The Netherlorn Churches - Being a Caring Church February-March No. 1 Being a Welcoming Church Dr Kenneth Ross 20 Feb 2011

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1 The Netherlorn Churches - Being a Caring Church February-March 2011 No. 1 Being a Welcoming Church Dr Kenneth Ross 20 Feb 2011 Ruth 2:1-23; Luke 14:12-14 The welcome of God expressed in Jesus When we had our Netherlorn Churches Gathering back in October we had workshops exploring different dimensions of church life. One of them was on Pastoral Care. When we had a follow-up meeting late last year it was clear that being a caring church is something that is very important to us. Some of us have particular aptitudes or experience which equip us to offer pastoral care. Some of us have particular needs which call for particular kinds of pastoral care. But before we get to that level of detail there is the question of whether the church as a whole is a caring community. Is it a place where we feel people care for us? Is it a place where we offer care to others? When people encounter the church would they quickly draw the conclusion here are people who care. Over the next six weeks in our services we are going to explore different aspects of what it means to be a caring church. We start today with the question of welcome being a welcoming church. Most organisations would like to see themselves as welcoming whether a shop, a pub, a school, a doctor s surgery, a supermarket, any kind of business. If it wants to do a good job it will have a customer-friendly meet and greet strategy. Is there anything different about a church? Is it doing the welcome thing on the same basis and in the same way as everyone else? Sometimes, we must admit, the church does not even get it right at the level of the basics. Some years ago we went to a church, which better remain nameless, for the baptism of our friends baby. It was a church to which we had never been before so we were first-time visitors. It so happened that the theme of the service was similar to ours today and the minister was exhorting the congregation to be welcoming to newcomers and visitors. He was very explicit - explaining how to approach new people, giving examples of friendly remarks you could make to begin a conversation. Well, the service finished and we were hanging around waiting for our friends to be ready. How many people came and spoke to us? Zero not a single person. 1

2 Worse still is the reality that church people have sometimes come across as the very opposite of welcoming. The journalist John Shore asks in one of his columns: Why are so many Christians so obnoxious and mean-spirited? It seems like Christianity s mostly about being judgemental, narrow-minded, and having an infuriatingly condescending attitude toward anyone who isn t a Christian. Christians are so busy being smug about being Christian that they forget to be kind. Ouch! Let it not be taken for granted that the church appears caring and welcoming. Meeting this challenge is not something we can do simply at the level of forming a meet-andgreet strategy, valuable though that may be. The thing that marks the church apart from the shop or the pub or the surgery is that it is called to represent the welcome of God. How do we know that God is welcoming? We know because of the way Jesus lived his life. Jesus was all about the welcome of God. He was a big surprise to those who thought of religion as a forbidding force, all to do with observing the rules, keeping out those who didn t, and stopping things happening. The table features strongly in the accounts we have of Jesus. The table where food and drink and fellowship were shared. The table which, notoriously, was open to all, even those regarded as outcasts and sinners. Jesus was about welcome the welcome of God to everyone. Two of Jesus stories bring this out very clearly. The one we read which conjures up the image of a banquet and suggests that you don t invite your family, friends and wealthy neighbours people who will invite you back. Instead invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind those who seem to have nothing to offer. This is the welcome of God. The other story is the famous one of the last judgement and the separation of the sheep and the goats. Jesus identifies himself so closely with the hungry and the thirsty, with strangers and prisoners and the sick, that what we to them is what we do to him. The welcome of God it is especially for the most marginalised and the most needy. Through the way he lived and the stories he told Jesus brought something new to the way we look at one another. He introduced the ever-present possibility that in welcoming the least, we are welcoming Jesus himself: and he gave us a strong orientation towards those who seem to have little to offer. He gave us the sense that our hospitality is an expression of the welcome of God, that our simple acts of care can minister the presence of God. 2

3 The Church as place of welcome, belonging It seems that the Church took this to heart from its earliest beginnings. It was a community where people felt welcome regardless of their background. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, wrote Paul to the church at Corinth, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. (I Cor 1:26-27) Read between those lines and you will see that the people who made up the church at Corinth were not so very far away from the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind of whom Jesus spoke. People who might easily be regarded as misfits but who found in the church a community where they were accepted, affirmed and welcomed. The church at its best has always been marked by this character. Step back for a moment 1500 years and imagine you are here at the time when Celtic Christians, led by people like Brendan and Columba, were establishing their monastic communities across the islands and headlands of Argyll. Imagine yourself approaching one of these monasteries. First you would be met by a porter stationed near the entrance whose primary role is to welcome guests and introduce them to the rest of the community. You would be taken to meet the abbot who would ask what had prompted your visit, wash your feet, read a scripture to you and offer a prayer for you. You would be taken to the guest house and given a bed. You would be invited to share meals at the abbot s table. Even if the abbot was fasting he would break the fast in order to eat with you there was no higher priority than extending hospitality to guests. Section 53 of the Rule of St Benedict stated that All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself said I was a stranger and you welcomed me. If you stayed for a while you would be given a soul friend someone with whom you could talk about all that is on your mind. You would be invited take part in small group discussions. You would be offered opportunity for solitude. And, of course, you would be invited to share in the regular worship of the community. It was a matter of believing through belonging. The more you came to feel a part of the community the more you came to share the faith which inspired it Perhaps in our world too it is the quality of the welcome, the quality of the relationships which gives the ring of authenticity to the good news of Jesus Christ. Words alone will not be 3

4 enough. We are bombarded by words every day. Words with a religious reference have been badly discredited because religion has been used as a vehicle for oppression or fanaticism. What will communicate is the open heart, the loving heart which makes room for someone else and shows them the kingdom of God in the form of acceptance, interest, care, compassion. In his book Ancient-Future Faith, Robert Webber suggests that in this century, People come to faith not because they see the logic of the argument, but because they have experienced a welcoming God in a hospitable and loving community. From hospitality to mutuality To go back to the Celtic Christian movement for a moment, one strong feature of its spread is that it did not seek to demolish what had gone before. The places which were regarded as holy places continued to be revered and became the sites of the new churches. The standing stones which had expressed faith and worship continued to be honoured, sometimes with Christian symbols or biblical scenes being carved on them. In time tall standing stone crosses were sculpted, with the distinctive Celtic circle intersecting the cross. All that people brought from their previous experience was embraced and became part of the Christian profession. Here is a deep note in the welcome which the church is called to extend. It is hospitality which recognises that the newcomer brings gifts and experience which will be transformative for those who offer the welcome. So it was that Celtic Christianity became something very different from Roman Christianity. And so it is in more recent times that Samoan Christianity and Congolese Christianity and Brazilian Christianity have emerged each with their own distinctive character. For each people brings its story and that story is received and affirmed in the welcome extended by the church. The untold secret of the missionary movement is that it was the missionaries who were converted as they absorbed the life and culture of the people among whom they worked. Far from the dogmatic, intransigent, intolerant characters that are often imagined, many of the missionaries were transformed in the course of their lives through their friendships with the people to whom they extended Christ s word of welcome. The Gospel story is big enough to embrace many other stories within it. When the Book of Revelation envisages the New Jerusalem which is God s future it is stated that By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it and its gates will never be shut by day and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and honour of the nations. (Rev 21:24-25) Well might we sing: 4

5 Let us build a house where all are named, Their songs and visions heard And loved and treasured, taught and claimed, as words within the Word (Hy 198) The welcome offered by the church is not a one-way affair. The one being welcomed is one who brings experience and knowledge, stories and songs which will unlock more of the riches to be found in the good news of Jesus Christ. Far from being a patronising pat on the head or a cynical marketing ploy, the welcome offered by the church is essential to its being. It is a welcome which speaks of the welcoming God who invites every human story to become a constitutive part of the everlasting kingdom of Jesus Christ. 5