Is It Kosher?

John Robinson, pastor to the Pilgrims, told them before they left on the Mayflower, “God yet has more light and truth to break forth from his holy word.” When did we stop believing that? Even within the Bible we can see that process. Look at what portion of Old Testament Law is spent on describing what is clean and unclean. Yet in a single vision, Peter hears God telling him that “all things are now clean” and the course of Christianity changed from exclusively a sect of Judaism to including all who would come. Christians have ever since considered the kosher laws of the Hebrew Bible null and void, or at least optional.

One of the sad legacies of the clean/unclean debate is that some people were considered unclean, which led them to be rejected by civil society. In Jesus’ day these would have included lepers, prostitutes, and those left less than whole by disease and disability. Yet these were the very people who sought out Jesus…and more importantly those whom Jesus sought out.

Even sadder is that two millennia later, after more than sufficient time to reflect on the words and example of Jesus, as well as the teaching of the Apostles, we still don’t seem to get it. Somehow homeless, poor and addicted people are unclean, and thus not given equal treatment, with at least the implication that they are not as deserving as the rest of us who are clean. And even if we reserve the right to debate the place of homosexuals in the church, how can we as a society deny rights to homosexual couples that we grant to heterosexual couples? If Jesus were walking the streets of America today, who do you think would follow him…and whom would he seek to spend his time with? Think hard about your answer to that question because the next logical question is, “whom do you seek to spend your time with?”