Sermon - 5-15-22

<p>As we have seen yet again in another horrific mass shooting, we as a people need to have a confrontation with self – confront our malevolent viewpoints and malignant ideologies.  We need to confront the sin of white supremacy, racism, and hatred, and move into a new place, live into a <u>new</u> <u>story</u>, a new understanding of God’s love for this world.  When talking about such confrontation, Richard Rohr writes:</p> <p>Every viewpoint is a view from a point. Unless we recognize and admit our own personal and cultural viewpoints, we will never know how to decentralize our own perspective. We will live with a high degree of illusion and blindness that brings much suffering into the world. [As we work to recognize this,] the love of God is the source of all truth. Only an outer and positive reference point utterly grounds the mind and heart. People with a distorted image of self, world, or God will be largely incapable of experiencing what is really real in the world. They will see things through a narrow keyhole. They’ll see instead what they need reality to be, what they’re afraid it is, or what they’re angry about. They’ll see everything through their aggressiveness, their fear, or their agenda. In other words, they won’t see <em>it </em>at all.</p> <p> </p> <p>Rohr aptly describes not only our present context, but also the early church as it was called to move beyond certain boundaries, beyond personal, cultural, and traditional religious viewpoints, and learn to love beyond those boundaries and narrow understandings. Today’s readings communicate this as we continue to learn what it means to be inclusive and love others beyond boundaries of cultic religious traditions and ideologies. They teach us what it means to truly be the body of Christ in this world.</p> <p>In today’s first reading from Acts, we come face to face with a confrontation of cultic religious thought. The Jewish people considered all Gentiles unclean and thought the idea of sharing an intimate dinner around a kitchen table in a pagan ho