Hey again, happy Fourth of July everyone and do not this day forget to give thanks. And be grateful for the good gift of being born in this country, the opportunity that freedom and liberty provides every one of us. Most people who have ever lived have longed for the kind of freedom that you and I enjoy every moment of every day without even giving a thought to it. Now today, this Fourth of July, and for the next few weeks of July, we're kicking off a new series.
And while it's not directly targeted at the Civil Discorder National Discunity which currently plagues our Ipluribus Unum, it does address a core issue there, really a heart issue that lies at the foundation of some of our national struggles. This new series, well, it's called Outcasts. And what we're going to be looking at over the next couple of weeks is the Biblical, the historical accounts of Jesus and the outcasts of his day. What is an outcast?
Well, the definition is simple. An outcast is any person who's been rejected by a society at large or maybe a social group in particular. Is anybody who's either been physically or culturally cast out, set aside, minimized, marginalized, or has been refused acceptance? Now, if you know the story of Jesus, you might know the story of the outcasts of his day.
There were a lot of them. If I were to ask you, well, name an outcast in Jesus's day, you might say, well, the lepers. The lepers were outcasts and you'd be right. Indeed they were.
In fact, what I would tell you is some things never change. Many of you remember that both Mother Teresa and Princess Diana made headlines because they were willing to embrace lepers. It's amazing, right? Lepers have been outcasts, unfortunately, for all of time.
In Jesus's day, though, there were more subtle outcasts. For example, Samaritans, an entire race, they were outcasts, Gentiles in general, all non-Jews. They were outcasts, at least in Israel. But it didn't stop there, even within the Jewish community.
The caste system found its way of making outcasts out of, well, entire genders, women, and entire age groups, children. And we're going to take a look at Jesus's interactions with many of these outcasts over the next few weeks. And here's why. Because the issue of outcasts, it's not an ancient problem, nor is the subtle danger and sin that underlies our pursuit of inclusion.
Here's what I know. Both Biblicalism and Social Science back me up on this. Nobody wants to be an outcast. And fear is being the outcast.
And all of us, all of us, at one level or another, have felt this sting associated with becoming an outcast. If you have ever looked for your name on the list of people who made the varsity team in high school, you know the one that Coach puts up on the locker room door and you didn't find it, maybe you were like me, you held out some hope that maybe it wasn't an alphabetical order so you looked all the way to the bottom and you still weren't there, you know what it felt like to be an outcast. If you've ever seen your friends or neighbors out for a night on Facebook or Instagram and wondered why you weren't invited, you know what it feels like to be an outcast. If you didn't sit at the right lunch table in high school, if you didn't get into the right sorority in college or you weren't invited onto the high performing team at the office, you know what it's like to be an outcast.
All of us at one time or another have found ourselves, well, on the island, I miss the toys. Now, it happens to me all the time. I'm a pastor, part of my job is to do weddings. So when I marry people, the couple often feel obliged to invite me to the wedding reception.
There's only one problem with inviting the pastor to the wedding reception. Nobody wants to sit with them. I mean, who can blame anybody, right? This is supposed to be a party, this grand raucous celebration, and nothing puts a damper on your third up Long Island ice tea like sitting next to the pastor.
I can figure out and discern the social construct of the room merely by where I get seated. I mean, people pray that they don't get seated with me at the wedding. Well, first, because they don't want to have any kind of governor on their good time, and second, it might mean that they're at the loser table. I get it.
See, he has Lewis. He has, I mean, he has a brilliant essay on this topic. I so encourage you to read. Just Google it up after the sermon.
It's called the Inner Ring. And entity describes what we all know experientially to be true. Experientially, why experientially? Well, it's because this stuff isn't written down anywhere.
It's just felt in every society, in every school and office, and in every church, even in our church. I'm sure there are little groups of people who are on the inside. These groups are almost never formal. Nobody votes on who gets in.
Yet, whether or not you remember is reflected in subtle things, in nicknames, inside jokes, invitations to certain things. Now, here's what we know. Once you get inside, of course, Lewis says that you discover that there are actually further rings that are even more inside. The further in the ring is, the more status and prestige it bestows on the members.
See, by definition, every society, including this Fourth of July, our American one, it includes people who can act who belong to one another. Yet every society, including ours, this Fourth of July, it includes people who feel left out, who don't get chosen at recess, whose invitations to dances get turned down, who get black walled and cold-shouldered and voted off the island. Lewis, he writes, quote, I believe that in all men's lives, one of the most dominant elements, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local ring and the terror of being left outside. Guys, the existence of these rings, Lewis says it's not bad.
I mean, we're all finite, right? We can have deeply intimate friendships with only a limited number of people. But there's a desire that we have to gain status by being part of a high status entering is deeply dangerous. This desire, he says, it leads us to constantly compare ourselves with others, to feel anguish when we get left out and deeper anguish when someone close to us gets ushered in.
And so what do we do? Well, in order to get in, we begin to compromise. We say things we don't really believe because we think it might make us look good to somebody deeper in or higher up. We laugh at that person's jokes a little too eagerly.
We pretend to agree when secretly we differ. We give a compliment that's partly sincere, but also partly self-serving. We get a little surge of pleasure when we think that we are in a more inner ring than somebody else. And seeing others excluded makes us somehow feel, well, a little more special.
Here is what all of us know. Here is why so many of our teens are facing crippling anxiety attacks, even though they seem so popular and successful. See the inner ring, it turns out it's much like an onion. See, once you make it into a certain circle, we find out there is yet another one.
But there is no circle so far inside that it can confer on us this sense of permanent worth that we want so badly because inside we know we're still the same person. And even then, once we get into the inside group, we then start to worry that people are going to discover we are still the same person and they might usher us back out. I think Groucho marks this all up best when he said that he would never join a club whose standards were so low that they would let someone like him become a member. The danger now, think through this with me, to danger and it's a deadly danger.
It lies on both sides of the ring. See, we each experience we each feel both sides of this. All at once we feel when we don't get in, rejection, hurt, abandonment, loneliness. But at the same time we're dealing with that, we're dealing with, well, I think Lewis sums up his essay best.
He says of all passions, the passion for the inner ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet very bad, do very bad things. Here's what I know, here's what I've seen. Taken to its most extreme, we will kill others to get into that ring or we might kill ourselves if we're not. You see, this is the power and the danger in dealing with the issue of outcasts.
The danger of it, the pull towards it, right? As I said earlier, it's not new. Jesus, Jesus felt one side of being an outcast. He felt, in a sense, the penalty of the inner ring.
The disciples, they were on the other side, they felt the passion for the inner ring. Israel's great prophet Isaiah in writing about Jesus says that he was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering familiar with pain, like one from whom people hide their faces, he was despised and we held him in low esteem. Jesus felt the pain of being an outcast. And yet his followers, the one following the outcast, they felt the passion and pull of the inner ring.
Mark writes that at one point James and John, the son of Zebed, he came to him and then teacher they said, we want you to do for us whatever we ask, which is kind of a crazy thing, right? To ask. And so Jesus plays along. He says, what do you want me to do for you?
Do you know what they want in Jesus to do for them more than any other thing? They reply, let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory. We Jesus would like to be at the core of the onion. When I read you those statements, the statement about Jesus from Isaiah, can you feel the pain of Jesus?
Have you felt the pull of the disciples? And thus the need for this series, this desire to be part of the in crowd, it's killing us, it's killing our kids, it's killing our families, it's destroying our culture, and it's upending our nation. We have to take the power out of this thing. We as followers of Jesus, we actually have the solution for a heart, sick and heart broken world, but we too often get duped.
We allow ourselves to be divided, to create these caste systems and outcasts. We lose our way. And so next week, next week we're going to look at Jesus's particular interactions with those in his culture, those in his culture that they labeled as outcasts. But today, this is the 4th of July, we're going to begin with what you have to, you and I have to understand, and we have to remember, foundationally first about God.
If we understand this foundationally about God, if we get the foundation right, if we get the right filter in place, then the house will be built strong. What comes out of us will be pure. So let's jump into what I think. I truthfully think this is the most important chapter in the entire Bible.
Luke, he is this Greek physician turned historian who sets out to write this orderly account for history for all of time of Jesus and his life in his ministry. He writes, I love how this starts. Now, the tax collectors and the sinners, they were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, this man welcomes sinners and eats with them.
See, Luke says there was some social stratification going on here. Jesus is surrounded by both sinners, those who had not, who were not, keeping the Mosaic laws as practiced and preached by the religious leaders of the day. But it wasn't just sinners that were there, there were sinners and there were tax collectors. Now understand, tax collectors were sinners, all right?
But they were their own special category of sinners. See sinners woke up every morning and thought to themselves, well, at least I'm not a tax collector. You see, the tax collectors in Israel, they worked for the Roman government who was Israel's current oppressor. The tax collectors, they were fellow Israelites, fellow Jews who would turn their back on their own people and were by power of threat and force and violence.
They were extorting from their brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles. They were extorting money for the benefit of Rome and for themselves. So sinners and tax collectors, I mean the outcasts in Israel and the outcasts of the outcasts are somehow drawn to Jesus. And the Pharisees begin to mutter.
What do I take that to mean? I take it to mean they begin to gossip and to complain and to call into question what is it that this itinerant rabbi is doing with this crowd, with these dredges, these outcasts from their society. And it is just this moment, a moment when the in crowd is looking down at the outcasts that Jesus, well, somehow he overhears the muttering and he responds, this is so good. He responds with three striking stories, no introduction and no conclusion, not even an explanation, just three stories.
And to be faithful to Jesus's presentation, here's what I'm going to do, the exact same thing. Let's jump in. Then Jesus told them this powerful, suppose he said one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Well, doesn't he leave the 99 in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?
Now listen, if I say that to you and that sounds familiar, it's because we sing it so often in church, this is the course of the song, reckless love. Oh, the overwhelming, never ending reckless love of God chases me down, bites the line pound, leaves the 99. This is where that song comes from. And so Jesus goes on.
And when he finds it, after leaving the 99 for the one, and when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and he goes home and he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, rejoice with me, I have found my lost sheep. I tell you that in the same way that we'll be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who do not need to repent. And then Jesus simply goes on to the next story. Or he says, suppose a woman has 10 silver coins and she loses one.
Well, doesn't she light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, well, you know what happens, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, rejoice with me, I have found my lost coin. In the same way, Jesus looks at him and says, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents without any explanation. Jesus continued.
There was a man and he had two sons, two sons and the younger ones that his father, giving my share of the estate. And so he divided his property between them. And not long after that, the younger son got all he had, he, well, he had together, he set off for a distant country and there he squandered his wealth in wild living. And he spent everything.
There was a severe famine in that whole country and he began to be in need. So as he went and hired himself out to a citizen in that country who sent him to his fields to feed pigs, which is kind of the lowest form of work a young Jewish boy could possibly ever take on, he longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating. Nobody gave him anything. I love this line.
When he came to his senses, he said, how many of my father's hired servants have food to spare and here I am starving to death. I will set out and go back to my father and say to him, Father, I sin against heaven and against you, I'm no longer worthy to be called your son worthy to be called your son. Take me like one of your hired servants and that was his plan and so he got up and he went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him.
He ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. The son said, when father kicks into his plan right, father, I sin against heaven and against you, I am no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his servants, he interrupts him. Quick, bring the best robe and put it on.
Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fat and calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For the son of mine was dead and is alive again.
He was lost and is found. And so they began to celebrate. Jesus. Jesus, when he hears the muttering of the end crowd, of the rulers of the day, of the religious and societal elite, about him hanging around well with the outcrowd, the outcasts.
Jesus tells three stories. One story is about a shepherd in sheep, one is about a woman in coins and one is about a father and a son. And then that's it. He says nothing more.
He really doesn't explain anybody. He just leaves it there in the air, hanging with all of the mutters. Now, here's my guess. My guess is that based on how few of the religious leaders changed their hearts and minds regarding Jesus, most of them heard the stories, gave them little thought, maybe compartmentalized each one of them didn't realize they were kind of put together, right?
We do that. We read the story of the prodigal son. We don't realize it's part of another couple of stories. We hear the scriptures and we read them, but we don't spend a lot of time trying to figure out and reflect on them.
There's little introspection going on. But I can't help but wonder if maybe one or two of the Pharisees, when they're on their way home that night, maybe they stopped and tried to understand what Jesus was saying about sinners and outcasts. I can't help but think it's possible that one of the Pharisees that night, maybe when they were walking back to their house, maybe they passed by a field where there was a shepherd abiding, keeping watch over his flock by night and maybe he began to ponder what he saw and what Jesus said. And so let's do that.
What have we seen? Let's ponder this together, right? We've seen Jesus tell three stories and these three stories have three striking similarities. Here's the first one.
The first similarity is this. Each person has lost something. The shepherd is sheep, the woman of coin, the father of son. And each of the things that was lost was of such great value that the person who lost them goes searching and looking for them.
Think about the first story. It doesn't make a lot of sense, right? At least economically. We sing it.
It sounds nice. But what sense does it make to leave 99 sheep unattended and go searching for one? I mean, the shepherd's job is to keep the sheep safe. He's still got 99 of them.
That's pretty good. I don't know what shepherd statistics are, but a 99% safety record, it can't be all that bad. Until it doesn't make any sense until you see the story in the light in which I think Jesus wants us to see it. One reference I read this week explained it this way.
Imagine you woke up in the middle of the night. This is everybody's worst nightmare, right? To the blaring of your smoke alarm going off. And suddenly you're kind of shaking to your senses.
And as you are, you smell the smoke and you begin to see the flames. And so you drop to the ground, right? You begin to crawl through your house. Room by room.
Mouth may be covered by a wet cloth. And you're going searching, rousing and waking, all of your kids. And you get all of them together and you go down the stairs and on your way out, you grab your beloved dog and your cat and you make your way. You're closed singed.
And you gather in the street. As you all kind of clasp and exhaust and you look around and suddenly you realize, one of your kids isn't there. What would you do? Who amongst you would say, well, you know what?
I got three of the four. I got the dog. Three of the four. Nine of the 10.
That's good enough. See, of course you wouldn't. You know what you would do? And so would I.
And there would be no fireman or police barrier that would keep me from running back into that house to get the one. And here's the deal. You know this. It's not because I'm brave or you're brave.
I don't think it would occur to me that this is a lack of bravery. You know what? It would be brave if it was your kid in there. That would be brave.
But if it's my kid, are you kidding me? This is my kid. He or she is of so much value. I don't care if I have 99 kids.
It does not matter. I leave the 99 and I go to look for my son. See, something changes when it's my kid at risk, when my kid is the outcast. Well, now Jesus begins to sharpen the story.
He speaks now of a woman with 10 coins who loses one. And again, I mean, she still has nine coins. 90% is still there. It's not like she's broke.
But yet Jesus says that in a sense in desperation, she likes a lamb and sweeps the house and searches carefully until she finds it. One coin. Is it worth it? I mean, it seems a little dramatic.
It does until this week. I learned the story behind the story. See, for this woman, the coins were more than coins. I want to show you something.
Many of you know that. My daughter, Courtney, was married last week. This is her veil. This is what she wore over her head.
This is what I lifted over her face when I kissed her and gave her away. This veil has significance to me beyond mere cloth. This means something about our relationship and our love and my role as her dad and hers as my daughter. Now I want to show you something else.
This I need to be even more gentle with and I need to be a little bit more careful. This. This is my wife, Jones Vale. My wife, my life's partner.
She wore this veil when her dad walked her down the aisle and gave her away to me over thirty years ago. This is precious to me and to Jones. It has deep meaning and significance. It represents something, our union, our oneness, our decades together, the family that we made together.
You see, this veil has more meaning and more memories than I can put into words. Similarly, for the woman in Jesus' story and Jesus' culture, you see these ten silver coins, what happened was these ten silver coins were bound together as a dowry and a head dress for a woman to wear on her forehead for her wedding day and thereafter. She would wear this piece of jewelry day and night even while she slept. This dowry then became the bride's personal property.
But even more than I had formed a financial support for her new family that could be changed into money and times of need. The silver, the silver ornaments on the head dress, they served for something more though. They were an indicator of her status, that she was married, of her wealth, of her faithfulness. And that's why she was so anxious to ensure that every coin was intact and in place.
You see, if the bride used any one of the coins for any financial transactions without the husband's knowledge or approval, it would reflect very badly on her character. Her husband would take the lost coin to be a good reason to divorce her. The coin meant more to her than the value of the silver. You see, for her to lose it, it was like losing face in her community.
She would become shameful before her husband. And thus upon losing any one coin, she would begin a desperate search to find it. Her whole life and her marriage depended on the coin. She's sweeping the whole house, she's searching not just for a bit of metal.
Do you see that? She's searching for her right to have a home and to be respected for her right to have an honorable place in society, for her right to be a wife to her husband. Courtney's veil matters. Jones veil matters.
You see these coins? They matter. They have meaning and significance. Listen now, beyond what you see, that you hear what Jesus is saying.
He's saying it about people. These people matter. These so-called outcasts to you, the ones that you're muttering about, the ones that you would like to see marginalized, the ones you want excluded, they matter to me. To me, they have much more significance and meaning and purpose more than you see.
Well then, then Jesus takes it a step further. He takes it to another level. He tells the story of a father with two sons and one goes missing. And many of you know the elements of the story and I don't have the time to do a deep dive on it right now.
But essentially the son by wanting his inheritance is now. He's publicly disgracing his father. In one sense, again, publicly wishing him dead. And yet, despite the disobedience and the shame and the humiliation, the father does not disown the son.
He does not marginalize him or mock him. Instead, Jesus says shockingly, despite all the son is done, which should have made him an outcast of the father, the father should have put him out. Jesus says, but while he was still a long way off, his father saw him. While he was a still a long way off, do you know what that means the father was doing?
The father was looking for him and he was filled with compassion for him. And he ran to his son and he threw his arms around him and he kissed him. You see, as the in crowd, as the religious leaders mocked Jesus for allowing sinners and tax collectors to draw near, Jesus tells them three stories. And the first lesson is that in all three of them, people, individuals, matter.
It doesn't matter if it's one in two or one in a hundred. No matter how many they are, they all matter to God individually. He loves them all. He tells them that they have significance and purpose and meaning to Jesus more than you might be able to see or understand.
And that despite what they've done or how far they've wandered, no matter what they've done to embarrass themselves for him, he still wants them found. Good and bad, religious, immoral, rich, poor, powerful, meet, black, white, gay, straight, you name the sin. You name the lostness. You name the marginalization.
They all matter to God and they didn't to the Pharisees. They didn't to the righteous. They didn't to the in crowd. They mattered to God.
And so they ought to. They have to matter to us. Everyone matters to God. Everyone has to matter to you.
Now, second thing, it's in all three of the stories. What was lost really, really mattered. It was worthy. It really, really mattered because of that.
It was worthy of an all out, death defying, time taking, resource impacting, reputation reducing search. It was worthy of going all out to find. Now the most poignant, heart piercing way I've ever heard this hammered home was years ago when I went out to a Creek church in Chicago, the pastor at the time shared the story about how he became so personally convicted of the fact that lost and marginalized people, people far from the in crowd and far from God mattered to God. He said that he would also go out to his mailbox and he would gather up the mail so that on his way back in he could toss aside all of the catalogs and other things so that others in the house wouldn't see and be enticed to go buy a lot of stuff.
And so it's part of what he perceived to be junk mail. He came across one of the flyers that you and I have come across in our mailbox. He said specifically to remember that day it was a picture of two children and it said on the top of the little flyer, have you seen me, two faces of two kids and a phone number to call him. As he was going through what he perceived to be junk mail, he threw the catalogs in and then without a thought he tossed in the picture of the two kids.
And it was at that moment he just felt God speak into his heart and ask him, you know, you didn't even give it a second glance did you? You didn't even study what they looked like. You just let it flip back and forth and settle at the bottom of your trash can. How could you do that?
Well, he said he wrestled with the thought for a little bit. He wanted to answer God's question. I mean he's a pastor and all right. And he realized that he had to wrestle with the idea.
He said the best he could come up with was the reason he didn't care or the reason that he treated this like junk mail was because they weren't his kids. I mean, enter the story, right? If Courtney or John or Caleb or Caroline's, if their face was on that piece of paper, what would I not do to find them? I couldn't sleep.
I'd be up all night. I love this job. I'd quit it. I would spend down my 401k.
I wouldn't care what people thought about me, how I was perceived. There would be nothing that mattered more. I've got to find those kids. I would be Liam Neeson on steroids.
You know the line. I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you're looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have any money.
But what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills are the choir to have a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it.
I won't look for you. I'll pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you. I will find you.
And I will kill you. And when I say this, when I hear that line, because I've watched that movie with my kids, I watch that movie you'll feel it. I can't help but feel that same conviction from the Holy Spirit. John, why don't you care about my kids this way?
Here's the problem. The problem is that I like my group. I like people that are like me, that look like me and think like me and vote like me. I like people.
I'm attracted to people whose values line up with mine. I like people who watch the same news channels I watch. I like people whose sexuality and gender identity goes in line with what I think. And when others don't, when they don't line up, I don't feel any inclination to reach out.
I pull back. I circle up with my group. I make sure I'm on and in the inner ring. And then together what we tend to do, what my group tends to do is marginalize that group.
Just like they tend to marginalize my group. I marginalize how they feel. They marginalize how I feel. I marginalize what they've experienced.
They marginalize what I've experienced. I'm telling you, I'm really good at this. I could do this. It's like my day job.
I wish I could get paid for it. I'm utter about everybody. Anybody that's different? I'm utter.
Now, I want you to know, this is happening all over this great country of ours this 4th of July. It's a spiritual issue, but it's having national impact. Listen now, we are being divided up. We are doing this to ourselves.
We are marginalizing one another. Nobody is doing this to us. None of us. Everything out.
Everybody is pulling back. Do you hear how we talk about one another? Do you hear how we tear one another down? How we mutter about one another?
Let me ask myself the same question. When's the last time you literally searched for somebody different unlike you? You went looking for interaction with them. Somebody who looked different.
Somebody who smelled different. Who voted different? When's the last time you risked something in the search? You risked anything to get to know them, to care about them, to hear about them.
Or, I mean, heck, I just had a wedding. You just tried to, you know, I'm just going to have to put up with this person until the party's over. See, the Pharisees, they muttered because they thought they understood that their enemies were the sinners. See, the sinners muttered because they thought their enemies were the tax collectors.
You mutter because you think your enemy is the liberals, or the conservatives, or the Democrats, or the Republicans. You name the group. We like to marginalize. We like to outcast.
This country is not in trouble this morning because of Democrats and Republicans. This country is in trouble because we have forgotten that everyone matters. Those that are close to God and those that are far from God. Those who do what we want them to do, and those who don't.
Those who vote like we want them to, and those who don't. Those who sleep with who we want them to, and those who don't. We have forgotten that each other matters a lot. We are sons and daughters of God, and yet it seems incrementally that no one cares.
No one goes looking for anyone anymore. We've become a nation of mutters. Then, finally, here's the third thing all three of these stories haven't come. When each of these things of value that had been lost was found.
It became worthy of celebration. That was the win. It was the goal. Nothing was held back to celebrate.
Rings were put on fingers, slippers on feet, the fat and calf was cooked. Why? Because what was lost had been found. This is what happens in heaven, Jesus says, when one's sin or repents.
And so I have to ask myself and you this Fourth of July weekend. Is this your win? Is this what you celebrate? Because it seems to me that as a culture, and the church has gotten sucked into this now, it seems that we celebrate lots of other things first.
Things like achieving and retaining power more than reaching and reconciling people. It seems to me that we're on a search for like minds, but not for lost hearts. This Fourth of July, what's your win? Is it making sure you're in the inner ring?
Is it keeping yourself there? Is it keeping others out? See, if you want to understand Jesus' heart towards the outcast, you have to understand God's heart about those far from him, those who don't agree with him, those who have walked away from him, those who have cursed or abandoned him. God does not marginalize and denigrate and try to keep out neither should we.
God pursues. He entices, he forgives, he restores relationships and he did it. The search came at great personal cost, the cost of his own son. And how about you?
What cost might you be willing to bear? Church family, this Fourth of July, let Jesus' church take the lead. Who do you need to see differently? Who bothers you?
Who annoys you? Who rubs you the wrong way? Who do you just want to ignore and just have to put up with until it's over? This Fourth of July, take the time to realize that that person is a son or daughter of God.
His heart breaks for them. He matters. She matters to him. A lot.
Go. Pursue. Search. Listen.
Here. Share. Stop tearing them down. Stop muttering about them and start talking to them and then change your win.
Seriously, this week, reach out. Forget about making your win that you're in the inner ring and others are kept out. Instead make your inner ring the kingdom of God and your win helping others find their way home. This week, this July, it is time to start searching for some outcasts.