Inside or Outside?

Read: Luke 7:1-10

 

Second Sunday after Pentecost - June 2, 2013

The Rev. Kenneth R. Elkin

 

Today's Gospel turns on the question of who is an outsider and who is an insider.

The answers may not be what we first expect.

Let's imagine someone we'll call Humphrey.

He is the perfect picture of the self-assured insider.

He is so confident that he has “arrived.”

He is sure that he is in charge of all that he surveys.

He also looks more than a little ridiculous.

All of his pompous strutting cannot cover up his ordinariness.

Humphrey, who styles himself an insider, may be an outsider in the opinion of other folks.

We know it goes on all the time; with adults at work, and with kids on the playground.

This one is in and that one is out.

I like you, but  I hate you, Go away!

 

It was certainly happening in Capernaum that day when Jesus came by.

The Roman centurion would normally be an outsider; not a Jew, but an officer of the hated occupying Roman army.

And yet there was something unusual happening, since some Jewish leaders were willing to speak with Jesus on his behalf.

The centurion had done some friendly things, including paying for the construction of a new synagogue.

The folks said to Jesus that the centurion should not be regarded as the usual outsider because of all of the good things that he had done.

 

But notice in the rest of the story, the centurion never mentions his accomplishments and gifts to the synagogue;

and also, Jesus pays no attention to them.

The centurion is an outsider, and no number of accomplishments can change that.

But the word of Jesus can!

 

One cannot buy off God, and the centurion does not attempt to do so.

He waits for Jesus word, his command, his word of authority, with the confidence that Jesus' word will be the right word.

The new community of Jesus will be built with just such people as this.

Not with people who tally their doings and trumpet the list, but with those who know that God has the authority and direction, and wait for God to open the new way.

 

What now of us?

Are we like Humphrey, or like the centurion?

Are we pretending to be an insider like Humphrey while actually being an outsider who looks ridiculous?

Or are we outsiders like the centurion who know our true status and await Jesus' action to change things?

 

There was the old idea that one became an insider merely by being born to a Jewish mother.

It was automatic.

It brought about a feeling of pride and sometimes superiority over non-Jews.

I'm in – you're out.

Paul writing to the Romans makes it clear that no one has any room to brag.

Family background, accomplishments, who you know...none of them count for anything with God.

We are all in the same mess together; Jew and Gentile have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, Paul reminds us.

What matters is that Jesus encounters us, every one of us outsiders, and brings us in, welcomes us and bids us to welcome others to be joined in the same process.

 

One of the pictures which Jesus uses o illustrate “in” and “out” is of the vine and branches.

We are the wild branch, cut off and lying on the ground.

Our only hope is that God will pick us up and graft us into the vine which is Christ.

Otherwise, we wither and die.

Grafted into Christ, we can flourish and bear much fruit.

 

Our friend Humphrey would be like one of those branches lying on the ground with its end in a mud-puddle.

That branch says, “Look how well I am doing on my own!” but never realizing that the scorching heat will quickly dry up the mud puddle and the branch will soon wither.

Life without connection to the vine may go on for a while but death is certain.

That is truly the fate of the outsider.

 

But Jesus is determined to change that for everyone who will listen.

That is what Baptism is all about.

It announces a permanent change in our situation:

we, who are outsiders despite all that we do, are given the gift of belonging, by the action and promise of Christ Jesus.

 

There are so many ways in which we mess with that or forget it.

I was talking with a shut-in who said: “You know, we don't think about it often enough – all the things which God has done. We're not very thankful, are we?”

This person was looking back on a lifetime of opportunities, wishing to have taken up more of them, and feeling a little like an outsider again.

To this person, and to any of us when we get to feeling this way, we need to speak again the Gospel.

Once Jesus makes a promise, it is good always.

He has taken it upon himself to support us when we falter.

No matter what our crisis is, it is not a crisis for Jesus; he can and will remember us.

 

One of the reasons that we gather here today is to remind each other of this all-encompassing truth.

Some years back, I had an amazing encounter with a graduating senior who was on the way to becoming another Humphrey.

He was all self-assured and proud of his knowledge.

He spoke of his various readings and studies in the Middle Ages and how the sciences in particular have grown and developed in the centuries since then.

“All except theology,” he said.

“That is the one area we don't see as important anymore.”

Ah, the sophomore wisdom of the senior!

Biology, astronomy, and all the rest have come up with lots of theories to describe what there is around us, but none of them can handle theology's job, which is to tell us why this creation is and the reason for God relationship with us.

The other sciences leave us as outsiders struggling to understand.

Theology, which the folks in the Middle Ages described as the Queen of the Sciences, helps us with language that opens the relationship with Jesus, so that we are outsiders no more.

Isn't that the Good News, the knowledge which we need most of all?   Amen.