Sermon for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

This story reminds me of the reading we have this morning from Isaiah, the prophet we call Third Isaiah.

He is prophesying in Jerusalem.

the people of the exile have returned home to Jerusalem, and they are battered,

yet they are rebuilding Jerusalem.

And Isaiah preaches something that must have sounded almost reckless to the Jews who heard it.

Isaiah says, and the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, these I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful.

in my house of prayer.

For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.

My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.

Now we need to understand how revolutionary this was, how it broke open who was able to worship.

in the community because the law set forth in Deuteronomy had drawn hard lines around who was allowed to be part of worship.

Entire nations were named and barred from worship.

Children born of illicit unions and their descendants for

ten generations

were barred from worship.

and eunuchs were expressly excluded.

These were not casual social preferences.

This is written in the Torah.

It is understood as the very will, the very word of God.

That God willed some people are in and other people are out.

Maybe it's endemic in religious institutions to establish boundaries Just a second, I've got some confusion here.

Some empty pages crept into my sermon.

Maybe it's endemic in religious institutions to set up boundaries, to exclude, to make it us versus them.

I'll never forget when I was rector of the Episcopal Anglican Church in Munich, Germany.

I could tell that there was a woman who did not care for me.