Circuit Thoughts

You’re walking along with your friends and all of the sudden, out of nowhere it happens. This crazed person whom you have never seen immediately comes to you and begs for your help. This is exactly what happened to Christ as he was walking to Tyre and Sidon. Not only did he not know this person, but this person was also a woman and not Jewish.

In Jesus’ day, Jews did not mingle with non-Jews. And you especially stayed away from women who would openly confront a man. Jesus was well within his rights as a rabbi and as a Jew to ignore her and leave her be.

Now, look at it from the woman’s point of view. She heard that Jesus could heal anything. She heard of his kind heart and of his miracles. She also knows that it could mean her life if she did what she was planning. But her daughter was sick, and there was no cure. Curing people of demons is not for the G.P. This was an all-or-nothing act. The desperate act of a desperate parent.

Jesus opened a dialogue and would eventually break the norms of the time so that a little girl could go on and live a normal life. Now, what I want us to focus on was not the curing of a demonic, but the breaking of ritualistic traditions.

That’s right. In that short amount of time, Christ crossed a barrier that had been laid down hundreds of years before. Jews did not interact with Gentiles, especially Canaanites. Yet here was Jesus, curing this woman’s child. What are we learning here today?

There are around 300 different denominations of the Church in the United States. That isn’t even counting the “non-denominational”. Each denomination has its rituals and beliefs. They each have their standards and regulations of who can and cannot be a participant in their church. Their ministers follow rules and are bound by books of Discipline or Statements of Faith. The result is only a few get to participate in any given church.

My friends, if your rules and traditions keep you from doing the ministry of Christ, then you are not following Christ. When the great commission was given, it was to go to all the world, not, “go to just the people who think and act like you”. Every person in the world needs to hear and share in the Gospel, but we have installed gatekeepers and guards so that the “riffraff” will not taint our precious theology.

This is an indictment against my belief system as well as yours, and it is something that needs to change. No denomination has true faith, no matter what your pastor tells you. We are all sinners and thus fall short of the Glory of God. I think it is time for all churches to rethink what they are doing, and start working on building the Kingdom of God, not the church of (fill in the blank).

If Jesus can cross the cultural divide to heal a Gentile woman’s daughter, then we can cross the denominational divides and start being a church of believers.

Just a thought

Shalom my friends.

See you in church.