Care for All People

Gospel: Luke 4: 24-30

The consistent message of Jesus in word and deed was that God loves all people without distinction, regardless of gender, class, religion, or status.  He cured and fed all who came to him without precondition; he taught us that God provides rain for the just and the unjust.  If we who are evil know how to give good things to our children, how much more will God do for us.  It is a pretty simple message.

Yet, we find a lot of people threatened by this message, as we do in today's Gospel portion where Jesus' own hometown seeks to kill him for this message  Do we not do likewise? Jesus provided access to God for all, and we have done the opposite.  As religion is no longer able to exclude people in civil society, it does so all the more within its walls, limiting access to its schools, communion table, and even for a humble blessing.  

In the beginning God created one human family, one common set of parents and one common origin in God.  Since then we have created the divisions of race, gender, class, religion, and a myriad of other distinctions that have no basis in reality so that we might keep God for ourselves and exclude others.  The death and resurrection of Jesus restores us back to our original state in Eden, and we are to live as such by caring for all and making God available to all.