a bumper sticker seen on a jewish chariot in rome

"My LORD can beat up your god."

I'm so glad that the parish secretary chose to keep the optional ending to the Romans lesson for Sunday. It has a ton to say about the current state of affairs in the church (not to mention national politics). Polarity and polemic seems to be the name of the game these days. We operate in a mode of scarcity that says "I have all of the limited truth that is available and thus whatever you have is wrong."

Instead, the author of Romans offers a different model, "Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one"

Yes, God is one. The OT/HB lesson is a pretty good chunk of the Mezuzah that to this day gets nailed to doorposts in Jewish households. It begins "Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one."

Does God live only in the open source theology of Emergent? No
Does God live only in the classic prayers of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer? No
Does God live only in the Holy See of Rome? No
Does God live only in the hearts of Pentecostal Christians who can speak in tongues? No

Is God one? Yes
Does God reside with all of these believers and more? Heck Yeah!

I guess what I'm getting at is that God doesn't live exclusively in our boxes, but is in and beyond them all. God is the God of Jews, Gentiles, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, Conservative Evangelicals, and much, much more. So while the bumper sticker above might be true, we should be careful when using our God to beat up our neighbors God - they might be the same YHWH.