Rev. Tom Ott
Matthew 28: 1-20
If I didn’t know better, I would assume that we are in the exclusion business here in Christ’s church. All around the country states are rushing to pass legislation protecting our religious right to exclude.
No one else can get away with it anymore. Civil rights protections prevent state and federal governments from passing laws excluding people from services and opportunities. Discrimination laws prevent businesses from excluding customers from access to the goods and services they provide. School board policies prohibit educational institutions from excluding students from educational programs or services.
Today religion holds the exclusive right to exclude. If you want to say “no” to someone, you can only do so in the name of God: God insists that I say “no” to providing pediatric medical care to the children of same gendered couples, God insists that I say “no” to health insurance that covers birth control for my employees, God insists that I say “no” to entrusting unwanted children into the loving care of same gendered adoptive parents. If students publically condemn their peers at school, it isn’t bullying as long as it is based on their religious convictions. If parents deny their children access to vital medical treatment, it isn’t criminal child neglect as long as it is based on their religious convictions.
Does it surprise anyone that fewer and fewer people want anything to do with religion today? Only 46% of Americans attend church on a regular basis. “I’m spiritual but not religious” has become the watch cry of the post-baby boomer generations. The fastest growing population in America is the group that checks the box “none” for religious affiliation. Churches are closing every day and those that are still open are populated by people in their 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, but all across America state legislatures are rushing to safeguard our religious right to exclude.
If I didn’t know better, I would assume that we are in the exclusion business here in Christ’s church. That is really only time I hear the voice of the church speaking in public today. That seems to be the mission we are most committed to serving. That is what everyone is seems afraid of questioning or challenging. In America we respect the rights of religious people who claim that they are ordained by God to exclude.
But that is not our religion. Today on Easter Sunday, we have come together to proclaim God’s emphatic “YES” to the world. The fear and the hatred and the hypocrisy and the violence that had sealed the tomb holding the brutalized body of Jesus three days earlier was broken open by God on Easter morning.
God said “YES” to the world early that morning on the first day of the week, even after the world had said “no” to God. Even though jealousy, insecurity and fear had hardened people’s hearts, even though they harassed and threatened and betrayed and arrested and denied and humiliated and condemned and tortured and killed Jesus Christ, whom God had sent into the world as the incarnation of God’s love for the world, God refused to say “no.” God refused to give up. God refused to exclude. God refused to withhold the gift of life everlasting.
Easter is God’s unequivocal “YES.” Yes to life. Yes to everyone. Yes for all time. The rumble of the earthquake dislodging the stone and unsealing the empty tomb was the sound of God’s YES reverberating throughout the universe.
And those who were the first witnesses of that Easter event became God’s yes people. Simon Peter, who had earlier said “no” to Jesus three different times when questioned in the high priest’s courtyard, got to say “yes” three times over when the resurrected Jesus met him on the shore of the Sea of Galilee: “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? Yes, Lord; you know that I love you…Yes, Lord; you know that I love you…Lord; you know everything; you know that I love you (John 21: 15-17).”
Instead of being excluded for his previous failure of nerve, Peter was rewarded with apostolic authority and became a great leader in the church. Later during an encounter with a Roman Centurion named Cornelius, Peter recognized the Holy Spirit at work in the life of his adversary. Instead of perpetuating the pattern of exclusion that always said “no” to contact with gentiles, Peter baptized Cornelius and his entire household and was inspired to proclaim God’s emphatic “YES” with these memorable words: “I truly perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation, anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God (Acts 10: 34-35).”
Paul of Tarsus was a young Pharisee who had committed himself to excluding followers of Jesus from the Jewish community and had been given special dispensation to hunt down and persecute members of The Way after his role in instigating the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. But while Paul was on the road to Damascus, his life changed forever when he was blinded by a bright light and heard the voice of the resurrected Jesus inviting him to say “yes” to the all-inclusive love of God. From that day on, Paul dedicated his life to sharing the good news of the gospel with those who had previously been excluded. It was Paul who penned the beautiful affirmation of God’s emphatic “YES” to the world:
“If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? …Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8: 31-39). “
Those who first witnessed God’s emphatic “YES” on Easter morning went on to found a community of people who said “yes” to the world. They had a radically different orientation to the world because, like Jesus, they embodied God’s “YES” in their daily lives: yes you are welcome in my home, yes I will share what I have with you, yes I will pray with you and study with you and serve with you, yes you matter, yes you can make a difference, yes you have unique gifts to share, yes you can be like Jesus, yes you can change the world, yes faith, hope and love endure forever.
That religious community, founded on the resurrection “YES” of Easter morning, is our religious community. For 2000 years God’s “YES” has been proclaimed and embodied and shared with the world through those of us who have been gathering every Easter morning to sing our joyful Alleluia’s.
I don’t know whose religion needs special legal protection to preserve their right to exclude, but it isn’t ours. We people of the resurrection know that nothing has the power to exclude anyone from the love of God that was revealed to all the world on the day when the earth shook and the stone rolled and the empty tomb of Jesus was unsealed forever. Amen.
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