Level ground

Four neat lines.

We file forward singing about the Father’s deep love for us even as we hear our own voice scoffing.

Here the ground is level. It doesn’t matter how old you are or how you vote.

All are welcome. The table is wide.

The body and the blood are for us.

Paul and Silas had followed the Holy Spirit to Philippi.

God was preparing to build the church there.

An influential woman.

An exploited demon-possessed slave girl delivered in the name of Jesus. 

A suicidal jailer and his family.

This is the start of the church in Philippi (Acts 16).

Hardly an auspicious beginning. But isn’t that like Jesus?

Using this unlikely crew to spread the gospel in their city and build the church against which the gates of hell could not prevail.

Isn’t that like Jesus?

I’m lucky to have grown up with parents who believed unflinchingly that the table is wide. I remember all kinds of folks finding their way to our living room, often pouring out their hearts and asking tough questions for hours. Missionaries and misfits. Upstanding citizens and not-so-much. Friends of friends and teenagers scared of demons. Hurting families that had been excluded from their church. Mormons in their Sunday best and one guy that we’re pretty sure was an angel. They’d sip iced tea and munch on homemade cookies and many of them would come to faith there. In my living room.

Isn’t that like Jesus?

Using this unlikely crew to spread the gospel in their city and build the church against which the gates of hell could not prevail.

Voices all around tell us to draw lines. To divide people up into us and them. To decide who is in and who is out. But, friends, that’s not Jesus.

Nope.

The ground is level here.

At his feet.

At the cross.

His love is big enough.

All are welcome. The table is wide.

God is ready to use us all to spread the gospel in our cities and build the church upon which the gates of hell will not prevail.

Isn’t that like Jesus?