Jesus Jambalaya

Holy Gumbo! Fr. Dunbar in his sermon today reminds us that Jesus was executed in part because he broke the laws that separated people and did not permit mixing, a practice we still see today. Does Judaism have discrimination built into it's core? The old laws were discriminatory, but isn't that the nature of man? As babies we automatically discriminate between faces we accept and those we reject. As children we learn the prejudices of our culture, as teens we divide into cliques, then as adults we get to write the laws. Laws by their nature discriminate between right and wrong, and they have been used to the point of creating separate water fountains, swimming pools, and schools for persons of different race, who can sleep with who, who can fight in the military, and who can vote. Jesus' message was one of inclusion except when he picked his 12 (in whom we do not exactly have the diversity of the star ship Enterprise). He picked his crew carefully. I think Fr. Dunbar's point is that there is room in the pot for a wonderful mix of peoples, of shades of belief, and the "Ya Ya" of everyone speaking at once. The end result could be a great dish. Just remember that even a good Jambalaya can be spoiled by including bad ingredients.