Sermon Short for November 18th, 2018
My church includes …
Jesus kicks the money changers out of the temple. That’s pretty violent work for a man we call “Prince of Peace.” I think this happened because he was just fed up with people making so many rules about who can get close to God and who can’t get close to God. It was supposed to be simple but it was being controlled by a den of thieves.
Isaiah prophesied a time when anyone who wanted to be included in God’s kin-dom would be welcome – even the outcast eunuchs and foreigners. Imagine the shock this would give Isaiah’s audience – these people who had been shunned by God’s people because they were not like God’s people would be given a name better than God’s people.
God’s people have spent too much time and energy building road-blocks in the way of the very people God is welcoming into his kin-dom. The foreigner, the poor, the different gendered.
That has to change.