Clique bait

There is a photo going around on the internet that is generating clicks for the United Church.  It’s a recreation of Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous painting “The Last Supper”. This new picture is designed to stir some controversy, and that’s what it’s done.  First of all, instead of a bunch of male disciples with pale skin, unlike people from the Middle East, and Jesus looking sadly pensive, the photo is of people who are anything but ethnically uniform.  There is a minister who lives with disabilities, there are several immigrants, a francophone, a retired clergy, a drag king wearing white face paint, and way more ladies than the original.  Everyone is part of the United Church of Canada.  And there are only 12 people in it.  Who’s missing?  Jesus!  As the Rev. Doctor Catherine Faith Maclean explained, “Jesus is not there in an individual person.  That’s essential. Because we believe that post resurrection… Jesus is everywhere.”

The picture sends a message to the world that everyone has a place at the table.  That we are a vibrant, inclusive and inspiring denomination. At first, this isn’t surprising.  I doubt there’s any church anywhere that posts a list of who’s not welcome.  But again and again, we hear of people who said they thought they were welcome until.  Until they realized that they were the only person who had a disability or the only one with noisy toddlers or no suit to wear, or nothing to put in the offering plate.

Jesus wanted better than that. He wanted us to practice generous hospitality like Abraham and Sarah, welcoming and feeding strangers without expecting anything in return.  We are to show hospitality to all, for as the scripture says, “by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” (Hebrews 13:1–8, 15–16).

Of course, that’s easier said than done.  It is so easy to form a clique, a group of insiders who roll their eyes at newcomers.  It’s easy to get possessive of a pew and glare daggers at a stranger who takes our spot.  As far as I can tell, no visitor has telepathy to read minds and figure out what is okay.  It’s like the church is littered with traps to navigate.  Don’t know which hymn book is which? Snap! Don’t know what to wear? Trap! Don’t know when to stand or sit?  Gotcha! No wonder so many people are nervous about coming to church.  There are a lot of obstacles in their way, the unspoken rules, the unconscious regulations.  True, we do want to have some obstacles.  There are some very angry hurting people out there, and the latest tragedies like the Minneapolis church shooting or the Gaza church bombing do remind us that we need to be discerning.  But most people we’d like to have come to our congregations are not like that.  And they don’t know that they are welcome.

Someone might say, “Shouldn’t they know?” How?  Who has told them?  Unless we make it easy to ask, they may never know.  That takes gentleness, humbleness and openness on our part.  And enthusiasm, too.  Are we like the fans of K-Pop Demon Hunters or the latest Hollywood blockbuster meeting, talking about our church with a fan’s kind of joy and authenticity? Are we inviting people to come to church like we invite people to a new restaurant we’ve discovered or a new book we like?

Jesus challenged the wealthy to give invitations not to their friends or the people they wanted to impress, but to invite those most unable to give back.  Dinner parties shouldn’t be about keeping score of who was in and who was out, who was socially and financially skilled and who was not able to make a brisket to feed a fancy dinner for 12.  Invite the ones who can’t cook, who don’t have dining rooms, who can’t afford a fancy steak or a caterer.  I’m sure a lot of us squirm at the idea of having a dinner where we invite street people, but that’s in the bible.

Someone once asked, “how do we get rich people interested in coming to our church so that they will donate money and keep us financially stable?”  I wonder what Jesus would say to that!  Who would he tell us to invite?  And how would he want us to invite?  The Right Reverend Jordan Cantwell, former moderator of the United Church of Canada and also our Northern Spirit Regional Growth Director, led a workshop last May.  She said, “Bums in pews is honest but not healthy. It's not good news for our neighbors; it's based on our scarcity not God's abundance. It's exploiting the newcomers' naivety.”

Cantwell suggests four steps:

1. Gentle openness -wait for curiosity, no agenda

2. When asked why, talk about the transformation in your life with integrity and honesty

3. Pray for openness, courage, and for our neighbors that you might learn what they need.

4. Be open to the divine in others, with them not at them, it transforms our faith as we share with them.

How do you hope God will transform the lives of those you invite and help transform our own spiritual lives?  When we ask these questions in honesty and humbleness, we will be inviting all to the table where they will be fed with God’s abundance and grace.  As much as it’s great having a photo that shows our diversity, posters don’t bring in people, Facebook messages or cute sayings don’t bring in people, events don’t bring in people.  People bring in people.  Humble people who have been transformed by God’s love, and who know the power of hospitality to make a real difference when we break cliques and practice radical, humble hospitality.  God, fill us with humble authenticity and enthusiasm for sharing the good news of how you have filled our lives with abundance, hope, faith and love.  Help us practice that love with everyone we meet, and live into your teaching to welcome our neighbors. Amen.

Small Sacrifices

 Why do we follow Christ?  Why do we listen to his teachings when he seems to glorify abusive behaviors and torture by embracing his death on a cross?  These are deep, puzzling questions, and the scriptures sometimes help us and sometimes confuse us.

John’s gospel is not for the faint of heart in this regard.  It’s the gospel that almost didn’t make it into the bible back in the time of Constantine.  John was a philosopher, the Steven Hawking of bible writers.  When he described what Jesus taught, there weren’t many down to earth stories like we find in the other gospels, but flowery metaphors and complex images. 

And sometimes, we need flowery metaphors when dealing with the subject of today’s scripture.  Jesus was predicting his death and talking about suffering.  That wasn’t a popular topic back then, and it’s not today either.  Sometimes it feels like a modern slogan for the good life should not be “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” but “Life, liberty and the avoidance of all suffering”.  Our world struggles to know what to do with suffering.  We interpret the good life as being like an Oscar show, full of glittering gowns, fancy tuxedos and cleverly written speeches where everyone looks perfectly happy.  A lot of people put time and effort into looking like they are living the perfect life.  Social media is full of pictures of people living glamorous lives.  Unfortunately, this leads to increasing feelings of isolation, loneliness and depression as people wonder why they aren’t having more successes themselves.  Where are their statues for best actor or best costume designer, best director of the perfect life?  For those who are struggling with chronic illnesses and chronic pain, the push to portray only the happy moments of life can be a cruel expectation.

Jesus had an odd opinion about suffering. Jesus didn’t say that anyone who became his follower would be handed a “Get out of suffering free” card.  Some folks may preach that, and push the idea that Christians automatically get to avoid suffering.  There are people in our community who have turned their backs on Christianity because of that.  A catastrophe happens in their lives, and they take it as a sign that either they are terrible, or that God is angry at them and they don’t know why.  So, they reject Christianity altogether.

Jesus didn’t say that he would save people from suffering.  He did say that he came so that they could have life abundant.  And many of his disciples led very transformed lives that were abundant and fulfilling.  Fishermen became world travelers, tent makers became famous orators, tax collectors became community leaders, and they all followed Jesus’ teachings so passionately that they took his message to the ends of the earth.  Even faced with derision, imprisonment, and even crucifixion, they were so on fire that they kept sharing the good news to all who would listen.

Even Greeks wanted to come and speak with the Rabbi, and Jesus shared his message with them too.  His good news was for everyone regardless of ethnicity.  Often a reference to the Greek people was a reference to the rest of the world, for Greek was the language of intellectuals and philosophers.  Wealthy Romans considered a Greek tutor as a status symbol, like having a child in French Immersion may be considered a status symbol.  And Paul went to Greece, home of Socrates and Plato and schools of philosophy and medicine and was able to plant multiple small communities of faith, house churches with maybe a dozen people across that country that spread until it became a universally embraced way of life.

The disciples did that by making sacrifices.  They left their comfortable homes and their familiar ways and their homeland where everyone spoke the same language.  Now, we may squirm at the thought of sacrifices, but we do it every day.  How many of us sacrifice sleeping in on a Saturday morning because the dog needs to go out for a walk?  How many of us sacrifice our time by volunteering for Meals on Wheels or making lunch for crib players or selling tennis balls for the Lions or raising money for Rotary Club’s international exchange student program?  How many of us sacrifice our money for supporting good causes at the Farmer’s Market or buy fair trade coffee at the grocery store or buy chocolates for a kid’s school fund raiser?  How many of us helped our neighbors during Covid, or supported family and friends when they were going through hard times, or drove neighbors to doctors appointments?  We know how to follow in the footsteps of Christ and we often do it without realizing that we are even making sacrifices.

We sacrifice for others in many ways.  It’s because of those sacrifices, large and small, that we have continued to provide support for so many people for so many centuries.  Peter Drucker, a business guru, would ask industry leaders which organization was the most resilient.  People probably named institutions like the UN, or the Red Cross and the like.  Drucker surprisingly said it was the Church.  It was durable not because it created great leaders but because it allowed ordinary people to do outstanding things. It’s survived plagues, wars, collapses of empires, corrupt leaders trying to produce evil things like crusades and witch hunts, and it keeps returning to its core values of empathy, equality and courage. Or as we say in the United Church, deep spirituality, bold discipleship and daring justice.

Christianity transformed communities over the centuries. It’s easy to forget how resilient it has been and hard to see how resilient it is even now.  We don’t get the big picture when we are wrapped up in our worries and struggles.  When we hang on to our lives tightly, we can get tied up in knots of grief, fear and anxiety.  When we focus on our community and make those little sacrifices that we know so well how to do, we can do bold and beautiful things that make a difference in the world. And God glorifies what we do, saying, “This is my beloved child with whom I am well pleased.”  May our sacrifices continue to glorify God and inspire and empower the world! Amen.