Welcome

Pentecost 3A, 6/29/14

Matthew 10:40-42

O Lord, we will sing of your faithfulness forever. Establish your kingdom among us. Amen.

Over the years, I’ve been a regular worshipper in at least eight different congregations. There is one word that almost every congregation uses to describe itself: “welcoming.”

We know that’s not true, though. Not all congregations do welcoming well.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus emphasizes the importance of welcoming. When someone truly welcomes guests into their midst, they are welcoming Jesus himself. And when we welcome Jesus, we welcome God the Father.

When we do welcoming well, Jesus promises us that God will be present among us. That’s a pretty great reward for something that we already know is important and we already want to do anyway.

Let’s explore a little bit about what welcoming looks like.

A few years ago, I was living in St Paul. I was only going to be there for one school year, about nine months. This was near the end of my ordination process – I knew that it wouldn’t be long until all my Sundays would be booked for the foreseeable future. I decided to take the opportunity to visit as many different churches as I could that year.

I had read somewhere that you have to attend worship five times before you really get a feel for a congregation. There are so many unexpected things that happen – baptisms, special celebrations, volunteers forgetting their job, bad sermons –you can never be sure that your first impression of a place is accurate. So once I started visiting churches, I tried to get to most of them at least twice, to get a better feel of what the congregation was like.

Sometimes I met a friend for worship. She is a pastor in the United Church of Christ, and she was living in Minneapolis and was in between calls. At one church, we got there a few minutes early for the second Sunday worship service. Some folks from the first service were still around having coffee, and one nice older woman came over and talked to us. She told us that she was thrilled to see younger people in the congregation – their church needed more young folks. She was excited that we were both pastors, and told us how great it was that women were able to be ordained now. She told us about her family, and how long she had been a member of the congregation, and how important it was to her and what an amazing place it was.

My friend and I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. By the time we finally managed to pull ourselves away from this woman, the second worship service had already started… and there were no bulletins left. We had to try peeking over the shoulders of the people in the pew in front of us to follow along with worship.

A few weeks later, we decided to give this church another try. After all, you can’t judge a congregation based on one experience with it.

The same woman greeted us when we arrived. She remembered us from our previous visit and was excited to see us again. Even though we were a bit pushier in getting away from her and into worship, we still missed the beginning of the service on our second visit. And they had run out of bulletins again. Thankfully, this time, someone sitting near us saw that we didn’t have a bulletin, so they gave us one and shared with the person next to them.

Needless to say, that second visit was our last to that congregation.

These people believed that they were welcoming to guests.

This woman thought that she was being welcoming. 

What mistakes did they make?

On a practical level, not enough bulletins were made for worship. And even if that's understandable for one week, somehow the communication didn’t make it to whoever was in charge of printing the bulletins, telling them to make more because they had run out.

The ushers didn’t do their job either. They didn’t notice that there were sill people waiting to come in for worship, so they gave out the last bulletin – they didn’t try to find someone to make more copies. And once the service started, the ushers abandoned their posts. Any latecomers were left on their own. A welcoming usher could have stayed around, and if someone came in, they could have directed them to sit by a regular church member who could share, and help the guest find their way through the service.

What about the woman who greeted us? Do you think she had gifts for ministry? I certainly do. Someone who loves the church that much – get her set up with the new member class, talking to folks who are joining about the many ways they can get more involved. Sign her up to be a Confirmation mentor, so she can tell the kids all about how important it is to have a church community throughout your life. But don’t have her greet visitors on Sunday mornings. Find someone else, who is good as greeting and giving directions and helping with traffic flow, and post them by the doors before worship.

The biggest mistake that this church made, from my point of view, was that no one asked us why we were there. The only reason we went was to experience worship in community. And that was the only thing that we were prohibited from doing.

This congregation immediately assumed that any visitor who walked through the doors were potential members. Even when the woman found out that we were pastors, she didn’t change the direction of conversation. She kept trying to sell her church to us, rather than trying to get to know us. She didn’t listen when we said that we weren’t in the market to buy.

Think about walking into a car dealership and test-driving a new car.

Sometimes you’re actually in the market to purchase a car.

Sometimes you just want to try out something different or new.

Sometimes you’re shopping for someone else.

Sometimes you’re checking out the competition that your friend who owns another dealership is going to be up against.

Sometimes you just want the free giveaway that the dealership advertised for anyone who came in to test-drive a new car.

So you test-drove a car. And you didn’t buy anything.

Three years later, which dealership will you go to when you are ready to make a purchase?

Will you go back to the place where the salespeople hovered over you and didn’t even let you talk to your spouse about the car you tried, without butting in to the conversation? Will you give your business to the place that flooded you with junk mail and phone calls, pressuring you to return and buy something immediately?

Or will you return to the dealership that answered your questions but also respected your personal space? Will you return to the dealership that maybe made a follow-up phone call or sent a letter, but in a way that respected your independence and your ability to make your own decision about buying a car?

People attend worship at new congregations for a wide variety of reasons.

Some people are looking for a church home.

Some people are there to support a friend or family member.

Some people haven’t been to church for ages and they’re just dipping their toe in the water to see if God still shows up on Sunday morning.

Some people are in the middle of a life crisis and just need somewhere to go where they can spend an hour in prayer and not be interrupted.

Some people are hoping to be able to send their kids or grandkids to Sunday School, or are looking for a place in which to get married.

These people may or may not be potential members.

But they are all children of God.

And they all deserve to be welcomed as though they were Christ himself.

Some of the best efforts at welcoming end up going awry because people spend their energy focused on something that the guest doesn’t want.

I saw a cartoon last week that had a couple of old guys changing the lettering on the sign in front of a church. The caption had one of them saying to the other, “There! That ought to dispel the myth that we’re an elderly congregation that doesn’t know how to reach out to young people.”

The lettering on the church sign said, “Whippersnappers are welcomed.”

Another time I visited a church with one of my friends because they had a prominent theologian as their guest for the weekend. He had given a lecture the day before, and was preaching in worship on Sunday.

At the end of worship, this congregation practiced one of the most unfriendly traditions that churches ever invented. They asked all the guests to stand up and introduce themselves.

I know this is something that many of you have experienced. And I can tell you, based on every study done on church growth in the last 20 years, this is one of the quickest ways to ensure that a guest will never return to your congregation.

What if the guest had a speech impediment? And all of a sudden you’re asking him to stand up and speak aloud in front of a room full of strangers. Can you imagine the embarrassment?

This particular congregation also handed out loaves of homemade bread to guests. I guess it was something of a reward for standing up and speaking to strangers. But on this particular Sunday, they didn’t have enough loaves for all the visitors. You’d think they would have been prepared for a large number of guests, considering that they had advertised this event. Although my friend and I had made it clear in our introductions that we were classmates, not a couple, we had to share a loaf of bread. There wasn’t enough for one for each of us. It was awkward - we didn't live together, how were we going to share a loaf of bread?

Again, it was a nice gesture, but it failed. And what would have happened if one of us had been severely allergic to nuts, for example? Unless we knew that the bread had been carefully made with no ingredients that would put us at risk for anaphylactic shock, that bread would have gone straight into the garbage.

Sometimes in the church, we try so hard to be welcoming, that we end up scaring people away.

According to the Gospel lesson today, it shouldn’t have to be that hard.

Treat others as if they are Christ.

Put their needs first.

And God will be present in our community.

The Gospel passage actually sets the bar pretty low. If you even give a cold cup of water to someone as an act of faith, you will be rewarded.

Giving someone a drink of water. It seems pretty simple.

Is that something that we can do here?

At our church, if my sister came here to worship and wanted a drink of water because her throat was sore from singing so enthusiastically with the congregation – she wouldn’t be able to have one. My sister has a son who is three months old, and he is still breastfeeding.

The water in our well has a level of nitrates that is unhealthy for pregnant women & infants. 

Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about nitrates in the groundwater.

But we could keep bottled water on hand.

We could install filters on our faucets.

We could buy one of those fancy water cooler thingies.

My sister is exactly the demographic that we say that we want in our congregation.

We claim that we want young families at our church.

But if they actually came, would we even be able to offer them a cold cup of water?

Today’s Gospel lesson reminds us that welcoming is important.

And in welcoming guests, we have to remember a few important things.

Their needs come first. A guest isn’t here to serve us, to keep us in business, or help us avoid closing our doors. Our job is to serve the guest, to discover their needs, and to help them have their needs fulfilled.

When we welcome a new person to our community, Jesus asks us to treat them in the way that we would treat him.

We have work to do, folks. Jesus expects us to be a welcoming community. We can’t just say that we are, like every single church does, we actually have to put our words into action.

I hope that, when a visitor leaves this congregation, they don’t go away with stories like the ones I’ve told you today.

And I’m sure those congregations I told you about today would be appalled to know how unwelcomed I felt when I visited.

So let’s do better. Let’s focus our energy on making our church be a welcoming place, where everyone who comes in the door is welcomed as if they are Christ.

And may God help and guide us as we do so.

Amen.

Worship

Pentecost 2A, 6/22/14
Bring A Friend to Church Sunday, Baptism
Matthew 10:24-39; Jeremiah 20:7-13; Romans 6:1b-11

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our heart be acceptable in your sight, O God, you are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Well, I’ve learned a very important lesson this week. Next time I schedule “bring a friend to church Sunday” I should read the assigned lessons first.

People like to hear nice stories about Jesus healing people or walking on water, or being raised from the dead.

No one likes to hear abut Jesus bringing a sword to the earth and pitting family members against one another.

Yet here we are.

Welcome, guests!

You get to jump right in to the meaty, complicated parts of faith with us.

I’m not going to apologize to you about the readings, though.

Sure, I didn’t intend that today we’d be hearing Jesus promise that one’s foes would be members of one’s own household.

But no one likes false advertising.

And Jesus did say these things.

And it’s too easy in today’s culture to hear the message that God blesses everyone who is faithful and if you just believe strongly enough, you’ll be healthy and wealthy and never struggle with anything ever again.

That’s not how Christianity works, folks.

Life is hard sometimes. There is conflict sometimes. We don’t always get along with other people, we are not always healthy, and personal wealth has absolutely nothing to do with being faithful to God.

I don’t think that Jesus means for us all to start hating our family members. That’s not the point of today’s Gospel reading.

I do think that Jesus was speaking to people who had already been estranged from their families because of their faith.

Early Christians, the first followers of Jesus, were adherents of a minority religion in a culture where people could be put to death for their faith. Most of Jesus’ 12 disciples died martyrs’ deaths because of what they believed.

In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus says, some of you might already be pitted against your own family members for my sake.

Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.

Do not be afraid; God cares for even the sparrows, and you are much more valuable than them.

You have an identity that is more important than family, more important than your job, more important than even life or death.

And that identity is, child of God.

What you do and who you are as a person of faith is much more meaningful than anything you do as a member of a household or any other group.

Your faith – choosing to follow Jesus – living as one of his disciples – is the most important thing you could ever do.

Faith, to Jesus and his followers, was a life-and-death thing. It was serious business. That’s why the Gospel lesson sounds so harsh. Jesus was talking to people who were putting everything on the line to follow him.

Today, in this part of the world, Christians are not persecuted for their faith.

We can gather for worship without fear of execution.

Christians are elected to public office and are allowed to be landowners.

You can’t be put in prison for professing faith in Jesus.

The stakes aren’t as high for us. That is to say, living as a disciple of Jesus is still the most important thing we’ll ever do, but doing so is not a life-or-death matter for us.

So, the point of Jesus’ diatribe today doesn’t need to be quite as extreme for us as it was for the first Christians.

Our identity isn’t shaped by our persecution.

Our identity is shaped by other things.

One of those things that defines us as Christians, is gathering in community for worship. Worship is the primary function of this congregation.

The word “congregation” actually means “assembly.” So we only really exist as a congregation when people are gathered together.

Church is different – church refers to the entire identity and all the functions of all the followers of Jesus in every time and place – but that’s a different sermon. For now, let’s focus on what it means to be a congregation gathered in worship.

The Sunday School students just finished a year-long curriculum on the parts of worship. There are some things that we do every time we gather, and some things that we do only occasionally in worship. There are meanings behind all of it.

Take the Greeting, for instance. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

These words are from Scripture, from the end of Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth. When we use these words in worship, we remember that we are connected to the ancient church, and to other congregations who have used this greeting throughout history and around the world.

By opening worship with this Greeting, we are also declaring faith in a triune God – did you notice that there are three parts to the greeting? Not only that, but we are welcoming God into our midst, declaring ourselves ready to experience what God has to show us today in our gathering.

         Even parts of worship that seem simple have deep significance.

We don’t have time today to go through the meaning of each individual part of worship, but if you’re interested, please come talk to me later, or to one of the Sunday School kids or teachers.

Usually our worship can be divided into four major sections. For today, we’ll just go over those. The headings are listed in bold in your bulletin:

Gathering, Word, Meal, Sending

Gathering is how we begin our time of worship together. It’s a specific part of worship because it takes constant reminding that, in this place, we are not primarily individuals. In this place, in worship, we are primarily children of God.

Taking intentional time for Gathering allows us to realize that we come from different places in life – physically, emotionally, spiritually – but as children of God, we have common ground upon which to build.

Some congregations have a procession at the beginning of worship to emphasize the importance of Gathering. Those congregations might include the cross in the procession, as a symbolic reminder that what unites us is Jesus’ death on the cross – just like the reading from Romans told us today. 

The Service of the Word comes next in worship. This is when we hear words from the Bible, spoken and sung. Christians are people of the book – we believe in the authority of Scripture for teaching us about God. So every time we gather, we hear from God’s Word. The sermon goes in the Word section of worship because it is interpretation of Scripture, applied to the lives of the people who are gathered.

Today’s reading from Jeremiah is a kind of sermon, actually – it’s Jeremiah saying that he’s been told by God to preach to the people, but no one is listening to what he has to say. Why would God call him to such a futile task? Jeremiah is a preacher who is about to give up, because the task of preaching to unresponsive people is so draining that he doesn’t feel he’s doing God’s work anymore.

Jeremiah did keep spreading God’s message, thankfully, so we don’t have to dwell there – we can move on to the next part of worship, the Service of the Meal.

Jesus commanded his disciples to share bread and wine in memory of him, and so we share the meal of Communion together. Communion is the holy meal, it’s spiritual sustenance, that feeds both our bodies and our souls.

In our congregation, we celebrate Communion every week. Some congregations share this meal together every other week, once a month, or a few times a year.

Regardless of how often it’s celebrated, the point of Communion – of the Meal – is to follow Jesus’ command, and to provide a tangible way of interacting with God. You can’t get much more tangible than eating and drinking. The Meal in worship provides an opportunity for the theoretical to become practical – we take the ideas we’ve heard from the Word and physically experience them as a community, in the way that Jesus instructed.

Clear as mud?

If you’re confused, again, come talk to me later. We could spend all morning talking about the meaning of all the parts of worship, but none of us want to be here for that long. For now, let’s move on to Sending.

The church does not exist for the sake of itself. The purpose of worship isn’t just to make people feel good. We don’t gather here every week simply because we want to be fed – literally and spiritually. We do gather here because we need tools to take with us when we go back into the world.

So at the end of worship, we don’t simply close – we don’t conclude like a concert does, with a rousing number that makes everyone want to ask for an encore so they can stay just a little bit longer.

We send. The people of God are sent into the world, with a mission, with a charge to spread God’s Word to other people and invite them to follow Jesus.

Every single week the congregation is commissioned with the words Go in peace and serve the Lord. And every single week the congregation accepts that commission with enthusiasm: Thanks be to God!

Not only do we accept the charge to spread God’s Word, but we praise God for it! Thank you, God, for entrusting us with this important task!

Today in worship we get one extra section. In just a little while there will be a Baptism, thanks to Luke and his parents, Beth and Tom.

In Baptism, we remember first our own humanity and our own sinfulness. We realize that we do bad things in life, and we’re going to die someday, and our bad decisions could make life after death be pretty unpleasant.

But in our baptism, we are united with Christ, like Paul says in today’s Romans reading. And when Christ died, he didn’t stay dead. So we celebrate in baptism that we won’t suffer eternal damnation, but we’ll instead get to experience eternal life, through the grace of God and the resurrection of Jesus.

There’s a lot more that could be said on the meaning of baptism, but those are the main points.

As a congregation, our primary function is worship. Even when the Word is difficult, as with Jeremiah or today’s Gospel lesson, we remember that our identity as children of God trumps any of the other things going on in our lives.

Our congregation doesn’t exist for its own sake, however.

We may focus much of our energy around Sunday morning worship, because it centers us and helps us grow close to God. But if we spend all our time looking inward, we are not truly being disciples. We are not honoring our ancestors in the faith who literally put their lives on the line for what they believed, when all we do is worry about what we want to do as individuals.

Church isn’t about that.

Church is about being part of something bigger than ourselves.

Church is about living for others. Everything that we do as followers of Jesus is for the sake of God and for other people. True faith is selfless.  

Welcome to the deep side of faith.

Guests and members alike: today’s themes are for you.

Faith is not always easy. History tells us that.

But it’s the most important thing in the universe.

May God help us all to be faithful in following Jesus. 

Amen.