Reflections on Matthew 28: 16-20; Acts 11: 1-18

These two passage have so much in them that could be preached:

1.  The image of some of the eleven disciples on the mountaintop with Jesus still doubting.

2. The fact that only eleven were with Christ on the mountaintop.

3. What does it mean that Jesus is with us always?

4.  Peter's switch on the issue of dietary regulations and his being called on the carpet for reaching out to Gentiles.

5. The way in which the Holy Spirit works.

That's probably just a few threads I could have pulled this week in sermon preparation.  But, I also liked the sermon I ended up with Sunday.  It was fun to preach and had some strong images and reflections.

“Jesus Is the One Who Expands the Circle” April 28, 2013; FPC, Troy, Jesus is the one who series

Introduction: I spent six years in what I would call coaching hell. Because of my daughters' ages, I coached 1^st and 2^nd grade soccer for six straight years.

I discovered that not only did I make things too complicated, but that my way of explaining things generally used too many words. Yes, that glazed look on the faces that I see some weeks while doing the Time with young disciples greeted me at nearly every soccer practice.

It took me awhile, but I finally learned how to get the girls to make a circle, which was often necessary for drills and games we played at practice.

The simple command – “girls make a circle” would be followed by the strangest looking things. So I learned that first they had to stand shoulder to shoulder, then step back while holding hands; finally, they could be instructed to take a step or two back to make the circle really bigger.

Expanding the circle could happen, but you had to work at it.

This morning I want to reflect for a few minutes about Jesus' desire for us to work at expanding our circle to include others.

Move 1: Our desire to be included, can often lead to excluding others.

a. From an early age, we have a tendency to include and exclude.

 

1. Can you think of examples when you have been excluded?  Or included?

2. Most of us can remember being left out;

3. most of us, if we're honest, can remember intentionally leaving someone out.

b. We find reasons to exclude

1. Sometimes we have really good reasons.

2. For the Israelites it was part of who they were as God's chosen people.

3. The men were circumcised.

4. All of them worshiped one God instead of the multiple pagan gods.

4. They created lots of rules to help define their distinctiveness.

5. That included lots f dietary rules.

6. That made it, of course, easy to identify who was in and who was out. Whenever you saw them it, it would;d become readily apparent.

7. What made them distinctive also made them exclusive.

c. Our reasons may be a little less theological, but we we still find a rationale for excluding.

1. Sometimes it's because of numbers  -- you can only invite 8 people to you birthday party;

2. sometimes it is by preference -- I don't really want so-and-so to hang out with us Saturday night;

3. sometimes it is by happenstance -- if thought you were out of town, so I didn't invite you to join us

4. Maybe it is because of others that we did invite – they are getting along so, we'd better not invite so-and-so.

We are pretty good at excluding others, keeping them outside our circles.

Move 2: But then Jesus commands that we expand our circles to include others.

a. He's been doing throughout his ministry.

1. hemorrhaging woman

2. Leper

3. Woman who had committed adultery

b. Just before Jesus ascends to heaven in Matthew, he exhorts the disciples to go into the world to baptize and teach (we know it now as the Great Commission).

1. do not want to make this overly dramatic, but these are Jesus' final words.

2. Could have been – hang in there? Or take care of yourselves.

3. Jesus chooses to send the disciples into the world to invite others into their group.

4. Not just a few, but anyone and everyone.

5. Jesus' final words that reveal his great desire to extend his love to all the world.

c. This is the point that is made to Peter in his dream.

1. the long tradition of God's people being separated from others by dietary restrictions has been called into question.

2. I would suggest that by this time the dietary restrictions were less about being distinctively God's people and more about making sure that everyone knew that we were not like those other people.

3. Peter's dream challenges him to ignore the dietary restrictions and expand the circle to include everyone, even those other people.

Move 3: As Jesus calls us to expand our circle we discover our common need.

a.   Two Souls Indivisible: the friendship that saved Two POWs in Vietnam by James Hirsch details how two pilots, Fred Cherry and Porter Halyburton, survived as cellmates in a POW camp.

1. The North Vietnamese captors assumed that color would divide the prisoners. Probably a fair assumption for the 1960s.

2. They put these two particular men together because they thought that forcing Cherry, an African-American, and Halyburton, a Caucasian, to live together would be a punishment for them.

3. As it turned out, they had to care for each other. Cherry needed lots of attention from his new roommate to survive his injuries. Men who perhaps would not have been seen together eating in a restaurant in the United States found themselves changing bandages and feeding each other. Their common need to survive overcame their differences. In the seven months they shared a cell, however, they grew close together and very dependent on one another.

4. Although they both were held captive for approximately six more years, their attest to the how their time together shaped them to into people who could survive until they were released.

b. As we live out Jesus' command to go into the world baptizing and teaching, we are reminded that there is a world full of people out there who share a common need with us – the need of a savior.

1. we share our common need for someone to give us unconditional love.

3. people who may be different than we are in lots of categories we might use, but the same in their need to know Christ.

c. Imagine the temptation the disciples must have faced to not extend themselves.

1. the world out there had brought them nothing but trouble.

2. they have live through the pain and depression of watching Jesus die and then the exhilaration of discovering him resurrected among them.

3. They have their little group of friends who share with them their faith in Christ and their relationship with him.

4. how tempting it must have been just to stop right there.

c. But Jesus' pushes them.

1. there are still people out there who need to be in the circle.

2. Instead of settling for the circle they already have, Jesus says redraw the circle to include others.

Move 3: We are not in the circle alone – Jesus is still in the circle with us.

a. Good news – We are not alone in our efforts.

b. Challenge – Jesus keeps pushing.; he keeps saying step back and make the circle bigger. Include more people.

Conclusion: When I was in college, I served as the President of the Interfraternity Council.  One of my jobs was to match bids extended with those seeking a bid.  Fraternities would turn in their lists and potential members would turn in their lists.  They would be matched according to preferences.  What a horrible feeling to realize that there were a handful of young men who listed every fraternity as a choice they would accept only to discover that no fraternity had chosen to accept them.

They desperately wanted to be in someone's circle, and no one wanted them.

Jesus invites everyone into his circle. Go and tell the world.