Late last week temperatures got down to 12 year lows. When it gets cold outside we like to build a fire, cook turkey soup, grab a blanket and settle on the couch with a good book or movie with the kids. The cold invites us to do things at home we don’t normally do and, in a way, it can be exciting. But it isn’t for everyone. Some people die from the cold because they have no place to go to escape it. For them, the cold isn’t an invitation to something unique and exciting, but a potentially life-threatening scare. These two worlds seldom meet. Living in Suburbia allows us to be insulated from the cold world to the degree that we’ve forgotten that it’s there.

But this recent cold spell brought these two worlds together. Our deacons took the initiative to open the gym to our homeless neighbors. When worlds come together you get to meet people that are very different from you in some ways. It is these differences that usually keep our worlds apart. There is often a difference in goals, in aspirations, in opinions of people and politics. There is a difference in clothes and cleanliness and transportation. There is often a difference in speech and values. There is a difference in background and experiences, likes and dislikes, manners and proprieties. These differences make us uncomfortable – no matter which world you’re from. We begin to understand that when the worlds are brought together.

But after the cold spell, the two worlds once again split apart. Cold could bring them together in the short term, but not the long. What would it take to bring them truly together?

Only Jesus can bring the two worlds together.

He does it in this passage in a remarkable way. He leaves one world to dine in the other. And so we must dine in the other. He breaks down the barriers that once divided the two worlds, and so we can dine in the other.

Mk 2:13-17 Jesus the Physician

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