, prettiest, and most popular of their junior class, and Cady and her misfit friends decide that she should infiltrate this group to expose and potentially embarrass their way of life.

But once Cady gets accepted into that inner circle, she starts forgetting that original plan and starts behaving and looking just like the other Plastics. She starts speaking the same language, wearing the same clothes, and to the disillusion of Cady’s first friends, using the same tactics of exclusion. She’s become “better” than her first friends; Cady has become a Plastic.

I think this movie speaks to how good it feels to belong. If feels so good, in fact, that sometimes that fear of being excluded makes us exclude others. And we as human beings have let that fear take hold of us, and we’ve gotten real good at drawing a line, creating a fence, building up barriers so that we can stay on the inside.

When we look around us today, when we see how easily humanity tends towards exclusion, it’s hard to believe that inclusion has always been a part of God’s plan.

But it has. And while countless efforts have been made and continue to be made to hinder that inclusion, Peter reminds us today, “Who was I that I could hinder God?” The good news, friends, is that we cannot hinder God. People have tried and sometimes succeeded, but that will only last a short while, for the trajectory of God’s plan is inclusion and we can either join and partner with God in that effort, or we can try in vain to hinder it.

In the midst of us-and-them mentalities, faithful followers since Peter’s vision of inclusion—since really the beginning of creation—have worked to break down divisions, to look beyond society’s stigmas, and to welcome and include all.

Ruth did it when she included herself as a Moabite into the genealogy of Christ.

Jesus lived it.

The apostles followed it.

Rosa Parks sat down right in it.

Margaret Towner got ordained into it as the first female Presbyterian minister.

Who are we that we could hinder God?

This particular church, though we too have sometimes strayed from that trajectory, tries again and again to join God in the work of inclusion. On the front of your bulletin, we’ve inserted a statement of welcome; it’s a statement of inclusion, really. It boldly states, “Inspired by the radical hospitality of Jesus Christ, Fourth Presbyterian Church welcomes all of God’s children into the life of the church regardless of gender, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, physical limitation, educational background, or economic situation.

All are welcome here. You are welcome here. It’s not that these differences don’t matter. They do, but they don’t define us. They help make up who we are, but we are more than that, as well.

We as a church can’t just proclaim inclusion; we must live it.

One way we do that each week is through the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Through the sharing of this meal, we who are divided are bound together, united with one another and with those who’ve gone before us. Like Peter, who ate with those considered the “other,” when we share in communion, we partake in a meal that welcomes and includes all people. There is no other; we are made one.

As we come together later in this service to partake in this meal, remember that each time we do this, we make a countercultural statement proclaiming that there can be unity without uniformity, acceptance without assimilation, and solidarity without sameness.

This Table is big enough for us all; there is an abundance, an overflow. So have no fear: you will not be excluded. God will not turn you away.

From its very beginning more than 2,000 years ago, the Christian faith has been about inclusion; let’s show the world that this is still true today.

Amen.