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Sunday 24 February 2019

all welcome here? yeah, right.


SERMON PREACHED at St LUKE’S, MOSGIEL
ORDINARY SUNDAY 7 (24th February) 2019


READINGS:
            Genesis 45: 3-11, 15
Psalm 37: 1-11, 39-40
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
Luke 6:27-38


In letters written to the Corinthian Christians, Paul drew one line more prominent than any other in the sand. No resurrection: no gospel. As some will have heard, some years ago, when I was Dean of Waiapu, I sat aghast as a clerical colleague drew, fortunately for a tiny mid-week congregation, an eloquent case for dismissing any belief in resurrection in the narrative of the Christian community.
He began with a satirical attack on the doctrines of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, mocked their (now somewhat modified) teachings regarding the salvation of 144,000 faithful, then moved on to maintain that any idea that those we love or we ourselves could believe in any doctrine of afterlife is nonsense. Sadly, I was so deeply winded, spiritually speaking, that I sat in flabbergasted silence. Thoughts of Paul’s fierce defence of the doctrine of resurrection reverberating in my speechless mind.
I am reminded of that moment today, not only because our Corinthians passage is one in which Paul turns to the centrality of the death and resurrection of Jesus, but because Jesus himself is dwelling on images of largesse, of the responsibility of his followers to offer more than mere equivalence to the actions and thoughts of those amongst whom God calls us to dwell. Jesus calls us, as bearers of his name, as disciples, to surpass the expected, to go beyond the merely normal.
In these sayings Jesus is focussing on the pragmatisms of succour (coats) and of restorative (as against retributive) justice (slaps). Elsewhere Jesus demands extra miles, and reminds us to give fish, not stones, bread, not scorpions, to the hungry.
In a confused world where truth is called fake news and old certainties have crumbled it is not the task of Christian preachers to dismantle the central tenets of our faith. Perhaps as he wrote to the recalcitrant and faith-corrupted Corinthians Paul had in mind the Jesus-sayings about generosity and largesse, applying them to the hope at the heart of Christian doctrine. Fish, or stone? Hope, or despair? Paul warned those who deny the resurrection that they are more to be pitied than all people. Deny the central doctrine of faith and we betray the very core of Christ-following, and offer the world only hopelessness and darkness for hope and light, exclusion for embrace. Do we offer bread, or a scorpion to God’s world?
So I want us for a moment to be outside the church we (mainly) love, outside the institution in which we live looking in. What entices, what impels, what forbids?
Perhaps let’s look at it a different way. It is a bitterly cold Otago night. We have been cast for whatever reason from the warmth of our home and fireplace – perhaps our car is broken down as we drive from Invercargill to Picton. We glance through glass doors at a lively group gathered in an unfamiliar room, laughing, talking around a table, sharing a drink and fine food. Between us and the door – a notice on which assures us we are welcome – there is vast impenetrable chasm. It could be anything. A salivating rottweiler, a racial divide, a dress code. All are welcome, except those who do not fit. With heavy hearts we turn away and trudge into the night.
As we watched momentarily from outside we could hear what was being said inside. A figure, well-dressed, was speaking, enthusing vigorously about the love that is shared between those gathered in the room. Aren’t we good? “They will know we are Christians by our love,” he sang for a moment or two. Aren’t we a welcoming people? See how we love each other! The rottweiler growled, menacingly, as we turned and sadly walked into the winter’s night.
In his best-known book What’s So Amazing About Grace, the Christ-bearing writer Philip Yancey tells a tale about a prostitute. Asked why she has not sought help in her predicament by attending a Christian gathering, a church, she responds exclaiming that she feels bad enough about herself without entering a place where she will be made to feel worse. All are welcome here, so many Christian churches proclaim, except those not clean enough, literate enough, white enough, heterosexual enough, sober enough to enter. “Do not judge, and you will not be judged,” says Jesus. “Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.” And we don’t. Not in so many words.
And yet I wonder. I once knew a fine and dignified church in a place far from here. A young Māori woman walked in – she lived nearby and had often wondered what went on there. “Have you come to the right place?” a gentleman asked. Was it that she was Māori? Tattooed? Unfamiliar, other in some other way? What if she had come with a wife? In the same place during the week a man came looking for shelter from the weather. He’d had a drink or two, sure, but all he wanted was a place to rest awhile. He was moved along, unwelcome. “Give, and it will be given to you.” An eccentric woman with a bird on a shoulder was barred from communion. So too was a woman with a dog. You’re welcome, but only if you clone those of us cosily here already.
We tend to forget how foreign and even hostile a place we have become in a post Christendom society. As we approach Lent, we might ask some deep questions of ourselves. If there has been a work of the Holy Spirit – and I believe there has in recent years – it is that many of our false beliefs about ourselves have been exploded. Those who dress like us, believe like us, read what we read, all those are welcome here. But most of society doesn’t. Many of our behaviours have either been exposed as mere façades, or have been drowned out by our messages of intolerance: why would I go to church, says the prostitute at the opening scene of What’s So Amazing About Grace?
As a corporate body we have forgotten our brokenness. We have often rejoiced in our salvation, but forgotten our need for it at the beginnng. “I’ve been redeemed,” we sing and chant happily, emphasizing our singularity and our satisfaction. But our need for God’s touch? We’ve forgotten or never known it, parceled God into our lives as a habit or a convenience or a panacea or an insurance policy in case there’s a judgement and a hell. We have forgotten that the one who reaches across the abyss of the universe to edify our lives was the broken one, the hated one, the one who despite belonging in the place of the man of heaven, despite being the man of heaven, becomes for us the man of dust, real dust, real brokenness, and there touches our lives. Paul is saying something like that when he reminds the recalcitrant, self-satisfied Corinthians, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.” God in Christ gets pretty dusty to meet and penetrate our dusty lives, and we forget that at great peril.
The Church community is by God’s Spirit being forced to reassess itself. Are we a place of welcome, a whare oranga in which all may feel the love-touch of resurrection hope? Let us in the week to come ask ourselves how we look from outside, ask the Spirit of God to remind us where we have created barriers, ask the Spirit of God to dismantle those barriers that assure the seekers and the broken and the not good enough neighbours that they are not welcome. For this table fellowship we share is not the Feast of Hope for the Good Enough, but the feast of those who know they are not good enough, yet even so are touched by the warmth and the love of the risen Lord

TLBWY

1 comment:

Tuppynme said...

Certainly food for thought!