Do you know the secret handshake, knock, word?

I remember having a club with some friends from the neighborhood in my backyard. We had a secret knock... we had a secret password too. But in order to learn the secrets of the club you had to prove your worthiness to be in the club. Our "test"? The club house was built on top of my dad's storage shed, so the floor and deck was about 10' off the ground. In order to join the club you had to be able to jump from the clubhouse to the ground without killing yourself or breaking anything. Needless to say the club was pretty small.

I think most of us like to be a part of a club even as adults. Maybe it's a throwback to our childhoods or maybe we just like to feel like we are special, different, better than others. So we join country clubs. We're part of book clubs and alliances. PTO and Lions or Moose or Masons... I'm an official card carrying member of Dillons and Blockbuster myself.

In Acts 26:17-20 Paul is facing yet another trial and in his opening defense statement he says that God sent him to the Gentiles that they might "receive forgiveness of sins" and might "turn from darkness to light" and be "given a place among God's people who are set apart by faith." And this is what made the Jews so incredible mad. Why? Because they thought they were in a private club with God. For thousands of years they were the only ones who knew the secret code. Who had been entrusted with the secret handshake. They hated it that Paul was telling other people the password!

Funny how we tend to struggle with this even today. In my club as a kid every time we added another member the code got harder, longer, more complicated. It seemed that once you got in to the club each person wanted to make it harder for the next. I think this happens in church all the time. Once we're in we want to settle in, get comfortable and then make it harder for the next person, like we're somehow super special and no ordinary person could make it in the club with us. So the guests in our churches across the country feel like they have to dress the right way, speak the right way, walk, act, think, the right way in order to pass the test and get in.

But that has never been God's doing. He made it easy. Paul said the secret code is this, "repent of your sins and turn to God... and prove you have changed by the good things you do." It was the same for the Jews. But then they started adding all these other criteria on top, piling it so high that Jesus said of them, "do not practice what they preach. The tie up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders while they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them" (Matthew 23:4).

Jesus, right before he was betrayed got down on the dirt floor with a bucket and a bar and washed the dirty, stinky feet of His disciples - including Judas - and when He was done He asked them, "do you understand what I have done for you? You call me "teacher" and "Lord"... and that is what I am. And since I have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you and example that you should do as I have done" (John 13:13-15).

We're all in the same boat. Come from the same place. All have sinned and fallen short and God extends the password to us all just the same, believe in the one that He sent. We have no more right to make it harder for others than Jesus did, than we have to tell Jesus how He "should" have done it. We are not special as Christians. We're simply forgiven. Shouldn't that same forgiveness and Real Life be extended to everyone just the same? He made the rules, our responsibility is to follow them, just the same for all.