Loving "Those People" // Luke 10:1-16 // Pastor Doug Glynn

Our world is full of teams, tribes, and groups. It seems natural that belonging to one group means treating with hostility, suspicion, or fear those who belong to another group. Whether the boundaries of our groups are defined politically, religiously, ethnically, or by some other category, we are constantly creating relationships of “us” vs “them”. But Jesus not only ignores these boundaries, his words and deeds invite us to tear down every wall that separates us from loving “everyone always.”

For example, in Luke 10:1-16, Jesus sends out his disciples to preach his message to fellow Jews (“us”). However, he tells his disciples that the Jews (again, “us”) who deny him will be worse off than the people of Sidon (“them”), who were universally hated by the Jews. As if it isn’t enough that this instance would have radically messed with his disciples’ assumptions about “us” and “them”, Jesus hits this theme again and again throughout the gospels. As followers of Jesus, we are to love everyone, always. In God’s kingdom, there is no room for mocking, belittling, or otherwise denigrating those who don’t belong to our group; there is room only for the way of love.