A strong north wind blew into a small French village, right in the middle of winter, right at the beginning of Lent. It was a traditional, Catholic village, where everyone knew everyone else, and everyone knew everyone else’s business.  If you happened to go somewhere in the village, but then forgot why you’d gone, someone would very quickly tell you.  There were few secrets in the village where people lived as their ancestors had lived before them.   

That Lent, with that strong northern wind, came mysterious strangers – an unmarried mother and her daughter, each dressed in a long, hooded red cape.  They moved into the apartment above a vacant bakery, and set up a surprising new shop – a chocolaterie – a chocolate shop full of luscious and sweet-smelling treats.  Mysterious outsiders came to tempt the good villagers just as the holy fast was beginning.  The Duke, whose family ran the village for centuries, was not pleased – and the village followed suit.  Vienne and her daughter Anouk were treated with suspicion by the rest of the people.  They were condemned from the pulpit, labeled atheists and temptresses.  When other strangers came into town, those in power called on the whole village to boycott immorality. The newcomers were despised.  They were rejected.  And Anouk wondered when they would be driven out of town, as they had been from so many other villages, so many times before. 

As portrayed in Chocolat, one of my favorite movies, this setting is far removed in time and place from the world in which Jesus lived.  But the spirit of the story is akin to the spirit of the Gospel reading we just heard.  Jesus had gone to his own hometown and preached in the synagogue.  At first the people were amazed at his wisdom, his authority, and the graciousness of his words.  But then they began to become suspicious. They began to question and challenge.  “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked one another.  And since he is Joseph’s son, since he is one of us, they seemed to say, shouldn’t he act just like us?  They began to focus on how different he was. 

Jesus knew that’s what they were thinking, and he responded.  “There were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah,” he said, “ when . . . there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”  When the people heard this, the Gospel tells us, they were filled with rage and tried to hurl Jesus off a cliff.  Because Jesus gave them two examples of times when someone who was different, someone who was an outsider, received the fullness of God’s healing grace and love.  During the famine, the prophet Elijah lived in the home of a widow of Sidon, not a person of Israel.  And he did a miracle on her behalf, so that her bowl of flour and her jar of oil did not run out, no matter how much she used.  A generation later the prophet Elisha healed Naaman of his leprosy – Namaan who was a Syrian, not a person of Israel.   God’s abundant, life-giving love, was given not to insiders, not to people just like all the other Israelites – but to outsiders, to those who were despised and rejected, to those who were excluded from the community of faith.

The people of Jesus’ hometown were incensed by the very idea.  They were infuriated that Jesus should imply that God loved all people.  By even referring to outsiders, Jesus was turning out to be different from others in his hometown.  He was turning out to be an outsider himself, and people wanted to kill him because of it. 

We are like those people ourselves.  We often think that the only valuable human beings are the people just like us.  We seem to believe that the only people worthy of God’s love are people just like us.  If that weren’t true for most of us human beings, we wouldn’t be seeing warfare and racial and ethnic strife this very day in Israel and Lebanon, in Sudan, in Iraq, on the streets of Washington, D.C., even in school hallways right here in the suburbs.  We human beings are ethnocentric.  We believe that we and those like us are the best people, that we are the real people, that we are the true people of God.  In fact, studies show that we often don’t even see people of other races and ethnicities, of other social classes, or of other ages.  Studies show that we don’t recognize individual differences between persons who are different from us, but lump them all together as “white people” or “African Americans” or “Asians.”  We lump them all together as “kids” or as “old people.”  We lump them all together as “poor white trash” or “upper class snobs.”  All too often, we don’t see others as individuals. 

Today we are divided in our Episcopal Church.  A majority of members of fifteen congregations in the Diocese of Virginia voted to leave The Episcopal Church and affiliate with an Anglican diocese in Uganda or Nigeria.  In each congregation, a minority of people voted not to leave.  Relationships between former friends are broken and strained over this divide.  In some congregations, those who voted not to leave have met to elect a new Vestry and wardens to lead them as the continuing Episcopal Church in their communities.  In at least one of those communities, those who reorganized are prevented, by a restraining order issued by the non-Episcopal majority, from stepping foot in their church building.  As legal petitions are filed and litigation begins on both sides, there is much name calling.  Each side calls the other unfaithful.  Those who voted not to leave the Episcopal Church are told that they will go to hell for their lack of faithfulness.  Those who voted to leave are called unthinking, brainwashed fundamentalists.  Differences and divisions lead former friends not even to see each other anymore, and the pain of division cries out for our prayers and for God’s healing.    

Our not seeing, our not even looking at those who differ from us, is sinful and leads us to sinful behavior – to actions that separate us from God and from one another. 

Jesus knew this about us.  He knew our sinfulness.  And he called us to repent of it.  Jesus calls us to move beyond our sinfulness to recognize people as individuals and to recognize all people as God’s people.  People in Nazareth couldn’t tolerate this idea and tried to kill Jesus.  Others, later on, succeeded in killing him.  Better that one person should die than that all people should have to be open and accepting about God’s love, they believed.  But, of course, as we know, Jesus rose again.  He proved that hatred and prejudice and violence can never have the last word; that the love of God is stronger than the hatred and prejudice of humans.  Jesus rose again so that all people could have new life – ALL PEOPLE – not only those just like us, but all whom God loves – and that is everyone. 

Throughout that Lent in the small village in France, the prejudices of the people were tested and challenged.  The people were stretched, which is always uncomfortable.  They were grown, which always requires growing pains.  And on Easter morning, when the people gathered in church to celebrate Christ’s resurrection, they found new life.  The priest, who had only weeks before condemned the outsiders from the pulpit, spoke from his heart for the first time.  “Our faith is measured,” he said, “not in what we deny ourselves, not in what we reject or repress, not in who we exclude, but our faith is measured in what we embrace, what we celebrate, and who we include.” 

The Gospel truth was heard that Easter.  Vienne and her daughter Anouk as well as those who had despised and rejected them were changed by the power of love, the power of life.  All became more and more the people God created them to be.

God desires to change us, too, to expand and broaden us from people who define ourselves by what we deny and reject and exclude, to people who reach out and embrace, celebrate and include. For God does not love only us and our kind.  Jesus did not live and die and rise again only for us and our kind.  But God created and loves and blesses all people everywhere, no matter what their race or ethnic identity, no matter what their sex or sexual orientation, no matter what their age or religion or theological bent or political leanings.  God made us all, and calls us all to be one family. 

A strong north wind blew into that small French village right at the beginning of Lent, and the people were changed forever.  That wind blows today in our town, in our church, in our very hearts, calling us to grow and expand, beckoning us to embrace and celebrate and include the marvelous, diverse family of God in all we do.  For that wind is none other than the Holy Spirit of God. 

Amen.