Sermon For FEBRUARY 20, 2000
Seventh Sunday after Epiphany
JEWISH TESTAMENT: An Open Future, a Forgotten Past ~Isaiah 43:1-3a. 18-25
CHRISTIAN GOSPEL: Forgiveness and Healing ~ Mark 2:1-12
SERMON TITLE: What Kind of Place is This?
The story is one that you may have studied when you were in Sunday school. The image of people breaking open the roof of a house in order to bring a paralyzed man down and set him in front of Jesus, is an image that appeals to children’s minds. It is something unexpected, something that we can really get interested in. There are some aspects of this story that we are not aware of as children. One of those aspects is that for the Jewish people in the time that Jesus was living, illness was something that was to be kept as far away from as possible. If you were going to participate in a worship service, you could not have contact with someone who was suffering from an illness because that would make you unclean, and would exclude you from worship. It was the view in those days that if someone was suffering from an illness, they must have done something to bring it on themselves. They must have sinned against God in some way, otherwise they wouldn’t be sick. If they were living righteously, they would have received God’s blessing and be healthy. We know that kind of idea still exists sometimes in our society today. How many times have you read that AIDS is the punishment of God sent down for the sins of homosexuality? Or depression being the fault of someone who hadn’t coped with life? If someone is an alcoholic, smokes a lot of cigarettes, is addicted to drugs, we believe that those people brought on themselves. Whatever illnesses they experience because of that are their own fault. Intellectually we know that the issue is much more complex. While a person’s bad habits might be a contributing factor, addiction is not something someone chooses. Yet our gut feeling is often one of blame.
These friends in Jesus’ time didn’t have an enlightened view of disease. So to take a man and carry him to Jesus was taking a risk that they would be excluded from the spiritual community. Much of the story revolves around Jesus decision to forgive the sins of the man and even to command him to be healed, to get up and walk. The debate that goes on is the debate between Jesus and the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the time who challenged Jesus, “By what authority do you speak?” A whole sermon could be preached on their interchange about the important of forgiveness, and the need for us to stand before God as a whole person, not just spiritually in connection with God, but also physically, emotionally, and mentally in connection with God.
The focus we are going to look at this morning is the one that I mentioned during the announcement time, that is the issue of compassion, an issue of access. When these friends wanted to bring the paralyzed man before Jesus, they had a problem of access. Jesus was in the house, there were crowds all around and there was no way that they could get through the door for an individual person, much less four people carrying a stretcher with a paralyzed man. In order to overcome the barrier, they came upon an ingenious solution. They broke open the thatched roof and used ropes to lower this man down to Jesus.
If we are going to show caring, loving compassion for somebody in our society, there may be all kinds of obstacles to us doing that. If someone wants to show love and support for us then there may be other obstacles, cultural, physical, and financial. What I want to talk about this morning is the ways in which the church sets up obstacles that keep people from receiving God’s love. Or helps to remove obstacles so that people might receive God’s love. The picture on the front cover points to that theme. Church, no church? What kind of place is this? Now the issue of what kind of place this is, is one that is taken up by all kinds of congregations. It is often taken up in the name of evangelism, or “church growth” or “let’s get some more people in here to help us do the work and pay the budget.” There are a lot of churches that struggle with the issue of needing to gain more members. But often it is for the wrong reason. They want people to come and help support the church. Instead, the purer reason is for us to figure out ways in which we can draw people to the church so that we might help share God’s love with them. We want to tell them about the wholeness of life that we have found as followers of Jesus, worshiping together as Christians in a faith community. If that is our goal, then we have to try and be aware of all of the things that keep that from happening. It is not enough for us to say that, “The church is fine, I go there and I feel supported, I’m able to lift up my prayers and feel spiritually connected with God.” Instead we have to be aware of what other people feel when they come.
There is a story in the resource materials this morning about a woman who was an enthusiastic member of the congregation. She greets a new visitor saying,
“You know, I didn’t always feel this way. When I first came to this church I had been feeling very depressed in my life. I had been going through difficult times and some friends kept urging me to come over to visit this particular church. But I didn’t feel like doing it. So one Sunday I finally made my way over and I slipped into a pew in the back. As I looked at the bulletin I read the directions for the congregation that said, “Please stand if able.” All of a sudden I felt like I belonged here, because I knew that even though I had dragged myself to church there was no way that I was going to be able to stand. But those four words said it was all right for me to sit if I needed to.”
It was a reminder to me that we need to always include those words. From time to time we have had these words in our bulletin, but then we get to a change of season, or we get a little tight on space and they get dropped out, and they don’t always get put back in. But you can look in your bulletin today, after the first hymn you have the asterisks and it says, “Please stand if able.” There are things that we can do with the worship bulletin to encourage people who are visiting our church for the first time. During announcement time I asked those of you who are visiting today to share your comments, if you are willing, on those survey sheets, to talk about how successful we have been in making sure that people feel welcomed to our congregation. When we meet with our ecumenical parish and have clergy and staff from all of the other churches around Kirkland, I have expressed my thoughts about worship services that require you to use a hymn book or service book. Having to page from one place to another to get the prayers of the day or the opening scripture readings or the other items. I have said that if I were a visitor at one of these churches I would have no patience with all of that turning pages from one place to another. I think that all of those churches should print the things that they need to use into a worship bulletin on Sunday morning even if they have it in a worship book. Mike Anderson at Holy Spirit says, “ And how do you really feel about this?” (Chuckles) But we try to print everything in our worship bulletin that is going to be necessary for the worship service, except for the hymns that we use, so that people who are visiting don’t look around saying, “What am I supposed to do now? What’s going on? Where are we? What page are we on? What’s the prayer?” Not everybody who comes knows the Lord’s Prayer. That should probably also be printed in our bulletin. We now print the words to the Doxology and when we celebrate the Gloria we print the words, so that if people are not familiar with those parts of the worship service they are able to follow along with us. We try to make the worship service very clear so that that doesn’t become a barrier for someone to celebrate with us.
There are some ways in which we are very good at welcoming the community. We have made a strong effort, especially during the past ten years, to make sure that this building is available for all sorts of groups. As I mentioned, we have a variety of other Christian groups that meet in the building, but we also have a Hindu congregation that has had worship services here from time to time. We have a group called SUBUD, which is interfaith, meaning Christian, Unitarian, Jewish, Buddhist, a wide variety of folks. SUBUD folks come together to do movement meditation on Monday and Friday evenings. They are welcomed into our building. We have a variety of 12-step groups including people who are dealing with addictions to alcohol and drugs. We have Sex Anonymous groups that meet here. We have had Emotions Anonymous groups that have met in the past. We have a wide variety of fellowship groups: Cub Scouts, Daughters of Norway, Amigos organization, Toastmasters, which use our building. All of these groups have been welcomed into the space so that they might be able to do the work of their organization and also so that they might grow in their relationship to God. So it is an important thing that we have done in making our building available.
There are questions about the ways in which we make children welcome in our worship. We print special children’s bulletins each week. We have a children’s message for the younger folks. On the wall in the back we have Rainbow Bags that were designed intentionally to provide not just busy work for children as they are in worship, but to provide things that were also educational to help expand their horizons. The bags include things that give them an opportunity to be creative and to do some role playing. There are some bags that have minister and communion table and offering plates and choir members so that kids can set up a congregation with their bag. There is also a family bag that is grandparents and dogs and cats and parents of one sort or another so that kids can also set up family groupings. Out in the Narthex area there is a coat rack that hangs down at children’s level, so that if they want to hang their coats they have a place to hang them. There is also a three-panel display in the Narthax that has pictures of Sunday school. During the year there will be additional pictures of children involved in their activities. So those are steps that we have taken to welcome children in church. Inviting them to participate in serving communion and receiving the offering are also ways that they have been included. There are times that we have not been welcoming to children. Sometimes we have expectations that children are supposed to be seen and not heard. We have made critical remarks about children who have been involved in worship and who haven’t been behaving exactly the same way that we would expect them to behave. When we do that, we are making it difficult for families who have children to feel comfortable bringing their children to worship. We are telling them, “Your children can only come to worship if they are going to sit and be quiet, otherwise we don’t want them here.” That is a message that becomes a barrier to families participating in the life of our congregation.
We can go down a whole list of things. How welcoming are we to a family that has gone through a divorce? What if both spouses want to come and still participate in worship? Would we be able to be welcoming to them and supportive of them without taking sides and making their fight now a fight of the congregation? How welcoming would we be for people who come here who are of other races or other economic groups? Sometimes we have people come to the church for emergency food help. Whenever we do that, if we feel that it is appropriate we extend an invitation to those families to come here to worship. To this point, as far as I know, no families have come here. But what keeps a family who has no church connections, who needs help, who is looking for support of a community, what keeps them from coming to our church, or to any other church? Do they expect that they will not be welcome? That they somehow won’t fit in? That they won’t be able to worship God along with the rest of the congregation? How welcoming are we to people of different persuasions? How welcoming would we be to a gay or lesbian couple? A number of years ago Richard Crowe and his partner were members of the congregation. They sang in the choir, they participated in the activities of the church. But there were people who left the church at that time. There were people who would turn their backs on old friendships because of Richard’s presence in the congregation. If a couple were to come in today, seven years later, how would we respond? Would we be welcoming? Or would we turn our backs? How welcoming are we to single young people in the congregation? Do we expect that people are going to be married? Do we expect that people are going to be the same age as those of us who are gathered here? Do we welcome diversity? Do we find a way to include people? If we have dinner groups are those groups only for couples or are singles included? Are there ways in which we make sure that people of all ages, couples and singles feel welcome in this congregation?
We have taken many steps in the past to make sure that people with disabilities, or with difficulties of one kind or another, are welcome in the congregation. We cut out pews so that there are places for people in wheelchairs, to feel part of the congregation. We now have access down to the Fellowship Hall. We have the hearing support for people who have difficulty listening to these speakers. There are more things that we can do. We still have no way for people who are not able to maneuver stairs to participate in the choir when the choir sings up in the loft. That is part of the reason the choir makes an effort to also sing down here frequently.
What other things could we do to help people feel comfortable in our congregation? What about people who don’t read? Our service requires a lot of reading. Are there changes that we should make along the way for people who are not able to read? I already mentioned some of the changes that we have made in our worship bulletin for people who are not familiar with Christian worship and liturgy. These are all questions for us and this is not primarily wagging a finger at the congregation, nor am I saying, “Let’s celebrate how wonderful we all are.” But I am challenging us to take a good look at who we are as a congregation, how we welcome people into our midst. Let’s continue to do the things that we do well. And let’s change the things that are a barrier for people. And we do this, not to get more people in the pews to do the work and to pay the bills, but so that we might show people the ways in which our faith has made our lives full and abundant. May God’s Spirit guide us.