Today's gospel reading speaks of Jesus as the fulfillment of words spoken by the prophet Isaiah. "Here is my servant, whom I have chosen, my beloved, with whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles. He will not wrangle or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick until he brings justice to victory. And in his name the Gentiles will hope."The term "Gentiles" doesn't have a lot of meaning for many of us, but for the Jews of Jesus' day, it designated them, those folks, people not like us. Jesus was a Jewish Messiah, and yet he calls his Jewish followers to reach out to those folks, to the Gentiles. It was not an easy task, and one of the first big fights in the Christian movement was over how to relate to these Gentiles. Many Jewish Christians thought that for Gentiles to join them in the Church, they needed to become more like Jews, to adopt the customs and practices of Jews.
That fight was settled long ago, but we Christians still have our Gentiles. We don't call them that. We call them the unchurched, secular people, spiritual but not religious, and so on. They are our neighbors, and more often than not, we would love to have them join us in our congregations. But we do expect that they will become like us, adopting our customs and practices.
As one thoroughly vested in the institutional church, I'm wondering just what it means to hear that in Jesus' name the unchurched, the secular folks, and the spiritual nomads will hope. And I'm wondering how I'm supposed to be a part of that hope.
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