Church of Fools Pt. III

Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:10) Here we stand. Here today. Here today in the midst of a culture, a Christian culture that denies this very fact. A Christian culture that seems to forget this very thing. That once we were lost, but now we are found. Not that we found ourselves. Quite the contrary. We did not, nor must we ever suffer to think that we have found ourselves. We have not chosen ourselves for salvation. We have not elected ourselves as God's people. We have to start in humility, and yet I fear that we don't. We forget that once we were no people. Once we were not in relationship with God, and yet, and yet he called us. Each of us by name to bear witness to the light of life he sent in the word-made-flesh, Jesus Christ. We still seem to have ourselves convinced that our election gives us the right to lord this distinction over other people. We are the few, the chosen, the elite. But that's not who we are at all. That is simply not the case. Have we all too easily forgotten? Have we another log stuck in our own eyes. Some of us, we say that salvation is for the church. No longer for the Jews. Popular thinking still posits that salvation has superceded the call of the Jews. But have we not read the scriptures? God simply does not break promises. God simply does not revoke his covenant. Today you claimed, to put it bluntly, that "they broke the covenant, they messed it up," all the while forgetting that we, the chosen, the elect, the church have fucked things up just as bad. How is it that we have been more faithful than they? How is it that we have succeeded where others have failed? The honest, real truth of the situation is that we have been just as disobedient, just as hard-hearted, and just as stubborn as anyone in history. Today you said that the Church testifies to God's relationship with those who love him, and Israel is a testament to those who are ignorant of this covenant, of those who reject him. But hold on. Hold on just one second. I know we've been over this before, I know we've tried to explain it, explicate it, express it clearly, but apparently it just hasn't sunk in. It's a whole lot more complicated than that. I have a confession to make, and I think we all do, don't we? I, we, singularly and corporately have fallen short. We have not fulfilled our end of the bargains we have failed to uphold covenant. So who are you, who am I, who are we to claim that the Church testifies to a group who have accepted him? We haven't. The most scandalous part of the Gospel must be this, that even though the Church lives in conflict with the will of its Lord, even though it rejects God's love, even though we stifle hope and fail to act charitably; even though we fail at every turn to fulfill God's desire for us, his love, and his grace still cover us. We have not chosen ourselves (or rather, we have, and that's the problem). We have been selfish, uncaring, unrelenting in our zeal to exclude everyone but ourselves. In so doing we have succeeded even so in excluding the one who sent his only begotten son to save us from our selves, who chose us despite our failures, and who maintains his covenant with Israel to this day. Technorati Tags: Christianity, Church