Welcome Home
What feels like a lifetime ago, before we had children and before we became bicycle commuting fanatics, my husband, Parker and I moved to a new town in the Midwest without a car. We were broke seminary students who walked to class and to get groceries. When we decided we wanted to go to the Church of the Brethren in our new town, we set out walking without knowing exactly where we were going or how long it would take us to get there.
Mostly we walked along a main drag through the center of town and were passed by many cars, but one car in particular caught our attention as it slowed way down and both the driver and passenger stared at us out the window before continuing on. About that time we also started getting nervous that we had gone too far and missed the church building, so we turned off onto a side-street, picking up the pace. We were surprised and a little startled when that same car from before pulled up alongside us.
From the driver’s seat, a stranger I would later learn to call Bob Hunter called out, “Are you looking for the Church of the Brethren?” “Um, yes,” we answered. The woman in the passenger seat whose name I would learn was Rae, said that’s where they were going to and asked if we’d like a ride. They said they just had a feeling when they saw us walking down the street, but I have always been impressed that they stopped and took the chance.
That became the first church where we celebrated love feast. It was the first church where I ever preached. It was a church where I made cherished friendships, starting with Bob and Rae, who were willing to pick up two strangers on their way in.
In today’s scripture Jesus and his followers were on a long walk, too. Throughout the gospels they travel through rural areas often arriving in towns or stopping by wells where they are total strangers. Sometimes they find a warm welcome and a hardy meal. Other times they are greeted with suspicion and questions like “can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
Besides time and geography, one of the main differences between our dusty walk down the road and Jesus and his disciples’ walk is that Jesus came from an occupied people living in an occupied land. While my husband and I are part of a privileged social group in a privileged country, Jesus was a member of a country who lived under the threat of further violence from the Empire of Rome.
Howard Thurman, the great mystic, scholar, and pastor of the last century, described Jesus’ situation like that of Thurman’s own to be a member of those he called the “disinherited” or one of “those who stand, at a moment in human history, with their backs against the wall.” While scholars have argued endlessly over the reasons for Jesus warning his disciples in Mark against sharing his identity as the messiah as he does in today’s passage, Jesus’ knowledge of that very real threat of his untimely death at the hands of Rome and the religious leaders who meant to pacify the empire is more than reason enough for me. (1 Howard Thurman. Jesus and the Disinherited)
Indeed, he tells them in today’s passage that he will be betrayed, killed, and in three days rise again. “But,” the passage says, “they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.” Who can blame them? Death is scary. Resurrection? Strange and maybe scarier, yet.
It’s something I believe followers of Jesus can trust in--the promise of resurrection-- that because of Jesus we can trust that God’s love and grace will carry us through every loss and death that comes our way, including finding ourselves to be strangers in a strange land. I believe that’s true for the life that is to come beyond this one. And, I believe that’s true in the here and now while we yet breathe.
Sometimes, like the disciples, we fail to understand this death and resurrection thing. Sometimes, like the disciples, we find ourselves afraid of not only the losses we face but of the unfamiliar new life that comes after. Yet, Jesus welcomes us back to that resurrection promise every time we gather courage enough to face it. I, for one, am grateful for the opportunity to let parts of myself die and grow anew.
A colleague told a story recently that I was ashamed to find myself in. She told a group how at Bethany Theological Seminary where we had both been students, she had once attended a workshop on racial justice with her husband, both of whom emigrated to the U.S. from India. As other seminary students filed in she told her husband, watch this, I bet none of these white students will sit with us. Her husband didn’t believe her but as each student filed in one after another, they proved her to be correct. All of the white students sat with each other on the other side of the room. I don’t recall the incident with great clarity but I am fairly certain I must have been in that room, too, sitting on the other side.
When my colleague found the opportunity during the workshop to point out this dynamic, all the white students denied that race had anything to do with their seating arrangement. We told her she was wrong and that she shouldn’t believe what she was seeing with her own eyes. That, she said, was what hurt the worst. Even those of us who like to think of ourselves as good, moral people can find we are shamefully, painfully still far away from the people we want to be.
I am still learning how to apologize, make amends as best I can, and thank the person who set me straight, when I find out that I have messed up, hurt or disappointed someone. I think the disciples were still learning those things, too. Maybe that’s why the disciples were ashamed when Jesus asked them what they were arguing about on the road on the way to Capernaum. Maybe they knew he’d be disappointed that they were arguing about who was the greatest among them. Maybe they knew he’d be disappointed to hear they were still caught up in earning honor in order to make themselves feel more worthy or more loveable. But he set them straight right away, telling them “whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”
Mark scholar Mary Tolbert does not believe passages like these legitimize hurting ourselves or others for the sake of gaining holy status. Rather, she argues any sacrifices followers of Jesus make must have limits and be chosen for the sake of the reign of God and the hope of our future liberation. Sometimes we Christians confuse Jesus’ sacrifice with something done so that he would be loved, when in truth it was something he did because he was already loved. (Mary Tolbert. New Interpreter’s Study Bible notes, 1825.)
When followers of Jesus seek to serve others, I heard a wise woman say this week, we too would do well to remember that we do not seek to serve so that we may be loved. That would be too much like those disciples who argued over their greatness. Rather, we serve others and give generously of the gifts we have been given because we know that we already are loved and so is everyone else.
To make it clear to the disciples exactly what he meant, Jesus “took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not only me but the one who sent me.”
Children do not typically keep house by themselves. They usually cannot reciprocate invitations to dinner without some help from an adult. And in Jesus' time, children were entirely without honor. To welcome a child into your home wouldn’t gain you any points with the neighbors. But to welcome a rich or famous adult into your home, well, that would win you a whole lot of clout and perhaps tangibly increase your power in a community.
That’s not the kind of calculus Jesus wants to his followers to make when we’re deciding who to welcome into our midst. Rather than search a room for who we already know or who might turn out to be a beneficial connection, Jesus would encourage us to look for the ones who are wondering if they belong--who need the welcome the most.
I have probably attended about ten Annual Conferences, those would be the yearly nation-wide gatherings of this denomination, the Church of the Brethren. There are many interactions I look forward to at those gatherings, but one of the social interactions I look forward to the least there is the inevitable question of who my parents are. I don’t mind that question so much. I understand they’re trying to figure out if we are distant cousins. But what hurts is the quick dissolution of interest in me that follows after they find out we’re not blood kin.
When I realized how ridiculous it was to still feel like an outsider after so many years and so much involvement in this denomination, I realized I couldn’t be the only one who felt that way. So, before the pandemic, I made it my job at the last few conferences anyway to find new people and make them feel welcome. I have not been disappointed yet by those connections I have made.
Have you ever been the person in need of a welcome? Are there people in your life in need of welcome now?
When I read about the fall of Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the US military, I felt so much grief for everyone involved. The reality of what has been happening in Afghanistan for decades, the grief of the Afghanistan people, as well as the grief of those who served in the US military there who had hoped for a much different outcome all related to me an overwhelming pain and anguish.
One hopeful piece of the story that caught my focus though was the number of Afghanistan refugee families set to find a new home in the Chicago area. About 100 have already settled or plan to be settled in the suburbs with the help of World Relief Chicago -- a local nonprofit now seeking volunteers, funds, and other donations.
I wondered, when they find themselves strangers in this strange land, will someone pick them up and take them where they need to go? Will strangers smile at them, be willing to make new friends, and to learn from each other? Maybe, I thought, one of those welcoming strangers could be me.
I don’t know what it’s like to flee a home in fear of violence, but I do know what it’s like to seek a welcome in a new place. I know what it’s like to be miraculously welcomed, and I know what it's like to be painfully dismissed. I know I have failed to extend my welcome before but I am doing my best to practice again and again.
Jesus calls his followers to an expansive welcome. He calls his followers to a home in the expansive love of God that knows no borders of age, honor, status, wealth, language, geography, or war. He teaches, all who welcomes someone who needs it, “welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not only me but the one who sent me.” I believe that means whenever we are the child, the stranger, or the one in need of welcome, we travel in holy company--with the one in whose love we find our true home and from which we can never be far away.
I believe that means whenever we have the opportunity to do the welcoming, if we do it not so that we will be loved but from the sure knowledge that we are loved, we will indeed find it a joyful opportunity. I believe that whenever we need a sense of that presence all we need do is call out to the one who is always welcoming us home. Whenever sorrows or sea billows roll, the loving presence of the holy one allows us to say, we are welcomed, welcomed home.
And yes, it is well. It is well with my soul. May it be so. Amen.
