Family Reunions... Lynchings or Love-Ins?

Michael and I are talking about going to a family reunion in January, a Baptist family reunion. It is the first Baptist event that has caught my imagination in a long, long while. The purpose is not to start a new denomination but to establish connection and respect between many Baptist groups. There will be African American Baptists and white Baptists, liberal Baptists and evangelical conservative Baptists, political Baptists, southern Baptists and northern Baptists, many races, cultures and theologies but all Baptist. Some of the public Baptists like Marian Wright Edelman and Bill Moyers and Jimmy Carter have earned my respect through the years for the living out of their calling in the glare and gaze of an often unsympathetic culture. Other Baptists attending and leading have lived their calling as pastor or teacher or lay person or minister at large somewhat removed from the hurly burly world of public religion but all are searching for what is common and shared among them, not what divides them. There will be women ministers, women pastors of churches and folks who don’t believe women should be ordained in this group, probably. There will be Republican and Democratic Baptists but political affiliations are not the measuring standard for this group. The planning committee has chosen Jesus’ words from his first (and only) sermon in his hometown as the guiding light for this gathering.
Jesus quoted Isaiah... "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord" as his text. Jesus then announced that this scripture had been fulfilled that day, in Nazareth, in that synagogue, and everyone was so pleased. They were bragging on Joseph’s boy. The RSV version says "They wondered at the gracious words that proceeded out of his mouth."
But then Jesus began to meddle. He reminded them that God had done wondrous things for all God’s children, not just the Jews. God had used people from alien lands and religions and cultures to accomplish great things. They were filled with wrath and launched a lynching party, pushing Jesus out of the city and up to a cliff where they intended to push him over. Just like us, whatever our religious identification, our first instinct is to cast out the one who bears a message we do not want to hear.
This powerful text calls Christians to follow in the steps of Jesus and Isaiah by tending those who are overlooked and undertended. It reminds us that we are all strangers in a foreign land and the only way we can survive is to care for one another. Those who can, do and those who need, receive. The give and take, the receiving and giving, flow from the Source, The Spirit of the Lord. Often when I find myself weary of peace and social justice work, I need a balancing act. The Spirit of the Lord, the seeking first for the Source of our Being, the Love that called us all into existence must be the Ground on which I stand, the Rose that lifts my spirit with a sweet fragrance, the Breath that keeps me living in hope, love, joy and peace during times that offer precious little of them. And when I read this text, I find all the doing of good flows from the Spirit. Battle fatigue sets in when we forget to whom we belong and do not visit the Home Place often enough.
"Who are your people?" is a question heard throughout the South and a question that demands an answer. My people are the ones who love God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit in all the shapes and forms and names that we have created to describe the indescribable. My people are the ones doing the work of the Lord in many different ways... visiting women’s prisons, visiting the nursing homes, working to abolish the death penalty, serving as guardian ad litems, sitting with the old and the young, bringing food to the grieving, serving meals at the shelter, those who provide shade in a weary, hot land that has little mercy for the weak and weary.
So bless you all, you angels of mercy who spring from the Source and walk among us as bright beacons of the Light. You are my people and I am proud of you, my kinfolk. May we all, whatever our calling and however we define our faith, remember from whom we come and to whom we will return. May the Spirit of the Lord fall upon us all these holy advent days so that we might show how greatly we have been loved by the breadth and width of our love for others. Amen.