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"The Episcopal Church Welcomes You"
St.
Mark’s Episcopal Church
Sunday, October 1, 2006
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29
James 4:7-5:6
Mark 9:38-50
Like a picture on a wall that you pass by everyday, no longer
noticing or paying much attention to, if you ever did, there
are thousand and thousands of red, white and blue road signs
around the United States that offer this message: "The
Episcopal Church Welcomes You". I wonder if anyone really
sees them for more than one of many comfortable constants that
define and mark our daily routines and structured worlds. But
there they are, tasteful and unobtrusive, in virtually every
town that will allow such signs – Glen Ellyn not being
one of them. A friend of ours, who has lived in Glen Ellyn for
many years, recently returned from a vacation in New England
and remarked how many Episcopal Church signs she noticed. “Yes,”
I said, “they are everywhere” – the signs
and churches. Yet it doesn’t appear that signs alone will
do much to bring people into the church. In the United States,
there are about 2.5 million Episcopalians, making us one of
the smaller mainline denominations, far fewer than the Lutherans
and Methodists. I am convinced that no one, including the people
who put up the signs, realizes just how radical it is to extend
a welcome to the whole world. We say it and put it in print
on metal, but do we really mean it? I want to think that it
is true at St. Mark’s – that anyone is welcome and
will feel welcomed when they come here – to worship, for
Parent’s Day Out, for AA, and so on. And I don’t
mean “come as we are” but “we welcome you
as you are.” But if it were really true, and we really
lived into the radical meaning of our advertised welcome, then
we would see Somalis, homeless people, African Americans and
Latinos at St. Mark’s – because these are the people
who live in and around our church. And I don’t want to
imply that St. Mark’s is doing a worse job than our neighboring
faith communities. From all indications, they are similarly
homogenous, if not even more so when you consider cultural heritage,
theological expectations and confessional requirements. Truly
welcoming people means looking beyond the physical surface and
demonstrating a desire to listen to the story that goes with
the person – their beliefs, background, struggles and
hopes, and while doing so, looking for and seeing the image
of God that is behind it all. It is hard work to listen and
care about another person and to add another link to your web
of connections that are forged at a deep level. I’m not
suggesting that we change the wording on our Episcopal signs
but that we remember the awesome promise that we are making
and claim it as core to our Christian identity and calling.
If someone happens to be visiting St. Mark’s today for
the first time, or any Episcopal church for that matter, it
won’t be the welcome or lack thereof that will make them
run for the door and never want to come back. The reading from
Mark’s Gospel might accomplish that all on its own. We
hear Jesus speak of a mafia-style drowning, severed limbs, self-maiming,
unquenchable fires, and a hell carpeted with swarms of devouring
worms. I don’t think even Fear Factor can top this. But
this is the Gospel – the good news – and for better
or worse, it includes tough talk from Jesus. But there among
the frightening imagery is an essential, wonderful and stark
truth – that we may enter “life.” Jesus says,
“it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have
two hands and go to hell.” You may hear this, as has often
been presented, as having to do with a future time for the world
or the possible destinies for you after your death – heaven
or hell. I would like to challenge you to hear this not as speculation
from a safe distance but as an urgent reality for you right
now. I also ask you to consider that the word “welcome”
is equivalent to “enter life.”
To understand what it means to “enter life” is
to recall what action Jesus has just taken in front of his disciples.
In last week’s Gospel reading from Mark, which immediately
precedes what we have heard today, Jesus moves to the outer
perimeter of those gathered around him, finds a child, who he
takes into his arms and brings back to the center with him.
This is not the child that is often depicted in Golden Books
or Precious Moments – a child with blond hair, chubby
cheeks and shy smile. This child is barely recognizable as human
– gaunt, filthy, and diseased, barely alive – the
scum of the earth, rejected and ignored by society, a creature
who scrounges for food around the “hell” –
the nick name for the garbage dump outside of the city walls
that constantly burns and belches smoke, fueled by the refuse
from Jerusalem. Jesus holds this child and says, “whoever
welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” By his
actions, Jesus shows what it means to be welcoming and to enter
life. This is good and timely news. It is about our daily lives
– in church, at home, at work and everywhere in between.
At a time when our society is choking on materialism, when so
much time and talent goes into planning kitchen renovations
and house additions, when there isn’t enough room in garages
for cars, when remote storage business are booming, and landfills
are at capacity – this is what we need to hear and see
in our sacred Scriptures – that true life, the meaning
of life is about welcoming what is rejected by society. A life
built on accumulation, whether achieved or desired, is at its
core, a burning trash heap, where depression and despair are
the worms that eat at your very soul. You may be comfortable
and satisfied with a personal Jesus (a concept perfected in
the United States), but Jesus is comfortable with those with
HIV/AIDS, malaria and malnutrition, those who lurk in the garbage
dumps around Chicago, Rio, Moscow and Kigali.
Like John and the other disciples in today’s reading,
all churches remain pre-occupied and distracted with how other
people understand Jesus and how they are casting out demons
in his name. Then as now, the truth of the Gospel is radical
and unsettling. There it is, hidden behind the “Welcome”
in thousands of road signs. It is much easier to look the other
way, away from Jesus who holds the outcast in his arms. But
that is where we need to look to find the truth and to find
true life. Capturing the essence of this mandate, Archbishop
Ndungane of Cape Town chides his peer bishops in the global
south for “being so dominated by an inordinate influence
from the United States rather than learning the lessons of black
and liberation theology and black consciousness, in order to
concentrate on their own priorities.”
Jesus tells his disciples that everyone is salted with fire.
This is the second great truth of today’s Gospel. Consider
what it may mean to be salted with fire – and how you
yourself are in fact salted with fire. On the one hand, fire
symbolizes our predicaments and struggles: alcoholism, depression,
unemployment, anxiety, divorce, cancer, diabetes, rejection,
loneliness, failure, feeling abandoned by God, and peer pressure
to name a few. From Mother Teresa to Osama Bin Laden, movie
stars and politicians, the richest 500 and the poorest billion
on our planet, your neighbor and the person sitting near you
today – everyone is salted with fire. From my childhood,
I have this image of my father preparing a piece of meat for
the grill, taking a salt shaker – one with a dull metallic
finish and curved handle, and with half dozen shakes and the
“sh” “sh” sound of salt moving back
and forth, covering its surface with an even dispersion of tiny
grains of salt – imperceptible to the eye but later tasted
and appreciated in every bite. Jesus declares salt “good.”
Our saltiness is our condition, unique and fused with our image
of divinity. The fact that everyone is salted with fire gives
us the recipe for humility and empathy. Honest introspection
sees the fiery salt within us. Empathic care and listening sees
the fiery salt in others. Humility and empathy make the “welcome”
printed on our road signs actionable and sustainable.
Fire also symbolizes the imprint of the Holy Spirit –
and just as we are salted with various afflictions and problems,
we are salted with the fire of the Holy Spirit, which embeds
within us the desire to welcome and the desire to cast our demons
and the desire to know God. As we encounter Jesus in our Scriptures
and Sacraments, we recognize the radical call of the Gospel,
look to Jesus with what the world rejects in his arms, and look
within ourselves and other for the salt that is good, thanking
God for these gifts and standing ready to welcome, truly welcome
the whole world.
Amen.
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