A theology of welcome

Here's the sermon I shared at St Andrew's Wickford this morning:

Jesus called his 12 disciples to an itinerant ministry which involved going ahead of him to prepare people for his coming and his message. As a result, they took nothing unnecessary with them, they weren’t distracted by small talk along the way, and they welcomed hospitality when they received it but simply moved on to the next place and the next person whenever they were not made welcome. We’ve been listening to and reflecting on the instructions Jesus gave to his disciples in our Gospel readings for the past couple of weeks (Matthew 10). This passage (Matthew 10.40-42) comes as the conclusion to Jesus’ teaching. His concluding words are all about the importance of welcome.

Before the disciples go Jesus warns that those who fail to welcome them are not only turning God’s messengers away from their homes and lives but God himself too. As he says, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me” and earlier, “Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me; and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” When the disciples return to him, he rejoices at the welcome which they have received and the sense that the Gospel has been received from “the diverse and motley group he has chosen as his associates.”

The emphasis in these passages is on the hospitality provided by others to Jesus’ disciples. We tend to think of ourselves as being called like them to take the good news of Jesus to others, so we naturally identify ourselves with the disciples in the passage and think about the response we receive from others when they know that we are Christians. But to really get the force and challenge of what Jesus is saying in this passage we have to put ourselves in the shoes of those the disciples went to and ask ourselves how well do we receive others? The challenge in this passage is about the quality of the welcome provided to others. The great sin here is to be inhospitable and to be inhospitable is actually to reject the divine in our lives.

John Bowen is one who has offered a brief theology of welcome beginning with God welcoming us. God’s posture, as Jesus shows it over and over again, is one of welcome towards humankind. Thus, Jesus welcomes the crowds (Luke 9:11). In particular, he welcomes “sinners” – to the discomfiture of the Pharisees. “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them!” they say in amazed disgust (Luke 15:2). How can he open himself to such people? The story Jesus tells in response, of course, is all about a father who is also a welcomer.

The most frequent Greek word for welcome, or receive, is dechomai. Twice, when describing those banquets which are foretastes of God’s eschatological banquet, Luke uses an unusual word for “feast”—doche—-which is related to dechomai. Welcoming, it seems, is most naturally followed by feasting!

As God welcome us, so we are called to welcome God. God’s hope is that humankind will reciprocate by welcoming his banquet invitation. In fact, the word dechomai becomes almost a technical term in the New Testament – the equivalent of receiving or believing or trusting in God’s salvation. So, when the New Testament observes anyone engaged in “welcoming”, it is not just a sociological statement but also a theological one. The welcome means the welcomer has welcomed God’s grace.

Thus when Zaccheus “welcomes” Jesus into his house, it is almost Luke’s code way of saying, “Look! Do you get it? Zaccheus has entered the kingdom.” It is not only receiving Jesus which has theological significance, however. As we have heard this morning, when Jesus sent out the twelve, he explained to them, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me” (Matthew 10:40 cf. John 13:20). Paul too understands that the messenger stands in for the speaker. When he recalls how the Galatians first welcomed him, he says, “you welcomed me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus” (Galatians 4:14). Their welcome of God’s messenger was the beginning of their opening the door to God.

Finally, then, there is our welcoming of one another. The work of God’s Spirit in us can be summarised as making us like Jesus, restoring the image of God in us. Part of that renewing is to turn us into welcomers in just the way that God is a welcomer. Jesus urged us, “When you give a feast [doch], invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind…” (Luke 14:12-14) Paul says much the same thing, only in different words: “Welcome one another, as God in Christ welcomed you.” (Romans 15:7) God is the standard by which we are to measure the warmth of our welcoming.

For Paul, as for Jesus, this was not a matter of mere words. When Luke records at the climax of the Book of Acts that Paul “welcomed all who came to him”, we recognise this to be a Christ-like kind of welcoming, not least because Luke adds pointedly that Paul entertained “at his own expense” — just as God’s welcoming is at God’s own expense. (Acts 28:20)

When we welcome strangers into our churches, then, like Paul we are agents of God, representing the God who has welcomed us without reserve. The hand of welcome we extend is God’s hand. There is thus something sacramental in the act of welcoming. It is, as the BCP says of baptism, “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace”: the sign of the grace God has shown to us. Is it costly? Is it disturbing? Naturally. That’s the way grace is. But it is also deeply divine, and deeply human.

So, how do we rate on that basis? We think of ourselves as a friendly, welcoming church but it’s important not rest on our laurels and instead ask ourselves how we can be more welcoming, more hospitable to those who come for the first time and those that we don’t know well. When we are here in church, let us make those people our priority, always seeking to speak first to those we don’t know, don’t know well or haven’t spoken to for some time.

Whoever welcomes, welcomes Jesus and welcomes God. If we truly want to see and hear God, then all we need to do is to welcome those we encounter as we will see the face of God in them. God calls us not just to be those who follow him but also to be those sent out to prepare the way for him to come into the lives of others and challenges us, too, to be those who are always welcoming, always hospitable towards others.

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Let Us Build A House.

God desires mercy not sacrifice

Here's the sermon I gave at St Andrew's Wickford yesterday:

During the Queen's visit to the Open University in 1979, Kay Ritson's daughter met the Queen. Aged four, Sara broke through security and passed Her Majesty a bag of sweets.

Kay wrote: I was distracted by my younger child, and turned my back on Sara for a moment. When I turned around I saw she was talking to the Queen. Sara had walked straight through security and right up to her. The Queen asked for her name, where she was from, who she was with, and my daughter gave her a bag of aniseed balls which the Queen said she’d have for afternoon tea. The police then escorted my daughter back to me.

There were rules or protocols that separated Queen Elizabeth from four-year-old Sara yet Sara was able to circumvent those protocols and the Queen welcomed her when she did.

In today’s Gospel reading (Luke 5.27-32), the Pharisees were using the Law - the rules about when and how to make sacrifices - in ways that kept out those thought of rule breakers or sinners. They were doing so by adding additional requirements to the laws in order to define who was pure and who wasn’t when it came to making the sacrifices.

Jesus, by contrast called his disciples from among those considered impure and sat and ate with such people; tax collectors and sinners. Why did he do so?

The first reason he gives is that those who had been excluded from worship because they were considered impure where actually far more aware of their need of God, than those, like the Pharisees, who thought they were right with God because they kept the laws. Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” In other words, if you realise you are sick, you also realise you need help. If you don’t, you don’t.

He saw the Pharisees as being those who were sick and in need of a physician but who didn’t call for one because they thought they were well. He was happy to sit and eat with the tax collectors and sinners because they knew they needed God’s help. We see that clearly in this story through Matthew’s instant response to Jesus.

The second reason he gives is that God desires mercy not sacrifice. In its original form, the Law provided minimum standards to prevent abuse of God and of others, while also leading people towards whole-hearted love for God, ourselves and others.

The purpose of the Law is, therefore, not to be found in following the letter of the Law but in keeping the spirit of the Law. As a result, what is important is living out mercy towards others and ourselves, rather than following the practices of making sacrifices in the Temple. God doesn't want the rules kept for the sake of the rules, rather he wants people to love others, to connect and meet and care; that is mercy, not sacrifice. One could follow all the laws or rules of making sacrifices in the Temple without that changing one's behaviour towards others one jot. Jesus looks for behaviour change and for compassion or mercy to be shown towards others.

During the period of mourning for Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II we have been reflecting upon a life lived in service of others and taking Her Majesty’s 70-year reign of service as an inspiration for our own future commitment to our shared service within our nation and beyond. In doing so, we have been reflecting on mercy, not sacrifice. As the Archbishop of Canterbury said in Monday’s Funeral Service: “People of loving service are rare in any walk of life. Leaders of loving service are still rarer. But in all cases those who serve will be loved and remembered when those who cling to power and privileges are long forgotten.” Again, this was a reflection on the significance of mercy, not sacrifice. God doesn't want the rules kept for the sake of the rules, rather he wants people to love others, to connect and meet and care; that is mercy, not sacrifice.

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The Mother heart of God

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem ... how many times I wanted to put my arms around all your people, just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would not let me!” (Luke 13. 34)

In this statement of his love for the people of Jerusalem, Jesus speaks of his concern and love for Jerusalem being typified by a mother hen gathering together all her chicks under her wing for safety and warmth. Lovingly, Jesus is saying he wants to be like the mother hen gathering God’s people to him where they will then experience safety and love. At the same time that he makes this specific statement to the people of Jerusalem, he is also paying a wonderful tribute to motherhood itself by equating the love which God shows towards us to the love that mothers show towards their offspring.

We tend to think most readily of God as a father but there are several places in scripture where God’s love is described as being like that of mother for her children.

Hannah Whitall Smith wrote “My children have been the joy of my life. I cannot imagine more exquisite bliss than comes to one sometimes in the possession and companionship of a child. To me there have been moments, when my arms have been around my children, that have seemed more like what the bliss of heaven must be than any other thing I can conceive of; and I think this feeling has taught me more of what  God’s feelings towards his children are than anything else in the universe. If I, a human being with limited capacity, can find such joy in my children, what must God, with his infinite heart of love, feel towards his; In fact most of my ideas of the love and goodness of God have come from my own experience as a mother, because I could not conceive that God would create me with a greater capacity for unselfishness and self-sacrifice than He possessed Himself; and since this discovery of the mother heart of God I have always been able to answer every doubt that may have arisen in my mind, as to the extent and quality of the love of God, by simply looking at my own feelings as a mother.”

Hannah Whitall Smith lived in the United States in the 1850’s. She was born into a Quaker family but later became a Wesleyan preacher and was one of the inspirations behind the Keswick Convention. She wrote those words about the mother heart of God after reading Isaiah 66. 12 – 13, another passage of scripture in which God’s love for all people is described as being like a mother’s love for her children:  "The Lord says, “You will be like a child that is nursed by its mother, carried in her arms, and treated with love. I will comfort you in Jerusalem, as a mother comforts her child.”

Jesus’ focus was on the safety that mothers’ seek to provide for their children out of love. Here, the focus is on the sense of comfort that the child receives from the love of its mother, particularly as it is nursed and fed. Isaiah also used motherly imagery in reference to God in Chapter 49. 15 where the focus is on the faithfulness of a mother’s love:

“The Lord answers,

“Can a woman forget her own baby
    and not love the child she bore?
Even if a mother should forget her child,
    I will never forget you.”

Nancy Hicks picks up on imagery around nursing the child when she writes about Psalm 131:

“Nursing was one of the most intimate acts I have ever been allowed to participate in, and what joy to be utterly depended upon! But a nursing baby is a demanding baby, “Pick me up NOW! Feed me NOW!” And when she fell asleep in my arms I felt needed, but not really appreciated for anything other than my capacity to satisfy hunger.

Then she was weaned. Now, when she crawled into my lap it was for relationship and comfort and intimacy. I understood God’s delight at the psalmist’s words, “Surely I have composed and quieted my soul; like a weaned child rests against his mother, my soul is like a weaned child within me.”

In Psalm 131, the Psalmist pictures himself having the kind of intimacy with God that a weaned child has as it cuddles up on its mother’s lap. That intimacy comes after the child has been fed and has moved on from milk to solid food.

So, the picture that we gain from all these descriptions is of God’s love as the love of a mother for her child is that of God wanting to bring us into a place where we feel safe alongside her, where we know the comfort of being fed and therefore grow from the basics of the faith (the milk) to the depths of the faith (the solid food).

Do you experience the love of God in these ways? Have you thought, like Hannah Whitall Smith, that if we can find deep joy in our children, what must God, with his infinite heart of love, feel towards us? God loves you like a mother loves her child. As we pray and study the scriptures during Lent, God wants to take us into a deeper relationship with him and at the heart of that relationship is his infinite heart of love beating with the kind of love which mother’s commonly show towards their children. May we open up our lives and hearts to receive that love and enter in to that depth of relationship!

There are two final points it is worth us noting. As we have already said, we commonly speak about God as male and yet the scriptures do use, as we have seen, female imagery of God. Interestingly, not just in terms of the mother heart of God, but wisdom and Spirit in particular are often feminine terms. This is of real significance in understanding that women and men are valued equally by God and were created by God to be equal.

Secondly, all talk about God as male and female, Father or Mother, is ultimately only descriptive language. God is always more than any label or image we use to help us understand him. Ultimately, God is Spirit and neither exclusively male or female. It is great to think of God as a loving Father or a loving Mother because those images help us understand and grasp something of the reality and significance of his love but God’s love is always greater and deeper than the love that we have experienced even from the most loving of parents.

It is that depth of love into which God wishes to draw us. So I say again, As we pray and study the scriptures during Lent, God wants to take us into that deeper relationship and at the heart of that relationship is an infinite heart of love beating with the kind of love which mother’s commonly show towards their children. May we open up our lives and hearts to receive that love and enter in to that depth of relationship!

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Larry Norman - Strong Love, Strange Peace.

Coming down from the mountain-top

I find it very encouraging that the Gospels are so honest about the disciples. They are just like us; falling asleep when they should be praying and misunderstanding what God is doing and why he is doing it. Don’t you often find yourself doing those sorts of things? I do. But Jesus still loved and persevered with his disciples despite their shortcomings and he does the same with us. We are not expected to be perfect followers of Jesus just to keep trying and learning.

As they looked back on their experiences with Jesus the disciples were able to see that the sight of Jesus transfigured had been an important assurance for them that Jesus was God’s Son and that the path he followed, even though it led to his death, was the path that God had mapped out for him. Earlier in Luke 9 there had been much discussion about who Jesus was and what Jesus was here to do. In verse 7 we read about Herod’s confusion as he thinks Jesus is John the Baptist come back to life. In verse 18 Jesus asks the disciples to tell him who the crowds think he is. The disciples say that some think he is John the Baptist and others Elijah. Jesus asks Peter to say who he thinks him to be and Peter answers, “You are God’s Messiah.” Then Jesus tells them about his plan to go to Jerusalem where he will be arrested and killed and we know from the other Gospels that the disciples were greatly disturbed about this plan.

In the midst of this confusion and disturbance they have this experience which, in hindsight, they can see answers both questions. Jesus is seen in glory speaking with the great patriarch and the great prophet of the Israelites, Moses and Elijah, and then God speaks to confirm Jesus as his Son. Everything about this experience speaks of Jesus as God. Moses and Elijah speak to Jesus about his plan to fulfil God’s purpose by dying in Jerusalem and God confirms to them that everything Jesus says comes directly from God himself. This experience should, then, be a confirmation of everything that Jesus is and was about to do. But for the disciples, at the time, it seems to be too much for them to comprehend. They are afraid, confused and keep the experience to themselves. It is only later, looking back, that they can see the confirmation that this experience provided.

I wonder if we have had experiences of events and plans coming together in ways that confirmed to us that we were on the right path. It may be that we are needing that kind of confirmation at this point in our lives and should be asking God for his confirmation about our direction in life. What God wants to do for us, as he did for the disciples, is to give us a greater vision of Jesus as he really is. That will not answer all of our questions but can strengthen our ability to trust and follow him through our questions and uncertainties.

More than anything else though, the Transfiguration was preparing Jesus to walk the path that led to the cross. God had confirmed that Jesus was his Son at Jesus’ baptism which led to his temptation and then into his public ministry. Here at the point that Jesus resolves to walk the path of suffering which leads to redemption, God again confirms his Sonship to Jesus in the same way as at his baptism. Jesus came down from this mountain knowing that he was God’s Son walking in God’s way and that sustained through all the trials that endured.

We too will have mountain-top experiences in our lives. Times of great blessing and revelation when all seems well with the world and when we know without any uncertainty that we are God’s children. Our mountain-top experience might be a great worship service, an experience of healing, answered prayer or the gifts of the Holy Spirit, it might be a sense of overwhelming joy or of union with every other living thing in the whole created order. Whatever it is and however wonderful it is, we will inevitably, as Jesus, did come down from the mountain-top to experience suffering or in our case failure. We cannot live on the mountain-tops but those experience sustain us when we are in the valleys. Such experiences are one of the means God uses to go with us through the valleys, even the valley of the shadow of death.

Mountain-top experiences are often not looked for but are gifts to us to appreciate and enjoy. The disciples only recognised the full significance of their mountain-top experience as they looked back. At the time, they felt afraid and confused. Are you able to look back on events that may not have been clear at the time but which have been significant, sustaining experiences for you in your life? Have there been times of joy, wonder or blessing which you have now lost sight of in your life and need to rekindle and relive?

The disciples relived their experiences by telling them to others and by having them written down so that their stories could be passed on to others including us. It may be that you need to relive your experiences of refreshment, blessing and revelation by telling others about them or by writing them down to share with others.

Jesus was changed as he went up the mountain; his faced changed its appearance and his clothes became dazzling white. But it was not just Jesus that was changed by this experience as the disciples too were changed – not instantly but over time as they looked back and thought about the significance of what they had seen and heard. Their responses at the time were confused but time and reflection brought the understanding and assurance that enabled them to stand for Jesus in their lives and follow him on the path where he had led.

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U2 - I Will Follow.