Another Step?

Maybe it is another way to talk about life and death. Or another way to speak of crucifixion and resurrection. I am thinking about the words "inclusion" and "exclusion." The recent vote in the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America (PCUSA) to remove the constitutional language that prevented openly homosexual people from leadership, ordination, and public acceptance is but another small step along the way.

I have been reading the History of Great Britain and through out that history is the theme of the expansion of the people who could be in the government. The steady expansion of the vote, the steady inclusion of more and more classes of citizens into the power arrangement. The great desire to exclude people from positions so that the power could stay in the hands of a few and yet changes kept coming that forced the few to include more and more groups.

I think of our own constitution which began with the power only in the hands of white males who had property and worth. Black slaves were not even included as whole people. So we have had a series of Amendments to the Constitution to include in the voting process more and more people. The fight has been long and hard to include women, to include Blacks, to include people without property.

The same fights have been waged within the church as to who could be elected to offices, who could be ordained as Pastors, and who could be in leadership roles. First only men, then after civil war Blacks were included in their own churches, then Women got ordained, and now even some Blacks are welcomed in white churches. The vote this week which gave victory to the Amendment 10A is a vote to include homosexuals as pastors and elders and deacons.

Perhaps the push for inclusion is a push for life, a push for resurrections, because the larger the circle the more gifts and more blessings are possible. The push for exclusion is a push for death because it has a way of squeezing out the joy and the excitement of life. The forces that keep trying to exclude others is a force that brings death to hopes, death to opportunities, death to the opportunities to receive the gifts that others have to give. One can only imagine the kinds of wonderful things we might have had if many of the people who had been denied and excluded from opportunities had been included and invited to share their talents. There was only one tree in the Garden that God excluded from the list of the possibilities. We were invited to enjoy all the rest. A might big inclusion. The Circle not only need not be broken, it needs to keep expanding to the Glory of God.