A Necessary Faux Pas

May 12th, 2010

When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.
(Galatians 2:11-12)

Paul didn’t care about impressing people. That’s why when Peter showed up at Antioch, Paul got in his face.  Peter would eat with Gentile believers when other Jews weren’t around, but he turned a cold shoulder to his non-Hebrew brothers anytime the aficionados were on the scene.  He acquiesced to a social standard.  Sometimes the gospel requires us to commit a necessary faux pas.

There is no room for “gospel profiling” in the church.

Peter was wrong. Dead wrong.

If you are racist then you are wrong too.

If you are racist you don’t understand the nature and beauty of the gospel.

The gospel welcomes all with no respect to socio-economical status.

Maybe this is what makes the gospel so attractive to the Dalit people from Hindu regions of the world.  The Dalit people are the social outcasts of their cultures.  But the gospel is no respecter of persons.

The gospel is color blind.

The gospel is caste blind.

The gospel is age blind.

The gospel is status blind.

If you believe the gospel you are welcome.  The gospel bids the outcasts, the less than, the unworthy to come.  The gospel beckons the beggars and heeds the homeless.  There is no partiality in the gospel.

On the contrary, if we had to earn God’s favor we would all be damned.

If our ethnic heritage merited anything before a holy God then the gospel would be nothing more than an elitist filter fashioned by a pernicious God to oppress the undesirable.

But that is not the gospel.

If you are guilty of “gospel profiling”, of creating mental categories of who deserves the gospel and who doesn’t, then you need to repent.

Racism is an antithesis to the gospel.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons the term “Christian” is first used in Antioch (see Acts 11:26).  Perhaps it was here that the church first began to move beyond its ethnic categories to embrace an identity that was lost and found in Christ.

Immediately following Paul’s rebuke of Peter’s hypocrisy, we find these words:

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

He placed no emphasis on ethnicity, education, or socio-economic status.  Paul viewed such things as dead and crucified.  All that now mattered to Paul was faith in Christ.

Some of my favorite preaching memories from the last few years have been the multiple occasions I have had to preach at an ethnically diverse church outside of Chicago.  Their church reminded me of the beauty of the gospel.  The gospel crosses every boundary, even the ones our culture frowns upon; Even the ones our culture assumes are impossible.  In the end the gospel is the worst faux pas.

The gospel is a violation of any social norm that impedes a person’s access to the grace of God.

The gospel is an offense to anyone who denies God’s unmerited favor bestowed upon all who believe.

The Underbelly of the Gospel

May 5th, 2010

What lies beneath the gospel in your life?

I vividly remember cruise night in my hometown.  It was the epic event of each summer.  Anyone who was anybody was at cruise night.  It was one of the few events that brought together a generational and economical cross section of the community.  It was a night that smelled of barbeque and exhaust fumes.  It was wonderful.

A variety of cars would parade down Main Street from the pimped out high school clunkers to the vintage antiques. Typically, younger drivers drove junkier cars with  louder sound systems.  Adult enthusiasts sported Corvettes and Cadillacs from previous decades.  Regardless of the age of the driver, or the value of the car, they were all pristine and ready for one thing: five hours of bumper-to-bumper, 15 mile-per-hour, cruising paradise.  It was marvelous.

In addition to being “show ready”, each car shared another feature that few would consider.  They all had an under carriage, hidden from plain view, but exposed to all of the elements.  Regardless of how clean the driver kept the exterior and interior, they were nearly helpless to protect the under belly of the vehicle.  And for the most part, none of them likely cared since no one was looking.

In many ways church can become a sort of “spiritual cruise night.” We keep the topside of the gospel display-ready.   We know how to talk, pray, and generally behave as a person saved by grace.  Yet, what lies beneath the gospel in our lives?

If we were to take a look at the underbelly of the gospel we might find an assortment of works righteousness, legalistic strongholds, and otherwise anti-grace sentiments.  Maybe we would find doubt, indifference, or self-reliance.

I’m convinced that we need to heed the words of Martin Luther to speak the gospel to our hearts on a daily basis.  Take the time today to examine the recesses of your heart.  Ask God to reveal the areas where you fail to trust him alone for grace.  Ask God to clear away the residue of self-salvation efforts in your life.

Consider the prayer of the psalmist as you seek to live by the very grace by which you have been saved:

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
And see if there be any hurtful way in me,
And lead me in the everlasting way.

(Psalm 139:23-34)