Everyone knows what it is like to be excluded. You are not welcome at the cool kids’ table. You are picked last for the baseball team at recess. You do not get the promotion to the blowing and going team at work. The love of your life tells you she does not love you anymore. Exclusion hurts. 

Churches should not exclude, but we do. We have a thousand subtle ways of telling you this church is not for you. It can be as simple as a look that says, “That is my seat, not yours.”  Sometimes the message is spoken out loud. A shameful chapter of my own church’s history includes a time when deacons were to meet African-Americans at the door and direct them to the nearest African-American congregation. That was wrong. 

Churches can shame people and chase them away. Church people can judge you if you are divorced, have had an abortion, struggle with sexual sin or identity, have an addiction, or vote for a different political party.   Funny how the very thing Jesus told us not to do (“Judge not, lest ye be judged”) we excel in doing. 

Jesus reached out to people on the fringe. The lepers were excluded; Jesus touched them. The woman with the issue of blood was considered “unclean;” Jesus healed her and told her she was forgiven. The woman caught in the act of adultery (I always wondered where the man was) was about to be stoned; Jesus told her, “I do not condemn you; go and sin no more.”  The blind man was told his sin was the reason he was blind; Jesus healed him. Zacchaeus was excluded because he was a traitor and a collaborator; Jesus went to his house to eat with him. The sinful woman was condemned by Simon; Jesus forgave her.   

Jesus warned us to deal with the logs in our own eyes before we try to point out the specks in other people’s eyes. We are not very good at this. Maybe before we post something on Social Media, we should ask God to show us our own shortcomings. 

My friend George Bullard recently shared his memories of serving as a pastor in a rough section of Louisville, Kentucky. This is what he said:

“When I ponder the people in that church and community, I think of the following things.

·        They robbed our house two weeks before Christmas. But they still needed the unconditional love of God.

·        The police periodically chased people down the alley outside our bedroom window, shooting at them. But they still needed the unconditional love of God.

·        There were drug raids about every two months at the house directly across the street. But they still needed the unconditional love of God.

·        My wife’s jewelry box ended up in the bedroom of the mother of the boys who robbed our house. Just two blocks away. But they still needed the unconditional love of God.

·        We varied our pattern and tricked people who knew someone left our church each Sunday with the offering of mostly cash. Church-offering robberies occurred periodically in the community. But they still needed the unconditional love of God.

·        The teenage boys who robbed our house were the younger brothers of the older teens who stole our church sound system. But they still needed the unconditional love of God.

·        Two teenage girls in the church less than 15 years old had “back alley” abortions. But they still needed the unconditional love of God.

·        A sixteen-year-old girl who was seven months pregnant walked more than a mile in 20-degree weather without a coat to get to our church because she heard we could give her food. The father of her baby had abandoned her. She still needed the unconditional love of God.

·        Vacation Bible School was always in the evenings. A few women who taught in VBS said they would be there to lead their class if their husbands drank enough beer after work to fall asleep on the couch. They still needed the unconditional love of God.”

We might want to only put together “pretty people” to come to our churches. The truth is there are no put-together “pretty people.”  There are simply people who need the grace and unconditional love of God. And the church needs to welcome “All who are weary and burdened.”  Jesus and his church are here to give you rest, to share with you the unconditional love of God, to love you as you are, and to help you find where you need to be.

There is an old hymn l love that says, “Whosoever surely meaneth me…”  When Jesus came to save the world, he had you in mind. Whosoever surely meaneth you – and all the people you judge.