Getting Wet

Getting Wet

A Communion Meditation

Robert J. Elder, Pastor

Baptism of the Lord: January 9, 2011

Matthew 3:13-17

Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan

to be baptized by him.

I have prepared a sermon for you this morning. And inasmuch as this is the Sunday of the year when we recall Jesus’ baptism by John, I am going to deliver the sermon I have prepared. But also, inasmuch as I learned late yesterday, as did many of you, of the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 17 other people, resulting in the immediate deaths of 6 – including a nine year-old girl – at a sidewalk meeting outside a grocery store in Tucson, I am not going to stop with the closing words of my sermon. As I tried to make sense of what took place yesterday, I happened upon an article written after the tragedy, by The Rev. Dr. Diana Butler Bass for an online magazine called Beliefnet, which I plan to read for you when I conclude the sermon I have written. I found Dr. Bass’s words very much on point both for a Sunday celebrating the baptism of Jesus, and an extraordinary day when events call us to take a hard look at who we are as a nation on this particular day in our history.

So … in Matthew 3 we have what at least one scholar has described as the “first anomaly in Jesus’ ministry [which] is but a foretaste of the great absurdity to come: that the Son of God will suffer and die on the cross to accomplish salvation.”1 For what must be significant reasons, the gospels all report that sinless Jesus sought John’s baptism, which Matthew reports was “for the remission of sins.” Jesus no more needed sins remitted than he deserved the punishment of execution on a cross, but he submitted to both in order to take on humanity fully, not out of necessity but out of obedience.

Even if we don’t know or appreciate the things Robert Fulghum has written, we’d still have to admire the unique titles he chooses for his best-selling books, the first of which, in my memory, was All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. One of his stories from a subsequent book, carrying the promisingly enigmatic title, Uh-Oh, stays in my mind.2 It involves an elementary school class, the annual springtime class play, and a singular individual in the class, named Norman.

The teacher announced one morning that the play she had chosen for the class members to perform was Cinderella. The usual chaos ensued, every hand went up, waving madly, as all the students fell to begging for an important part. The girls all wanted to be Cinderella, the boys wanted to be the handsome prince. Naturally, not everyone could play those parts, so the teacher made other parts, like the ugly stepsisters and the king and the members of the royal court, seem sufficiently attractive that the children accepted them willingly. After assigning all the usual parts, and some she had created from her own fertile imagination, there remained one quiet boy without a part.

With no additional suggestion left in mind, the teacher asked a dangerous question: “Norman, what character would you like to play?”

Norman answered without hesitation. “I’d like to be the pig.”

“Pig?” responded his stunned teacher. “But there is no pig in Cinderella!”

Norman smiled. “There is now.”

And sure enough, there was. And the pig became the hit of the show. The rest of the story is pretty cute too, but I am just sticking with the idea of a pig in the Cinderella story for the moment.

I had an old seminary professor who used to say that the church is meant to be a safe-house for sinners, but that bringing sinners into the church – which means all of us – is like bringing a pig into a fancy parlor. It’s not the pig that gets changed. It’s the parlor that is changed, of course. The arrival of a sinless Savior to receive the baptism of John is like a parallel truth. Bring a sinless Messiah into the world and it’s not the Messiah that gets changed. It’s the world.

The people who were coming to John at the Jordan to be baptized were seeking a baptism, as Matthew says, “for the remission of sins.” They wanted to be part of the redeemed people of Israel, but when they thought about it, redeemed people all looked to them like Cinderella or Prince Charming, and when they saw themselves reflected in the mirrors of their hearts, what they saw were pigs. So they came to John, hoping somehow to rejoin the chosen people on an equal footing by baptism.

It turns out that since the Messiah came, there are no pigs among the people of God. No matter who we are or what we have done, there is a path blazed by one who was sinless, giving us access to the throne of God, the kingdom of heaven.

On the ecclesiastical calendar, today is called “The Baptism of the Lord.” It is a day meant to be remembered on this day every year, the first Sunday after the day of Epiphany on January 6. It is scheduled every year because it is so important to remember that we are baptized people. Baptism is not just a sweet little ceremony occasionally performed in worship. It is meant to be a remembrance of the dying Savior who came that we might all know the promise of new life. Jesus invites us to reflect that we are baptized, and be glad. In him we are a royal priesthood, lived out in his call to humble service.

As you exit the sanctuary this morning, you might want to think about going out by the side doors so you can pass by the baptismal font up here. I invite you to do just that, if you like, to touch the water and remember that you are baptized, cleansed by the one who knew no uncleanness. Remember you, like Jesus, are baptized. And be glad!

And be glad? Those were the words with which I planned to end my sermon. But yesterday’s events in Arizona caused me to rethink leaving things there, and the following words from Dr. Diana Butler Bass seemed to me to provide help in sorting out the kind of baptism to which we are called as modern American Christian people:

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords: Speaking for the Soul

by Diana Butler Bass

From http://blog.beliefnet.com/christianityfortherestofus/2011/01

Saturday January 8, 2011

The Sunday after Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, my husband’s family attended their Presbyterian church. They went with heavy hearts, expecting the pastor to help make sense of the tragedy. The minister rose to preach. The congregation held its breath. But he said nothing of the events in Memphis. He preached as if nothing had happened.

My husband’s family left church that day disappointed; eventually, they left that church altogether.

This Sunday, many Americans will go to church. A sizeable number of those people may be hoping to hear something that helps them make sense of the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the others who had gathered at her sidewalk townhall in Tucson. Some pastors may note the event in prayer and some may say something during announcements or add a sentence to their sermons. But others might say nothing, sticking instead to prepared texts and liturgies. Many will eschew speaking of politics.

That would be a mistake.

Much of American public commentary takes place on television, via the Internet, and through social networks. We already know what form the analysis of the assassination attempt will be. Everyone will say what a tragedy it is. Then commentators will take sides. Those on the left will blame the Tea Party’s violent rhetoric and “Second Amendment solutions.” Those on the right will blame irresponsible individuals and Socialism. Progressives will call for more gun control; conservatives will say more people should carry guns. Everyone will have some sort of spin that benefits their party, their platform, and their policies.

But who will speak of the soul?

Since President Obama has taken office, many ministers have told me that they have feared addressing public issues from the pulpit lest “someone get hurt.” Well, someone is hurt--and people have died--most likely because bitterly partisan lies have filled the air and most certainly because some unhinged individual killed people.

At their best, American pulpits are not about taking sides and blaming. Those pulpits should be places to reflect on theology and life, on the Word and our words. I hope that sermons tomorrow will go beyond expressions of sympathy or calls for civility and niceness. Right now, we need some sustained spiritual reflection on how badly we have behaved in recent years as Americans--how much we’ve allowed fear to motivate our politics, how cruel we’ve allowed our discourse to become, how little we’ve listened, how much we’ve dehumanized public servants, how much we hate.

Sunday January 9 is the day on which many Christians celebrate the Baptism of Jesus: “When Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’” Jesus’ baptism in water symbolizes life, the newness that comes of cleansing. But there is a darker symbol of baptism in American history: that of blood. In 1862, Episcopal bishop Stephen Elliot of Georgia said, “All nations which come into existence… must be born amid the storm of revolution and must win their way to a place in history through the baptism of blood.” Baptism as water? Baptism as blood? Baptism accompanied by a dove or baptism accompanied by the storm of revolution?

American Christianity is deeply conflicted, caught between two powerful symbols of baptism, symbols that haunt our political sub-consciousness. To which baptism are we called? Which baptism does the world most need today? Which baptism truly heals? Do we need the water of God, or the blood of a nine-year old laying on a street in Tucson? The answer is profoundly and simply obvious. We need redemption gushing from the rivers of God’s love, not that of blood-soaked sidewalks. If we don’t speak for the soul, our silence will surely aid evil.

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Diana Butler Bass holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of A People’s History of Christianity: the Other Side of the Story (HarperOne, 2009), and the best-selling Christianity for the Rest of Us (HarperOne, 2006).

1 Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year A, Advent-Epiphany, Marion Soards, et. al., Abingdon, 1992, p. 106.

2 Uh-Oh, by Robert Fulghum, Ballantine Books, 1991.

Weather God?

Weather God?

Second Sunday of Christmas: January 2, 2011

Copyright © 2011, Robert J. Elder

Psalm 147:12-20

He sends out his word, and melts them;

he makes his wind blow, and the waters flow.

Some of you know that for years I have made a practice of setting my annual plans for preaching in the summer during a study week, usually in the month of July. During that week, in the slow pace of summer, I look over the scripture lessons for Sundays in the months to come, beginning with Advent. It is a glance toward a future which cannot be known; even so I try to plan for a word to speak in those coming weeks. So it was that in the summer I made initial plans for this Sunday, what is often referred to in churches as a “low Sunday” because it comes in the weeks following such a high holy day as Christmas. I looked at the Psalm for the day and decided it was an intriguing text, another of the Bible’s many references to God as the Lord of creation. Even so – and I think this is vitally important for our understanding of the nature of God – it presents God as being continually at work in creation, rather than sitting back, no longer actively involved with what has been created.

Anyone who wants to think of God as Creator must, from time to time, come to terms with ways in which this good creation of God sometimes includes hurricanes, lightning storms, and – just a few weeks back – a tornado in tiny Aumsville Oregon. The earth on which we “live and move and have our being” is capable of unexpected events, from the moderately interesting to the completely terrifying, like modest eruptions on Mount St. Helens, or unimaginable destruction as with tsunamis, earthquakes, landslides and hurricanes. Those who commonly state flatly that they prefer to worship a god of nature – most typically in the pleasant surroundings of a golf course or on a sunny day of fishing by the riverside – must come to terms with the fact that nature itself is a capricious and temperamental god, capable of brutal, senseless destruction, as we frequently witness in locations around the planet. If we plan to worship the daffodils, we must also take into account the volcano. No wonder the Bible is always careful to distinguish between God and God’s creation. I have, in some weeks, found in words from I Kings no small comfort in the face of mounting death tolls from natural disasters. There, the prophet Elijah discovered that God was not to be found in the earthquake, wind or fire, but in the still, small, reconciling voice of God’s word.1

We do believe this about God’s work in the created world: that God is still at work in an unruly creation, that the work of creation is not finished and is still under way, and it truly is work. At the very least, calamitous events are calls to God’s service in aiding those who are victims through no fault of their own. Psalm 147, in verses just prior to those read today, declares the way we know we are in the presence of the God of creation, because the true God is one who

gathers the outcasts of Israel,

[who] heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.2

If we are to be people of the Word, we cannot believe that natural disasters we witness in the world express the intention of God for the world. It is a question that is continually asked of course. Once, following a natural disaster in Southeast Asia, I remember hearing on CNN one woman who spoke for many when she appeared on screen asking, “God, what have we done to make you so angry?” Was this event, as legal documents sometimes state, an “act of God”?

We have to be extra cautious about ever claiming to know the intentions of God in such complicated circumstances, and especially careful in casting about for reasons God might be judging others, when Jesus' chief advice about judgment had to do with self-reflection.

I also recall hearing from the usual gaggle of self-proclaimed broadcast religious leaders who declared that the horrific events of 9/11 were somehow God's judgment on the sinful actions of certain scapegoat groups of people in our country. Of course, these were the same people who in 1999 predicted that a "Y2K" cataclysmic shutdown of computers around the world would lead to the return of Jesus, and for his part, Jerry Falwell said at the time that he was stockpiling food, sugar, gasoline, and ammunition.3

(I have to wonder what sort of God such a person worships. It seems clearly not to be the God of the Psalmist.)

“So far I haven't heard of any imams preaching a similar message about the victims of the tsunami. And I suspect I won’t – primarily because many, if not most, of the victims are Muslims. I feel confident of this because I’ve noticed the tendency of imams – and I suspect preachers of all faiths – to cite the wrath of God when they’re talking about other people’s flaws. For example, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Jerry Falwell suggested that God allowed the attacks as a warning to the nation because of its “moral decay” and said Americans should have an attitude of repentance before God. He specifically listed the ACLU, abortionists, feminists, gays, and the People For the American Way as sharing in the blame.”

(Dr. Hassaballa went on to say) “This attitude deeply angers me. To say that terrorist attacks are a divine “warning,” or that a hurricane in Florida is God’s “revenge” for the U.S. invasion of Iraq or “punishment” for the sinners of Florida is simply callous.

I want to ask the imams: Is it the “wrath of God” only when non-Muslims are victimized? I don’t get satisfactory answers to questions like this during a typical sermon. And I disagree with them (and clergy of other faith of this ilk) because their approach strips us of compassion for the suffering of other human beings – which is completely contrary to the principles of Islam.”

…and of Christianity, as we know. Dr. Hassaballa went on,

“No doubt, both the Bible and the Qur’an are full of stories documenting how the rebelliousness of a people caused their destruction. We should heed the lessons of those stories, but we should never let ourselves become heartless. Just because God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for their iniquities does not mean we should have no compassion for the victims of a Florida hurricane – or of an Asian tsunami.”

Is it only God’s vindictive justice when people unlike ourselves suffer? A hurricane or earthquake or Pacific Northwest mudslide, which takes the lives of a handful or a hundred thousand people of any faith is equally tragic, because each of those who suffer and die are people made in the image of God.

When Jesus said, “I was hungry and you fed me, I was in prison and you visited me,” the disciples responded asking when he was in such circumstances. Of course, little did they know he would one day be in just such circumstances with no one to feed him, and certainly no one to visit him during his brief imprisonment before his crucifixion. But he declared that when we do these things for the very least, we do them for him. I take note of the fact that he did not specify what faith these “least people” should have before we attend to them in their suffering.

If you want to know my personal thoughts on natural disasters, I have come to believe that the creation of God is still a work in progress, that it is not yet a finished work, and that natural disasters, whatever else they may be, are not expressions of God’s particular will concerning those who suffer the effects. There is still a force in the universe that is resistant to the creation of God’s good world.

Perhaps the judgment that lies in such circumstances, if there is to be judgment, has to do with our relative willingness or unwillingness to respond with compassion and care and generous, even sacrificial gestures of assistance for those who suffer.

Once, during his teaching ministry, people approached Jesus asking about the will of God in tragedies. They asked him about a recent event when a tower under construction fell –probably due to an earthquake – and killed eighteen people. They wondered, had they deserved it somehow? Jesus said,

...those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them – do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you... 5

Jesus did not equivocate. “No!” he said. Natural disaster is not an expression of the will of God. We encounter the words of the Psalmist originally directed toward a people who had been overrun, carried off into exile, held for 70 years, and finally allowed to return to a devastated homeland. They were depressed, dejected, dispirited, downhearted, but then they heard a faint song ministering to them in their distress:

The Lord is the one who “gathers up the outcasts of Israel,” who “heals the brokenhearted, who binds up their wounds.” This God whom the psalmist praises is awesome and powerful, it’s true – but this God is also committed to tenderness and mercy and asks his people to be the same. Those who fear the Lord do not flee from the divine presence; rather, they seek God out, offering up, as in our psalm, their sincere gifts of praise and their acts of mercy to a merciful creator.

I’ll end with a little paragraph that Frederick Buechner, one of my favorite authors, once wrote:

“The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you.”6

Copyrght © 2011 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved

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1 I Kings 19:9-12

2 Psalm 147:2-3

3 Caryle Murphy, "'Millennium Bug' A Matter of Faith," The Washington Post , 11/23/98, B-1.

4 Will the Imams Remain Silent?, available on Beliefnet.com , http://www.beliefnet.com/author/author_144.html.

5 Luke 13:1-5

6 Wishful Thinking, Harper & Row, 1973.

Christmas Proclamation

Christmas Proclamation

© copyright 2010, Robert J. Elder

Christmas Eve: December 24, 2010

Comedian George Carlin said he once entered a bookstore and approached the clerk to ask where the self-help books were located. The clerk responded, “Well, if we told you, it would defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it?”1 The implication being, of course, that in the end, we can only really count on ourselves for help, we are all alone in this business of living.

After all is said and done, Christmas is a sort of divine declaration that self-help won’t/can’t do the whole job, will never get us where we need to be. There is no question that anyone can work on personal issues; personal improvement is always a worthy goal, but the gift of a Savior – which is what this night represents after all – is a powerful declaration about the very nature of God, that God recognizes our innate inability to rescue ourselves from everything that life has done to us, and that we have done to one another. We need help. We need a Savior.

One of the most ancient Advent carols, with words dating clear back to the 4th century, offers these words to people seeking the child who will be the salvation of us all. The first line of this song was sung by the choir from the rear of the church at my home church almost every Sunday of the year during my childhood and youth, as the choral call to worship. I can hear it in my memory to this day, reverberating through that gothic-style stone sanctuary:

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,

And with fear and trembling stand;

Ponder nothing earthly minded,

For with blessing in His hand,

Christ our God to earth descendeth,

Our full homage to demand.

King of kings, yet born of Mary,

As of old on earth He stood,

Lord of lords, in human vesture,

In the body and the blood;

He will give to all the faithful

His own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven

Spreads its vanguard on the way,

As the Light of light descendeth

From the realms of endless day,

That the powers of hell may vanish

As the darkness clears away.2

Let’s think for a moment about this ancient affirmation, how it describes what the Christ child comes to do for us, and the unique way in which he does it. The first stanza declares that Christ comes to us – the carol says he descends, as from the sky perhaps, but you are free to imagine him coming to you across a windswept meadow or from the other side of a crowded parking lot, the effect is the same. He fixes his gaze on us, and he comes to us. Without our having known it fully, we stood in need of a Savior, and one was provided, entirely apart from our ability or inclination to conjure one up. This is the caring love of God, expressed the same way people feed their own children, without regard to questions of their deserving or not deserving food, we come to them and we feed them. It is the way we hasten to warn someone who is about to step off a curb into the path of an oncoming bus. They didn’t know they needed saving, but that made their plight no less desperate, and we call out to them nonetheless.

Which brings to my mind the second stanza of the carol. “King of kings, yet born of Mary...” The sheer incongruity of the image of the highest king our minds can conceive, brought to birth by the merest peasant girl; this combined with “He will give to all the faithful his own self for heavenly food.” He comes in the most inconspicuous way, and in coming, delivers himself entirely into our deepest place of need, making available his very body, the very blood of his veins, everything he has and is. Every time we eat the bread and drink the cup at the Lord’s Supper we remember this one who comes to us, unbidden, rescuing us, devoting on our behalf the very essence of his life to our well-being. It’s an astounding thought if we stop to think about it.

The third stanza takes Christ back to heaven, but not without his having changed what happens on earth for all time. “Light of light,” he causes the brooding powers of all that is evil to recede in his light, and clears out the darkness the way a housekeeper removes the dusty bed sheets covering the beautiful furniture in a long-neglected home before it is restored to its old glory.

Why does the Christ child come to us? “That the powers of hell may vanish.” Anyone who lives in this world knows there is plenty more vanishing that needs to be done before that task of the Christ child is accomplished. Still, the Christmas celebration of his first arrival reminds us that the work of Christ is underway at this very moment in every nation on every continent.

“That the powers of hell may vanish…”

Reflecting on that, I want to share with you a recent reflection on Christmas from a young college student. He wrote the following note after the annual, beautiful Christmas season program on the Willamette University campus in Salem two weeks ago. My wife Christine directs the women’s choir, there is also a men’s chorus and a mixed chorus. In all about 120 singers and 20 or so orchestra players. With that background, I found this to be a remarkable reflection on this young fellow’s experience of college life.

Dear Choir Directors:

Thank you for another glorious Christmas in Hudson (Hall). I think that for many of us it’s the high point of the semester, and I know that these two days and the preceding months of preparation will figure prominently in my fondest and most vivid memories of Willamette. I want to share with you a short story, an experience I had that gave this Christmas in Hudson a very special meaning for me. So begging your indulgence, I’ll give you a little background.

Every weeknight a small group of friends and I gather to pray for our university – sometimes we sing in prayer, walk around campus in prayer or just sit in a room in silent prayer. Well, on Thursday night after the concert, we got to do something a little more unusual. A lady from a local church called us. She opens her doors to several homeless folks, sheltering them and feeding them. One of these had relapsed that day. After 14 months of sobriety under her care and influence, he gave in again, stumbling back to her, soaked, inebriated and ashamed. She was discouraged, obviously, and wanted our presence and our prayers. So she called that night.

Less than an hour after performing in Hudson, drinking in the warmth, the light, the radiant joy, the dignity, beauty, pageantry – after living in the wonderful celebration of worship for the infant king, I found myself surrounded by the darkness, the harsh city sounds, trying to stay warm, trying to stay dry, on the porch of an unfamiliar house with a drunken man at my feet, entreating God that He would make Himself known here, that He would intervene, heal and restore.

The dichotomy of the two worlds distracted me for a while, but as my friends and I prayed together, I began to understand something new, to get glimpses of a certain sameness between them. “The Lord God omnipotent reigneth." I had sung those words in a place of comfort and peace, amid excellence and splendor. But my removal from a building didn’t diminish the truth of the text. Omnipotent, He reigns. Everywhere. Here in the darkness His glory is undimmed – indeed, it’s the only thing shining. “The angels sungen the shepherds to.” To whom? Poor workers on the outskirts of a no-name town. To these, to the lowly ones, and to the discouraged woman and the ashamed reprobate, the angels declare a message of salvation.

More than this, I was struck with the realization that our celebration, as glorious and grand as it was, can’t approach the magnificence, the reckless and exuberant abandon that goes on in the throne room of heaven when this lady acts as Christ to the needy, or when the needy respond and welcome Him into their hearts.

So we prayed. After a time, we helped the man to a bed and took our leave.

In the comfort of my dorm room, I knew that I had encountered God in two profound ways – each one glorious, each one rich, but I don’t know that I would have recognized the beauty in the dark cold and wet had it not been for the wonder of the first. There are so many reasons to put on Christmas in Hudson: it serves the community, gives us a chance to sing great literature, it’s a mainstay of the university. But I need to thank you because it was something else for me this year. Thank you for your dedication to excellence, your sincerity, enthusiasm, vision, and most importantly your willingness to lead us in the adoration of the Christ child. You helped to make my experience transformative and revelatory; I learned something deeper about “our Lord and His Christ.” And every time God is glorified like He was on Thursday and Friday, there is the opportunity for transformative experience. So with all of my heart, thank you for Christmas and Hudson. I really can’t tell you how much it means.

- Dan Daly

The King of glory comes to us this night, in whatever place of need we may find ourselves. The Lord comes, whether in the shape of glorious angels, or a handful of ministering college students. The Lord came, and is coming still. Let all mortal flesh – which is everyone here and anywhere the word is proclaimed – let us all offer our full homage to the King of kings.

Copyright © 2010 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved

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1. Publishers Weekly. October 18, 2004, alt.'

2. From Liturgy of St. James, 4th century.

Making Welcome

Making Welcome

copyright © 2010, Robert J. Elder, Pastor

Second Sunday in Advent: December 5, 2010

Romans 15:1-13

Welcome one another, therefore,

just as Christ has welcomed you,

for the glory of God.

“The abominable greeting.”

I have heard it called that.

Here at First Church, Vancouver, we have been calling it the “passing of the peace.” I have also heard it called the “fellowship moment,” and the “ritual of friendship,” among other things. I hear occasional complaints about it, praise for it, questions concerning it, but mostly, it provides barely even a dent in our worship life, it is but a blip on the liturgical radar screen, a whispered hello, and handshake or two, and then it’s gone.

When any of us tries to think about what is the essence, the main event or outcome of worship – if we think about it at all – probably we would offer a variety of perspectives. I doubt, however, that many of us would offer the opening greeting or the passing of the peace as the highlight of our worship experience. More’s the pity, because if the New Testament writers recommended anything to those earliest Christian churches, it was the blessing of hospitality, of welcome, and, most especially, the welcoming of strangers.

Probably all would agree that a church ought to be welcoming. But what do we mean by that? Exactly whom do we think we are welcoming? People just like us? People slightly different than we are? People drastically different than we are? More importantly, how do we express the thing we call welcome in such a way that those outside the church family would see it, experience it as true about who we are? And how do we go about making this an important aspect of worship?

It might alarm, or even frighten us to know in our flu-bug-sensitive, vaccine-seeking age, that there were churches in those earliest days of gatherings of Christian believers that passed the kiss of peace. Some still follow that practice. Yet for stout Northern European types, among others, the practice, if it survived at all, eventually devolved into the much less intimate business-handshake of peace, or, as I recall from my long-ago sojourn in the South, the “Texas howdy of peace.”

Recently I read that in some church assemblies, word has come from denominational authorities offering permission for folks to skip the kiss and even the handshake of peace in favor of the more sanitary “wave of peace.” The whole point of the kiss of peace, of course, is that a kiss is intimate, germs and all. And by this action, members of the community of faith are meant to remember that Christ would have us be reconciled to one another, even “leaving our offering at the altar,”1 as scripture says, to reconcile with one another before going about our religious rituals. It was meant to be a gesture of intimacy among those who had formed a small, faithful community for Christ in the midst of a world that barely knew who Jesus was, if they knew of him at all. Genuine affection would be hard to miss if we were asked to kiss each other as worship got under way. Even the simpler greetings we do make would cause some to wince in discomfort in churches that do no such thing.

OK, I suspect some of our personal space intrusion-meters might be starting to click like Geiger counters, so let me put fears to rest, or at least at ease. There are no plans afoot to initiate the practice of the free-for-all exchanging of the kiss of peace in the sanctuary. After all, we don’t live in the first century, which is one of the many things about which we don’t need to feel guilty. We aren’t a community of believers on the far margins of a culture at best ignorant of, at worst hostile to our faith and the community in which we celebrate it, as those first Christians were.

Still, I find myself cycling back to the many, many admonitions to the earliest church communities to be communities of welcome, and I do think if we need to recognize our shortcomings about anything, we need to recognize them when we fail the test of Christian welcome, in any form that welcome might take. There is little chance we will be found overly welcoming, our particular shortcomings are more likely to run the other way.

In the New Testament, words for welcome occur 46 times; for greetings 61 times; for hospitality 7 times. The word kiss appears 15 times, though, as we know, not always in a happy context, since Judas was known to have betrayed Jesus with a kiss in the gospels. Still, there is plenty of kissing apart from that unhappy scene, as when the Ephesian church elders said their farewells to the apostle Paul with weeping and kissing.2 This was a description of hospitable kissing, the Ephesian version of the Texas howdy of peace.

In other words, making welcome is, in the New Testament, a high-level Christian duty, right up there alongside jacking the log up out of our own eyes before pointing out specks in others’, and practicing kindness to the poor, the powerless, the weak and the suffering. But this sounds so great to hear, it is often not so easy to do. After all, since, biblically speaking, welcome is not intended only for those already in the community of faith, there is a high likelihood that welcome to those currently outside the community will include a welcome to some outsiders whose presence we might even find discomforting. Yet scripture seems clear, welcome is meant to be expansive, not restrictive. Paul’s words certainly provide a case on that point.

In Paul’s day, Jewish Christian believers worshiped right alongside non-Jewish Christians, often referred to as Gentiles, which, really, meant anyone not born a Jew. Because most faithful Jews grew up with a laundry list of religious practices we associate with the Old Testament – like refraining from eating pork or other meat the Old Testament law declares to be unclean, circumcision as a religious requirement for males belonging to Israel – there was a tendency in the earliest churches for conflicts to develop between those who believed that to be faithful followers such requirements as circumcision were still required, and those who didn’t. It doesn’t make much sense to revisit those ancient quarrels which are no longer our quarrels, except to find in them the opportunity to ask what barriers we may place between ourselves and others in our own time when, as Paul said,

“Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. Christ became a servant of the circumcised [that is, the Jewish believers] on behalf of the truth of God, in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.”

Pretty clearly, Paul says that the welcome of Christ came first, his decision to become a “servant” for the sake of all, Jews and Gentiles, equally. If his welcome can be so global, how can ours be any less? He who died that all might be one is crucified again when we seek to divide, when we fail to welcome one another “just as Christ has welcomed you.” If Christ offers welcome, we must let go of any barriers dividing us and also welcome one another. It is a religious act, not just a way of being neighborly, and it is meant not only to transform us but to transform the world. And the world will be transformed when all who confess Jesus as Lord, believing God raised him from the dead, are found together in the same worshiping community, celebrating his gift of himself at the same table.

A friend of mine was preparing to retire from ministry after 37 years in the same church when he shared his delight in his memories of speaking with the children in that church in the annual season of Advent. Something he reflected on with great joy is an experience many of us have come to cherish in our own church life, and that is the telling of the story of Jesus’ birth to the children. If you’ve ever attempted to “tell” a group of children this particular story – or any other story really – in a way that takes the children seriously, you will know that “telling” is not really the right word. Even many very young children, given a chance to speak, already know so much of the story, it is astonishing. They are generally eager to supply details about names and places as hands shoot up with eagerness to be part of the telling. And then their own stories begin to weave into the big story, the “travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem,” calls up memories of recent family trips, and mention of names like Joseph and Mary elicit the naming of their own fathers and mothers.

Why do children feel this way? Because they instinctively know they have been welcomed in the church, this story is as much theirs as it is ours – maybe more so in a way. They are at home at church, and they feel it, they know it. Children understand this effortlessly and at this season of the year it is they who welcome us to join in the telling, so that the story of Jesus “becomes our story and our story to tell.”3

As we move through Advent with it’s built-in longing for Christmas and the arrival of the Christ who receives us all, it is especially good for us to think again and again on ways in which we receive each other in his name. If reaching toward another person in welcome and fellowship seems a bit of a strain, we need to think of it like the strain required for muscles to become stronger. Though the process may require some discomfort, in the end, it’s a good thing, the healthy thing to do.

In the name of the One who is coming to us, may we always welcome one another, as well as those whom, year by year, Christ is bringing to our faith and fellowship; because in doing so, we welcome Christ himself.

Copyright © 2010 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved

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1 George Chorba, in The Pipe Organ, New Vernon, NJ, December, 2004.

2 Matthew 5:23

3 Acts 20:37