News

Have you ever considered how fortunate you are to be a Canadian?  For all the griping about taxes and complaining about the weather and the worries about health care and crime rates and  all the rest, Canada is not really a bad place to be.  If you are not so sure of that, then ask the Europeans, who call us the land of opportunity and adventure and admire our vast lakes and forests and mountains and prairies.  Ask the Asians, who call Canada the "Golden Mountain".  Ask the many people of the world who desperately long for the peace and the prosperity and the sense of personal safety that most Canadians so very much take for granted!  

Canada is actually a very desirable country and there are many, many people who would cherish a birth certificate like yours or naturalization papers like yours.  Yet, there is something they know all too well about Canada.  Unless you have close relatives to sponsor you, or unless you are wealthy enough for your money to be your sponsor, getting Canadian citizenship is more a dream than anything else.  Most of the people who would love to live here will never get that chance because they don't have that kind of a sponsor!  

How fortunate we are that it is not that way with the family of God!   With God's family, there is plenty of room and an open invitation.  With God's family, the doors are open to us no matter how undesirable we might be to the governments of this world.  If God has created in you a desire to be in His family, then He has also made the way open for you to get there.  If you want to be in His family, then you have the perfect sponsor who will not only stand up for you and bring you in, but He will stay with you to keep you in!  

You see, Jesus is that sponsor.  In His name, the doors of God's great country are open to you, no matter how foreign you think you might be!  Through Jesus God moves you from being a foreigner to being part of the family!

 

For most of Bible times, there were strict rules against foreigners when it came to a person`s place in Jewish society, but things were quite open to foreigners when it came to actually living and working in what was once the territory of David`s Kingdom.

 By Jesus` day, the Roman authorities guaranteed freedom of movement throughout the Roman Empire.  Roman citizens especially had the right to settle in any territory under Roman rule and enjoy all of the rights and privileges granted by Roman law.   The Romans, however, during most of their history of occupation of other lands,  did not interfere to a very great degree with the ethnic and religious customs of the territories they conquered.  They often left it to the local populations to decide whom they would accept as one of their own.

This is why you could have completely Geek cities in Palestine called the Decapolis.  This was a region of Greek colonies where the population did not mingle at all with the Jews in the area, but where people with a Greek background simply stuck with other Greeks.

This is also why you could have Roman soldiers set up homesteads in Jewish territory and still stay quite separate from the Jews.   Romans were granted land in return to their service to Rome, and the rules where the same in Palestine as they were in Gaul or Germania or any other territory under Roman occupation.   Romans would farm the land and hire servants or own slaves and be surrounded by Jewish farms, but they could live their lives as separately as they wanted.   They could simply shop at Roman stores and mingle with other Romans socially and worship in their own temples and barely give their Jewish neighbours a glance.  

As a general rule, the Jewish people liked it that way.  Sure, they were very annoyed that they had Roman rulers at all, but they were also quite jealous of their status as pure Jews.    The Jews had all sorts of obstacles in place to make it difficult to accept foreigners into their own culture.   Their many cleanliness customs and diet restrictions were not all that appealing to outsiders.   Their standoffishness and their sense of being a people set apart made it about as socially awkward to become a Jew as it would be for you or me to adapt to being Amish or  Hutterite.   If that wasn`t bad enough, the religious leaders set up many, many roadblocks to anyone who wanted to join the Jews in worshipping the Living God!

If foreigners believed in God but did not want to become Jews in every sense, then they were simply not welcome in the worship life of the people.  They were not allowed in the temple.  They were not allowed in the synagogues.  They were not allowed to take classes in what the Scriptures had to say unless they wanted to take all the Jewish laws upon themselves, too.  Foreigners who believed in God but still wanted to remain Greek or Roman had to figure out God's Word for themselves in their own homes.  They could not worship the Living God in public. 

In fact, foreigners --even God-fearing foreigners-- were so shut out by Jewish rules and regulations that Jews were not allowed to go near them or to touch them or to enter into their homes without becoming ceremonially unclean.   The religious leaders of the Jews could not talk to non-Jews on a Sabbath, and if they had to talk to them on other days, they had to go through a special ritual afterwards to make themselves pure again! 

Indeed, those rules were so strict, that even a man like the centurion, who went as far as building a synagogue for the Jews, would not have been allowed in that synagogue at all,  and would not have been allowed to talk to any rabbi on a Sabbath!  The Roman soldier had to send some elders of the Jews to talk to Jesus on his behalf if he wanted to respect the Jewish rules because the rules did not allow him to talk to Jesus directly.   He was not allowed to speak personally with Jesus because the rules and regulations of a religion that thought it had all the answers had become an obstacle to truly knowing our Lord!

We might not have the same problem as the centurion when it comes to our religion, but there are things that can make us feel foreign just the same.  For many people that foreign feeling really comes out  simply when they enter into a church.   

There aren`t too many things in today`s world that are like a church.  Where else to have to sit on a bench that you share with five or so other people who might end up being so packed in with you that you barely have room for your shoulders?  In sports halls and theatres, everyone at least gets their own personal space!  Then again, where else do people actually sing out loud together anymore?  If anyone is going to do that, chances are it will be around a campfire or something.   Even just sitting there and looking at someone talk at you is not a common experience to people who have never been to church.  You might see something like that at a political rally, but how many people have ever gone to one of those?  It has come to the point where just the concept of mingling with people of every age group is starting to be a very foreign experience to many people.   The only time they actually do things in public, they generally end up with people their own age and skill level, like in a classroom or in a sports league.   It is not normal for such people to actually have some person from a different generation who is not a relative know anything about them!    Finally, we have come to the point where a new generation of people has simply never had any experience in a church before.  If anything, they went to one for someone`s funeral or, at least heard some preacher speak in the funeral chapel.  Stepping into a church is like stepping into another world.

This doesn`t mean, though, that we have to change our churches and our customs just to appeal to people who have never been in a church.  That would be like bulldozing down the medieval towns of Europe and replacing them with North American style cities in hopes that more Americans will come to visit!   A person who truly is open to different experiences is more than willing to change and to adapt and to accept the differences.   Such a person would even be attracted to them and they would be more than willing to respect them.   They key, though, is to respect the visitor, too, and help that visitor adapt.  The key is to not use those differences in such a way that they remain out of bounds for a foreigner.  

The Roman Centurion clearly respected the differences that were found among the Jews in their culture and their religion.    He clearly did not expect the Jews to change in order to accommodate him.   He donated the money that enabled the synagogue to be built, all the while knowing he would not be allowed inside of it.   All that the Roman Centurion cared about is that he would have access to our Lord.  What mattered most to him is that he could still have some way to ask the help of this great Rabbi, Jesus.  What mattered to him is that God was ready and willing, for the sake of Jesus Christ, to help him in his need.

The Roman Centurion may not have had all the book learning and access to worship and Bible study that the Jews around him had, but he still had the most important thing.  Jesus said of this man who had been denied so much by the Jews, "I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel."   The centurion had the faith that brought him to knowledge that really matters.  He had the faith that recognized Jesus.  He had the faith that trusted that Jesus would convert even him from foreigner to family.  He had the faith that cut through the false teachings and the misunderstandings of a religion that did not recognize the promised Messiah and still refuses to believe in the Trinity.  He had the faith by which Jesus could provide for everything that he would ever need.  The Bible tells us in Psalm 111:10, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow His precepts have good understanding."    This man, who was considered to be so much a foreigner by the Jews, was a man who truly belonged because he had the wisdom and understanding that comes only by faith.  He had the wisdom and understanding that moves us from being a foreigner to being family, all for the sake of our Lord.

The way that a foreigner becomes family is when the family guides him or her into the family.  They must be invited in and shown all the many details about family customs and expectations and all the rest,, not all at once, but gradually.    That person who has been adopted into the family or who marries into it will spend a lot of time observing and a lot of time listening.   What they need the most, though, is the sense that people value them.   They want the sense that the family cares.  They will be willing to make all sorts of personal changes and learn many different things as long as they are made to feel wanted and welcome. 

This is how God has worked on us all to bring us into His family.   Yes, God`s Word makes it painfully obvious at times just how foreign we are.  We are as sinful as God is perfect.   We are as ignorant as God is all-knowing.   Because of what we were born to be, we could not be any more foreign and alien to God as we are.   We were born into the family of the world.  We were born into the family of sin.  We were born with hearts that were by their very nature set against God.  Yet, we were also born into a world where God is present and where He greatly desires to change us into immigrants and to sponsor us into a whole new world!

Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:19, "through Jesus, we have access to the Father by one Spirit.  Consequently, we are no longer foreigners and aliens but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household."   Through the forgiveness of your sins, you have that access.  Through Jesus' suffering and death on your behalf, you have that special citizenship.  By the great miracle of our Lord's resurrection, you have that belonging.  You have the forgiveness of sins.  You have the grace and the mercy of God.  

By all those things, Jesus does care for you.  He does listen to you.  He does help you in faith and move you through faith.  By those things you have every reason to take part in Christian living and in the Christian community even if you feel overwhelmed by things that you don't understand!  

The ways of God`s kingdom can get pretty deep.  They can get pretty profound, but that is no excuse to forget about them or try to change them to make them less foreign.  It is our duty as we grow in faith to learn the spiritual truths that are expressed in spiritual words.  It is our duty as we grow in faith to also grow in Biblical knowledge so that we can become familiar with God`s way of doing things and  live all the more comfortably in His Church.  

The writer of the Hebrews wrote, "Solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.  Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on in maturity." (Hebrews 5:14) By constant use of your faith you must be trained to distinguish good from evil.  By constant learning and growing you must be equipped to recognize and be comfortable with the truth of God's Word.   By the continual experience of living in God`s family, doing the right thing and the God-pleasing thing becomes normal and familiar.   You get to the point, that no matter how foreign you felt the first time you went to church, the week doesn`t feel right anymore if you were not in church on Sunday!   

I have noticed that some of the most Canadian of Canadians are people who were not born in our country.   While many people who were born here barely can muster any enthusiasm to sing Oh Canada, the new Canadians sing at the top of their voices.   While some people who have never known anything other than being Canadian seem to spend more time wishing they were Americans, many new Canadians burst with pride and gratitude for being able to call themselves Canadian.   These people who once were foreigners are like that because they know what the world is like without the things we take for granted.  They can become quite an inspiration for the Canadians who appreciate being Canadian but just don`t have that same sense of enthusiasm.

In a similar way, some of the most enthusiastic Christians are the people who know what they were missing in the days when they were foreigners.   They have much to offer people who don`t remember what life was like before they became Children of God.  They can be an example to us, too, to encourage us and stir our gratitude for what it means to have Jesus as our sponsor in heaven!  They can ignite in us an appreciation for everything that God has given to us.  They can repay our efforts to welcome them by inspiring us with that same kind of joy that they know in being welcomed into the family of God!

Jesus did not change His ways in the least in order to make us feel welcome in God`s family.  He simply did those things that needed to be done to guide us and to lead us past our sins and to the forgiveness of God.    He welcomed us and changed us so that we would fit in to God`s Word and God`s ways.    He made you belong and made it clear to you that you do indeed belong to God.     

May God bless you with the wonderful knowledge that you belong to Him for Jesus' sake.  May God bless you in this so that you, too, become welcoming and accepting in helping to prepare others for membership into God`s family.   May you, in turn be blessed to appreciate what it means to be at home with God for the sake of Jesus Christ.  Amen.