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Who’s muttering against us?

“Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ ”

Luke 15:1-2

Is anyone “muttering” against or criticising the Church? And if so, for what are we being muttered against? The Scriptures tell us that Jesus was muttered against or criticised by respected and revered persons in 1st centuryJerusalem. They were shocked that Jesus would seem to welcome table fellowship with people who were regarded by the majority in society as immoral or unethical.

 

Is anyone muttering against the church of Jesus today for being too welcoming towards those who society regards as immoral and unethical? Or are we more likely to be muttered against by those who feel we are too condemning? Would Jesus be muttered against today?

 

Some years back, there was a clever video advertisement of a well-known luxury hotel chain that showed a traveller trudging through the snow in a forest, all alone. He feels lost and increasingly tired as he tries to navigate to a safe haven. With ominous music in the background, we see a pack of wolves, hidden by the forest, looking at this stranger, slowly closing in on him. The inevitable happens. The man collapses in exhaustion onto the snow-covered ground. He passes out as the wolves move ominously towards him.

 

The sombre music slowly fades and in its place comes soothing, welcoming music as the camera zooms onto the man dying in the snow. The man’s eyes open slowly. He is still alive. He hasn’t frozen to death or been torn apart by the wolves.

 

Instead, he has been saved by the wolves. They have surrounded his body, keeping him from freezing with the warmth of their own fur-covered bodies. Then the clever tag line of this hotel chain appears as the ad concludes: “To embrace a stranger as one’s own – it’s in our nature.” (https://youtu.be/ wZeS0Un3jwk)

 

Wolves welcoming and embracing human beings? Not what we usually think is possible or natural. Humans and wolves in the wild are, by nature, not only strangers to one another, but enemies. But wouldn’t it be nice if our understanding of what is “natural” was wrong? Maybe then we might be a bit more willing to embrace a stranger as one’s own.

 

People muttered and criticised Jesus for going against nature by welcoming the stranger and enemy. One does not, by nature, welcome or love one’s enemies. But Jesus did, and mainstream society muttered against him. Is anyone muttering against the Church of Jesus Christ today? And if so, for what are we being muttered against?  

Picture by stuartmiles/Bigstock.com

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The Rev Dr Gordon Wong was elected President of Trinity Annual Conference (TRAC) in 2012 for the quadrennium. He has been a Methodist pastor for 29 years, and was a lecturer at Trinity Theological College since 1995.

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