1.
Please
pray with me. May the Word of my mouth
and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock,
and our Redeemer. Amen. The message from God’s Word this 10th
Sunday after Pentecost is taken from Isaiah 56:1, 6-8, it’s entitled, “We are God’s Gathered People,” dear
brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
It’s back-to-school time. Imagine you are a
parent taking your children to school for registration, only to be told that
your children will not be welcomed into the classroom and that you should take
your children elsewhere. That’s what happened to a family in Florida in 1987.
The parents had three boys, each a hemophiliac and infected with the AIDS virus
they received through contaminated blood. News of their condition spread around
town, leading to a general panic. The boys were ostracized. Their home was
burned to the ground. The mayor of the town pulled his own children out of
school rather than have them attend with these HIV “lepers.” The message from the town was clear: “Consider yourselves foreigners. You have no home here.”
3.
Maybe
you’ve felt like a foreigner because you didn’t have the right clothing or live
in the right part of town or go to the right school. Some people are made to
feel like foreigners because of the language they speak, the color of their
skin, or the amount of their income. To be a foreigner is to have no home, to
have no joy.
4.
Isaiah
56:1, 6-8 says, “1Thus says the LORD: “Keep
justice, and do righteousness, for soon my salvation will come, and my
deliverance be revealed. 6“And the
foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, to minister to him, to love the
name of the LORD, and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and
does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant—7these I will bring to my holy
mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer
for all peoples.” 8The Lord GOD, who
gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares, “I will gather yet others to him
besides those already gathered.”
5.
The
prophet Isaiah reminds us that sadly, sometimes God’s people have been guilty
of treating others as foreigners who have no place with us because they are not
like us. Israel became confused about
what it meant to be God’s chosen people.
God selected Israel to be his covenant people, blessed them, and
prepared to bring the Messiah into the world through them. Israel was not to mix with other nations lest
their false religions corrupt the truth God had revealed to Israel. Israel began to think of itself as the sole
object of God’s love; God did not desire any others to be saved. The people
ignored their God-given mission to be “a
light to the Gentiles,” refusing to associate with “foreigners” at all.
6.
It’s
still true today. Christian churches
sometimes do the same thing, transforming God’s house into our house. We may welcome
only people who are like us: same color skin, same culture, same style of
dress, same ideas about church. By our
attitudes and actions we may declare, “No
foreigners welcome.” We operate as “a
church within a church,” allowing only certain people to fully participate.
The joy of others is diminished because they do not feel accepted at church. This is shameful, for the Scriptures declare
that we have all sinned and fallen
short of the glory of God. None of us have found favor with God because of our
family, wealth, race, or length of time as members. By excluding those whom God
desires to include, we may exclude ourselves from God’s mercy.
7.
The Holy
Scriptures make it clear that by our sinful nature we’re all “foreigners” before God, for God is holy
and righteous, and we are sinful and alienated from his presence. We would be for eternity except for the grace
of God, which reveals justification and righteousness in Christ and gathers us
together in his love. So, God promised
to welcome foreigners who would cling in faith to God’s covenant promises. He
brought this to pass through Jesus Christ.
We who were foreign because of our sin, God made acceptable by the
atoning work of Jesus on the cross.
8.
In his
crucifixion, Jesus bore the burden of all our sins. He suffered our “foreign-ness” as he was
forsaken by his Father. God accepted the
sacrifice of Jesus as payment for all our failings, including treating others
as foreigners.
9.
We see
this in the old King James English translation of this text in Isaiah 56 we
find something interesting that links us to the Good News we have in Jesus our
Savior. The text translation in the King
James Version for foreigner is “sons of
the stranger.” Could “sons of the stranger” serve as a synonym
for “sons of God if we capitalize the
word “Stranger?” Isn’t there a sense
in which all Christians, mature Christians, newcomers, native and foreign, are
“sons of the Stranger,” spelled with
a capital S, the Stranger who is Jesus so that He can make us a part of God’s
Gathered People?
10. Jesus our Lord, a citizen of the “far country “called heaven, came from
outer space to visit our world over two thousand years ago to share our life
for more than 30 years. He was even
greeted as a stranger. “There was no room for Him in the inn.” When his mother Mary and guardian Joseph were
in Bethlehem before Jesus was born. Jesus was in the world and the world was
made by Him, and the world knew Him not.
“He came unto His own (the Jews),
and the world knew Him not.” Jesus,
“had no place to lay His head.” As a Prophet, Jesus was “without honor in His own country.” His nearest relatives considered Him “beside Himself.” In His greatest crisis His disciples all ran
away and deserted Him as He was betrayed with a kiss by Judas. And in that same crisis, on the cross, Jesus
was even estranged from God His Heavenly Father on account of our sins. He cried out, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsake me?: Or “My
God, My God, why hast Thou treated Me as a stranger?” In that dreadful cry we recognize the Son of
God, Jesus our Lord, becoming the “son of
the stranger” as far as God His Father was concerned. That was our estrangement from God that Jesus
endured. The outcome? Now you and I have eternal companionship with
God as His gathered people through Jesus.
11. Now through the means of grace, God sends his
Spirit to gather us to himself. In Baptism you became God’s own child,
receiving full acceptance into God’s household and the promise of everlasting
joy. The Word assures us that while once we were far away and no people, now in
Christ we have been brought near and are the people of God. We attend our Lord’s
Supper as honored guests welcome at his feast.
12. The joy of the Gospel is that none of us are
excluded because of our past sins, our family history, our physical weakness. Although
Satan strives to convince you that you are not welcome, that you are a
foreigner, God’s promise in Jesus declares that you do belong, you are a part
of God’ Gathered People, giving you joy in his house.
13. In today’s Gospel from Matthew 15, Jesus
responds favorably to a foreigner from the region of ancient pagan cities that
once were Israel’s worst religious and military enemies. We express this joy as we maintain justice
and live in righteousness with others, regarding everyone we meet as one for
whom Jesus died. We don’t keep the Good News of Jesus from anyone. We welcome
all to confess Jesus and enter into his eternal joy.
14. God’s plan is to gather still others besides
those of us he has already gathered. We live with all people justly and rightly,
speaking the truth of justification and righteousness through Jesus’ sacrifice,
which makes the “foreign” forgiven.
Thus we will be the Spirit’s tools to gather more people of promise to have joy
in God’s house forever. Amen.
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