Welcome Home
Romans 11:1-5, 25-32[1]
In
our highly mobile world, I’m afraid that “home” is a concept that has gotten
complicated for many of us. Some of us have made major moves across the
country—some more than one. Doing so leaves you feeling out of place, and away
from “home.” Some think of home as the house where they grew up. There may
still be family members living there. A few of us may even live in the house
where we spent our childhood. But many of us don’t have that place to look to
as “home” any more. I would say that the way our society operates these days
leaves all too many of us with the feeling of not having a home.
Of
course, in the absence of a place that is home, we turn to the people around
us. For many in our world today, family, friends, and church provide the feeling
of support and community that we association with “home.” I think that’s one of
the best qualities about this particular family of faith. I would say most if
not all of us have a sense of feeling “at home” here. For some of us this may
be the only real “home” we have. That makes it all the more important that we
gather together, that we share meals, that we build relationships, and that we
care for one another. Many of us have no other place to turn to find that
feeling of “home.”
I
think that one of the main points of our lesson from Romans for this week is
that God is the one who is our ultimate “home” in this world. God’s love and
mercy extend to all without any “if’s, and’s or but’s.” That sets the tone of
the inclusive welcome that our incredibly generous God offers us all. I find it
interesting that Paul makes this point right in the middle of an extended
discussion of the idea that all those who are now seemingly “excluded” God will
ultimately include in the family of those who know God’s embrace.
St.
Paul says it this way, “God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may
be merciful to all” (Rom. 11:32). That
language may offend us; what kind of a God “imprisons” people in
disobedience? But it’s often easy to
miss the point Paul is trying to make in his letters. Here he’s talking about
the good news that although we’ve all imprisoned ourselves in our own
disobedience, God works to include us all in mercy! Again, I like the way Gene
Peterson puts it in The Message: “In
one way or another, God makes sure that we all experience what it means to be
outside so that he can personally open the door and welcome us back in.”
When
you read Paul’s statement in that light, you can see that the emphasis is on all. Now, some of us may wonder what the big deal
is with disobedience. Everybody makes mistakes. But when Paul insists that
we’ve all wandered into the prison of disobedience, we have to understand that
he’s what he’s talking about is first and foremost dis-belief, un-faith, an unwillingness to respond to
God’s gift and claim with trust. “Disobedience” means going our own way regardless of the consequences to
ourselves or others. “Disobedience” means
satisfying of our own desires at the expense of others. “Disobedience” is not
simply accidentally failing to follow the rules, it’s willfully doing what is
destructive to oneself and/or others.
And Paul insists over and over again, that we have all fallen into that
trap. As a result, we may very likely not feel “at home” with ourselves, with
our world, or even with God.
But
the “big deal” here is that God’s response to our disobedience is to extend
mercy to us all, to include us all in the embrace of salvation. And Paul says that this happens because of
God’s grace (Rom. 11:6), or “undeserved kindness” (cf. Rom. 11:6, CEV). As we mentioned last week, the fact that it’s
undeserved means that God gives his love and mercy to us as a gift. We can
never claim that we deserve it, but God gives it anyway because God chooses to embrace
us!
The
good news is that God welcomes everyone into his loving embrace. That’s the
home that we can all turn to when we have nowhere else to look. God’s kindness
may be undeserved—by us all—but it isn’t just some “random act.” In fact, God’s kindness is very intentional:
God has determined from all eternity to be the God who has mercy on us all! God
has deliberately chosen to include everyone—especially those who seem to have
been excluded. That’s what Isaiah the
prophet had said long before Paul: “And the foreigners who join themselves to
the Lord, … these I will bring to my holy mountain …; for my house shall be
called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isa. 56:6-7). God’s purpose has
always been about inclusion, not exclusion.
God welcomes us all home to
the embrace of his love and mercy. For more and more of us these days, that may
be the only real “home” we have. And that’s all the more reason for this
fellowship of people who are “strangers and refugees in this world” (1 Pet.
2:11, TEV) to extend God’s love and
mercy to one another, and to all whom we encounter. We don’t know what burdens
a person may be carrying. We don’t know how far from “home” they may feel. But we
do know that God’s plan is to welcome us all home, to a home that we can always
count on. And that means that we are called show the love and kindness that
essentially extends that welcome to those around us. Just as we have been
embraced by God’s love and mercy, so we are called to embrace others in a way
that says to them in God’s name, “welcome home.”
[1]
©2017 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by
Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 8/20/2017 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
No comments:
Post a Comment