I really wish more churches would preach this: there are no walls.
The attached Naked Pastor cartoon is one of the most powerful he’s ever done (and he even managed a touch of poetry too).
Over and over and over again in his ministry, Jesus demonstrated that those people the religious leaders were excluding and judging were actually accepted and welcomed by Jesus. The only people Jesus ever warned about being “outside” were those religious leaders themselves.
Am I saying “everyone will be saved”? No. Some people don’t want to be saved. What I am saying is that it is mainly the people who want to close the doors for others who are choosing to not be saved. They’re choosing instead to build something that is the opposite of the Kingdom of God: they’re choosing to build an exclusive, exclusionary club, and so – by their own approach – they will be allowed to choose a future where live in a space as small as they wanted it to be, as excluded as they were exclusionary, as rejected as they were rejecting and as sad as they made many seekers of love and truth. Their hell has already started.
This is not what God wants. The story of the history of God is a story of ever expanding inclusion and acceptance (or more accurately, of our ever improving understanding of God’s inherent inclusionary character). From one man and his family, to his tribe and a nation, to their neighbours and eventually to the ends of the earth, and all peoples, nations, tribes and tongues. The story starts in an empty garden and ends in a limitless, sustainable city, open to everyone and capable of accommodating us all.
And, yes: it specifically includes all genders as well.
