In his video, Rob Bell stops, and says “Really? Gandhi’s in Hell? And someone knows this for sure, and felt the need to let us all know?” And he goes on to ask the question that many of us have asked: is God going to select just a few of us for salvation, and let billions of others burn eternally? Or, stated more simply – Who’s In, and Who’s Out? Who’s on God’s side, and who’s on the other side, and how do we tell the difference?
If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that the question of Who’s In and Who’s Out occupies a lot of energy in the human mind. We human beings are constant boundary-setters, always wanting to define our borders, delineate who’s on our side (the good side) and who’s not. And while setting personal boundaries is a healthy thing, enabling us to enter into strong, equal, adult relationships with people around us, in our communal lives, the boundaries we draw can quickly become excuses for conflicts and wars, like the Berlin Wall (whose 50th anniversary we observed on Friday). And when we start defining our world in terms of what we think God thinks about who’s in and who’s out, things can become very frightening very fast.
We saw an example a few weeks ago in Norway, where Anders Breivik, a self-described Christian, murdered almost 80 people, mostly teenagers and young adults at a summer camp, because he felt that there were too many non-Christian outsiders being allowed to flourish in Norway. Since the society around him was not willing to answer the question of Who’s In and Who’s Out in a way that satisfied him, he decided to answer it himself. This is far from an isolated example – world history is full of terrible stories of In-groups destroying Out-Groups for religious reasons, believing God to be on their side – from 9/11 to the Holocaust (in recent history alone).
What is it in human nature that causes us to want to define in-groups and out-groups, and more importantly, does our tendency to draw these boundaries between people groups, our tendency to exclude the outsider – does this reflect the character of God? Our Old Testament lesson is the conclusion of a sad story where Joseph’s brothers get jealous of him, gang up on him and sell him into slavery. But he is so talented that he rises to the top and becomes Pharaoh’s right-hand man; years later his brothers, suffering from famine in Israel, come to Egypt to ask for help, and find themselves standing before brother they had wronged. Joseph, instead of defining the brothers who betrayed him as “outsiders,” recognizes God’s hand at work in his life, and displays the character of God in what he does next – extends the hand of forgiveness, welcomes his brothers with joy, and promises them everything that they need, they’ll have in Egypt. And from this extended family in Egypt, God creates the people of Israel.
God does not define outsiders based on our past mistakes, the wrongs we have done to others; God works with the situations we get ourselves into and, if we let him, can bring good even out of the worst evil in our lives. And God, like Joseph, extends the hand of forgiveness and welcomes us home. So if we are addressing Rob Bell’s question of who is an outsider to God – we can’t say that God defines outsiders based on sinfulness. God is on the side of reconciliation. God works with who we are, wherever God finds us – at whatever stage of life we’re in, whatever we have done – God welcomes us home.
Our gospel narrows down our question a bit more, because it is very specifically addressing the question of whether God defines insiders or outsiders based on what religious group people belong to. To understand the questions being asked here, we need to understand the fact that Christianity arose in the Jewish world. Jews were different than the other people around them – they worshiped one God, who was greater than all other gods, and who called them to be different.
As a mark of their difference and their loyalty to one God, they lived differently; they ate certain foods defined as clean (kosher), the men were circumcised; they did not eat or associate with Gentiles (pagans). And to the Jews, their status as God’s chosen ones, God’s Insiders, was easily visible in their careful observance of those laws – so that defining insiders and outsiders was a religious obligation, and a way of being faithful.
Jesus pointedly addresses the things that Jews did to stay pure and separate in the gospel today when he talks about the food they ate (marking them as holy). It is not what goes into a person that defiles them, he says – it’s not the food you eat – it’s what comes out – it’s the things that you believe in your heart, that become actions you take in relationship to others, that mark you as holy. Religious observance is all very well, he says, but our hearts are where we know God, and if we know God, we will live as God wants us to live.
Jesus, the Jewish rabbi, is challenging the purity laws God had given the Jewish people, challenging the wall that kept them separate from outsider groups. As disciples point out to him, this is very offensive to the Pharisees. But Jesus is insistent that God looks at our hearts, not our outward actions.
Well, this is difficult for human beings – we want our boundaries to be clear. If the life of following Jesus is going to mean we can’t use obvious markers like what religious group someone belongs to, to judge whether people are on God’s side or not, but have to look more deeply at their hearts, life as a human being has suddenly gotten more difficult.
And, as if to underline just how difficult this will be, Matthew immediately tells us a story that lets us know that it was a challenge even for Jesus. Jesus is the Son of God, fully divine, but he is also fully human. And in a moment of full humanity, Jesus has to decide whether to open up his ministry to an outsider – a non-Jewish, Canaanite woman. She recognizes who he is – the Son of David, sent by God, the one who has the power to heal her daughter – but he does not immediately recognize who she is. He believes he’s been sent only to the lost sheep of Israel – not to the “dogs” outside Israel (and by the way, calling her a “dog” is a huge insult).
Yet it turns out that this dog, this outsider, is someone unexpected: she is a messenger sent by God to let Jesus know that it is time to open up God’s word, God’s healing power, beyond the Jewish people, to people everywhere. God’s love extends to all religious groups, apparently. Jesus has to listen for God’s call in the voice of the outsider – and hearing God’s call, Jesus changes his mind: because he understands what Joseph understood in the OT lesson – God is on the side of reconciliation.
In this moment in Matthew’s gospel, we watch Jesus’ whole ministry shift, from being a renewal movement inside Judaism to a movement of reconciliation and discipleship that will reach out to the whole world – till at the end of Matthew, the resurrected Jesus will tell the disciples to go, and make disciples of all nations – to bring Christ’s presence to the world.
God is the one who wants to bring us together, not keep us apart. God is not a maker of boundary lines; God transcends all boundaries.
Paul speaks about that in the Epistle today. For 3 chapters in Romans, he has gone round and round about the question of whether God still loves the Jewish people who have not accepted Christ – are they insiders, or outsiders? Finally he gives in. He doesn’t exactly reason his way to a conclusion. He simply decides that he can trust God – God has made a covenant with God’s people, and God is faithful to his covenants. God is merciful to all. God doesn’t make outsiders; God’s mercy wins.
Which is more or less where Rob Bell ends up, in the book I opened this sermon with, the book that has caused all the controversy in the Christian world. The book is called Love Wins: Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. Rob Bell doesn’t know the fate of every person, any more than you or I do – in the end, we simply can’t know the mind of God. What we can do is trust God’s faithfulness.
The God we worship is a God who came in the person of Jesus to all of us when we were outsiders, separated from God by our own disobedience. This is a God who does not hold our sins against us, but like Joseph, holds out the hand of reconciliation when we deserved condemnation. This is a God who knows no outsiders. This is a God of mercy. This is a God of Love. And in the words of Rob Bell, Love Wins.
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