Jeremiah 23:1-6; Psalm 23; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56; Ephesians 2:11-22
We come up against this question from time to time in our readings, a burning question for the first Christians yet one that makes little sense to us today: what on earth are we meant to be doing about the Gentiles? Jesus our leader is Jewish. All his first followers are Jewish. He worshipped in the synagogue. He told us that what's in our hearts is more important than what goes into our mouths, but even so, we keep God's laws about food and everything else - we've been brought up that way. But here come people who want to know more about Jesus, but who don't give two hoots about our ancient way of living and don't see why they should become like us in order to follow our Lord. What do we do about them? Do we say, you have to become like us if you're to join us? Or do we let them join us anyway, even though they don't understand or respect much of where we're coming from, even though that may mean changing really important things about who we are?
In our reading this morning, the writer - who may or may not be Paul - is addressing newcomers in the church at Ephesus, the non-Jewish Gentiles: men who have never been circumcised as every Jewish male is, at a very young age; women who know nothing about keeping a kosher kitchen. And he doesn't pull his punches. You come from a very different culture from ours, he reminds them. Once you knew nothing about the God my people had worshipped for centuries or God's promises to our people. Then, you were complete outsiders. But now, he goes on, because of Jesus, we are no longer two peoples, divided by religion, culture, expectations. Now we are one people. And he gives them lots of pictures of this. They are one body in Christ, fellow citizens in God's kingdom, all part of God's household, stones in a living temple built to God's glory on the foundations of God's prophets and those who first knew Jesus; all of them together supported by Jesus, the cornerstone; all of them together making a place where God chooses to live.
The union turned into a Gentile takeover - now hardly any Christians are of Jewish birth - so it was generous of Jewish Christians to take that risk.
Had they not done so, Christianity might well have turned into a footnote in history, a Jewish reform movement that had its day and died. But because the first Jewish Christians, like Paul, were willing to risk their beloved traditions to welcome others who were different from them, Christianity grew and prospered, and in time became the bedrock of our lives.
That's an old, old story. Yet it is also a story of our time, of St Andrew's Church in Sheffield. For in every generation, Christian communities must decide which is more important to them: where they have been or where they are going. Sometimes culture is a matter of geography. When Dr Jim Coleman, the Training Officer for the Yorkshire Synod, came to speak with the Elders a few months ago, he told us of a church in England he had served with a strong Presbyterian identity and many Scottish members. Like our own church, it had run out of new Scots. That church decided that while they still felt Presbyterian, they didn't feel so strongly about being Scottish, so they welcomed members from Presbyterian churches in very different cultures, such as Ghana and South Korea, and shared power within the church. That changed the way their church looked, sounded and functioned, but it is alive and flourishing.
Yet you don't even need geography for different cultures within churches; all you need is the passage of time. When I help at the Broomhall Homework Club,
I realise how differently children learn now from when I was at school; those of you who have families may have reflected on this too. Many of you here will have learned by rote, from a teacher at the front of the class giving lecture-style lessons. Those in paid employment now may have learned through discussion and making presentations to the class themselves, while children today learn individually through computers and the Internet. Yet the way we learn in church is heavily weighted towards the older end of the age spectrum, with the lecture sermon taking pride of place. When we have discussed our faith during worship, I always have positive comments from students, who find it an exciting way to learn, alongside negative comments from longer established members, who are not used to behaving this way in church and find it uncomfortable.
Several people have asked me whether these Vision4Life services are imposed from on high by the national URC, and I am forced to lead worship in this way. This is not at all the case. The URC would never force ministers to lead worship in one particular way, and if they tried, I would never comply. I have led worship in this way from time to time to make our church more accessible to people of all generations and cultures, not just the majority.
Yet I am painfully aware that in offering worship which helps some in our church to grow in their faith, I run the risk of alienating others, whose expectations of worship have been shaped by a lifetime of faithful attendance. And my responsibility is particularly pressing when I hear our reading from Jeremiah this morning. Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture, says God. The Jewish people in exile had been abused by their leaders, responsible for the bad decisions which had taken them into exile, scattering them among the nations. But God promised to gather them and unite them again, under one leader, David's descendant.
We Christians believe that God kept that promise in Jesus, our good shepherd. Yet when Jesus came, he disrupted the order and unity of religion. He healed Gentiles as well as Jews. He spoke to Samaritans. He befriended women and children, tax-collectors and prostitutes as well as Pharisees. He united people not by trying to make them all the same, but by reconciling everyone with God. For whether we're Scots or English, old or young, women or men, rich or poor, none of us can live up to God's perfection; each of us, in our own particular way, needs the forgiveness and healing that Jesus offers. How can he offer that forgiveness and healing? A complex mixture of power and culture and fear led to his innocent death on the cross; motivations in which we too share, part of our humanity. Yet in spite of that supreme human destructiveness, Jesus never stopped loving or forgiving or accepting us, and nor did God. That foundation of Jesus' death and his life-giving resurrection, in which as Christians we all share, is how we can learn to accept one another, different though we are, as a family, and to become, together, a place where God chooses to live.