God's Welcome

Matthew 10:24-39

June 25, 2023

 

This is the end of the pep talk that

Jesus and His 12
Ed de Guzman

Jesus gives the disciples before he sends them out.

We heard some last week and we’ll 

hear more next week.

I have to admit that I swapped next week’s

readings for this week’s readings.

This one was just too appropriate for our

worship today: the theme of the Gospel is Welcome.

 

Welcoming is a hard word to explain.

We’ve talked about it a lot lately,

but if you asked me to define it, I don’t know if I could.

“You know, not unwelcoming.”

The dictionary definition is

“to greet someone in a glad or friendly way”

but like a lot of definitions, it doesn’t quite get there.

Welcoming is a lot of unspoken things together.

Basically, we know when we’ve felt welcomed,

and we know when we haven’t.

 

When someone’s face

lights up when we enter a room.

That can be welcoming.

When someone gives us a hug, that can be welcoming.

 

And when we come into a room,

and a group of people abruptly stop talking.

Or when people look away and avert their eyes.

Those things can be unwelcoming.

 

But then again, sometimes a hug isn’t welcoming at all.
Sometimes those lit up faces can seem false.

In some situations, silence when we enter is respectful

And sometimes it’s more welcoming for someone to avert their eyes.

 

I’ve been to parties where I knew lots of people

and have felt like I was intruding on something.

And I have been to parties where I knew no one,

and the people there made me feel like I was their oldest friend.

I think we’ve all probably had experiences like that.

 

Welcoming is more than just a few identifiable actions.

Welcoming is a feeling that we have for one another

It’s conveyed in our actions, but goes beyond our actions.

Really welcoming someone is for us to make room

for another person in a conversation, in a moment, or in our life.

 

Christ Lutheran is a place of welcome.

We do a good job of welcoming new people.

We try to make people feel at home.

There are things we could do better,

and Christianity, in general, could do a better

job of being welcoming.

 

Many Christians churches have the best intentions to

welcome everyone and they believe that they’re welcoming.

They say that they’re “friendly” and “welcoming”

But lots of them are friendly to the people they know,

but to strangers they are less than welcoming.

When you walk in, you feel like you’re interrupting a private party.

 

When I was on Sabbatical about four years ago,

On Sundays that I was in town, I went to church at congregations 

that my friends were pastors of, since I never usually get to visit them.

I probably went to five different churches,

and at four of them, the only person that talked to me

was the pastor that I knew. The other people were all talking to their friends, 

laughing, hugging one another. I was sitting by myself.

Walking in and out unfettered by any conversation.

That was not welcoming.

 

There was another church I went to while I was on my sabbatical

I was visiting another city, it was a large church, a very large church

and there were a lot of people who talked to me and every person

that talked to me, asked me to come back. It was noticeable to me.

And then when I told them that I lived in another city and I couldn’t,

they dropped me and moved on. It felt a little like a car salesperson

when you tell them you’re not interested in buying.

That was not welcoming either.

 

And I was a pastor. I knew my way around churches.

I was a straight, white woman going to majority straight,

white churches. And those were still going to be tough hurdles

to jump over to get me to feel comfortable or at home.

Just imagine someone who isn’t at home in a church, or

who isn’t straight, or isn’t white. Think of the hurdles they might 

need to overcome just to get inside. Letting people know they’re welcome

and then following that up with an actual welcome can help.

 

Alternately, when I was in seminary, and I wasn’t otherwise 

occupied on a Sunday, I went to a Roman Catholic church

that was near the neighborhood where the seminary was.

People talked to me, they were genuinely interested in me.

When I told one person the first time I was there

that I was going to the Lutheran seminary,

they made sure to tell me that I was always welcome to take

communion with them at this church.

I really went only sporadically one Summer and several people 

remembered my name and would ask me how things were going.

That place was welcoming.

I cannot remember the priest or anything that he said or did,

but I remember that congregation fondly.

 

Real welcome requires honesty.

To really welcome someone is to genuinely

want to know them and to enjoy their presence with you.

It’s not just about adding numbers to the roster,

it’s about genuinely liking and wanting others to be involved.

 

Welcoming requires vulnerability too.

When we welcome, someone could reject our welcome.

Someone could take advantage of us.

To welcome someone in – to really welcome them

into our churches and our lives –

means that we will allow them to change the things

that we like, and to ultimately change us.

To welcome means to be open to change

 

Jesus values the spirit of welcoming.

Jesus says, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me,

and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”

Jesus is talking to the disciples about how other people

may or may not welcome them.

But he’s also teaching the disciples how to act towards others.

He’s telling them to treat others how you would like to be treated.

 

Welcome is the first step to know others

the first step to allow them into our space

to bring them into our circle

to intertwine them into our lives

and make the stranger a part of our new families.

Brothers and sisters in Christ.

 

Welcome is the first step at the heart of the gospel.

How can we meet new people?

How can we help people? How can we understand them?

How can we give them that cup of cold water?

How can we tell them about Jesus?

Unless we first welcome them?

 

The religious leaders at the time of Jesus and

lots of religious leaders, now and over the years,

try to make Christianity into something more complicated:

following rules, repeating rituals, or following certain,

narrow definitions of purity.

 

But true Christian spirituality is as simple as welcome.

About being willing to open ourselves up and giving

someone what they need, a cup of water on a hot day.

 

Everyone can be a part of this.

Even the least among us,

just a simple cup of water is enough.

Not a bathtub. Just a simple cup.

 

And Jesus doesn’t tell us to make sure they really

need the cup of water,

or if they’ve led a good life thus far,

or to ask whether they will use the cup of water

for good things or not.

Jesus says to give it, to share it.

No questions asked.

 

Jesus’ way doesn’t get much more complicated than that.

No elaborate systems, no checked boxes,

no obsessions with keeping every code or law.

 

Because one small welcome can snowball into others

and eventually the world is a place of welcome,

and that place of welcome becomes the Kingdom of God.

 

Bishop Desmond Tutu,

The bishop of South Africa during and after Apartheid,

gave this in a sermon in Washington DC

in November 2001, two months after 9-11.

He said:

 

“God says, I have a dream, that all of you - my children -
will realize that you belong in one family.
This is a family in which there are no outsiders; all are insiders.

All.
When Jesus spoke about his death, he said,
If I be lifted up, I will draw all - he didn’t say I will draw some.
He said, I will draw all –

black, white, rich, poor, American, Iraqi,
Afghanistan, gay, lesbian, straight.
All belong in this family: Arafat, Sharon, George Bush, bin Laden.
And God says, I have no one except you to help me realize my dream.
Will you help me? says God.  I have no one except you.”

 
God dreams about us.

We might dream about wealth, or romance,

or fame, or grandkids, or security, or that next big trip.

 

But God daydreams about us, reaching our hands out

to someone new, someone different,

and giving just a cup of cold water to them in God’s name.

God has no one but us.

 

God dreams about us welcoming others

and us being welcomed by them.

Until we, all of us, share God’s welcome together.

The Harvest is Plentiful

Matthew 9:35-10:8

June 18, 2023

 

We have been away from Matthew for quite a while

spending our Easter mostly in the book of John.

We come back here in Chapter 9

and lots has happened before this:

 

To summarize:

Jesus was born, his life was threatened by Herod,

innocents were slaughtered,

Jesus was baptized,

he was tempted in the desert,

He calls a few disciples.

Starting in chapter 5,

Jesus gives the sermon on the mountain

which lasts for three chapters in Matthew,

He comes down from that mountain,

and he heals some, and he calms the storm,

then he casts demons out of a man,

and sends them into a bunch of

swine who throw themselves off a cliff.

 

Then in the middle of chapter 9,

Jesus finally calls Matthew the Tax collector

Which we heard last week,

and now his 12 disciples are complete.

And we come to today’s gospel reading

which says, Jesus went to lots of

cities and villages and did amazing things:

casting out demons, healing the sick, raising the dead.

Then he sends the disciples out to do the same.

 

So the gospel isn’t just a story about the son of God

who does impressive and miraculous things

and tells people the good news.

This is a story about the son of God who does

impressive and miraculous things and shares the Good News

and then sends his followers out to do the same things.

 

He tells the disciples that “the harvest is 

plentiful, 

Wheatfields With A Reaper
Vincent Van Gogh

but the laborers are few.”

Meaning there is a lot of produce 

to pick, but no one to go pick it.

Meaning that there are a lot of people who

could hear about and experience 

the good news of Jesus,

but there’s no one to show them and tell them about it.

 

Is that the same for us now?

I don’t know if most people would say that.

We’re told that the harvest is sparse.

That no one is interested in the church any more

Christianity is in decline

the youngest generation of adults is leaving the church

in droves, or they’ve never stepped foot

into a church or heard much about Jesus in the first place.

If you are a young person in a church, you are an anomaly,

and it’s only going to decline more as time goes on.

The word on the street is “there is no harvest anymore”

 

So some churches have given up.

Some pastors have given up.

The feeling is that less and less people

want to hear about Jesus and the gospel and be part of a congregation

then there’s no need for us to keep trying any more.

The feeling is that the workers are plenty,

but the harvest just isn’t there.

But is that true?

 

I think the problem might be how we’re defining the harvest.

Lots of church people today define “the harvest” in terms

of church membership and church attendance.

It’s all about how many people are coming to worship on Sunday,

how many are becoming members,

and unfortunately, I think, because we live in a market economy,

how many people give money to the church.

  

We look with longing back to the 40’s or 50’s, or even the 90’s

when it seems like all you had to do was

be open on Sunday and people would come and find you.

And yes, there are still some congregations

that are able to reap that kind of harvest, and that’s wonderful.

 

But is that the harvest that Jesus was talking about?

Is that the harvest that Jesus led his disciples work towards?

When Jesus led his disciples, he didn’t tell them to

“get a congregation of people to come to a church and worship

for an hour and give money to us.”

Jesus doesn’t tell them, “Tell them how sinful they are so that they will think 

they’re going to hell unless they come to our church every Sunday”

Jesus doesn’t say, “tell them they’ll be rich and healthy

if they come to our church and give us enough money”

No one in the bible ever tells anyone, “tell them to come to our church . . .”

 

Jesus never told his disciples to bring people in.

Jesus sent his disciples out, out to the world.

Now some people have interpreted that to mean

that we should out and knock on doors to invite people in,

but that’s not what Jesus sent his disciples to do either.

He sent them out, basically to help people and to share

the good news of God’s love for this world.

 

I think the church has done a lot of harm to itself and to people’s 

relationship to God because we’ve been so hung up on numbers.

I think people have felt like they’re just a number in a pew

or like they’re an offering in a plate. We’ve been so focused on

our institutional survival that we’ve forgotten about Jesus mission.

The gospel reading starts out saying that Jesus had compassion

for the crowds because they were harassed and helpless.

A lot of that harassment came from the religious people.

They needed to hear that God loved them. They need a help up.

They even sometimes needed a hand out of food or money and of healing,

they needed to have their demons expelled,

they needed to hear that there is hope.

That is the harvest that Jesus is talking about.

And I think that harvest is still plentiful in our world.

I was watching the news a while ago and there was

a protest in front of the capitol about something.

They interviewed one of the protestors, he was about 20 or 25,

And he said: “We are looking forward to a world

that I’ve never seen, but I know is true.”

 

I wrote it down because, hey,

that’s the kind of stuff we say as Christians!

We are looking forward to a world we’ve never seen,

but we know is true.

 

Statistics would say that this young man was probably not part of a church

and if he ever was, he probably wasn’t attending it regularly.

But he and so many other like him are looking for

the same kind of hope we share in our communities.

People may not be looking for a church,

or they may not be looking for a church like ours,

Or they may have been turned off by our numbers game,

or they may have been so hurt by churches and church people

and can’t see themselves coming into one.

 

But people still want hope.

They still want forgiveness.

They still want healing.

They still want good news.

They still want prayer.

That’s what we’re called to bring.

The harvest is plentiful.

 

Now what does that mean for us?

How do we work in the fields like the disciples did?

A lot of us answer that call by giving food and diapers and school supplies

to people who need it.

A lot of us help to care for people’s health.

We care for people who are grieving and sad.

We give support to children at risk, we care for the poor and homeless.

There are many ways that we can help people.

Like Oliver and others helped Zachary.

And that we can be healing and good news for people.

 

And there are other ways too.

I think that we have to find the opportunities that God puts in front of us.

Forgiving people in your life that you need to forgive is one way.

And, maybe it’s because I’m a pastor, but I find that so many people

don’t think that they are forgiven, by God or whatever 

they call the force in the universe, or by themselves, or others, for one thing or another.

Telling people who don’t feel forgiven that you believe

that God forgives them and loves them.

That can be an amazing testament.

 

Laboring in the field can just plain being kind

to people we meet through our day, who we talk to.

Grocery store check-out people, restaurant staff,

people waiting at the doctor’s office, your neighbors,

 

Sometimes the biggest testament is just to

be identified as a Christian and then not being a big jerk about it.

 

One of the best ways I’ve feel like I’ve done my labor

is by being at Pride Events.

When we went last year to the Pride Event in Bluffton,

we were the only church with a table there.

People stopped by just to talk to us and, I think, see if we were real.

Some people were nearly moved to tears knowing that we thought

that God loved them the way they were. 

You could tell it was healing and hopeful for them. 

And at the Pride Parade in Columbus, that I’ve been to

a number of times, the biggest cheers from the crowds

have been for the churches, because it gives people

hope and healing to know that there are disciples of Jesus

who care and love and accept them.

 

The justice work we do for people like the residents of Chimney Cove

gives them hope and healing and it also is a testament to others

that God cares about everyone and God has sent people to help.

 

And, even if they’re not going to church or ever going to church,

people want prayer, I always have to remind myself of this.

If we are sensitive to other people and to their sensitivites,

it can be very healing to pray with and for them.

 

The harvest is there.

It’s not about how many people we get into our church,

it’s not about our attendance on a Sunday.

It’s not about being the biggest, or the richest church

or even the most stable church.

It’s not about preserving our institution.

It’s about sharing the good news of God’s unconditional love with others.

If we’re in here, we already know it.

Our job is to share it with others out there.

The laborers are few.

But The harvest is plentiful.

Go out and tell everyone the good news:

The kingdom of heaven has come near.

 

A Tale of Four Healings

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

6-11-23

 

If I Only Touch The Hem of His Garment
Elizabeth Wang

I struggled to figure out why these two sets of stories

are here together in one reading.

Up until this morning, I was thinking about

chucking the last part out and  

pretending the gospel writer didn’t put them together.

But where’s the challenge in that, right?

After thinking about it, I came to a conclusion:

These are four stories of healing.

Some obvious, some not so obvious.

 

First the obvious:

We have the story of the leader of the synagogue

whose daughter is on the brink of death,

or may actually have been dead.

The leader in his desperate faith tells Jesus,

“if you only lay your hand on her, she will be healed.”

And the second, on the way to that healing,

Jesus is interrupted by a woman

who has been hemorrhaging for 12 years.

In that time, it wouldn’t have just been an inconvenience

for her, she would have been seen as unclean,

and would have been separated from the community.

In her desperate faith she tells herself,

“If only I touch his cloak, I will be healed.”

 

These are the two obvious stories of healing.
Two people are sick or dying and then

they encounter Jesus and they’re not.

There are two others that are not so obvious.

One is the calling of Matthew.

 

 

Matthew, or Levi as he is also known, was a tax collector.

Now when we think of Tax collecting,

we think of an IRS auditor, which, although

it’s dreaded if we’re being audited,

it’s mostly seen as a respectable occupation.

So if we just read it without the historical context,

it’s just a story of Jesus calling a business man

with a slightly annoying occupation to be a disciple.

 

But tax collectors were seen as a little more than annoying.

After the Roman Empire took over a country, the countries remained generally how they were before,

except that the citizens had to pay taxes to Rome.

To do this they would employ a local person

someone who lived among and already knew everyone,

who knew who all the people were, who had money, and did trade.

They set up toll booths on the road, taxing people

coming in and coming out of a town or area to do business.

 

The Romans would give this person a contract

for an amount of money and the Tax Collector would have to raise that amount of money. 

Then the Tax Collector got personally paid by what they could raise above that amount of money.

So the more they could strong arm out of the people and businesses, 

the more wealthy and comfortable they were.

 

Tax collectors were hated by their community.

They were seen as traitors – they were in cahoots with the oppressor. 

They were ostracized from their communities.

No one wanted to be around them.

They most likely ate with other tax collectors,

or even with other Romans or Gentiles.

No respectable religious person would have eaten with a tax collector 

because that would make them unclean too.

So Jesus sees Matthew is sitting in his tax booth one morning,

Jesus is not just polite to Matthew.

Jesus doesn’t just say have a nice day,

which could have been seen as a scandal in itself.

 

Jesus asks Matthew to follow him.

To be one of his disciples, to be part of his religious

community. And Matthew does this.

He goes and follows, leaves his old life behind

and finds a new life as a disciple of Jesus.

Matthew is healed of his life of oppression and corruption.

And that Matthew is the third healing.

 

But there is one more.

 

Right after the calling of Matthew,

we see Jesus and the rest of the disciples,

eating with Matthew.

In Luke’s gospel, it says Matthew threw him a party.

And at this party, was all of Matthew’s friends –

the other tax collectors and Jesus is eating with them.

 

Now because of the weather and the way houses

were built, most dining was in the open,

out in front yards or in places where people could be seen.

 

Some public and religious figures used

this to capitalize and show off their status.

Kind of like celebrities go to clubs

and movie premiers and awards shows.

 

So other people are watching this party

and seeing Jesus, the up and coming preacher

in town, eating and having a party

with these hated and despised people.

  

We first hear line from the other religious leaders that

we will hear repeated over and over again in the gospels:

“Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

 

And this is the fourth healing story.

 

Jesus is in the midst of a community that is divided.

One that believes that some people are sacred

and some are unclean. That some are worthy of God’s love and some are not. 

A community of haves and have nots.

And his public presence with the assumed “have nots” of

God’s love is the first step of healing that division.

Jesus is healing both the sinners and tax collectors,

who have assumed they are outside of God’s love,

and he’s healed the religious people who think they’re

better and more worthy than the tax collectors.

 

Now sometimes healing doesn’t feel like healing

at first, sometimes the doctor has to break the leg again

to get it to set right again. And of course, that leg takes

a whole lot more time to heal, but it’s still healing.

 

By eating with those sinners

by hanging out with all the wrong people

by calling a tax collector to be his disciple,

Jesus is healing this rift by showing all of them

that God’s call and care are not beyond anyone.

As much as he heals the woman who’s hemorrhaged for 12 years,

Jesus is healing this community.

 

My internship congregation was in Milwaukee, WI.

I worked with two churches,

Reformation was the name of one of them.

In the 60’s and 70’s Milwaukee changed a lot.

By the 1980’s, all of the members of Reformation

and the businesses and the funding and tax dollars

had moved out into the suburbs, and the neighborhood that the church was in was mostly black and very poor.

And because of the lack of opportunity and support,

it was a pretty dangerous place.

 

On Sundays, in the 80’s, the members of Reformation would

drive to the church and the members would wait in their cars, 

and the council president would get there and he would unlock the door and stand by it. 

And he would wait for the rest of the congregation

and the supply pastor to come, and when the last person came 

(there were like only like 30 of them,

so it was easy to count) he would lock the door

and bolt it up and they would have worship.

And after worship and a cup of coffee

they would do the same thing in reverse.

This was a very unhealthy situation.

They didn’t know it, but they were very sick.

 

Then in the 1990s they called a full-time pastor.

His name was Mick Roschke and he had a very different idea of how to do church.  

He had this building that was basically empty

during most of the week, so he invited people in the neighborhood in for different things. 

He would walk the neighborhood looking for

anyone who would receive him.

 

Single mothers, prostitutes, drug dealers, drug addicts.

He’d invite them in the church for grief support groups

and addiction groups, for donuts and coffee,

he got doctors to come and give clinics and check-ups.

He got bikes donated and he said

he was giving them out like sticks of gum.

By the time I got there 10 years later in 2002,

the church was no longer at 30 people sneaking in and out of  the doors, 

there were hundreds there on a Sunday.

Mostly all people from the neighborhood

but some old timers were still there.

Now Reformation was a beacon to the community.

 

I was part of a grief group that was made up of

drug addicts, former drug addicts,

and mothers who had lost their children to drugs

and gang violence. The pain that all of them

had seen and experienced was astounding.

 

Reformation was the place where people knew

they could come during the week for food,

support, and counseling, for justice, for bible study,

and just for friendship and a hug.

 

I looked them up today and one of their quotes says:

Reformation has “an irrational commitment” to a community

of people that society generally doesn’t want to deal with;

it is what Reformation is called to do.

It seeks a compassion that “stands in awe of what the poor

have to carry rather than in judgment of how they carry it.”

 

That community and that church were healed by inclusion.

It’s still not rich, and there’s still problems, but the people

who come through those doors have been healed of addictions,

and have turned away from drug dealing and violence.

And old and new members have been healed of the idea that

some are outside of the scope of God’s love and care.

  

Now, some of the old members of the church were still there

when I got there, and they told me that it did not

feel like healing to a lot of them at the time.

They grumbled and gruffed like the religious leaders.

And a lot of them left, but a surprising amount of them stayed

and were there to tell me what the transition was like.

And how their notions of God and the neighborhood their

church was in was changed in the process.

They were healed too.

 

We live in communities in need of healing.

We have sick and dying,

we have the corrupt and the cruel.

We have communities that are torn apart

and we have communities along side them

that are divided from them.

We are sick and we don’t even know it.

 

We at Christ Lutheran are a community of people,

who come together

for mercy and to give mercy,

we are the saved and we are called to save,

we are the receivers and the givers

we are the forgiven and the forgivers

we are saint and sinner for the world.

 

Jesus, the physician, has come to heal us all.

And he has called us to follow,

to follow him in mercy, and to heal the sick.

Some of us are called to help heal the body,

but all of us are called to help heal the community.