Here is a sermon of Steve's. I can hear his voice preaching it.
Anti-Welcome
There’s a book going around like a fever called Blue Like Jazz. One of the ideas that caught my attention late in the book was that in any given conversation, there are actually two conversations going on. There may be the exchange of words, but there is something going on under the surface too. On the surface, there is what is actually being said. Underneath there is something more subtle, but real none the less. There is a lot more being said than simply what is said. If you talk to a person, they may be speaking words to you, but their posture and body are telling you as much, or may be telling your something different. You know that if you ask your wife how she is, and she says, “Fine!”, but crosses her arms and scowls at you, that things are not fine.
That idea has shaped us a good bit in our church, or at least made us more aware of the atmosphere we create. We can say certain things up front that are very welcoming, we can put it in our “vision statements”, but there is a subtler conversation going on underneath. People can sense whether they are really welcome, whether our words are empty.
Miss Irene helped our church a good bit when we first got off the ground. She was the one who welcomed our volunteers into a local, poor housing community. She loves people who come, but she said, “don’t bring people with fear in their eyes.” The eyes tell the story. You can tell by them whether someone really wants to be there or not. Two conversations. They say that dogs can smell fear. People can too. They can smell self-protection. They know when they really aren’t welcome.
What do people sense when they walk into a church? Or a nation, or a business, or an institution, or a home? Or when they meet an individual? Here’s Christine Pohl again: “When we offer hospitality to strangers, we welcome them into a place to which we are somehow connected – a space that has meaning and value to us. This is often our home, but it also includes a church, a community, a nation and various other institutions.”
Any human organization can offer welcome or not. It can offer hospitality or not.
Here’s a politically charged example. We’re familiar with the Statue of Liberty. Her motto reads, “Give me your poor, your tired, and your hungry.” (My daughter adds “and your sleepy.”) She has always been the sign of welcome to our country. She greets so many at the door. Our country’s history is full of welcoming strangers. The U.S. was built to say, “send us your refugees, your poor, your persecuted, your struggling…Come in! Come home!” But lately, that has become dangerous. I think countries should have borders, and should watch them. But can you become suddenly so defensive about your borders that welcome dies?
I know of a Mexican woman who crossed the border illegally when she was 17. She was pregnant, and her father threatened to kill her. So, she slipped out of the house and into the U.S. This was 25 years ago. She has raised two children here (both U.S. citizens) and owns a business. She married a man in the states who then abandoned and divorced her years later. He had told her that he had “taken care of” her citizenship papers. But in the divorce proceeding it was discovered that she did not have legal status. Immigration came after her. Thankfully, her church and her new husband have rallied and been able to get her legal help. But, for the last six years she has had to wade through courts to keep from being deported. She has been treated with hostility at every turn. And she is still in limbo. Her children have never been to Mexico. She did come illegally, but as a scared, pregnant teenager. I know there are not easy answers here (though our political parties think there are). And I know that there is danger too. But what happened to “Give me your poor, your tired, your hungry?”
An atmosphere can become hard and hostile and closed. Anti-welcome. There are examples of this in the Bible.
In the gospel of Luke is the story of a religious leader named Simon. Some of the local preacher-types are getting together for dinner at Simon’s and they invite Jesus to come. The famous part of the story is when a “woman of the city who had led a sinful life” crashes the party. She comes and weeps at Jesus’ feet, and pours really expensive lotion on them. Simon is not real happy about it.
Jesus says, “Simon, when I came in you gave me no kiss. You did not anoint my head with oil. You did not give me water to wash my feet.” What did he mean by that?
So I invite you over to a dinner party. You knock on the door. I open it and say, "Oh. It's you." (the opposite of “thank God you’ve come). You extend your hand. I put mine behind my back. You ask if you can wash up before dinner. I say no. At dinner, I move around refilling glasses with a choice beverage. You hold out your glass. I pass you by. The other guests are looking at you, whispering and then chuckling. Feeling welcome so far? "You gave me no water for my feet. You gave me no kiss. You did not anoint my head with oil." It's the same thing. I had invited you. But the atmosphere said, “you’re not welcome here.” Simon is one of "God's men". He is an influential religious leader. He is held in high regard by the people. He is very moral. And he keeps the forms. He even set a table. But it is clear that Simon doesn't like Jesus very much.
One of the most famous New Testament churches is the church at Ephesus. The ruins of it can still be found on the coast of Turkey. They were the first recipients of one of Paul’s letters.
The church was born out of some pretty fierce opposition and yet is really growing and flourishing. It’s changing the whole city! Acts 19 and 20 tell the story. Everywhere that Paul goes to start a church, a band of people follow. They come in behind him and try to undo what he has worked for and to stir up trouble. Paul is about to leave Ephesus, and he knows these guys are coming. So, he calls the elders together and leaves them with these words: “I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away disciples after them. Be on your guard!!” There are those who would shred the church to bits, and they are supposed to watch out.
You meet this church again at the end of the Bible. In Revelation 2 they are addressed in the “seven letters to seven churches”. Jesus dictates this to the Apostle John for the Ephesians: “I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance and how you can’t bear with those who are evil but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not and found them to be false. I know you’re enduring patiently and bearing up for my namesake and you’ve not grown weary.” It seems they have done what Paul told them to do. They are fighting for truth. But then Jesus says this: “I have this against you- you have abandoned the love that you had at first.” Fighting and defending had become the hallmark of the church. But they had become such fighters that it changed who they were. In fighting for the gospel, they had stabbed the gospel in the heart. The need to be right kills off love.
A church (even a whole denomination) can so identify itself with being defenders of the truth that it becomes harsh and intolerant. They create an environment with Christian words but filled with suspicion and fear, where if someone is different, or they don’t agree with every doctrine down the line, they feel like outsiders. It can bring a lot of shame.
My other example is from a very obscure letter in the New Testament, 3rd John. (Did you know there was a 3rd John?) It’s a short little letter written to an individual elder named Gaius. John contrasts Gaius to another elder in his church. Gaius is known for taking care of strangers, for showing hospitality. “It is a faithful thing you do in all your efforts for these brothers, strangers as they are…” Gaius welcomes.
But there is also a man named Diotrophes. “He likes to put himself first…and not content with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers and also stops those who want to and puts them out of the church.” That’s pretty over the top! I’ll bet their elder’s meetings were a real ball. Gaius and Diotrophes are in the same church.
In all three of those examples (Simon and his cronies, the Ephesian elders, Diotrophes) it is the leadership, even the orthodox leadership, that exhibits the hostility. Remember Psalm 23? The shepherds are to be hosts. They are to create a safe environment where people can flourish. They are supposed to make room for others, but in each case have created anti-welcome and the church becomes harsh.
Cultivating Welcome
The church in the beginning of Acts, the Pentacost church, is alluring. They are meeting each other’s needs. They have a one-mindedness as Jesus knits their lives together (even though they come from diverse backgrounds). And there is an intense sharing of life. “They break bread in each other’s homes with glad and generous hearts.” Hospitality. Welcome.
Eugene Peterson says this:
“It is hard to believe that this marvelous word of salvation is presently taking place in our neighborhoods, in our families, in our governments, in our schools and businesses, in our hospitals, on the roads we drive and down the corridors we walk, among people whose names we know. It is basic to the Christian faith that Jesus is, in actual fact, God among us…. Jesus keeps our feet on the ground, attentive to children, in conversation with ordinary people, sharing meals with friends and strangers, touching the sick and wounded, praying simply and unselfconsciously. Jesus insists that we deal with God right here and now, in the place we find ourselves and with the people we are with. Jesus is God here and now.”
This isn’t some 2000 year old story about the Spirit coming to some distant group of people. It’s the story about living Pentacost over and over and over in the places we live. The same story is being written on our streets that was started on the streets of Jerusalem. It all begins in the glory and shame of our lives.
When people are joining Red Mountain Church, we say it is sort of like a marriage. When you get married, you don’t marry marriage. You marry Joe. That’s the shock of it. You thought you married an idea and you come home with Joe. It’s the same thing with a church. You don’t marry the concept of the church, the ideal, you marry Red Mountain Church. The people in these chairs, in this neighborhood, in this city. We don’t practice welcome “someplace else”. We do it here, with our “feet on the ground”, this ground. Jesus has come in the guise of these people.
I recently heard Wilson Goode, the former mayor of Philadelphia, speak. He has started an organization called Amachi which works with children. He says the name is from a Nigerian phrase that goes like this: “Who knows what God has brought to us through this child?” There is an anticipation in the word that every child that crosses the threshold brings a gift from God. Beautiful.
Dr. Goode also relayed a greeting he learned from the Masai Tribe. In the South we say, “Hey!”. These tribesmen ask, “How are the children?” That seems a little odd, but they are on to something. If the children are flourishing, then we are all flourishing. If the children suffer, we all suffer.
We long to make room for children and help them flourish in the room we have made. But we can extend the definitions. To anyone who crosses the threshold, we can wonder, “who knows what God has brought to us through this person.” We can also ask, “How are the poor?” “How are the women?” “How are the marginalized?” “How are the lonely?” Because in God’s economy, if they flourish, we flourish. If they suffer, we suffer.
Have you seen the bumper sticker that says, “If you’re not mad, you’re not paying attention”? It’s true. The world is not working like it was made to. And you can get pretty overwhelmed by the brokenness of it all. If you think you are supposed to swallow it all yourself, or if you think you are responsible for all the darkness in the world, you will be paralyzed with fear.
One old saint says, “make small steps into the darkness”. Baby steps. Wilson Goode told the story of a father who’s young son wanted to play. To buy a little time to finish a project, he found a picture of a world map and cut it into pieces. “Go put this back together, and when you’re done we’ll play.” The son was back in 5 minutes. The father was surprised and asked how he did it so fast. “Well, on the back of the picture of the world, there was a picture of a man. If you put the man back together, you put the world back together.” Pretty clever.
Jim Houston says that everyone can cultivate a signature prayer. Just like your signature is unique to you alone, your prayers can become unique as well. I think that we can say the same thing about welcome and hospitality. Each church or person has unique gifts and resources. We can each pray, “God, what is the signature way that I/we can make room for others and help them to flourish in the room that we have made?” What are the ways we can bring the two conversations into sync, our words and our atmosphere?
“Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you.”