October 26, 2025
I Will Gather Yet Others
Isaiah 56:1-8
Today, I want to consider with you the ever-widening circle of the kingdom and kin-dom of God. The ever-expanding frontier of those whom God is gathering. Let us pray.
Thus says the Lord GOD, who gathers the outcasts of Israel: “I will gather yet others to those already gathered.”
That single verse—Isaiah 56:8—captures the gist of this remarkable passage in Isaiah. And, I would argue, the entire arc of God’s story with us – from Abraham and Sarah, through Israel and Jesus, to you and me, to those yet to come. I will gather yet others…
Isaiah 56 was written after the Babylonian exile, when the leadership of Jewish society was taken into captivity in Babylon. Generations later, now, they were returning from captivity, coming back to a city with demolished infrastructure, no Temple, and deep questions about their identity.
Who are we now? And what makes someone part of us?
During the exile in Babylon, there had been ethnic and religious mixing. Many Jewish men had been castrated to serve in Babylonian courts—they were made eunuchs against their will. Observance had become nearly impossible without the Temple. The regathering community was anxious, fractured, uncertain.
The question pressing on them was this: What makes a person one of our group? Is it biological heritage? Cultural practice? Religious observance? What about these foreign wives who were brought back home? What about these men who can have no children? What about these people who have forgotten how to observe God’s law?
There were different sides to this argument, and different prophets took different sides. Some argued for ethnic exclusion and family heritage. Isaiah casts of vision of ethnic inclusion and covenant faithfulness.
Listen first to the lament in verse 3: “Do not let the foreigner joined to the LORD say, ‘The LORD will surely separate me from his people’; and do not let the eunuch say, ‘I am just a dry tree.'”
These are people who feel excluded, fruitless, separated. The foreigner who has joined herself to the Lord—probably a convert who married—fears she will never truly belong because she wasn’t born there. The eunuch, unable to have children, unable to enter the assembly according to Deuteronomy 23, calls himself “just a dry tree”— without a legacy, without a future.
God speaks through Isaiah with words of grace and hope. To the eunuchs: “I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.”
To the foreigners: “These I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer… for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
And then verse 8, the capstone: “Thus says the Lord GOD, who gathers the outcasts of Israel: I will gather yet others to those already gathered.”
Do you hear what’s happening? When the community could have contracted into ethnic identity or ancestral heritage—God announces welcome. Any who keep the Sabbath, who choose what pleases God, who hold fast to the covenant can belong.
As I said, this small passage captures the arc of God’s story, right down to you and me. God’s gathering work is never finished. And just when the community gets comfortable with who’s “in” and what it means to “be one of us,” God says: There are others. I’m bringing more people than you expected.
Today is Reformation Sunday, and we can see this same dynamic in the Reformation. As Presbyterians, we are part of the great family of Reformed churches, the ones that were born out of the work of John Calvin in Geneva, and a generation before him the monumental insight and moral courage or Martin Luther.
We celebrate this on the last Sunday of October, which is the Sunday nearest the day when Luther nailed 99 points to the door of a German church in Wittenberg. And we remember that the church is reformed and always being reformed according to the Word of God and the inspiration of the Spirit. One of the important ways the church is always being reformed is right here in Isaiah, the expanding horizons of who God welcomes and includes in the household of faith.
Notice, there, God is doing the welcoming. This isn’t a sermon about who WE need to reach. This is a sermon about recognizing who GOD is gathering and our call to respond. The job of the church is not to manufacture inclusion or manage the target demographic.
The job of the church is to watch for whom God is bringing and ask: What obstacles need removing? What welcome needs extending? Who needs to hear “you have a place and a name here”?
I can think of many ways in recent years that our denomination and this congregation have learned to say “you have a place and a name here.”
For a generation now, we’ve been learning to welcome fully, ordain, marry, and celebrate our LGBTQ+ siblings in Christ. That was a reformation—expanding our understanding of who God gathers. And it wasn’t easy. It cost something. But we heard God say, “I’m gathering these ones,” and I’m grateful that our part of the Christian church, and others, responded by making room.
In this congregation, for almost fifteen years we have welcomed our unhoused neighbors for a weekly meal and respite in winter, recognizing that God’s house is called a house of prayer for all peoples—not just the housed or comfortable.
For over a generation, we’ve invested in children and youth ministry in significant ways—with theologically trained pastors working with youth and families, saying ” your questions matter, your faith and your future are important.” Saying, a worship service is not a concert. The noises children make in worship are okay. You are welcome here, wiggles and all.
We’ve worked on accessibility and mobility. We livestream worship. There is hearing assistance and large print bulletins. There are ramps onto the chancel and working elevators. All of this says, if you can’t physically get here easily, or see easily, or hear easily, we’re going to try to remove those barriers.
Right now, through our capital campaign that is being refined, we’re working on more important steps in removing obstacles. Making it easier to park here, to know which door to come in, to find your way through the building, and ensuring that our spaces – for gathering, worship, education – are updated, and fit the needs of the ministry that happens here.
I’m not trying to be self-congratulatory. Rather, I want us to recognize and celebrate where we’ve heard God say, “I’m gathering people” and how we’ve responded — and how we are responding now.
That’s what “reformed and always being reformed” actually means. Not that we bless every change or follow every trend, but that we keep returning to the center and keep asking: Who else is God gathering? What obstacles are in their way? What welcome do they need to hear? What does it mean to belong?
Because here is the next thing: God isn’t finished gathering. And sometimes the very ways we seek to include can inadvertently create new exclusions. This is sensitive, but I think it’s important, so let me try to give examples of what I mean.
Every now and then, regularly, sometimes says to me, “You know, everyone here at FPC seems so smart.” They mean that the people in any given class or pew are theologically educated or politically informed or an expert in some field or another. And it’s impressive to see how much horsepower there can be in any give class or group. But it’s also easy to feel that you don’t have anything to contribute, or unsure if you know enough to participate. And honestly?
Sometimes I feel that way too. And I so appreciate that we’re a congregation that values education, the life of the mind, and thoughtful engagement where faith meets the world. That’s part of who we are, it’s a distinctive part of the presbyterian identity.
Yet, it must not be a barrier to belonging or participation in the life of the church. Every person must have room to share from the unique experience they have lived and contribute their valuable perspective.
Let me offer another example. There was a time in the presbyterian church when conformity to dogmatic orthodoxy was the order day. Students memorized catechisms in confirmation. Ministers being examined for ordination had to squirm to interpret their progressive faith in the language of traditional confessions in order to get past the presbytery.
We’ve made so much progress on that front. Curiosity is now welcome, doubts are normal, unusual beliefs are typical. We all have them and don’t need to be ashamed of them. Confirmands explore the questions they have rather than memorizing answers. Ministers coming for ordination are invited into a conversation rather than an examination.
Yet sometimes, and this is the flip side of having a nuanced and progressive faith, we can overlook the importance of the basic building blocks of faith. Many who come here, today and in future decades, will not have memorized a catechism or even the Lord’s Prayer. They may not know who came first, Moses or Jesus, or the difference between a bible and a hymnal.
We need a faith that is open-minded, able to wrestle with questions, that is theologically and historically informed. And the same time we must make room to learn the basic touchstones of faith, that sustain us even when we least expect it.
Scripture, the Lord’s Prayer, the Psalms, the Creed, weekly Communion, the very best hymns. These are our guides and companions in the life of faith. On any given Sunday, some of us are in desperate need of a fresh take. And there are some who need to start from the beginning.
One last example, and this one is hard – when politics overwhelms faith. Especially today, when the concerns of our political life feel so urgent, when our media environment is fine-tuned to stoke fear and anger, the life of faith can feel less relevant. Many of us come to worship looking for the preacher to mirror what we’ve been thinking about the news of the day, to say what we believe needs to be said.
And of course, the gospel must intersect with the events of the world. The gospel isn’t partisan, but it does have political implications for society, for how we treat our neighbors, and the ethical vision we have for our life together. Yet, the good news of God in Jesus is so much more than current events. So there is so much more to our lives, to our needs, to our well-being, to God’s voice speaking in us and God’s call speaking to us.
If following Jesus gets confused with my politics—and it can happen in progressive and conservative churches—we’ve lost the center. There needs to be room for political disagreement around the center of following Jesus.
For us Christians, I believe the center is following Jesus—the one we believe is God’s full revelation to us, God’s Word made flesh, the fulfillment of God’s law, the keeper of God’s covenant.
Around that center, there’s massive room for diversity:
Intellectual space for people who don’t have it all figured out.
Emotional space for people going through divorce, job loss, grief, addiction recovery, the challenges of raising kids.
Spiritual space for people who struggle with the Creed but want to follow Jesus.
Political space for people who disagree but want to be in fellowship together.
Generational space so both our 90-year-olds and our 9-year-olds feel this is their church.
The question isn’t: Do you have it all figured out?
The question is: Are you willing to follow Jesus and figure it out with the rest of us?
When theological sophistication becomes the center, we’ve lost it. When progressive theology becomes the center, we’ve lost it. When political alignment becomes the center, we’ve lost it. When having your life together becomes the center, we’ve lost it.
The center is Jesus. He is the one around whom God is gathering a new creation. He is the one we follow.
The church is reformed and always being reformed according to the word of God and the inspiration of the Spirit.
This means we’ll never arrive. We will – I hope – be perpetually uncomfortable and beautifully surprised as God keeps gathering people we didn’t expect, people who don’t fit our assumptions, people who challenge our settled ways. Because that is exactly the promise of the kingdom of God. God gathers outcasts and strangers, from the ends of the earth, the hopeless and the helpless.
Thus says the Lord, I will yet gather others to those already gathered and make them joyful in my house of prayer.
Our work is to watch for whom God is bringing and remove the obstacles that we can and keep returning to the center—Jesus. May we have eyes to see, hearts to make room. And may we too be joyful in the household of God. Amen.
Rev. Patrick W. T. Johnson, Ph.D.
First Presbyterian Church
Asheville, North Carolina