Epiphany 6
9 February 2025
Vineville Baptist Church
Macon, Georgia
- Gregory Pope
WALLS DOWN, ARMS OUT:
THE COVENANT PRACTICE
OF RADICAL WELCOME
Series: Five Covenant Practices of Vibrant Congregations
Genesis 1.26-27. Leviticus 19.33-34. Deuteronomy 10.19.
Romans 15.7. Hebrews 13.2. Matthew 25.35, 40
Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1.26-27)
When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the stranger. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native-born among you; you shall love the stranger as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. (Leviticus 19.33-34)
Jesus said, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me . . . Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:35, 40)
Welcome one another just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God . . . For you were strangers in the land of Egypt and God led you home. (Romans 15:7; Deuteronomy 10:19).
Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. (Hebrews 13:2).
Alanis Morissette, Joan Osborne, and Prince – the one and only – all three recorded separately a song I think should be considered a great hymn of the church. It asks the question, “What if God was one of us, just a stranger on the bus, trying to make his way home?”1
If we hear that question with gospel ears we realize Jesus said that God IS one of us, that God comes to us in the poor, the prisoner, the sick, and the stranger, and that we are all of us strangers on the bus of this world just trying to make our way home.
Radical Christian Welcome is the third of five covenant practices we are exploring these days in our aim to be a faithful and vibrant congregation. The word “radical” may scare some of you. It has come to mean “extreme,” “far out.” But it actually means “deep down,” literally “to the root.” So instead of setting rules about who we should welcome, perhaps we would be better served if we got to the biblical root of why we are called to welcome. The reasons are simple and beautiful.
Our scripture readings this morning tell us we are called to extend welcome to every person because every person is made in the image of God, and because every person is lonely and broken, in need of friendship and love, and because in every person we meet Christ.
The biblical word for welcome is: “hospitality.” In Vineville American-ese we translate it: “coffee and confections.” In Scripture it means “love of the stranger.”
We wisely teach our children to be leery of strangers in order to protect them. But as we grow older we need to be taught that extending hospitality to the stranger lies at the very heart of biblical faith. By my count, the Bible explicitly calls us to welcome the stranger in at least 14 different places. However, God’s people have often created fluffy layers of rationale and dangerous layers of untruth as to why we should not love the stranger – most of those layers formed out of fear. While the Bible speaks of a “love that casts out fear,” many of us live with a “fear that chokes out love.” It is a fear of “the other,” a suspicion of strangers, outsiders, those we deem to be different.
This fear of the other expresses itself in varying degrees of prejudice. Prejudice we often don’t even know we have until we truly hear the biblical call to Radical Welcome.
The practice of Radical Welcome is an act of spiritual formation where we learn to love the stranger and the guest as we love Christ, because Christ is found in the stranger and the guest.
Radical Welcome can be so inconvenient: it will refuse to let you think only of yourself.
And there will likely be a cost. It may be the simple cost of giving up your seat in worship or waking early to pick up someone who cannot drive or maybe just listening to the story of another. It could also be the greater cost of taking an unpopular political stand or beginning a whole new ministry or opening your wallet to meet human need. Like the Good Samaritan who took the needy stranger to a place where he could get help and then paid the tab.
As the Body of Christ, we are here not to be served but to put the needs of the guest and stranger before our own, to invite the guest and stranger to a place of connection, acceptance, and home. We live in a world of profound homelessness. Those literally without a place to live. And those whose homelessness resides within, those who wander around in the world as if it were a wasteland, void of meaning and connection. A church of Radical Welcome offers to all who wander an invitation home in the name of Christ. Because that’s what God has given to us.
Since the days of Moses God’s people have been told to welcome the stranger because (we) were strangers in the land of Egypt and God led (us) home. We are all of us strangers in this world, given a home by God’s love. And so as God’s people we are called to offer the world a home in the name of God’s love.
Albert Hamrick was a man in a former church of mine who for 18 years gave out suckers to every child he saw on Sunday mornings. But don’t be fooled into thinking it was just a piece of candy he was giving. He was handing out gospel kindness that many children will forever associate with Jesus and the church!
Beginning in small ways like that, a culture of Radical Welcome must enter the life-blood of every vibrant biblical congregation. In planning every ministry event, we must consider how to best welcome the guest and make room for the stranger.
It’s been said that “there is a big loneliness at the center of every person”2 – a loneliness meant to lead us to God and to one another. For deep down: We all yearn for a hand that will reach out for ours. We all need to know and be known by others. We all need to know that we are not alone. We all want to know that when we face life’s difficulties we will be surrounded by a community of grace, people who will care for us. A congregation of Radical Welcome seeks to be such a place.
Patty Griffin sings: I’m gonna find me a man, love him so well, love him so strong, love him so slow. We’re gonna go way beyond the walls of the fortress. And we won’t be afraid, we won’t be afraid. Though the darkness may come our way, we won’t be afraid to be alive anymore. We’ll grow kindness in our hearts for all the strangers among us, till there are no strangers anymore.3
Yet another appropriate hymn of the church’s vocation. Our love for one another seeping through the walls of our sacred fortress, our beloved sanctuary, our close-knit Sunday School Class, into the lives of strangers and guests. Without prejudice or fear, our love for the stranger is an invitation for all to become friends of God and friends of God’s friends, “till there are no strangers anymore.”
The Rule of Saint Benedict written in the fourth century still guides most monasteries around the world. Benedictine monasteries do not require a visitor to understand their belief systems or conform to their cultural norms in order to be welcomed. Instead all persons are received as they are and invited into a place where acceptance and compassion generate the desire for God. Radical Welcome says to every guest and stranger: “We welcome you to this place to share life with us.”4
The Bible says, Welcome one another, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.
The writer of Hebrews adds, Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have entertained angels unawares.
The Rule of Benedict says that all guests who present themselves at the door are to be welcomed as you would welcome Christ, the Christ who said: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me . . . for just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
If we really believed Jesus, it would radically change our behavior toward strangers. And if people really want to know what we think of Jesus, they don’t need to listen to our songs, our prayers, our sermons, or our language, they only need to watch how we treat strangers and guests. The gospel calls us to treat every person we meet as if they are Christ. “The (church’s) message to the stranger is: ‘Come right in and disturb our lives. You are the Christ for us today.’”5
There is a word for this I learned several years ago from a writer friend of mine, Robert Benson. It is the word “Namaste.” To greet one another with “Namaste” is to say, “The living God who lives in me bows in reverence before the living God who lives in you.” It is an acknowledgment that every man, woman, and child who comes our way bears to us the presence of God because every person has been created in the image of God – no exceptions!
Benson remembers his father saying that when we get to heaven and see Jesus, our first thought is not going to be that we’ve never seen him before. Instead, we will grin and exclaim, “It’s you! It’s you! I’ve seen you everywhere.”6 Jesus told us he can be seen in every stranger, in every hungry face, in the chains of every prisoner, at the bed of every sick soul. And that awareness changes the nature of every human contact.
Have you noticed in the gospels how at every turn the disciples and Pharisees seem ready to draw boundaries and distinctions that would keep people at a distance? And in every instance, Jesus challenges those prejudices by overstepping the boundaries to invite people in.
The practice of Radical Welcome calls us to look for God lurking in every single person we see and allows us to see people as Jesus sees them and to see Jesus in the people God brings before us. Radical Welcome refuses to toss aside, ostracize, demonize, or dehumanize any one or any group. You can’t ignore people when you realize that God is looking out their eyes at you.7 “And if we do ignore them,” Jesus said, “you ignore me.”
We are called to receive every person as if we are receiving Christ himself. And unless we allow God’s Spirit to open our lives to strangers and practice Radical Welcome among us, our world will only grow more frightening and hostile, more isolated and lonely and cruel. So may we strive to shape a life and a church with walls down, arms out – a community of grace that says to others: “Welcome!” And may we join in the ancient benediction of sending forth that says: “We go in peace to love and serve the Lord and to live our lives so that those to whom love is a stranger will find in us generous friends.” Amen.
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- “What If God Was One of Us?” written by Eric Bazilian, 1995, performed on separate occasions by Joan Osborne, Alanis Morissette, and Prince
- Daniel Homan and Lonni Pratt, Radical Hospitality, Paraclete Press, 2002, 10
- Patty Griffin, “No Bad News,” on Children Running Through CD. 2007
- Elizabeth Canham, Heart Whispers: Benedictine Wisdom For Today, Upper Room, 1999, 49
- Joan Chittister, The Rule of Benedict: Insights For the Ages, Crossroad, 1992, 141
- Robert Benson, A Good Life: Benedict’s Guide to Everyday Joy, Paraclete, 2004, 53-55
- Homan and Pratt, 10