The readings we've set for this week are Isaiah 56:1-7 and John 4:7-30.  

The Isaiah passage is particularly brilliant — a ready-made answer to anyone who tells you how unloving, xenophobic, or bloodthirsty the “God of the Old Testament” supposedly is.

“Oh really?” you can now reply. “Is that why the day he longed for was one in which the foreigner was welcomed in, the outcast was restored, and all people lifted their voices together in praise and worship? Is that why he told his people for centuries that he was in the business of bringing people together in joy, and love, and peace?”

Yes, religion has often been misused throughout history as an excuse for racism, bigotry, violence, and oppression — but never make the mistake of thinking that it was done at the desire of the God those religions claim to worship.

“My house,” God says in v7, “shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”  Not just some, decided on by arbitrary whim, or particular local biases or expectations. All peoples.

In the God we worship, we find unity in diversity — a nature that celebrates the beauty of different persons existing together in one being. In their very essence, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit embody inclusion.

Perhaps that’s why Jesus was so angry when he entered the temple and found that the outer courts — the only space available for the Gentiles — had been turned into a marketplace? Maybe it wasn’t just profiteering, but the exclusion that provoked him to flip the tables and remind people of this very passage from Isaiah?

Almost certainly, it was this deep desire to bring all peoples into unity — not just with himself, but with one another — that motivated Jesus in his encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4. You don’t need me to rehearse the long list of barriers he was crossing: ethnicity, gender, morality… it’s all there, as is the extraordinary impact it has on her — transforming her from social outcast to a community evangelist.

But as shocking as it might have been for others, this was nothing new for God. The barriers being broken down weren’t his, but ours — the ones created by confused, fearful, fallible human beings. God has always had a heart for being with and drawing together — right back to the opening pages, when it was said of Adam: “It is not good for man to be alone.”

So maybe this Sunday is the time to join back in with one another — to become again part of all peoples as they gather in prayer, praise, joy, and worship.

And maybe it’s time to join back in with the God we serve — looking at the world through his eyes to see who is being left out, and asking, with his generosity of spirit, what we can do to welcome them home.