Beyond Welcoming to Belonging

Luke 19:1-10

November 4, 2007 Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Kingston Road United Church by the Rev. Richard C. Choe
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Ireland Park, Toronto, Canada Richard C. Choe©

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Beyond welcoming to belonging.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote in one of his books that strange travel suggestions are dance lessons from God. I recently had such a dance lesson.

I was attending a function at a private golf club. I was given a name and was comforted by the fact that most people seemed to know the place. I looked up the Google Maps and got the directions. It looked simple enough. Well, what you see in a two dimensional map and what you see through your windshield while driving is a different story.

I could not see a sign or a marker indicating the golf club as I was driving back and forth along the street where the entrance was supposed to be according to the map. So when I saw the green through an opening I assumed that it must be the entrance. The entrance was not exactly what I expected. It didn’t look like any of the golf club entrances I had ever visited but I thought to myself, “Well, this must be a very private one.”

As I drove along I could not understand why the road was so narrow. After driving about a minute or so, it dawned on me that I must have entered the golf course through the wrong side. I was driving on the golf cart path! It was like a scene from a James Bond movie – or Mr. Bean, depending on the way you looked at the situation. I kept driving and ended up at where people tee off.

I told a friend that I had to drive on the golf cart path and that my car may have been damaged because of it. He, an avid golfer, told me that it was a good thing I didn’t drive on the green. It costs over a million dollars to put the green on the golf course and I should consider myself lucky that I was not sued for any damage I may have caused. So the name of the golf club shall remain nameless.

The lesson I received at the private golf club was that,

· If you belong here, you know your way in so there is no need for clear signage.
· If you cannot find this place, it is because you do not belong here.

On the way back home (through the real entrance), there were nagging questions in my mind. What if church is like that private golf club? What if church is like a private club where people who are new to us get the kind of message I got at the private golf club – if you do not know the way around here, you do not belong? The size of our building may not be as large as the golf course but the message would have the same impact.

The private golf club, I think is an apt metaphor, for many churches. Whenever I visit a church I find that there is no clear signage to indicate which door to use or where things are. Newcomers and visitors often find that even the worship itself is an alienating experience where it is assumed that you ought to know what is about to happen. When do you stand? When do you sit? When do you recite prayers that are not printed in the bulletin? What exactly is the Lord’s Prayer everyone seems to have memorized? How do you not feel foolish when everyone seems to know what they are doing? For those who are relatively new to church, being welcomed means more than hearing hello from people.

When you are new to a place, when you are a visitor, you soon realize that what people consider as common knowledge is not so common for you. You also realize that those in the know often assume that everyone knows what they know. There are lots of assumptions people in the know take as normal or elementary.

If welcoming strangers is so difficult, how, then, are we to help them be part of us? I think there is a clue in welcoming strangers and helping them to belong to the community in the Luke passage read today.

Jesus is visiting Jericho – the famous place described in the book of Joshua in the Hebrew Scripture where the walls of the city tumbled down by the long blast of Ram’s horn before the ark by Joshua’s army. The city of Jericho is a town in the West Bank near the Jordan River. It is believed to be the second oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world.

Jesus encounters a wealthy man named Zacchaeus, who has accumulated his wealth by dishonest means. Being a chief tax collector in Palestine during the time of Jesus meant that he would be skimming off profits from collecting tax. Jesus must have heard of him. Jesus initiates conversation, “Zacchaeus, let me stay at your house today.” Zacchaeus reciprocates Jesus’ invitation by not only hosting him in his place but he also volunteers to give and return much of his ill gotten possession to the poor and those he had defrauded.

Zacchaeus’ experience of being welcomed and being invited to open his door to Jesus becomes a turning point in his life. A chief tax collector promises to return most of his wealth – giving half of his assets to the poor and promising to return four times to anyone he has defrauded. But there are murmurs of disapproval from the religious. “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.”

An encounter between two individuals – a wealthy man who was despised by the public for his ill gotten wealth meets a homeless preacher who is being watched by religious authority for getting too close to so-called sinners – provides an example of how transformation takes place in human life. Even a chief tax collector – the epitome of corruption – can be turned around from ways of evil when he experiences genuine welcoming and an invitation to be part of God’s community.

The story also tell us that,

· There will always be individuals who will have difficulty accepting those who are changing their lives around.
· That welcoming and belonging takes reciprocity and mutuality.
· And that there are no barriers in God’s love; that everyone is welcomed and invited to belong in God’s community. After all, even a dishonest tax collector can change.

When individuals experience genuine welcoming, they experience a life changing encounter. We have all experienced such welcoming in our lives. We know what it is like to be greeted when we move into a new neighbourhood. We know what it is like to be welcomed when we have felt alone in our surroundings. We know what it is like to be accompanied when we are “walking alone.”

Moving from welcoming strangers to ensuring that they be an integral part of our community takes courage from everyone involved.

There are few things that KRU Council and I have been trying to work with since I came here. One of the messages I heard from the Search Committee was that KRU community would like to continue to expand welcoming in a rapidly changing neighbourhood.

“Sharing the Peace of Christ” during Sunday worship is one attempt of implementing welcoming in and through worship on Sunday. I am well aware that it is not easy for introverted folks to take part in such an extroverted activity. I am also aware that getting up in the middle of the worship service could be experienced as a disruption of a worship mood when you want the worship to be a time of quiet reflection.

But what if welcoming is the integral part of worship? Making peace with our neighbours before we make peace with God is part of worship. Worship – being in communion with God – cannot happen without attempting to make peace with those who are here. Experiencing welcoming and being welcomed by one another is part of Sunday worship service. Taking time to greet people is part of greeting God in our midst.

Welcoming encounters involve change. Sometimes the change is tremendous like the way Zacchaeus was changed by his encounter with Jesus – from an unscrupulous tax collector into a generous man giving away much of his fortune. Other times, it can be as mundane as receiving a genuine greeting in worship on Sunday when you’re not feeling very friendly – and turning to greet someone else with more warmth than you felt a minute ago.

There are many examples of how we practice welcoming at KRU.

· There are Sunday School teachers upstairs who are sharing their time with young children and their passion for Christ’ ministry.
· We have former CGIT leaders who have resisted sexism and misogyny and in turn guided young girls to be women who live to their fullest potential.
· We have lay leaders like Helen Hick who just celebrated her 90th birthday, along with those in the 90 plus club – Elizabeth Carnaghan, Myrtle Lamb, Hazel Ferguson, and Bessie Stallworthy – who have exemplified living a life that is full of zest, humour, and generosity.
· We have members of the choir who minister to us through music.
· There are those who participate in Friday lunches, who phone or visit shut-ins. The list could go on.

Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, a Roman Catholic priest who is regarded as a Poet Laureate of Toronto recently published a book, Municipal Mind: Manifestos for the Creative City. In it, he considers what enfeebles the passionate imagination of a city. If I were to replace the word city with church, this is what we would hear.

“The quality of life is initially and inevitably predicated by love. … What is at stake is always quality of life, which people know cannot be bettered, unless love is factored in. People who are not in love are irresponsible. A church that is not in love (to care for) itself is irresponsible. … A congregation is incited to action by eros of mutual care, by having a common object of love – their neighbourhood.”[i]

“What enfeebles the faith community?

The notion that money predicates vision.
The mean-spiritedness that criticizes before it allows.
The convention of “safeness” from either the left or the right.
Anything that discourages human encounter in the interest of expedience and time-saving.”[ii]
Our faith community is called to serve this neighbourhood. Serving this neighbourhood requires us to move beyond welcoming in order for our neighbours to belong with us as part of KRU community. Serving this neighbourhood also requires us to be integral part of our neighbourhood.

May we continue to welcome strangers and be welcomed by them. May we continue to broaden our sense of being a faith community with those who journey with us. May we be changed as we learn to belong together in God’s community. And may we show signs of welcome wherever people are so that all will know they belong here.

Amen.

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[i] Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, Municipal Mind: Manifestos for the Creative City (Toronto: Mansfield Press Inc., 2007), 23.
[ii] Municipal Mind, 19-20.