FIRST READING—Hebrews 13: 1-3, 13, 16
Stay on good terms with each other, held together by love. Be ready with a meal or a bed when it's needed. Why, some have extended hospitality to angels without ever knowing it! Regard prisoners as if you were in prison with them. Look on victims of abuse as if what happened to them had happened to you.
So let's go outside, where Jesus is, where the action is—not trying to be privileged insiders, but taking our share in the abuse of Jesus. This "insider world" is not our home. Make sure you don't take things for granted and go slack in working for the common good; share what you have with others. God takes particular pleasure in acts of worship—a different kind of "sacrifice"—that take place in kitchen and workplace and on the streets.
SECOND READING—Luke 4: 14-21
Jesus returned to Galilee powerful in the Spirit. News that he was back spread through the countryside. He taught in their meeting places to everyone's acclaim and pleasure.
He came to Nazareth where he had been reared. As he always did on the Sabbath, he went to the meeting place. When he stood up to read, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written,
God's Spirit is on me;
[God chose] me to preach the Message of good news to
the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free,
to announce, "This is God's year to act!"
He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the place was on him, intent. Then he started in, "You've just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place."
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God, give us the grace to see You when You welcome us into Your grace, or into a new place of spiritual depth. Give us the grace to welcome others to everything we have in You. Be our vision, our mission, and our light. Amen
Today is often called Freedom Sunday, that Sunday that falls closest to Independence Day. And on this Freedom Sunday we celebrate the freedom that allows us to meet here in this place without fear of bodily or material harm. We celebrate all the freedoms we enjoy and say thank you to all who have fought in so many ways and at so many times for our freedom. May we never forget that it is the courage of those who came before us who enable us to talk of all sorts of freedom today. Nevertheless, may we continue to remember that we are not wholly free until all of humanity is free and that we must continue to work for freedom in our own world and lives. Today, we are graced to meet together, to worship together, and to be grateful together. Let us move boldly into God’s wide and wonderful welcome as we honor those who have done so in other times.
Before the first person every stepped across one of the numerous doorways we have called Open Circle, I was driven by the belief that all of us, young and old, need a place to be at home—just as we are, comfortable in our own skin, finally free from the demands to change who we are or at least to pretend to be something we are not—and I do not necessarily only mean as it relates to sexuality. But as I entered into what is certainly the last half of my life, if not last third or last quarter, and began to watch my friends and colleagues do the same, it became clear to me that, time is indeed short and waiting to find God’s wild and wonderful welcome was not a good plan at all. I sat with those thoughts for probably 5 years before I came to be your pastor. As I authored a training curriculum for nursing home staff and worked with those staff to try to get them to understand the damage of requiring our elders when they entered those unfriendly places known as nursing homes, to either “go back into the closet” or “batten down the hatches on an existing closet even further”, I came to have a passion for finding or creating, if need be, a place where faith is free and open and one is welcome because of who you are—gay, straight, trans, bi, rich, poor, healthy, sick, young, or old or in-between and not in spite of who you are. And God continued to work on my heart and make ready a plan for what became Open Circle.
I am convinced that Open Circle is here because people, all people, need a place where it all makes sense. Perhaps those of us who have passed the mid-mark of our lives, need it a little more as we have come to a time in our lives when we may feel a stronger need for life to ‘make sense’ as we face numerous transitions in our lives. But that takes a very special place, a place full of peace and grace. It takes a place where all are welcome, and where the world in all its difference and splendid creation are represented. I believe that we are intended to have a full array of ministries someday—ministries that will bring all of God’s wild and wonderful welcome into this community and communities beyond. I believe that we are called to minister especially to those who grieve and those who are facing great loss as they age. My vision for this place is to be a place so free from guilt and blame that all prior pain is absorbed by grace. As we spoke last week, it is in community, this community where God’s word becomes incarnate and God’s welcome is felt by all who enter these doors. And it is this community who will, as our scripture says today, go out into the streets to offer God’s wild and wonderful welcome to young and old, parents and children, grandparents, those without homes, those without friends, those without God.
In our first reading, the writer of Hebrews is clear: “Stay on good terms with each other, held together by love. Be ready with a meal or a bed when it's needed.” And referring to our story of Abraham and the heavenly visitors from last week, the writer continues: “ Why, some have extended hospitality to angels without ever knowing it!” This writer calls us to treat prisoners as if we were in prison with them, abuse victims as if the abuse had happened to us. It doesn’t take much to extend those words to include those who are ill, or in pain, or in emotional turmoil. To treat all of those folks as if their infirmity or issue is happening to us, because it is happening to another child of God, calls us to open even wider God’s wide and wonderful welcome. Look at what comes next—it is not enough to stay inside these walls. The writer reminds us, “ So let's go outside, where Jesus is, where the action is—not trying to be privileged insiders, but taking our share in the abuse of Jesus.” For it is outside as well as inside where Jesus is. And finally, the writer commands us: “Make sure you don't take things for granted and go slack in working for the common good; share what you have with others. God takes particular pleasure in acts of worship—a different kind of "sacrifice"—that take place in kitchen and workplace and on the streets.” Particular acts of worship, worship that requires us to use our resources, our hands, and not just our speech. As we plan together, think together, enlarge our thoughts together to explore and celebrate what God has in mind for Open Circle, we will do well to remember these words of challenge. God’s wide and wonderful welcome, indeed!
Letty M. Russell, feminist theologian and minister, writes of God’s welcome in her final book, Just Hospitality: God’s Welcome in a World of Difference. She talks about the concept of hospitality as it relates to creating a safe space—a space perhaps as I described earlier in my own vision for Open Circle. She relates the concept of safe space to the Hebrew tradition of “Sanctuary” which is rooted in a tradition of ‘cities of refuge’. God commanded the people of Israel to create places of sanctuary—places where no blood could be shed—where, regardless of their past lives and actions, people were safe. Over time, this concept was expanded to include all people, not just Israelites, and the notion of sanctuary and “the sanctuary”, or “church” as we call it began to flow together. According to Russell, “The word “sanctuary” comes from the Latin sanctus, which means “holy”. The Latin sanctus comes from the Hebrerw kaddish, meaning “holy”. The right of protection for all persons is derived from God’s holiness and provides the basic theological understanding of hospitality in both Hebrew and Christian Scriptures: Human being are created by God and are to be holy, and to be treated as holy or sacred.”
Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, author of some of the world’s finest books on suffering and God’s grace, also notes that the concept of sanctuary relates to human beings. He states: “Every human being is a dwelling of God—man or woman or child, Christian or Jewish or Buddhist. Any person, by virtue of being a son or a daughter of humanity is a living sanctuary whom nobody has the right to invade.” Now we know that there are many places in the New Testament where our bodies, our very selves are referred to as sanctuaries, temples, holy places. And so, we are sacred, each of us, our hearts, our souls, are all sacred before a living and loving God.
God calls us then to extend this wild and wonderful welcome in ways that protect each other and all of creation. Who are we to welcome then? Or, in other words, who is it that needs this safe space, this wild and wonderful welcome of God? For this we turn to Jesus’ reading in the temple in Nazareth. He stood up, and he read from Isaiah: God's Spirit is on me; [God chose] me to preach the Message of good news to the poor, sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the burdened and battered free, to announce, "This is God's year to act!"
Jesus handed the scroll back to the assistant and sat down. And then he said, “today, this has come true in your hearing.” I believe as we move forward into a full expression of God’s wide and wonderful welcome in this place and in this time that God will honor our actions—this remains God’s year to act! Amen and amen!
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