{"id":287,"date":"2012-09-23T16:27:35","date_gmt":"2012-09-23T21:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/?p=287"},"modified":"2017-10-26T22:20:32","modified_gmt":"2017-10-27T03:20:32","slug":"sermon-the-welcome-place-homecoming-sunday-sept-23-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/2012\/09\/23\/sermon-the-welcome-place-homecoming-sunday-sept-23-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Sermon: The Welcome Place Homecoming Sunday, Sept. 23, 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

TEXTS: \u00a0Psalm 116:12-17; \u00a0James 3:13-18; \u00a0Mark 9:30-37<\/span><\/p>\n

Gracious God, help us in our meditations on your Word to receive you and welcome you in our lives.\u00a0\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n

Last week, we heard the writer of the Epistle of James admonishing us that words matter, and that sharp tongues can cut and wound, and, thankfully, words may also heal and bless.<\/p>\n

This week, James offers insight about how to live wisely to a Christian community struggling to survive in a hostile environment\u2014an environment where other religions might infiltrate the young faith community and divert it from the course on which it had been set by Jesus. Somehow, I don\u2019t feel that is too different from what some of our churches face today from the prosperity gospel folks, or people who want to conflate nationalism with their version or perversion of religion\u2014whether it be Christianity or Islam or Judaism or Hinduism\u2026or some other \u201cism\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 James note that evil is often cowardly and weak.\u00a0 Philosopher Longshoreman Eric Hoffer once said that \u201crudeness is the weak man\u2019s imitation of strength\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 The reaction of Muslims to the hate-filled movie trailer bye attacking embassies and killing people does not represent the core values of Islam, just as the reaction of the Terry Joneses of Christianity does not represent the strength of Christianity but rather our human weakness.<\/p>\n

At The Interfaith Alliance event of Prayers for Peace Day on the past Thursday, a number of Muslims spoke of how the terrible actions of some so-called Muslims had caused them many tears, and much sorrow, and how the gathering of people of many religions, each praying in their own way for peace, helped to touch those broken places in their hearts.\u00a0 It was a deeply moving evening. \u00a0That event resonated with James\u2019 belief that \u201ca harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus, churches, so often marked by conflict within and among various sorts of believers, are called to remember that these conflicts\u2014whether doctrinal or territorial\u2014come from human envy and ambition.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve ever lived or worked in an environment of aggressive ambition or if you are particularly sensitive to this election season of resentment that we are currently enduring, you know what an \u201cunwelcome\u201d place that can be.<\/p>\n

James advises us to remember that true wisdom does not come from ourselves, but comes from God. \u00a0In this political season, I would be so thrilled by any politician who said:\u00a0 I don\u2019t have all the answers; we need to work through these complex matters together, trying a little of this and a little of that, and perhaps then, if we don\u2019t claim to have all the truth ourselves, together we can find a way.\u00a0\u00a0 So it is spiritually:\u00a0\u00a0 if we try to draw near to God, God does draw near to us.\u00a0 If we try to please God, we become more Godly in our relations with others and the world.\u00a0 So we acquire that divine wisdom that is pure, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.\u00a0 That sounds like a welcome place to be!<\/p>\n

Home is a welcoming place.\u00a0 In Mark\u2019s Gospel it is clear that Jesus has a home in Capernaum, on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee.\u00a0 A great many significant things happen in that house.\u00a0 Jesus goes there often to get away from the crowds, but still they interrupt him frequently.<\/p>\n

Out on the roadway the disciples had been involved in a bit of career evaluation. One thing led to another, and they got into something of a tiff over which of them was in line for the next major promotion.\u00a0 Of course, they had done their best to keep Jesus from overhearing this discussion, but apparently tempers had run \u00a0hot and the whispers got too loud at some point.\u00a0 Before they could get it hushed up, Jesus caught the drift of what was going on.<\/p>\n

So there in his home, Jesus asks: \u00a0\u2018What were you talking about a few minutes ago?\u2019\u00a0\u00a0 The disciples are silent, presumably embarrassed at being caught by Jesus as they argued over which of them was the greatest.\u00a0 They were every day folk, fishermen, merchants, maybe a carpenter, a tax collector\u2026nobody special until Jesus came along and then they thought they were going to be part of a new, great political\u00a0 and national triumph.<\/p>\n

To their thinking, the predictions of killing and rising again, sounds like Jesus is heading for self-destruction.\u00a0 Like good members of the crew, although they are deeply confused and perplexed by these repeated comments of Jesus,\u00a0 they look around to see who is going to carry on the fledging operation.\u00a0 They still harbored illusions that Jesus would come with power, that the reign of God, the kingdom that he kept talking about, was going to be a real political place.<\/p>\n

It is probably not an overstatement to suggest that we followers of Jesus are still caught up in this illusion.\u00a0\u00a0 If Jesus is the Messiah, if we are doing things rightly and believing rightly, then the world will eventually bow at the feet of Jesus.<\/p>\n

When Jesus finds out what all the whispering arguments have been about out there on the way\u2014a phrase that reflects that Christians and the church are always on the way–, he finds a child and brings it front and center to teach a lesson.\u00a0 Child-centered families are something of a new invention.\u00a0 In the middle-eastern world in which Jesus lived, children were entirely without rights or status.\u00a0 Someone has observed that if Jesus were to re-enact this scenario in our time, it might not be a child he would use, but perhaps an Alzheimer\u2019s patient, an undocumented worker from Mexico, or maybe a person with AIDS whom he would embrace.<\/p>\n

To those misunderstanding disciples of his, whether in his own lifetime, or now, Jesus says: \u201cwhoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Then he makes the child, a real nobody, a stand-in for himself.<\/p>\n

Jesus brought out the child, powerless, capable of producing nothing much, to remind us that God is to be found in the lowly and humble. \u00a0After all, the story starts in a manger and ends on the garbage hill and a borrowed tomb.\u00a0 There\u2019s a Jewish story of a young rabbinical student who asked of his teacher:\u00a0 \u201cRabbi, why don\u2019t people see God as much as they did in the olden times?\u201d\u00a0 The wise old man put his hands on the student\u2019s shoulder and said, \u201cThe answer, my son, is that no one is willing to stoop so low.\u201d<\/p>\n

As with children, the really good things in life are rarely ours,\u00a0 if ever, because we have earned them or worked for them. They are ours because of the love and forgiveness and generosity of some one else.<\/p>\n

Christ follows the symbolism of the vulnerable child with the stress on an action verb:\u00a0 Welcome!\u00a0 \u201cWhoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes NOT me but the ONE who sent me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Welcome, as Jesus uses it, means something far more radical than our little polite nod of the head when we respond to a thank you, with \u201cyou\u2019re welcome.\u201d\u00a0 Or our casual greeting when someone enters our home, \u201cWelcome\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 As Jesus uses it,\u00a0 \u201cwelcome\u201d implies hospitality\u2014which is to make space, to make room for the other.\u00a0 Welcome disturbs the comfortable status quo.\u00a0 Welcome forces us, by admitting another,\u00a0 to accept being out of control.\u00a0 To welcome a child connotes acceptance of smallness and lowliness.\u00a0 Jesus wants his followers to learn from the child about newness and holiness of life.<\/p>\n

Jesus makes it even more radical:\u00a0 If we \u201cwelcome the child\u201d, he says, we welcome him, and we welcome the one who sent him, namely God.\u00a0\u00a0 To make room for Jesus, to make room for God is the most radical thing that we as human beings can do.\u00a0 It changes everything.\u00a0\u00a0 Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once noted:\u00a0 \u201cIf God is not of supreme importance, God is of NO importance.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 If nothing is changed, if we keep living the way we always have, using words in political or religious conversations as if the violence hidden in them doesn\u2019t matter, if we have not made room, we have not welcomed him into our midst.<\/p>\n

The word \u201cservant\u201d in Greek is \u201cdiakonos\u201d <\/em>and literally means \u201cone who waits on tables\u201d, and from which we get our word Deacon.\u00a0 Children were often used as those who waited on tables, too invisible to be seated at the table.\u00a0\u00a0 It is in their serving of others, their selflessness, that Jesus declares constitutes real greatness.<\/p>\n

This church was first named \u201cUnion\u201d church, and then \u201cNew Union\u201d because \u00a0the founders intended that here no one would be excluded, but all would be within the unity of God\u2019s love that embraces all\u2014the good, the bad, the ugly, the sinner, the failure, the success, the radical or the fearful, the conservative and the liberal, the generous, the tightwad, rich or poor, male or female\u2014all would be one in Christ Jesus.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Here, in union with Christ, each person and the whole community is transformed.\u00a0\u00a0 We celebrate the welcome table, where there is no hierarchy of status, other than that we bequeath to one another:\u00a0 some to be elders because of our perception of the efforts they have made in their lives to draw near to God, and nearly all of us to be deacons, and definitely all of us to serve one another as we pass the tray with their simple elements\u2014a bit of bread, a sip of the fruit of the vine\u2014to remind us that where two or three are gathered, not in our own names, but in his\u2014that he is here with us. \u00a0\u00a0As we pass those trays down the rows, we become Christ to one another, even if we think one of those to whom we are passing these symbols may be a contemporary Judas, that one is included.<\/p>\n

And so Christ has been here in this hallowed place of simple beauty, this beloved community of memory and hope, touching hearts, mending broken places, accepting confessions both of sorrow but also of faith, offering encouragement to those weary from life\u2019s journey, and strength to those who keep trying to live Godly and generous and peace-giving lives. Thanks be to God known to us in Jesus whose presence has made this a welcome place for many generations, and we pray, for generations to come.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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TEXTS: \u00a0Psalm 116:12-17; \u00a0James 3:13-18; \u00a0Mark 9:30-37 Gracious God, help us in our meditations on your Word to receive you and welcome you in our lives.\u00a0\u00a0 Amen. Last week, we heard the writer of the Epistle of James admonishing us<\/p>\n

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