Join the club

 

Groucho Marx once said: “I would never join a club that would accept someone like me as a member.”

Exclusivity – it’s everywhere. Identity can be as much as who you are not as who you are, who you won’t eat with as who you will, who you won’t pray and play with as who you will.

Yet the Scripture I focused on today invites us not to exclusivity but to inclusivity.

The people of Israel considered themselves a separate people, chosen especially by God.  And indeed that was how God designated them.  But Paul reminds us that Abraham was blessed by God to be the father of many (not one) nations and that we’re all descendants of Abraham in the spirit if not in the flesh and all share in the status of chosen people (Romans 4:13-18).

Jesus speaks a complicated set of sayings in Luke’s Gospel: all those who believe in Jesus and witness to this belief are part of the Kingdom.  But there’s also a turn—those who reject the Holy Spirit separate themselves from God (Luke 12:8-12).

Inclusivity and exclusivity are not absolutes and opposites but also relative and relations terms.  The people of Israel are indeed the chosen people and are loved unconditionally by God, but they’re also judged and reprimanded insofar as they obey and serve their God.  Jesus invites everyone into the Kingdom unconditionally but also asks that they behave in certain ways too.  Jesus tells a lot of stories about who is included such as wise maidens (Matthew 25:1-13) and the poor and who is excluded such as foolish maidens and the rich (Luke 12:16-21) – all are invited but whether they’re ultimately included or excluded has to do with how they treat one another.

We’re all invited to the table, but we’re asked to be good guests – to care for those around us, acknowledge the right of all to be there, share what we have, and to make room.  Anyone who has a large family knows a lot about making room.  When I was a kid, we often had a lot of friends or relatives over to the house as dinner guests.  My parents would make room for them by setting up a “kid’s table”—often a card table or tv trays set up in another room of the house.  I often felt that having someone eat in another part of the house was just not right, no matter how old they were.  Squeezing at the table is not always comfortable but it’s infinitely comforting.

Clearly we’re to work for inclusivity—to recognize Christ in all, to invite all to Christ.  It’s not for us to exclude, to judge, to reject.  And, as Jesus reminds us, if some should leave the table, invite them back, put a ring on their fingers and bring out a calf (Luke 15:11-32).  It’s Jesus’ place, not ours, to ultimately judge who belongs to the kingdom.  We can take comfort in the fact that ours is a judge who looks for the missing coin, the lost sheep, the person up in the tree—and ours is a judge who rejoices with heaven when we are found and brought home (Luke 15).

I’m not so sure about Groucho, but I would certainly join a club that would accept anyone, even me, as a member.