This is the third in a sermon series on The Embracing Church
For the past couple of weeks, we have been thinking together about what it might be to be a church which is known to welcome all with the love of God, a church that reaches out with grace and acceptance to draw folks in rather than push them away, a church that might be known as the Embracing Church. I have tried to suggest that the kingdom of God is created in such a way that we are constantly called to expand our thinking about who we embrace with the love of God. Last week, we looked together at some of the ways that we fall short of that goal, and asked us to consider repenting of the ways we exclude others from participation in the kingdom.
Today we are going to take some time to move forward and think about what it means to call ourselves people of embrace. After all, “embrace” is not a word that is widely used today to talk about church folks. We talk about the church as a family or the church as the body of Christ, but to suggest that the church is about the work of embracing others is a relatively new way of thinking. What does it mean to be an embracing church? Isn’t that at the heart of what we do, or are we missing something that we need to think about in how we approach others in God’s kingdom?
