Mark 9:30-37
This is one of my most favorite images in the Gospels. That of Jesus in a teaching moment with his disciples, taking a child, putting it among them, and saying to the gathered disciples that they must welcome children in the same way they welcome him and by association, God.
Most of us know that in those days children were considered property, just as women were. In fact, as I sit and think about all of the people within the stories of the New Testament I can see there were many who were considered "non-citizens". Not only women and children but the sick, destitute, and anyone whose religious beliefs were different than the religious leaders of the time.
It surprises me that in a world 2000 years removed from those days we still treat people who we consider "different" as outsiders. We see same-sex couples holding hands and we call them outsiders. We see people living in cardboard homes on the sidewalk and we call them outsiders. We see people who pray to the same God as we do in a different way and we call them outsiders. If they don't dress like us, or talk like us, or think like us they must be "non-citizens", right?
Wrong. We are all one people, all citizens of one world.
Martin Luther King, Jr. is quoted as saying, "Whatever affects me directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality." Dr. King understood that we all belong to each other. He understood that we depend on one another for all things. Dr. King understands what it means to treat all people as citizens of God's Kingdom. After all, he was one of those outsiders and never stopped trying to unite all people in peace and justice.
Why, then, can't we?
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