Dear Friends,
From its earliest days, Christianity has been more a community than a doctrine. Without question, knowing our doctrine of faith, our set of beliefs, is essential to being a faithful Christian. But even more important is that we live in community, in a welcoming manner that allows people to feel at ease in the company of believers.
Doing welcome is more vital than being informed of Christian traditions. Our faith is an active, action-oriented commitment lived out in a supportive, open, accepting, and loving community of like-minded believers and seekers. This is the essence of the welcoming community.
In the time since I first started preaching here, I have been delighted to find how truly welcoming the community of faith that we know to be the Scottsville Presbyterian Church is, and how notably comfortable you are with being so hospitable. Hospitality is a Christian virtue, and Nan and I can attest to the depth of your faithful practice of this long-revered tradition of our faith. We feel so very welcomed in your presence, and we are thankful for your hospitality to us and to our friends who have occasionally come to visit. I’ve found that churches are rarely aware of how they present themselves, and I hope you know that the sincerity of your warm welcome is, for us at least, a hallmark of SPC. I pray that you also feel as welcomed in large and small ways when we gather together.
Today’s short but powerful gospel lesson, Matthew 10:40-42, centers on the notion of welcome. May the following prayer for illumination open your heart to the gospel’s lesson:
God of abundant mercy, we turn to you for water for all your thirsting children. We come seeking your hospitality, that we may be equipped to welcome others. We reach for those high standards of commitment which you call forth, that our loyalties may not be misplaced. Keep us from easy assurances that might lure us from the challenges of faithful living. Open our minds to understanding, so that we may always reflect your welcome as we open our hearts to welcome all. Amen.
Two weeks ago, we read the end of chapter 9 and the first few verses of chapter 10 of the Gospel of Matthew about Jesus sending his disciples out into ministry. Most of the remainder of chapter 10 is travel instructions for the disciples, what we’ve come to call the Missionary Discourse, and reading it demonstrates how difficult life was for the earliest followers of Jesus. Jesus warns them to expect ridicule, rejection, and hostility rather than hospitality. “See,” he says, “I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (10:16) What an ominous, frightening charge that is!
Then, in the final three verses of the chapter (our reading for today), Jesus does an about-face, and the emphasis shifts significantly. He wants to prepare the disciples for the possibility that there might be a few who would welcome them. In these verses, Jesus is encouraging each of his disciples to accept such a welcome and be the good stranger.
The stranger is a multi-layered concept in the Bible. Most of us are familiar with the notion of welcoming the stranger as a way of living out our faith. The Bible is full of this thought throughout both testaments. I’ll provide just a few of many examples. “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 10:19) “When an alien resides with you, in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:33-34) Doesn’t that remind you of the Golden Rule? Indeed, a case could be made that the command to love one’s neighbor is, in fact, a command to love the stranger – once again, a deep, harrowing challenge. It’s much easier to imagine loving one’s neighbor than a stranger, after all.
The notion of welcoming the stranger is also found often in the New Testament. In Romans 12:13, for example, Paul counsels the new Christian community to “contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.” And the unknown writer of the letter to the Hebrews offered similar wisdom, based, as always, on the teachings of Jesus. “Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” (Hebrews 13:1-2)
Jesus himself issues the challenge in even stronger terms. He casts himself as the stranger, so that welcoming the stranger is welcoming Jesus. “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” (Matthew 25:35-36)
Welcoming the stranger, however, is but half of the task. In our reading at the end of Matthew’s Missionary Discourse, we learn of the essential other half of the welcoming equation. At times, we, like the first disciples, must be the good stranger rather than the gracious host or hostess.
Jesus tells us that “whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” (10:40) Here, he takes a significant step: he affirms that though we may be among strangers, and though others may feel like strangers to us, he walks with us; he is a part of us. And who among us doesn’t need that security, strength, and power as we face the unknown?
You might recall conversations you may have had with your children or grandchildren as they were preparing for their first sleep-over with friends, or maybe a weekend at a grandparent’s house or a favorite aunt’s. You probably reviewed all the conversations that you’d ever had with them about manners: be polite; don’t eat with your mouth open; say please and thank you; help clear the table, don’t leave a mess. In short, remember that you’re a guest!
For Christians, however, being a good stranger is more than social etiquette; it is a practice of our faith. As followers of Jesus, we live in such a way as to make our faith evident. If community is a strong element of our Christian witness, then there will inevitably be times when we find ourselves as the stranger. Jesus prepared the disciples, and us, for this crucial ministry in today’s reading.
Imagine for a moment how this works out in our lives. Our Christian calling is to reach out and touch some one’s life. Remember, doing welcome is more vital than being informed about all the minutia of Christian history, teachings, and theology. If all works well, those to whom we reach out will receive us as ambassadors for Jesus, and in turn, they will welcome us and Jesus into their lives. Though we clearly represent ourselves, we are also emissaries of Jesus, and as his messengers, we are also messengers of God’s divine self.
When the early disciples ventured out on their mission, there were no more than a few thousand followers of Jesus. The disciples knew well that they would be strangers in most of the towns and cities they entered. We, on the other hand, live in a world that includes over two billion Christians. Our message is not about an unfamiliar man from an underdeveloped area of the Middle East, nor is the message itself unknown.
Nonetheless, and hard though it might be to recognize, at times as Christians, we are often strangers. One of the reasons I love to travel is that it reminds me how much of a stranger I am: different languages, foods, customs, etc. reinforce my small place in the wider world. Travel keeps me humble. And when I’m away from home, it’s easy to see how different we are from one another.
But most of us are rarely in an entirely alien land, and safe in the familiar comforts of home, it’s much more difficult for us to recognize the stranger or, perhaps even more importantly, to recognize ourselves as the stranger to others in our own communities. As members of the dominant culture in this country, we are too easily unaware that our ways, our traditions, our history, our privilege, and our expectations are not universally obtainable or understandable by everyone in our community. This is the heart of implicit racism. That we allow such mindlessness is one of the many contributors to implicit racism.
In cities, towns, churches, businessses, and schools across our country, we’ve recently begun important and difficult conversations about implicit racism. Such discussions are merely the first step on a long path to more concrete action in order to achieve healing in this country. But we must begin somewhere.
So what, exactly, does “implicit racism” mean? I trust we know what racism is: bigotry, intolerance, and prejudice on the basis of skin color. Implicit can mean anything from unspoken, to inherent, to hidden, to buried, to embedded. You might be able to come up with more meanings. Again, we at SPC are members of the dominant group in this country. Dominant does not mean privileged; it means the largest, most powerful group. As part of this cohort, we are burdened by unspoken racism that is buried so deep that we may well be entirely unaware of our own bias, judgment, intolerance, and fear. Our burden of implicit racism becomes an intolerable burden for our brothers and sisters who are affected by it.
To unwrap this deep-seated racism, we need help; help from friends and teachers, and help through a clearer understanding of our faith. As this long-deferred quest for understanding and justice unfolds, I hope we will be able to dig deeper in future months into the work and conversations of our Presbytery and our brothers and sisters across the broader spectrum of faith. This is part of doing welcome.
I’m heartened by the exchange of pulpit and sanctuary that the Scottsville Presbyterian Church and the Chestnut Grove Baptist Church share, worshiping together in one or the other’s sanctuary each year. It’s a first step that we’re already taking. But we must not become complacent or triumphalistic: this is still but a first step.
When we worship at Chestnut Grove, even though we’re among those whom we know at least a little, we inevitably worship as strangers; we are dislocated and perhaps uncomfortable. But the awkwardness that might come with being strangers can open our hearts and minds to new ways of un-burying our bias and racism. It may grate on your heart to read that we might be strangers among people we have grown to know, like, and respect over the years. But if we are to succeed at this difficult conversation, we must be honest. Members of both congregations know that in order to more fully understand our respective social locations, we must all be courageous and willing to risk exposure as flawed people and strangers to ourselves as well as one another. We can begin to overcome our stranger-ness by working to understand one another more fully.
Fearlessly sharing new insights with humility and love will broaden and deepen our Christian faith and make us more humane as we seek to live into the charge to mission that Jesus gives us. Sharing such insights is necessary because we know, at some level, that there is much to learn about one another, and much more importantly, about ourselves. We are all strangers.
Many, perhaps most, of us are loath to admit it, but our implicit racism is real even though it lurks far below the surface, planted deeply in our psyches. The ongoing work to undo centuries of racism is not easy or comfortable, but it is essential if we are to truly live out our faith. If I may, I hope that, once the pandemic has ended and we’re able to gather again for worship in our sanctuaries, we will worship in one another’s churches much more often than only once a year. Sharing our worship lives is a small but critical step to the manifold rewards that come with truly living our faith.
Jesus calls us to welcome the strangers in our midst, and he also challenges us to recognize when we are the strangers. Both are fundamental to Christian discipleship and to healing the pain of our nation. I pray that this wonderful congregation will continue our shared ministry with Chestnut Grove Baptist Church, that we will find answers in the faith that binds us all, and that our work here at SPC and with Chestnut Grove will be to the glory of God.
Joys and Concerns:
Ongoing prayers for all who suffer from Covid 19 and the economic, social, structural, and societal fall-out it continues to engender.
Prayers for all who seek justice, all who seek to find ways to ensure it, and all who seek to discern their role in the injustices that persist in our society.
Prayers to unlock our hearts and minds to see and eradicate the weaknesses that keep us from living the challenge of authentic welcome.
Let us pray together:
Redeeming Sustainer, visit your people
and pour out your strength and courage upon us,
that we may hurry to make you welcome
not only in our concern for others,
but by serving them
generously and faithfully in your name. Amen.