Yesterday we gathered in this Sanctuary to remember and celebrate the life of Norman. As I read the Gospel for this week, I kept thinking about this service and the way a community comes together at certain times of life, especially funerals and weddings. The act of gathering together is inherently based on hospitality; in welcoming one another and all of the emotions that we are feeling into this space to be present in the midst of community, even if it is just for a little while. I love that about the way churches gather for life’s milestones. These are the times when so many people who never attend our congregation become a part of us and we get to connect over our shared experiences with others. It makes me wonder why we don’t do this more often.
Our Gospel today, while short, is central to our understanding of what it means to live as a Christian because it expands our worldview beyond ourselves. It involves the invitation and welcoming of strangers. While we say things like “welcome” when we invite people in, like love, welcome is so much more than just a word. I’ve been in spaces that proclaim “all are welcome” and I did not feel like I could be myself at all. Welcome is about creating a space of vulnerability. It is about maintaining an openness to be changed in the process. When we welcome someone in and we allow them to truly be in that space with us, it changes all of us in the process.
What does it mean to even say that all are welcome? Maybe it’s just my skeptical nature, but it feels like someone is always excluded. Take the conversations churches were having during the pandemic for example. I remember when a church received a call from someone asking about whether people had to wear masks or not and when they were told this was required at that time the person scolded them for excluding those who didn’t want to wear masks, even though by wearing them it was protecting the most vulnerable among them at the height of the pandemic. Priya Parker in her book, The Art of Gathering[1], has an entire section about how thoughtful exclusion is actually better than being wholly inclusion for many types of gatherings because we cannot be all things to all people. And, it forces us to think about who is being excluded and who is being protected, essentially, through this intentional exclusion.
Now, I’m not necessarily saying that Jesus wanted us to exclude people, but it makes me think about the Lutheran understanding of law and gospel, specifically in cases where one person hears something as law, and the other might hear as Gospel. God’s preferential option for the poor sounds a lot different to people depending on their socio-economic status. Even Jesus, when extending invitations to the poor, orphaned, ill, and widowed, was excluding the other religious leaders and those in power because the people who already had all of the social control didn’t need an invitation; they were already there as somebodies in society.
I’ve been thinking about this in relationship to accepting and extending God’s welcome that we hear about in the Gospel. “Those who welcome you also welcome me, and those who welcome me welcome the One who sent me” (Matthew 10: 40). When people welcomed the disciples into their homes, it opened them up to a relationship with God, and they were changed as a result. This is no accident that God uses relationships to continually shape us and reform the way we gather. We are drawn together for a purpose and a reason; to worship God together, but also to surround one another during the best and worst days of our lives. And, with each new person who joins us, we get to live into our call even more fully.
I think this is so beautiful too because while the welcome in our case comes from the church, it is ultimately Christ’s welcome, just as it is Christ’s church. It’s why I chose to say that “all are welcome at Christ’s table” as the invitation to communion. Because Christ was about breaking down the divisions, creating relationships with strangers, and not accepting that life had to keep going on in the same way it always had. Christ was coming into the world to shake it up. Which, I know can cause it’s own sense of grief, especially as the church changes over the years.
So when we talk about being a church of welcome, and I hear today’s Gospel, I also find myself wondering how common it was for people to open their homes to strangers along the way. Because, I don’t know what is has been like for you all in Seattle, but several times a year, growing up in Minnesota, the front door of my house would be knocked on by various people who wanted to tell us about Jesus. Now, admittedly if I was home alone, I would duck down and hide because I was terrified any time someone came to the door, but even when my parents were home, I don’t remember there ever being a conversation. How many households actually talked to those people? Is turning them away just a phenomenon of our age, or were people skeptical about opening their doors in Jesus’ time too? Even now, there is a lady who walks up and down the sidewalk here in Seattle asking people if she can tell them about Jesus; it makes me stop and think about what gets in the way of me actually having a conversation with her because usually I just cross to the other side of the street.
We know that not everyone welcomed Jesus, as we see clearly with his public execution. His invitations into abundant life were not received well by those who felt that parts of their lives would be taken away because of this. This unfortunately is still our reality today. But Jesus is calling us back to active welcome. To seek out those who are not present in the space, determine why they don’t feel they can be a part of it, and see what we can do to help change the story. To embrace those who do enter into Christ’s space, ultimately being good stewards of his grace and mercy. It’s not going to be perfect and at times it is going to be messy because the reality is that not everyone is going to like what we are doing, as was made clear by our 1-star review on Yelp, which still makes me laugh. But, we will continue to be a presence, to engage with those around us, and to continually seek to understand what it means to welcome someone in Christ’s name, for Christ’s sake.
[1] Priya Parker, The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters (Penguin Publishing Group, April 14, 2020).