The Glorious Embrace--January 20, 2021

The Glorious Embrace--January 20, 2021

"To them [the saints] God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." [Colossians 1:27]

When the Big Deals of the world want to impress you, they show off their power and weapons.  

You know how it is--whether it was the Romans marching their legions into town with gleaming helmets and blood-red propaganda banners, moving to the rhythm of the marching centurions, or the Cold War-era military parades of the Soviet Union, where armies and nuclear missiles were put on full display, all throughout history, the go-to move of dictators and emperors has been to show off their arsenals. That was how you saw the "glory" of Rome, or the supposed "triumph" of Stalin and his successors.

Funny, though--that's not how God does things.  God doesn't put on a show of force to reveal divine glory: God's glory is in welcoming the not-good-enoughs to the party.

This is, in so many words, what this sentence from Colossians is saying.  The apostle says that God's way of showing God's glory is not a flashy military parade, but the inclusion of outsiders.  In this case, the letter to the Colossians is talking about the inclusion of Gentiles--that is, all the non-Jewish peoples of the world, people who didn't bring the credentials of proper ancestry, or correct sacrifice, or membership in the right cultural group of Israel.  The writer of Colossians says that God's glory can be seen the best in the way God has chosen to include all the ones who didn't belong--that is, Gentiles--as a gift of grace.  

In other words, what makes God worthy of praise in the end isn't that God is the Biggest Kid on the Block or that God carries the biggest stick, but rather that God welcomes in people who had been deemed unacceptable, unworthy, and unloved.  It is God's welcome to Gentiles in the community of Jesus, beyond the boundaries that had been in place before, that shows us the goodness--and indeed, the greatness--of God.

I want us to spend a moment letting that sink in because it is so very different from the usual thinking of the world around us.  The conventional wisdom is that the way to impress people is to show them how you wield power... or how you have gold-plated your living room to demonstrate your wealth... or for that matter, to make a big deal about your social media following, or your status as an "influencer," or your firepower.  But God finds none of those things very impressive, and instead, God seems intent on showing us the glorious way that love reaches and stretches beyond what is socially acceptable to include outcasts and anybodies who don't fit the cookie cutter pattern. You get a better picture of God, then, from a neighborhood block party where everyone is welcomed than from a Roman-style imperial march of soldiers.  

And if that's God's choice, we need to pay attention, too.  If God has decided that God doesn't need to parade around the missiles or show off the centurions in order to be God, then maybe we don't have to worry about looking "tough" or "powerful" or  like "winners" in order to be faithful representatives of this God to the world.  We don't need to spend any more time at all trying to impress anybody else, and instead, we can just focus our attention on welcoming in the ones who had been labeled (probably by religious people) outsiders or told that God's love wasn't for them. We can be freed from needing to "wow" people, and instead are simply freed to love people... whomever God sends across our path today.

If people feel loved, genuinely loved, among us, they will have been given a glimpse of the glory of God as surely as Moses looking at God's backside and still glowing for days afterward.  If people feel that they are not merely tolerated, but actively sought and draw in, they'll have seen a show of God's real glory.  If people feel that they are welcomed as they are, they will be drawn to praise the One who welcomes them.  That's what will be worth spending our energy, our time, and our lives on today.  

Go--be glorious: welcome someone who has been told they don't belong.  Embody for them the glorious embrace of Jesus for outsiders.

Lord God, let us reflect your glory in the ways we love like you.