What sets us apart?
How are we each different? Unique?
The people of Israel are God’s chosen people, what sets them apart? How do they honor that calling?
By how they eat, how they dress, how they bath, how they speak, how they treat one another, how they treat those who are not Jewish.
What set Israel apart was much more than just a set of stated beliefs, it was a whole culture of belief and practice. To become like everybody else was to dishonor God and their calling to be God’s people.
In the book of Acts we see a profound change.
Peter has a vision, a sheet lowered from the sky, carrying all those animals that other people ate, but not God’s people, and Peter was told to Kill and Eat, and Peter, being a good Jew said no, and Peter and God went back and forth on this three times.
The concluding statement each time was, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”
Which meant that what set God’s people apart was something more.
Which meant that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was not just for the Jews, but for the whole world, all people.
It was a revelation and decision that almost destroyed the early Church. The Messiah was for everyone.
God’s people included the Jews but now it could be everyone else as well.
So what sets God’s people apart …now?
What is the culture of belief… now?
How are we not like everyone else?
John’s Gospel states it very clearly, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Love for one another sets us apart, that is the culture of belief, the culture of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, a people in love.
Otherwise we are just like everyone else, we lose our distinctiveness, we lose our uniqueness, we lose our faithfulness.
The Christian understanding of love is an interesting thing, Love is like God in that everything it touches becomes more and more unique and alive, rather than more and more the same.
Jesus is that love anointing each of us and unleashing and freeing each us to become a unique creation, and we each become part of that love spreading out and freeing a world that is in chains, chained to cultures of hate, scorn and indifference.
This is the sending off Sunday for our high school seniors.
I don’t really want to preach at them or give sage advice.
None of us really remembers that kind of thing anyway, it doesn’t touch our hearts or travel with us very far.
At the end of the (10:30) liturgy (they) (you) will each be anointed with Chrism, the oil of Baptism, a reminder of the Gospel, a reminder that God has a claim on our lives, that we are branded and marked.
So if this is preaching or sage advice I apologize for my failing, but I want that anointing to be a reminder to all of us of what sets us apart as God’s people, a culture of belief that is a culture of love.
The world doesn’t need anymore angry Christians, the world doesn’t need any more scornful Christians, the world doesn’t need anymore hateful Christians, what the world needs is God’s People for real, set apart by a culture of belief that brings out the best in everything and everyone that they touch, a culture of love that sets the world free to become unique and set apart.
That is where everything begins and ends, and nothing else lasts.
That is worth setting forth into for all of us, that is where we find Jesus.