Throughout the Gospel we witness how Jesus mingled with the alienated – those formerly disregarded by the spiritual elite: Sinners and tax collectors, foreigners and sick.
Before Jesus – in the ancient Jewish society – the population was separated into groups. Those who were clean, and those who were unclean. Those who belonged to the Jewish ethnical group, and those who did not. Just to mention two of the many groups into which people were separated.
The goal in this society was always to strive for being on the good side of any given separation. This could not always be achieved. But it was the main goal of human existence.
I am happy that I am not a pastor in such a society. Being a pastor, I properly would – without questions asked – be placed in many of the better groups. But still, I am happy not to be a part of such a society.
Why so? Well, because to me it removes the individuals from what truly is important: Pursuing growth in faith. Something that I do not believe is obtained through static pursuit of fulfilling a law. Rather something that I believe is obtained through succumbing to spiritual stimulates. Stimulates that occur daily in our world through the work of the Holy Spirit.
So, with the Gospel in hand – with the exemplary stories of Jesus and how he changed the Jewish society – how are we doing as a Church?
Pretty good, I believe, but there for sure is a challenge that we need to be aware of. Our challenge is that we do not create a society like the Jewish within our institution.
An institution. The danger of an institution is that it – to get structured – creates similar separations that were found within the ancient Jewish Society.
What creates separations within an ethnical group and an institutional group might differ. But the danger is there. Because just as a society works well with separations, an institution does so as well.
It creates an understandable hierarchy. It creates a framework for people to easily relate to. It creates – for better and for worse – stability.
Luther’s critic of the Catholic Church related to just this. The Catholic Church was a Church in which a strong hierarchy had established itself.
With the Pope in the prime positions, salvation was administered by the Church, within the Church, and with the separations that was created.
Luther – in what grew into his Church – dismantled all of this. To him the Church should not abandon the separations found within the ancient Jewish Society all to create new separations. No, the Church should exist without any separations.
Yes, we have pastors and bishops. Yes, we even have a world organization with a president in charge. A Danish president at the time being.
But still, there is no hierarchy. Because first; the Bible is to be deciphered by all. Second; everyone is encouraged to share faith – both through various activities but also even from the pulpit.
Hence, regarding the institution, in the Lutheran tradition we are naturally doing well as the hierarchy has been dismantled as much as possible.
But are there still issues that we are not aware of? Are we still focusing on separations instead of doing as Jesus: inviting all equally?
I believe we are. We are focusing on separations. Maybe not deliberately. Maybe not willingly. But we are. We are because we as humans understand and perceive the world more easily through separations.
Through separations – and through comparisons – we determine a lot of things: false and truth, good and bad.
But also, our entire world is created in such as well: light and dark, night and day.
Because of this it is in its way not hard to understand why we do this. But more importantly it becomes to remind ourselves that we do so.
We cannot hinder ourselves from doing it. But we can make ourselves aware of it. And we can try not to rely on these too much.
Rather we should rely on Jesus. Rely on God. The sole being not needing to deal with matters through separations, but in its original state.
“… new wine into new wineskins.” I believe this sentence in its own way describes all that I have been talking about so far.
God did not become a part of our world through Jesus to deal with our world in the same way that we do. No. God came to us through Jesus to show how God truly is greater than all we can possibly imagine.
Something that God is because God does not need to deal with things through the world – through what is old. God can perceive the world in a new way. A completely different way to ours. A way that needs new skins.
Therefore, let us pray:
Dear Lord,
We thank you for your new wine and your new wineskins. Make us – as much as it is possible – able to perceive the world through your eyes.
For that we pray this Sunday in your name.
Amen.