Whoever Welcomes You

Romans 14:1-13

Matthew 10: 40-42

While traveling through Northern Ireland to research for her book Siobhan Garrigan visited a Presbyterian Church one Sunday morning. When she first walked into the doors she was pleasantly surprised to be immediately greeted by two women right as she walked in. Not only did these women say hello but they also invited her into conversation. First they asked her for her name, and then they asked if there was anyone with her and what their first names were. Siobhan thought it was a bit intrusive at first but then though maybe that’s the way they do church in Ireland. So she was taken to her seat towards the back (where most new people like to sit). As she was waiting for service to begin she could hear the women greet other folks as they came through the doors of the church. It was the same greeting she got, what is your name, are there people with you, what are their names? But eventually Siobhan noticed something disturbing. The people with Protestant names such as Erin, Ronan and Shannon were warmly welcomed and taken to their seats but the people with the Catholic names, the Marias, the Catherines and the Patricks were told that they were in the wrong church and sent away. (1)

 
It is offensive for us to hear about that kind of behavior. How could a church who claims discipleship in Christ act so unchristian? Extending hospitality, especially to the stranger is one of the most important commandments of us in the scripture. Why within this church we have welcomed all kinds of people into our worshiping community and we celebrate those differences. You all come from different walks of life, have had different religious backgrounds and experiences, live in different economic situations and come from all kinds of family configurations. We are part of United Church of Christ, a denomination that calls itself a people of extravagant welcome and radical hospitality. This welcome is not only a matter of opening the doors of our congregations. It is also commitment to make the world a more hospitable place for all God’s children, be it advocating for immigration rights or hosting evacuees from the earth quake in Haiti.


Apprehension towards people who are different from ourselves is a natural thing. We feel most comfortable with people who look like us, talk like us, whose ways and customs are similar to ours and who live in the same ways we do. Practicing radical hospitality is a risky thing because we make ourselves vulnerable anytime we are relate with someone whose ways are different from our ways.

Several years ago I was called by Small City Church to be their associate pastor and the director of their cold weather shelter which houses homeless men and women during the coldest winter months. This call was a bit of a stretch for me because this was a wet shelter. Most shelters will not let people who are intoxicated stay the night which is good because it keeps the residents safe and on their programs. However there were homeless people who suffered from addiction who couldn’t stay in these dry shelters and they were literally dying in the streets. Small City Church saw the gap and filled it by opening it’s Christian Education wing to provide radical hospitality to these men and women that other shelters were unable to house. My previous work experience had been in a shelter that housed families with children. In the shelter in Small City, I was going to be working with people in various states of intoxication and bizarre mental conditions. I was going to be working with street people. Quite overwhelming thing for this middle class Midwestern girl to embark on. When I told her about what I would be doing, my mom begged not to take the call. She was worried that her beloved daughter would be harmed by some crazy homeless person. It’s one thing to work with homeless families with children but another to work with a bunch of skid row bums and crazies according to my mother.

“Why can’t you work in a nice church like other normal pastors do?” She asked. And I told her “because you did not raise your daughter to be normal, so why would I be a ‘normal pastor.’” You see my call was leading me to the caring for the least of these, those whom the world had given up on. Someone needed to extend radical hospitality to these men and women in the midst of their struggles and God was trusting me to do it.

Working in that shelter was a life changing experience for me because of the people I met there. They allowed me to minister to them, but in many ways they ministered to me. I found that many of these folks had a deep and abiding faith that seemed childlike and naive in comparison to my more rationally based faith. These people had nothing and so all they had to rely on God. I had more requests for Bibles from the shelter residents then I did from the people in the pews. These folk were not shy about testifying their faith with me and each other because they were not silenced by the rules of polite society that keep people from openly discussing religion or politics.

I learned a lot about religion from these folks. I’ve also learned about radical hospitality from these folks as well. Like one night a person came to the shelter soaking wet from the rain and did not have a dry set of clothes to change into. The other guests gave what they could to him so that their friend would not have to sleep in wet clothes. One evening one of the guests over heard one of the volunteers telling me that she didn’t have time to eat supper that night. That guest walked over to our table and gave her his last granola bar so she wouldn’t have to work hungry that night.

Jesus says, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes to one who sent me.” That is so true because every time I welcomed someone into the shelter I would see the face of Christ in their face. I would have missed so many opportunities of spiritual witness if fear got in the way extending radical hospitality.

“And whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of the little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”

May it be so.

Amen

(1) William Goettler "Matthew 10: 40-42.  Pastoral Perspective" Feasting on the Word, 192

The Far Side and Ministry

A colleague recently told me that being an ordained minister in an anxious system is like this Far Side cartoon. 

The Great Commission

Romans 8: 14-17
Matthew 28:16-20

We’ve been talking a lot about the Holy Spirit lately in this Church. A few weeks ago I talked about how the Holy Spirit is doing its work through the discernment process of our search committee. Last week we confirmed _________ and _________ affirming the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Today on Trinity Sunday we celebrate God the Father, Jesus Christ the son and the Holy Spirit working together to bring about God’s kingdom here on earth. It is easier for us to talk God and Jesus in the context of the daily life and worship of our church but it is more challenging for us to talk of work of the Holy Spirit. To talk of the Spirit can feel like we are talking about a bunch magical mumble jumble. In the more charismatic traditions of the Christian faith the Spirit is celebrated through physical manifestations of speaking in tongues and wild abandon, which is fine for them, but for us of the New England Congregational tradition we are more comfortable with a more the subtler ways the Spirit makes its presence known in our lives. But how to describe the Spirit’s work in the church, that’s the rub.


This morning’s Gospel we hear Jesus’ great commission to his disciples, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matt. 28:19) Biblical Commentaries note that for Matthew’s church the Trinity was not a sophisticated theological creedal doctrine to submit to. This came much later in church history. But rather it was more descriptive of the kind of intimate loving relationships that existed among the Father, the Son and the Spirit. We remember that in Jesus’ baptism, the Spirit descended tenderly like a dove on Jesus and God spoke a word of blessing “This is my Son, The Beloved.” (1)

The commission goes further, “Teach the nations to obey what I have commanded you.” Jesus is telling the 11 disciples then and for us now “to go out to the nations not as an army of occupation but as a humble tutor, teaching mercy and righteousness and forgiveness and peacemaking.” (2) Talk about a mission impossible. How does a Church go about doing this difficult work?

In the early 1990’s in East Los Angeles in a neighborhood called Boyle Heights, a group of women formed a prayer group in the Dolores Mission church. The neighborhood that the church was located in was a war zone riddled with gang violence, drugs and prostitution. Everyday there were gang killings and injuries. Within the church itself there were members of eight gangs and so you can imagine the heart break these women felt over the fact that their sons were killing each other over such things as turf, drug trade and reputation. In a locked room they would pray every night for the violence to end and studied the bible together for comfort and assurance.

One evening they were studying the scripture about Jesus walking on water and calling the disciples out of the boat. After their bible study they prayed together and as they prayed “one of their number -- electrified with a sudden sense of discovery and consternation -- shared with others what she saw as the parallels to their own predicament.” (3) This woman caught a spark of inspiration from this story and realized that their prayer group was being called to get out of their locked room and to “enter the violence saturated streets and…calm the storm together.” (4)

The other women looked at her like she was nuts. “What are you saying?” They asked. And she explained to them that “they were being called to walk together in the midst of the war zone of the gangs.” And after a long discussion and more prayer and discernment that night seventy women began to walk the streets as a procession from one gang turf to the next throughout the Boyle Heights neighborhood. When they encountered gang members preparing for battle they gave them food and offered to pray with them. “Throughout the night, in eight war zones, the conflict was bafflingly, disorientingly interrupted. People were baffled; the gang members were disoriented.” (5)

Every night thereafter the mothers would walk the streets and talk to each other’s sons. Now the gangs were reluctant to engage in warfare because it was their mothers who were putting themselves in the crossfire. The love that the mothers gave on their nightly walks made the gang members see that there really were people who cared about them. Eventually the mothers called their nighttime walks, “Love Walks.” Within a week there was a dramatic drop in gang violence. Eventually through community organizing the mothers and gang members created a tortilla factory, a bakery and a child care center thus creating jobs and giving the gang members an opportunity to learn job skills. Also the members of opposing gangs were learning how to get along through the community work that they were doing with their mothers. The call that pushed these women from their locked room out into the streets is the same call that the disciples heard in the great commission “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” (Matt. 28:19)

The Holy Spirit is a gift that God gives to all God’s children freely. As Paul states in his letter to the Romans, it is given to us in the spirit of adoption, we are God’s children just as Jesus is God’s child and we become joint heirs to the Kingdom of God with Christ. The gift of the Holy Spirit is not given to a select few but to all who wish to change the world into the ways that God would have it.

In her book, “Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life Evangelism.” Rev Martha Grace Reese writes about how the Holy Spirit uses the church as a means of transformation. She states, “Church is an igniter of faith, an instigator of growth that affects your whole life. Thinking extraordinary new ideas about surrender of self, healing of bodies, addictions, marriages, wounded souls, and surviving others-these thought come to mind when members of great congregations hear the word church.” (6)

The great congregation Christian Church was started by 11 disciples called by Jesus to transform the world by going out and making disciples of all nations through the power of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This same call for transformation was heard by great congregation of the women of Dolores Mission Church when they went into the battle zone of the gang infested streets of East Los Angeles to bring peace. Where is the Spirit calling the great congregation of our church to go to transform the world in this time and in this place?

May it be so.

Amen.
(1) Thomas Long, Matthew (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 227.


(2) Ibid., 227

(3) http://www.thirdside.org/stories_01.cfm

(4) Ibid.

(5) Ibid.

(6) Martha Grace Reese, Unbinding the Gospel (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2006), 65.

Garden Blogging - Week 3

Come see how my garden grows

The Tomatoes struggled when I first put them in but now  they are flourishing!

Spinach and Cucumbers.  Look like it's going to be a bumper crop.

Radishes and Green Onions

The long view.

Confirmation Sermon

Acts 2:1-21
Romans 8: 31-39

Today is Pentecost Sunday – the birthday of the Christian church. Today we remember when the Holy Spirit came like a mighty wind sweeping the disciples off their feet and into the streets to preach the good news about “God’s mighty deeds and power.” And so it is fitting that today we celebrate the Rite of Confirmation. Now the Spirit isn’t going to descend upon our confirmands with the same dramatic force of windows blown open and tongues of fire on the head that the disciples experienced 2000 years ago. But the Spirit’s work in them is no less awe inspiring today.




_________ and ___________,

What you are about to receive today is an outward sign of an inward grace that was given to you on the day that you were baptized. As part of your baptism your parents made vows on your behalf and you were welcomed into the church. Now that you are of age, you will re-affirm these same vows and commit yourselves to accept the joys and costs of discipleship in Christ Jesus.

In the past year and a half we have shared in our faith journeys and explored what it means to be a Christian in this time and in this place. I have learned so much from you. What I’ve learned is that things are different for you then they were when I was your age. When I was your age I didn’t have the internet, cell phones, 100’s of cable TV channels, and news 24/7. When I was your age music videos had just been invented and Madonna was considered the most scandalous singer in my day, and yes I wanted to be just like her. You have access to music videos 24/7 with explicit imagery that is less kind to women. You are facing more pressures at a much younger age than I did, pressures to fit in, to keep up, to grow up fast. My hope and prayer is that the faith you already have will sustain you as you continue to grow into adulthood.

You have your whole lives ahead of you! Oh the wonderful places you will go. There will be so many happy times: graduations, careers, travel, marriage and children (if you so choose).   For you, your life's adventure is just beginning.

However, life will have its challenges. There will be hard times. You will find that life is not always fair. There will be things that will happen to you that don’t make sense. There will be people in the world who out of their own sense of insecurity who will try to make you feel less than worthy because they think your don’t look right, act right, own the right things, have the wrong beliefs. There will be times where you will choose to do the right thing because of your Christian beliefs and still be treated badly by those who refuse to understand you.

If you remember one thing from the time that we have shared together, please remember this, there is nothing absolutely nothing you can do that can separate you from the love of God. God is for you. God is for you! It doesn’t matter what people think of you because God will always think highly of you. It doesn’t matter if you mess up or even fail, God will always love you. In good times and bad, God will always be there. Even in the times where you feel lost and lonely and that hope is gone, you are not alone because God is there beside you. For I am convinced that neither life, nor death, nor too skinny super models, nor manipulative mean girls, nor cliques turning against you, nor peer pressure trying to force you to do things that you are not comfortable with, nor relationship break ups and make ups, nor class grades, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in creation will be able to separate you from the love of God in Christ. _______ and__________, remember you are always worthy because you are beloved of children of God. Amen.

Garden Blogging - Week 2

I am so grateful for my garden.  It's been a rough couple of weeks of unbloggable stuff at Smalltown church but my garden has helped sustain me through the anxiety.  On the first day of planting my anxiety got the best of me and I had to have a Garden of Gethsemane moment. I stopped what I was doing, sat on my garden box, put my head down and prayed.  A little later on a neighbor was jogged by and saw me. she asked if I was OK, I put up my head and said yes.  Then she asked when I last ate and drank, which I told her, then she said she was still concerned.  I told her that I was praying and she thought that was cool.  What a grace filled reminder that I am never alone.

Peppers and Lettuce

Tomato Plant

Beans and carrots

Cucumbers and Spinach

Even more lettuce