All Are Welcome?

 

St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Cambridge, MA            The Rev. Nancy E. Gossling 

Just this month, our Bishop shared with members of the Diocese of Massachusetts the work that we have been doing over this past year regarding our new core values, mission statement, and the strategic priorities for the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. According to the Bishop, our hope is that these values and priorities will guide us in our life together for the next several years to come. Today I want to focus on our five core values. They are: Welcome, Courage, Justice, Joy, and Love; and I’d like to focus most specifically on the core value of Welcome.

Many years ago, one of the hot topics in our church was encouraging the practice of radical hospitality. In his sermon last week, the Rev. Dan Bell mentioned that he had recently learned a new word called “Sonder.” It is defined as realizing that every other individual has a life as full and real as one’s own. It can also be described as the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.” (John Koenig, Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.)

Put another way, according to St. Benedict’s Way of Love, radical hospitality “means you’re open to the gift of discovering what any person has to offer no matter who they are.” (Radical Hospitality, Benedict’s Way of Love.) Or as Brother David, one of the monks affiliated with the Society of St. John the Evangelist, has said, we can only know another individual as the tip of an iceberg. So much of our lives and stories, our thoughts and experiences, lie beneath the surface, unknown to others, perhaps even to ourselves!

 Why would our church place such importance on radical hospitality? Why would our diocese recently name welcome as one of our core values? Well, because Jesus did!

In Luke’s gospel today, Jesus specifically talks about what it means to be a guest in someone’s house. And here we are today, gathered in God’s house which we call St. Peter’s, and at today’s Eucharistic feast, we are all invited to be Christ’s guests at His Table. Everyone is invited. Indeed on your website you say to expect A Radical Welcome at St. Peter’s!

What do we mean by “a radical welcome?” Your website claims that Saint Peter’s “welcomes the voices, presence, and power of all people, including those who have been defined as The Other, pushed to the margins, or silenced.” You say that “We will welcome you if you are ready to walk the path of Christ in fellowship with others; if you are struggling to find your way forward; or if you need a quiet place in which to pray. At Saint Peter’s, there is room for everyone at God’s table.” Everyone?

Remember that oft repeated marketing line that hangs from church banners or appears on our church websites? “All are Welcome!” we proudly proclaim. Now I have a friend who lives in Minnesota and often makes fun of that claim. He says, “Do you really think churches would welcome a violent and criminal predator to join them without practicing safe church guidelines? Do you really think that anyone would welcome a stranger at their church door who is masked and holding a gun in their hands? Would you welcome a young man carrying three guns who appears at your church ready to kill the children who are praying inside during mass?”

 Because of its dwindling numbers of parishioners and its desire to address a social need within their community, a church in Somerville decided last year to convert its church into a homeless shelter. Partnering with the Somerville Homeless Coalition, they created everything needed for a shelter for the homeless people in their neighborhood, with a sign that said, “All Are Welcome Here.”

Unfortunately or fortunately, depending upon your perspective, the neighbors have taken them to court, arguing that it is against the law to create this shelter in their neighborhood. Pointing to NIMBY, “Not in My Back Yard”, the church members are pushing forward to open this shelter. Why would you complain about certain problems if you’re not willing to find and create solutions for them, they argue? Pointing to increased drug use, petty and violent crimes, and more litter on their streets, opponents offer their own rebuttals.

How often have you been excluded from a conversation or a gathering because you seemed to be the wrong age, the wrong skin color, or wearing the wrong clothes? How often have you been avoided just because you’re new and different from the people who know each other already? How often have you felt a cold shoulder rather than a warm welcome because of one thing or another?

Over the years I’ve learned variations of the word “radical.” Unfortunately it is a word that is often misused or misunderstood. Politically, we group people into far right and far left camps and we call them radical. We claim that certain politicians are so radical that they would destroy our country if elected into office. Judging books by their covers we consider certain lifestyle choices as being radical. In fact, blue hair and tattoos belong to the young and old alike. And if human nature isn’t radical enough, how about Mother Nature and the radical changes we see in our climate?

I learned that the root meaning of radical invites us to dig deeper. Indeed radical means just that….to be radical is to go to the root of something or someone. It is a way of going beyond surface manifestations, beyond the tips of our icebergs, and ‘digging’ deep into the core of something or someone. It means practicing “sonder”, which means seeing individuals just as they are, with so much more of their lives and stories hidden beneath the surface.

Jesus was someone who practiced radical hospitality and He practiced it by moving beyond the confines of his own religious upbringing. While the author of Hebrews wrote: "Remember your leaders, and imitate their faith”, last week Jesus called them “hypocrites.” Jesus wasn’t afraid to speak truth to power; and yet Jesus incarnated God’s radical love and encouraged us to love God as God loves each and every one of us. To love others even though it involves risks. How do we do that?

The letter to the Hebrews offers us multiple suggestions. Here are five from today’s lesson:

1.     Let your mutual love continue between you and God and between you and your neighbor. We can love others, and indeed even ourselves, because God loves us first and Jesus showed us the Way. Mutuality implies giving and receiving.

2.     Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers. If you don’t know someone here, introduce yourself. If you see someone alone or struggling, offer a word of kindness, or a look of understanding. Offer to help. Speak up; if you see something, say something.  Being radical means taking risks, and stepping out of our comfort zones for good reasons.

3.     There are many hot topics for debate and discussion these days, like immigration, gun violence and wars, gender identity, and economic challenges. It can be tempting to stay on the surface or remain within our favorite echo-chambers, and therefore avoid those difficult conversations. We often maintain our superficiality and don’t dig deeper with radical courage, engaging others with respectful dialogue, or maybe even challenging our own perspectives.

4.     “Keep your lives free from the love of money.” Soon we’ll find ourselves in the thick of our stewardship season followed by our end of year financial planning. Quickly we may remind ourselves that money isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just the love of it that causes us so much trouble.

5.     And that easily leads me into the 5th example offered in the letter to the Hebrews. “Be content with what you have.”

Today, we can only live one day at a time, trusting that Jesus is “the same, yesterday, today and forever” as the author of Hebrews attests. We are all welcome for a meal in God’s house with Jesus as our gracious and radical host. We are all invited to share places of honor, each and every one of us, at His Table. Praising God, from whom all our blessings flow, we are then empowered to be radical agents of Christ’s love, “doing good, sharing what we have, and confessing His name.” Amen.

Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16                         Luke 14:1, 7-14