C
Proper 12 17 Ord 2016
Genesis
18:20-32
July
17, 2016
I grew up in a great UCC church in
rural Illinois—Christian Union Church. We
had a rock band filled with the voices of young people who put on our
incredible high school musicals. We were
praise band before there was praise band.
Our church was busting at the seams with numerical growth. We sent more people to church camp than any
other church. We had our own church camp
just outside of town, Camp Wildwood, where, once a month, we would hold
services, our pastor would play the hymns on his ukulele, we would all eat the
best catered fried chicken in Woodford County along with salads and desserts
brought by the women of the church. After
lunch we would then break off into children chasing tadpoles in the creek, the
seniors playing card games, and the Mulberry family organizing the church
softball game. It was idyll. Our church grew so much that we had to build
a whole new church building at the town crossroads.
Our church was the union of several
different denominational churches that decided the gospel message was more
transcendent than any differences of opinion they might have in worship,
prayer, and praise. We were the church
where your Protestant daughter and their Catholic son might
find a compromise. Or where you could go
if you had been through a divorce and your denomination of origin condemned or
shunned you in some way. Or the place
where a teenage boy like me could know himself to be so loved and cherished
that when he said to his pastor at the end of the confirmation process, “Rev.,
I’m not sure I should confirm my faith.
I’m not sure I believe all this stuff,” his pastor would turn right
around and say, “Mike, you should think about going into ordained ministry.” Whaaaaaat?
Last week, I spoke of one of my
mentors in ordained ministry, Rev. Dr. Jack Good. At one point, there may have been no more
respected pastor in the Illinois Conference than Jack Good. He had Chaired the Justice and Peace
Committee, served as the Conference Moderator, and would speak humbly and
forthrightly about important issues that the Illinois Conference faced. Long ago, he retired from ministry at
Community UCC in Champaign, Illinois, as a wise and measured counselor and
sage. I remember taking a deep sigh as
Jack retired.
You see, my home church started to go
downhill when my boyhood pastor was forced to resign and the congregation
believed they could find the perfect young male pastor, in his 30s with 50 years
of experience. Heat was put on the
search committee. Eventually, they found
someone related to a higher-up in the denomination who really didn’t match our
church, and then another pastor, and then another pastor, and then another
pastor, until Christian Union Church split and split and split, until the
church at the crossroads became less and less an example for living in community. We finally ended up with a split search
committee that called a retired military chaplain who completed the split for
me, refusing to ordain me in my hometown church, pulling what was a united and
uniting church out of the United Church of Christ, and my mom deciding to move
her membership to Willow Hill United Methodist Church in a neighboring
community.
That first search committee made a
fateful decision that I found out about later.
Before Rev. Dr. Good became pastor at Community UCC in Champaign,
Illinois, he was a candidate for pastor at Christian Union Church. But beside all of Jack Good’s stellar
qualifications and even temperament, his wife, Diana Good, a strong and
powerful Christian person in her own right, lived her life out of a
wheelchair. And that first search
committee declined Dr. Good’s candidacy because they thought Jack Good would
spend way too much time caring for his wife and not for their
congregation. Perish the thought.
Those gifts, those divine gifts found
both in Diana and Jack Good, were right there waiting for my hometown
church. But they were too worried about how
they might be served than how they might be Christian community together. I believe God was waiting, expecting, hoping
to give these incredible gifts to my hometown church. But we could not imagine God’s gifts coming
to us in something as strange and alien as Jack and Diana Good, Diana leading
and teaching from her wheelchair but maybe not doing all the things required of
a traditional “pastor’s wife.” Jack later told me this story, smiled softly as
he always did, and said that he then candidated at Community UCC in Champaign, “And
the rest,” he said, “is history.”
My hometown church really never
figured out, once it arrived at certain level of flourishing, who or what it
wanted to be at its core. It had no
transcendent vision that went beyond, “We should have someone that serves us.” So it left their search committee in fear of
not being served. Oprah Winfrey used to
ask the readers of her O magazine, “What
do you know for sure?” Winfrey asked
that question, deciding that she needed to spend the rest of her lifetime
figuring it out.
What do we know for sure? I think that’s a good question for all of us—particularly
when we come to the Christian faith—because what we will know for sure about
what Christianity is at its root—will probably define how we interpret our
tradition, take as our spirituality, and then live out our life. What do we know for sure about what
Christianity— is it about being a part of the best and biggest church, living a
moral and holy individual life in the face of God as judge who will call us
into account, or something else? What do
we know for sure?
Some of the theologians I respect have
offered me answers. Rev. Dr. Peggy Way,
my beloved pastoral theology professor, used to say, “Christianity is coming to
the table to talk about the impossible things.”
Will Campbell, civil rights activist who described himself as a bootleg
preacher, said that, “We are all bastards and God still loves us.” Dr. T. Niles wrote that Christianity is one
beggar showing another beggar where they can find bread.
In our age, the Scripture passage
before us and accompanying story have become a litmus test for faith in our
country. Religious writer and Presbyterian pastor, Mark
Sandlin, references the Sodom and Gomorrah story as one of the few “clobber
passages” for the LGBTQ community found in Scripture. Passages like these have led to deep splits
in Christianity with some claiming what they know for sure is a God who is in
equal parts loving and just and therefore “hate the sin, love the sinner” in a
condemnation of homosexual behavior.
Other people believe such passages are so intrinsic to Christian faith
that they would rather split off into the church of the New York Times on a Sunday morning than be a part of a community so
full of judgment and condemnation. I
want to propose a third way, a way of hospitality, a radical way of life that
knows this story to be about a God who is waiting, expecting, and hoping to
give us divine gifts through people who might be a stranger or not like
us.
Here is what I know for sure. Tolerance is not a Christian value. Hospitality, where we might receive gifts or
be transformed by the stranger, is one of the deepest, most repeated parts of
our faith tradition. This is what I know
for sure.
Rather than a judgmental God, the
Scripture before us reminds us of the character of God. This God hates the violence and bloodshed,
the injustice that is found in Sodom, but is open to having the Divine Heart
transformed by the pleas of the kind and merciful Abraham. In a nomadic culture, a value like “hospitality”
would have paramount. When you are
wandering around in the Arabian desert, finding a friendly tent with food,
liquid refreshment, and safe haven from the elements and enemies is
paramount.
The Sodom and Gomorrah story is sandwiched between
two stories which help us know its Biblical context. The first has God included in a trio of
visitors who visit Abraham and Sarah’s tent.
Abraham and Sarah set them down to provide a little shade, a little
water, a little meal. In granting the
Divine visitors hospitality, Abraham and Sarah hear of God’s divine promise for
children. There it is. That classic exchange. Hospitality provided to the stranger. The stranger bears a divine gift or promise.
After the Sodom and Gomorrah story, Abraham sends
his servant, Eliezer, back to find a wife with old country values. As the servant walks along, he has to figure
out what it means to have the old country values. So, Eliezer decides, as he sits by the well in
the old country, whomever shall provide me with hospitality, shall be the woman
for my master’s son. Rebekah not only
provides hospitality for him but also for his camels. Well, I mean, c’mon. This is the gal. She provides hospitality for his camels. The stranger, in Abraham’s servant, provides
the gift for Rebekah and her family.
These were the same stories the gospel writers were
looking at when the author of the Gospel of John knew when he sat down to write
his story about a Samaritan woman at a well providing for Jesus or when the
author of Luke writes about the Resurrected Christ on the road to Emmaus, only
known because the two disciples provide for his hospitality. We know the divine presence—God and Christ—through
the hospitality which is extended.
In the Sodom and Gomorrah story, when Lot persuades
two men who are ready to sleep in the town square, to stay in his home, he is
spared judgment. But when in Sodom, all
of the people of the city, not just the men, arrive clamoring for the
two guests so they may do violence against them and rape them, they are
judged. It is not to have sex with
them. It is to do violence against
them. Not even ten people can be
found.
Tracy always reminds me of the necessary critique of
patriarchy found in this story in that Lot, in deference to providing hospitality
for his divine visitors, offers his two daughters to the people of Sodom, so that
they might do violence against them.
Ugh. So in order to condemn
homosexual sexuality we condemn the villagers asking for the angels but not Lot
offering up his daughters? A telling but
sad part of our tradition.
Beyond the critique, however, the value of
hospitality, the welcoming of strangers who bear divine gifts, is that, more
than ever, shall determine whether we are people of violence or people of
faith. Our understanding of this
Biblical story would radically change if we read what other Biblical writers
believe was the sin that brought judgment down on Sodom. Jeremiah cited adultery, living in lies, and
siding with the wicked as reasons for the destruction of Sodom.[1] Isaiah, the prophet, believed that Sodom was
judged because it divorced worship from the doing of social justice and helping
the most unfortunate.[2] The prophet Ezekiel believed that Sodom was
judged because of how terribly the people of Sodom treated the poor.[3] Jesus, in Luke 10:10, suggests that the sin
of Sodom was inhospitality. And the
teaching of Hebrews references the sin of Sodom by saying that we should not
neglect to greet strangers with hospitality for some people, in so doing, have
greeted angels unaware, a clear reference to the Hebrew Scripture story.[4]
Even when we hear of violence being most often done
to us by the people we know and are closest to us, concepts like “stranger
danger” have taken hold and have become part of our national dialog. We fear greeting the stranger, inviting the
one not like us to the table when the Biblical story teaches that we often find
that the stranger is the one who broadens our mind, expands our heart, and
helps us to receive gifts we would have never otherwise received. Instead, the Christian story has too often
reversed the story and made us fear a sexuality that seems strange within is or
outside of us to condemn the LGBTQ community.
That may be changing in some parts of our country, but the strong hatred
and vitriol aimed at people who fall outside our circle continues to do
violence to people and peoples. Pray
that God may find one of us righteous in the midst of such hatred and violence. For it seems to be a part of our Christian
tradition too often to draw a circle around us and call everything outside that
circle evil.
We may say that these stories have nothing to teach
us. I hope you can hear that I believe,
like any faith resource, they need to be engaged and critiqued. What I hear though are calls for toleration,
and I think the Biblical story offers something far more radical than that. Tolerance is not a Christian value. Tolerance suggests a “live and let live”
where I can bear you but not be transformed by you, not receive the Divine
gifts God has just waiting and hoping to give us.
Hospitality is a greater call to relationship to
which these great stories of faith call us.
The good news is that each of these stories portrays God as anxiously
awaiting, knocking, standing outside the door, with a divine gift or promise we
could not have imagined. Judgment, in each
of these stories, says that as you exclude the stranger from your table, you
lose the innumerable, incredible gifts God waits to give you. And those gifts are sometimes, sometimes
never, ever available again. Can we
imagine not having Steve’s musical gifts and his willingness to lend a hand
with most any event, Karen’s gifts of kindness and courage, Suzie’s gifts of
humor and leadership, Cheryl’s gifts of care and a beautiful voice? I cannot.
And though I do not know Shauna
and Nichole all that well yet, you know how I would miss the gift of Aden if we
did not welcome them here.
I believe our church is enriched by ministries like
Family Promise, which welcome the stranger, the homeless family into our midst. At the church I served in North Hampton, New
Hampshire, they still talk of the family that stood during joys and concerns and
thanked the congregation for saving their lives. It is a gift, a memory, that sustains that
congregation. I believe our church is
enriched by the incredible Native American presence that is here almost every
day through the week. I know one of the
gifts I have received is the power and the compassion of Joel Simpson and the
friendship of Josiah Hugs and Lita Pepion.
You all, as a congregation, are participating in these wonderful gifts
of hospitality, welcoming the stranger. I
believe as we continue to do so, we open our lives to the breadth, and width,
and height of God’s immeasurable love.
And we receive gifts time and time again we could not imagine. May it ripple out. May it ripple out to transform Billings,
radically reform Montana, and change our national dialog so that fear of the
stranger becomes no more and the violence we do against each other comes to an
end. So that we might know that our
prosperity as a nation is not found in our hoarding and greed but in our
welcome and kindness. Amen.
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