How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity! Psalm 133:1 (NRSV)Who are the kindred? In the past and still in many cultures today, your kindred group is dictated by your birth. But in our culture, we often have more freedom to choose our kindred. And who do we usually choose? Those we like. Those with whom we easily relate. Those who "get us" and those "we get."
But I think one reason God invented the Church was to afford us an opportunity to come into kinship with those who we don't get, those to whom we may not choose to associate, and those who don't get us. You see, we all have something in common. That is that God desires kinship with me as much as He desires kinship with the person I can't even begin to imagine being in kinship with. Therefore, we have much more in common with each other than we would probably like to think. Why then do we continue to be snobs? Why then do churches tend to be hotbeds of snobbery? Before you deflect by wholeheartedly agreeing with me, stop and look in the mirror. I know that when I take an honest look at myself, I have a snobby attitude with some people. Of course, I do a good job hiding that fact, especially at church. But the fact of the matter is that my heart has a long way to go when it comes to understanding the kind of kinship that God offers each of us the same. It has even farther to go when it comes to learning how to drop my snobby attitudes so that I can be in true kinship with others. Kyrie Eleison!
I know that I need to keep moving into the light of God. God's light is truth and grace. Only God has perfect truth and offers perfect grace. He sees all of the truth about us yet offers us infinite compassion and grace. He offers us kinship. When I choose to stay in the shadows, I imagine that what I am seeing about others is the truth. I get judgmental as if I can see into a heart. Being judgmental is snobbery. Grace is not extended. I am up here and you, who I judge, is down there. I am in the right, you are in the wrong. I think I am enlightened and you need to be enlightened. No! What we all need is to be enlightened by the pure light of God's truth and grace. When we stand there, we understand that we are all on equal ground before the cross. We leave judgment up to the One who has the ability to judge but who made a way for mercy to triumph over justice. We allow the light of God's truth and grace to shine into our own hearts. When we all begin to step into that light, we begin to have true fellowship with one another.
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 1 John 1:5-7 (NRSV)
What fellowship is there between light and darkness? Our fellowship with one another happens when we step out of the darkness of our own faulty judgment of one another and into the light of God's truth and grace.
Father Gregory Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries in the Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles (pictured above), speaks of kinship in the video link below. His actual talk is about an hour long, but it is an hour well spent. I promise! (You can scroll past the first 5 minutes of introduction and the last 15 minutes is Q&A which can also be skipped). I highly encourage you to watch and listen. Alert! He does use some colorful language, so you might not want to listen with kids around.
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