Selah2020: Pause and Reflect

[Transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube^[1], January 2021]

How do you choose your friends? Who do you hang out with? Are you willing to step out of your normal comfort zone with regards to friends in order to break down divisive barriers?

Some people say that dogs can recognise their own breed; if you put a load of different dogs in a pen together they’ll end up grouping in their breed. Now I think that’s actually a bit of a myth and that wouldn’t really work with my dogs because they’re mixed breeds. But actually, that probably works with us. As humans we tend to be attracted to, drawn to, people who are like us, similar. As the saying goes “birds of a feather flock together” and those divisions can be all sorts of things, you know, type of football team that you support, the clothes you wear the music you listen to, but those divisions can be much bigger. I mean race, class, the country you live in.

^[01:14]Of course there’s always people that will push the boundaries a bit. People will move to other countries, try out different cultures but nine times out of ten – possibly more than that – people will stick with people that they know, places they know, places they feel comfortable with, people they feel comfortable with and can understand.

^[01:38]That’s fine to a certain extent but where it becomes a problem is when those divisions become a way of not only dividing us but causing us to look down on other people who aren’t like us. We draw away from them because we view them with suspicion, we view them with distrust, maybe even hate and anger, and that’s why – you know – last year in particular things came to a head with the differences and divisions in race in the States. Well actually we’re just as guilty of divisions in our own country and the things that divide us – politics, race, religion – can cause us to look down on others, to even hate others and to keep as far away from them as at all possible.

^[02:36]But if you’re a Christian that can cause some significant problems. It is a reality for the UK church because if you look at the UK church most of our UK churches are mono-cultural and they’re full of slightly older middle class people. Actually the group which is least attractive to church, the group that churches do the worst job of reaching out to, are white working class males and perhaps it’s because we tend to draw in people that are like us. That’s certainly part of the problem but actually also part of the problem is that we are drawn to people who are like us, that we’re not willing to step beyond the boundaries of our own culture, we’re not willing to make friends with people who aren’t like us, people of a different colour, people of a different religion, people of a different class. You see, who you eat with says a lot about who you are and also a lot about what you believe.

^[03:56]Jesus ate with people who were the outcasts of society. Jesus associated with people who were looked down on, they were the people that if you wanted influence, if you wanted power, if you wanted a good reputation you didn’t hang out with. I wonder how concerned we are about our reputation when we choose who it is that we hang out with, who we eat with. You see, if those early followers of Jesus had been really concerned about sticking with their own culture and not straying outside the boundaries of that then Christianity would never have taken off, it would have stayed within the boundaries of a Jewish sect.

^[04:43]But that’s not what happens and Christianity is now the largest religion in the world, crossing all cultures, all races, all countries so the challenge to us really as a UK church is “what are we doing to do the same, to be the same, to draw into our friendship circles as individuals as well as our church those people on the boundaries, those people who are different, those people who are left out?” We need to buck the trends that are so readily adhered to of distrust and hate.

Hey guys, thank you so much for watching this midweek message. Do remember that this message is really just an introduction to some of the ideas that we’re going to be exploring in our Sunday sermon so do tune in to watch that either at 10:30 on our service or you can watch it later online on our YouTube channel this week. This Sunday we have got Dr Chris Tilling who is a lecturer at the largest Anglican training college in the country and he’s going to be talking to us about good food and friendship as we continue our “living like Jesus” sermon series.
Cheers, ’bye
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[1] YouTube link: Who do You Eat With?
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