September 13, 2009 Des Moines

Genesis 18:1-8; Hebrews 13:1-2

Second in the “Getting Started in the Right Direction” Series

In the Direction of Welcome

Christians have a tendency to talk in lofty, sweeping language.

· We talk a lot, for instance, about "Jesus as Lord", but manage to act out some decidedly “un-Christlike” behaviors by never really getting to the part about what difference that Lordship makes.

· We've heard about "loving our neighbor", but aside from waving over the fence occasionally on mowing day, we don't get around to thinking much about who that neighbor is or what that kind of loving really means.

· We give thanks for our "salvation", but aside from the children's stories we've heard about heaven and the ghost stories we've been told about hell, we have a hard time telling someone what we've been saved from, let alone what we've been saved for.

· We hear about justice and peace, but even when we are able to separate scripture's words from all the rhetoric of the politicians on the subject, we still have a hard time knowing just what courses of action are "just", and what the tools are that make for peace.

You know the problem. When we use such large categories, it's hard to know much about the small circumstances. We can talk all we want to about the "living of our lives", but what do we do with this particular moment, and the people I meet in it and the choices I will make in it.

Haven't you ever ached for more? Haven’t you ever faced a difficult choice or an agonizing fork in the road; struggled with a moral decision or wondered if you were doing the right thing, and wished for a clear and specific rule to guide you? Haven't you ever been sinking in a sea of gray and wished for a rope of black and white that could pull you out? OK, maybe not “black and white” because we have come to distrust such absolutes, but surely more direction than we usually get.

Our congregation is in the process of working to flesh out some of those big and abstract principles. We have been paying special attention this past year to how God is calling us to focus our ministry. Four big ideas have crystallized among us that have begun to pull us purposely forward. Various Ministries and groups within the church are already at work teasing them out – envisioning what they might look like – what we might look like if we were actually doing them. Last week we looked at the first of those four as we work to get this new season of our life started off in the right direction: last week in the direction of caring.

The writer to the Hebrews is ready to move in the direction of the second of those ministry priorities: toward being a welcoming community of faith. For the better part of twelve chapters, he has been alternating his brush between that larger, broader and loftier stroke, and one with a narrower, sharper point. Here, for instance, in this 13th chapter, general principles again evolve into practical application. What does it mean to be Christian, concretely?

In a word, it has to do with love - which shouldn't catch any of us by surprise. The church, its book and its leaders are always talking about love. It has to do with community, but community stretched in ways we have a tendency to forget - which may be why he seems to be so fond of the word "remember." We forget the basic thread of relatedness that has woven us together by creation.

At camp, one of those goofy get-acquainted, ice-breaking, group-building games, small groups occasionally play uses a spoon tied onto a ball of string. The spoon is passed by the first person down through the shirt collar and out through the pant leg and handed to the person next in line; she then passes up through her pant leg and out through her collar. Up and down, through person after person, until each in the group is included; sewn together after a fashion by giggles and string, then given a task to perform as a group. Steps must be taken with care because each one tugs the others along; individuals must act as one, because for all practical purposes, they are.

It's harder to remember without the spoon and the string, but the same is true with the rest of us. We, too, are strung together; all of us - the person sitting beside you in the pew, but also the strangers you don't know but bump up against; your leaders and the ones who learn from you; those we need and those who, in one way or another, need us - the imprisoned and those who need to be; the child abused or the mother without food to serve her kids; the laid-off worker ashamed to go home; the immigrant who screams for dignity and basic human needs, and the newcomer who simply needs a friend.

All of us - the blest and the blasphemous, the sought and the avoided - we are all woven together by the same muddy string of creation. And the writer urges us to remember, in all these circumstances, and more. In the hospital or the prison; the classroom or the kitchen; the marriage bed or the trench. “Open yourself,” he writes, “offer welcome. After all, you may be entertaining angels unaware.

It is a titillating thought, and sounds like a simple, churchy thing to do. But the truth of it is that it isn’t always easy. Once upon a time, close to 900 years before Christ, the prophet Elijah was serving God by preaching against the idolatries that had come to distract the people of Israel. God had already been providing for him in some unusual ways when God sent him to the town of Zarephath, on the Mediterranean coast about 80 or 90 miles away, with instructions to visit a certain widow who would provide for him. It seemed like an odd plan, since God had brought a drought and famine upon the land, and the poor, such as this widow, would almost certainly run out of food before anyone else.

Setting his skepticism aside he made the trip, located the widow near the city gates gathering sticks, and introduced himself. “Would you mind bringing me a little water to drink,” he asked, “and would it be too much to ask to bring along with it a little bread?”

The widow couldn’t have been overjoyed. My bet is that, taken a little aback, she responded with something like, “No, I wouldn’t mind, and it wouldn’t be too much trouble. The only problem is that I don’t have any bread. In fact, the only thing I have is a small handful of flour and a little oil that my son and I were planning to use to prepare a last meal before we die of starvation. Welcome to town, but I’m afraid I’m a little beyond the hospitality stage.”

But welcome, Elijah understood, is more than a word. It is behaviors interrupted and new spaces cleared. He coaxed her, reassured her, and encouraged her. “Give,” he reminded her, “and it will be given.”

And so she did – welcoming the prophet into her home and into her kitchen, where she prepared a meal with what she had and shared it with Elijah and her son, even though such welcome cost her everything she had. But somehow, miraculously, it didn’t. According to the story, neither her flour nor her oil ran out until the day that God returned the rain. (1 Kings 17:7-24)

Moving in the direction of welcome. Jesus talked about it another way. In his parable of the last judgment – when the sheep are separated from the goats – the key behavior dividing the two was this: “Truly I tell you, just as you showed hospitality to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you showed it in essence to me.”

The story and the reminder come this week at something of a providentially good time. We are, after all, getting a workout in that regard today. Welcome is precisely what we are extending to yet another worshiping community, and also a brand new minister preparing to come and serve among us. And while the latter might be delightfully easy, the former will likely feel at times like it is taking our last bit of oil and flour. But here we are, determined to lean and lead in this direction.

An ancient teacher once asked his pupils how to tell when the night had ended and the day was on the way back. "Could it be," asked one student, "when you can see an animal in the distance and tell whether it is a sheep or a dog?" "No," said the teacher. "Could it be," asked another, "when you can look at a tree and tell whether it is a fig tree or a peach tree?"

"No," answered the teacher. "Well, then when is it?" demanded his pupils. "It is when you look on the face of any woman or any man and see that she or he is your sister or brother. Because if you cannot do this, no matter what time it is, it is still night." (Pulpit Resource, vol. 17, #3, p. 36)

Remember, then, who you are - from whom you came and to whom you're related; remember the grace that blossoms in welcome, trusting that in love's light you might entertain the angels you discover all your guests to be.