Hi Everyone-
I pray you're finding joy in this Christmas season. One aspect of Christmas that's hitting me this year is that it's a season of inclusion's victory over exclusion. What do I mean by that?
I think with His birth, Jesus brought inclusion to many people, and am hoping I can reciprocate that for others. In C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength one of the main characters, Mark, spends the better part of the book trying to get into the innermost circles of power at his job. He is constantly looking for the most elite, most exclusive, and smallest core of power brokers. The way I put it in some of my notes was that he desperately wanted to be one of the "cool kids." I know I can remember that feeling from junior high in particular. Let me put it this way, Mark thinks he needs to be someone smarter, better, cooler, and more powerful than who he is to be accepted and valued. He doesn't realize the err in this way until the end of the book. I believe Christmas, i.e. the birth and life of Jesus, change this paradigm and need to be in the inner/exclusive circle for us all.
In Acts we find a history of the early Church. In chapter 8, Philip feels moved by the Spirit to go south where:
27 So he started out, and he met the treasurer of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under the Kandake, the queen of Ethiopia. The eunuch had gone to Jerusalem to worship, 28 and he was now returning. Seated in his carriage, he was reading aloud from the book of the prophet Isaiah.
29 The Holy Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and walk along beside the carriage.”
30 Philip ran over and heard the man reading from the prophet Isaiah. Philip asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?”
31 The man replied, “How can I, unless someone instructs me?” And he urged Philip to come up into the carriage and sit with him. ...
34 The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, was the prophet talking about himself or someone else?” 35 So beginning with this same Scripture, Philip told him the Good News about Jesus.
36 As they rode along, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “Look! There’s some water! Why can’t I be baptized?”[d] 38 He ordered the carriage to stop, and they went down into the water, and Philip baptized him.
What seems at face value a pretty cool conversion story becomes brilliant when we learn a couple things. First, eunuchs weren't allowed to be in the Assembly of God before Jesus. The eunuch asks what would prevent him from being baptized (i.e. excluded)? Easy, he's a eunuch, so before Jesus was excluded by definition, but after Jesus that changes. Second, today in a highly Islamic area of the world, Ethiopia is 65% Christian, and most all of them trace their lineage, mark as their reason for being Christian, back to this eunuch.
A pastor I heard recently put it this way, "God loves those who are thirsty, not those who are worthy."
I think that's a brilliant summary of the inclusion Christ brings. I'm going to try and make this Christmas about the victory of inclusion over exclusion.
What do you think?
Grace and peace,
Lang
If you want to receive email notifications when I post new blogs, please put your email in the "Follow by email" block to the right.
Another cool connection with Isaiah. Isaiah envisioned a lifting of this restriction in the messianic age.
ReplyDeleteIsaiah 56:3-5
[3] And let not the son of the stranger, that adhereth to the Lord, speak, saying: The Lord will divide and separate me from his people. And let not the eunuch say: Behold I am a dry tree. [4] For thus saith the Lord to the eunuchs, They that shall keep my sabbaths, and shall choose the things that please me, and shall hold fast my covenant: [5] I will give to them in my house, and within my walls, a place, and a name better than sons and daughters: I will give them an everlasting name which shall never perish.