"All Are Welcome"

I Kings 8:23,23, 41-43

Luke 7:1-10

A Sermon preached by The Rev. Douglas M. Donley

June 10, 2001

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

I know this is the annual meeting day. There are many things to attend to, reports to give, lunch to eat, people to thank. Translation: "preacher, keep it short."

I will, but let me say this: This is the day that we attend to what is important to us as a church community. This is when we address issues as vexing as budgets and as exciting as the celebration of God's action among us. In this brief sermon time, I would like to look at the fact that the church can and must be the place where everyone is welcome to the table and we are to attend to the work of bringing the reign of God to the fore.

Come here, all you six-foot gladiolas;

come all you purple lilacs shining bright.

Come, let us all bloom together in the garden:

a carnival of fragrance and delight.

We don’t simply tolerate each other.

We ask and tell we don’t just turn away.

We give attention to ev’ry bud and blossom.

Let ev’ry face come grace the grand bouquet.

Our demons keep trying to divide us.

They document their lies to make them true.

Today we’re freed from our judging and excluding.

Just look around, enjoy the lovely view."

That’s what I want to preach on today. But you know what, it ain’t so easy to welcome everyone. We all have our blinders.

We like things a certain way.

We like the way we understand the world.

If we are honest, we probably don’t want anything to rock that boat.

We want and we thrive in a world we can understand.

We want things to go just right.

But what happens when we take the radical nature of the Gospel seriously?

What happens when we look at the fact that Jesus embraces the outcasts—this is probably what got him killed, you know—what happens if we welcome everyone?

What might we see and what might it cost?

That’s the real question for us to address on an annual meeting day.

The dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem held that kind of promise. Solomon prayed: "When a foreigner, who is not of thy people Israel comes from a far country…and prays toward this house, hear thou in heaven…and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to thee; in order that all the peoples of the earth may know you…"

This is the hospitality ethic which existed at the beginning of the founding of the Temple cult. This monotheistic City-State was unique in the ancient east. This benevolent YHWH who welcomed the foreigner and offered salvation to everyone was certainly an exciting and welcome addition to the politics and spirituality of the time.

It’s easy to be welcoming when everything is going all right. But when things start falling apart, people start looking for someone to blame. The foreigners were easy prey. The Hebrew people would eventually abandon the inclusive welcome of the stranger in order to not "corrupt" the temple. They instituted laws to further restrict people. There are 613 of them in Torah. We all know that the Prophets saw that later exclusion as reason for their eventual destruction, for as Mel White reminded us a few weeks ago, "the Spirit of God cannot abide in a place where all of God’s children are not welcome."

I am leaving in the morning to add my voice to the forces of inclusion at the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in New Orleans. I covet your prayers. Look at the exclusion frenzy the National body has taken over the past 20 years. For a denomination that once valued Baptist principals of soul freedom and local church autonomy, the Southern Baptist Convention leadership has made unbaptist creedal alliance a hallmark of the price of admission.

This new creedalism started out with the decision that only people who believed in the infallibility of Scripture could teach in the seminaries or hold national office.

Then it said that women should not be Pastors and if they were, their churches would be disfellowshipped.

Then they said any church that is gay-friendly should be disfellowshipped.

Then they said that the only contact they should have with Jews and Muslims was to convert them to their brand of restrictive Christianity.

Then they said that women should be graciously submissive to their husbands, regardless of how their husbands treat them. One wonders what will be next.

Restrictions and denominational judgements are the acts of desperate people who panic. If we are under the province of God, then we need not worry so much about who is with us or against us. Yet we still mourn the broken lives in the wake of exculsivity.

So, I mourn for the Southern Baptist Convention and for people growing up in Southern Baptist homes and churches. I go to New Orleans to show that there is another way loved by God and most importantly honored by Jesus. I go to pray for my Southern Baptist sisters and brothers and put my body on the line and risk arrest if they choose to still engage in spiritual violence against my gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender sisters and brothers.

In Jesus’ time, this bias toward exclusion reared its ugly head as the Hebrew people tried to separate themselves from the occupying Roman army. They fought a losing battle to ignore their captors. It was kind of like trying to ignore the government to whom you pay taxes, upon whom you depend for school, water, electricity and roads. Oppressed folks know what it’s like to be in the world, but not of the world.

They saw in Jesus, a possible savior figure, who would overthrow Roman rule, reestablish Temple rule, with all of its restrictions and exclusions right in place of course. But Jesus had a different ethic.

When a Roman Centurian’s servant was sick, Jesus ignored all of the cultural taboos and instituted a new ethic, one in which all are welcome, foreigners, enemies, outcasts, sinners, in a word, all of us. Matthew’s version of the same story adds a poignant criticism of the Israelite people. Jesus said, "Many will come from east and west (meaning the gentiles) and eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the commonwealth of heaven, while the heirs of the commonwealth (that is the Hebrew people) will be thrown out..." (Matt.8:11-12) In other words, he was saying, just because you have the right heritage, lineage and even trappings of piety, it does you no good unless you are inspired to live lives of faith and service.

We as the church need to take the lessons and the ethics of Jesus and the prophets seriously. We need to let them be in the forefront of our minds and our hearts. These ethics need to establish the basis for all of our decisions as a church. This is what we need to be looking at in our annual meeting and every other meeting. We need to build a house where all are welcomed, honored, loved and respected for their individual journeys. For it is only when we open ourselves up to all people, even those we do not yet know, that we truly see all aspects of the face of God.

May it be so in our community, this fragile and wonderful place called University Baptist Church.

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