This sermons was preached for the St. Andrew's/St. Michael's online service for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecosts. The texts for this Sunday were: Genesis 22:1-14, Psalm 13, Romans 6:12-23, and Matthew 10:40-42.
One of my projects in seminary was working with a small, urban parish on re-imagining welcoming. How could we make visitors who came through their door feel comfortable and appreciated?
I focused a lot on small, tangible things like how confusing the bulletin might be for non-Episcopalians or thinking through whether a giant hug-fest during the peace might be extremely welcoming or totally intimidating. But we also sank into the most beautiful and symbolic expressions of Episcopal hospitality: that daring moment when we all drank from the one cup of salvation, when no one is turned away from the table.
The past few weeks, our parish leadership has been hard at work considering another, seemingly opposite question. As we begin to regather in person, how do we institute guidelines, practices, new habits that will care for our community, especially the most vulnerable? We’ve been finding ourselves caught up again in those tangible details of church – from the removal of hymnals from the pews to the new seating arrangements for the liturgical ministers.
But it’s not just church, though – we are in the process of rethinking our businesses, schools, even how we open our homes. Embedded in all these conversations is the loss of how we’ve been accustomed to communicating welcome and hospitality as a culture. Shared food, open arms and open doors, friendly smiles. The other day I watched two unmasked strangers shake bare hands and had the same kind of sudden, visceral sensation of revulsion and horror as I might have months ago watching someone bend down and lick the sidewalk. What could it mean to be God’s radically welcoming, all-embracing love in this new world? It’s fair to ask ourselves why should we still spend so much energy on regathering in-person if we cannot do and be the most quintessentially Episcopalian ways of loving and welcoming: coffee hour, chalices, song?
When Jesus talks about welcome in this passage from Matthew, he is not talking to the disciples about how they can be more welcoming to those who come their way. He’s talking to the disciples about how they may or may not be welcomed in their journeys out spreading the good news. In Jesus’ church, the risk of being unwelcomed does not fall on the visitors and newcomers who’ve been brave enough to cross a threshold. The risk of being unwelcomed falls on the disciples’ shoulders, on the ones who are walking in his footsteps to the cross. It is when we live our faith out loud, in public spaces on the internet and out in real life, that we take up this call.
Jesus’ church here is a sent church. Now, more than ever is a time to remind ourselves, we gather to be sent.
In this time, we may not have the option to consider tangible ways of welcoming people into our sanctuaries on Sunday morning. Come September, we might need to restrict who walks in our doors, we won’t shake hands, and we can’t even offer a friendly, unmasked smile. The days of a shared chalice may be gone for quite a while. It is so real and fair to mourn the loss of all those things, as small as they may seem. I wonder though, if we peel away those traditional ways of welcome we’ve relied on, might we uncover deeper, more transformational ways we can be God’s love? In this time of gathering virtually, aren’t we already seeing that at work? I have seen the body of Christ stand up to racism in more explicit and challenging ways than I ever have before. Lay and clergy teams are pro-actively combating social isolation, armed with tools and techniques we’d never tried.
In these strange days, our parishes are being sent in radically new ways – our worship is being beamed into wherever you are right now, our services sent out over television broadcast, expanding our community to folks on the West Coast and across the Atlantic Ocean. We are praying out loud and in public more than we ever have – in town-wide vigils on the village green, every day on Facebook live. I have run into you on the river path looking for signs of God in nature. I have encountered you in the streets calling for an end to racism in our community. I have seen you at public forums listening to black Wellesley High School alumni speak about their experiences. I have glimpsed your faces and grocery bags in photos of donations to our B-Love ministry. We may not be gathering all together in person, but our church is out here, being sent. Daring to be welcomed or not welcomed by a world that needs Jesus’ message of love.
One of my professors in seminary, Rev. Dr. Ruth Meyers, was all about how worship together strengthens, nourishes, and equips us for the work of faith in the world. She’s the one who taught me that one of the most sacred and important sentences in our whole liturgy is often the most overlooked: the dismissal, when the deacon raised her arms and proclaims “Let us go forth into the world!”
May the dismissal always serve to remind us: We gather to be sent.
One of my projects in seminary was working with a small, urban parish on re-imagining welcoming. How could we make visitors who came through their door feel comfortable and appreciated?
I focused a lot on small, tangible things like how confusing the bulletin might be for non-Episcopalians or thinking through whether a giant hug-fest during the peace might be extremely welcoming or totally intimidating. But we also sank into the most beautiful and symbolic expressions of Episcopal hospitality: that daring moment when we all drank from the one cup of salvation, when no one is turned away from the table.
The past few weeks, our parish leadership has been hard at work considering another, seemingly opposite question. As we begin to regather in person, how do we institute guidelines, practices, new habits that will care for our community, especially the most vulnerable? We’ve been finding ourselves caught up again in those tangible details of church – from the removal of hymnals from the pews to the new seating arrangements for the liturgical ministers.
But it’s not just church, though – we are in the process of rethinking our businesses, schools, even how we open our homes. Embedded in all these conversations is the loss of how we’ve been accustomed to communicating welcome and hospitality as a culture. Shared food, open arms and open doors, friendly smiles. The other day I watched two unmasked strangers shake bare hands and had the same kind of sudden, visceral sensation of revulsion and horror as I might have months ago watching someone bend down and lick the sidewalk. What could it mean to be God’s radically welcoming, all-embracing love in this new world? It’s fair to ask ourselves why should we still spend so much energy on regathering in-person if we cannot do and be the most quintessentially Episcopalian ways of loving and welcoming: coffee hour, chalices, song?
When Jesus talks about welcome in this passage from Matthew, he is not talking to the disciples about how they can be more welcoming to those who come their way. He’s talking to the disciples about how they may or may not be welcomed in their journeys out spreading the good news. In Jesus’ church, the risk of being unwelcomed does not fall on the visitors and newcomers who’ve been brave enough to cross a threshold. The risk of being unwelcomed falls on the disciples’ shoulders, on the ones who are walking in his footsteps to the cross. It is when we live our faith out loud, in public spaces on the internet and out in real life, that we take up this call.
Jesus’ church here is a sent church. Now, more than ever is a time to remind ourselves, we gather to be sent.
In this time, we may not have the option to consider tangible ways of welcoming people into our sanctuaries on Sunday morning. Come September, we might need to restrict who walks in our doors, we won’t shake hands, and we can’t even offer a friendly, unmasked smile. The days of a shared chalice may be gone for quite a while. It is so real and fair to mourn the loss of all those things, as small as they may seem. I wonder though, if we peel away those traditional ways of welcome we’ve relied on, might we uncover deeper, more transformational ways we can be God’s love? In this time of gathering virtually, aren’t we already seeing that at work? I have seen the body of Christ stand up to racism in more explicit and challenging ways than I ever have before. Lay and clergy teams are pro-actively combating social isolation, armed with tools and techniques we’d never tried.
In these strange days, our parishes are being sent in radically new ways – our worship is being beamed into wherever you are right now, our services sent out over television broadcast, expanding our community to folks on the West Coast and across the Atlantic Ocean. We are praying out loud and in public more than we ever have – in town-wide vigils on the village green, every day on Facebook live. I have run into you on the river path looking for signs of God in nature. I have encountered you in the streets calling for an end to racism in our community. I have seen you at public forums listening to black Wellesley High School alumni speak about their experiences. I have glimpsed your faces and grocery bags in photos of donations to our B-Love ministry. We may not be gathering all together in person, but our church is out here, being sent. Daring to be welcomed or not welcomed by a world that needs Jesus’ message of love.
One of my professors in seminary, Rev. Dr. Ruth Meyers, was all about how worship together strengthens, nourishes, and equips us for the work of faith in the world. She’s the one who taught me that one of the most sacred and important sentences in our whole liturgy is often the most overlooked: the dismissal, when the deacon raised her arms and proclaims “Let us go forth into the world!”
May the dismissal always serve to remind us: We gather to be sent.
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