Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Extravagant Hospitality”

Delivered by Reverend Dan De Leon

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Psalm 146:5-10; Isaiah 35:1-10; Luke 1:46-55; James 5:7-10

Hugh Richard Lawrie Sheppard.  He was known to his friends and to the countless people that he ministered to as Dick Sheppard.  He lived from 1880 to 1937, and in those 57 years, Dick Sheppard constantly struggled with poor health.  He had to quit three jobs in his lifetime because of his physical ailments: Head of the Oxford House in London, Vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, and Canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral.  You would think this would give a man a permanent outlook of disappointment.

But he always had a great sense of humor and laughter about him.  And more importantly, he spent his life shattering the bland image that most Englishmen had of what a church should be.

On his first Sunday preaching at St. Martin’s, he shared with the people his vision of “a great and splendid church standing in the greatest square of the greatest city in the world.”  This is how Dick Sheppard described his vision for what St. Martin’s could become:

“I stood on the west steps, and saw what this church would be to the life of the people.  There passed me, into its warm inside, hundreds and hundreds of all sorts of people, going up to the temple of their Lord, with all their difficulties, trials and sorrows.  I saw it full of people dropping in at all hours of the day and night.  It was never dark, it was lighted all night and all day, and often tired bits of humanity swept in.  And I said to them as they passed, ‘Where are you going?’  And they said only one thing.  ‘This is our home.  This is where we are going to learn of the love of Jesus Christ.  This is the altar of our Lord, where all our peace lies.  This is St. Martin’s.’”

Shall we pray?

We hear about Dick Sheppard’s vision for St. Martin’s this morning because that vision seems like a utopia, the same kind of utopia that Jesus proclaimed when he preached and taught about the kingdom of God.  But I also want to hold Sheppard’s vision up to the vision of our church this morning.  It is the vision of Friends Congregational Church to offer God’s extravagant welcome to all.

From where I stand, I can testify to this church doing a good job with that vision.  The tree of angels and lights that you see in our narthex, you can see it from outside these church walls, and that’s a comforting invitation.  What’s more, the lights strung above our church porch, a new addition this year; you can see them from Harvey Mitchell Parkway driving by at 45 miles an hour.

10:30: We have parking spots with the word ‘visitor’ painted on the curb, but as those stenciled letters fade, our church members keep visitors in mind on Sunday mornings when so many of you park in the spots farthest from the church, making room for curious newcomers and longing seekers.

Of course our church’s public statement that Friends is an Open and Affirming congregation is a purposeful invitation to the diversity of our community; our community that only on the surface appears uniform.  I can’t tell you how many times I have received blessings on this congregation’s behalf from strangers who find a chair in this place on a Wednesday night or a Sunday morning.  They say, “I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” or, “I had to see this to believe it,” or just, “This felt like ‘church’ to me again.  I had missed it so much.”

And, from my personal perspective, when I came home to check voicemails on a Sunday in January 2005 at my home in Austin, and I heard the voice of this church’s search committee, Ruth Schemmer, on the machine saying, “We’d like to visit with you,” I thought, “OK, if a United Church of Christ congregation in College Station wants to take the time to talk to a Baptist UT graduate about being their pastor, then this is the kind of welcoming church that I hope I can one day serve.”

It would seem that we’re living up to our vision statement pretty well.  At this point I want to interject that our history in this respect is not something for us to be proud of, so much as it is something for us to learn from and improve upon.  There are always more ways that we—the UCC in Aggieland—can offer God’s extravagant welcome to all.

But Friends has done a wonderful job fulfilling her vision.  Where does that leave us?  After you welcome someone into your home, the next step is to offer that person hospitality.

A friend of mine once told me about what it was like dating a Pentecostal boy when she was a Baptist.  Early on in their relationship, Gregg, the Pentecostal boy, took Dee Dee, the Baptist girl, to his church.  She was welcomed there with open arms and shining faces.  Gregg was so relieved that his congregation received this girl so warmly, because he was starting to like her.

But then the service began, which lasted nothing short of three hours.  And at one point in that service, Dee Dee and Gregg were carted off into a room off the sanctuary where a small group of worshippers were sharing a Pentecostal ritual: speaking in tongues.  Dee Dee was uncomfortable.

Then, the self-appointed leader of this small group of believers said very pointedly, “No one leaves this room until the Spirit takes hold of them and they speak in tongues!”  Dee Dee was now terrified.  They didn’t teach her this in Sunday School, and she was starting to wonder why Gregg, the boy she was starting to like, had dragged her into this scenario.

So, at that point in the story, I asked Dee Dee, “Well, what did you do?”  And Dee Dee said, “What do you think I did?  I started speaking in tongues!  I think I just blabbered the alphabet backwards or something; anything to get out of there!”  Dee Dee and Gregg remain happily married with three children, and their family holds their membership at Highland Park Baptist Church.

A welcome void of hospitality is dead and forgotten within moments after it is received.  So, perhaps it might be time for us to adopt extravagant hospitality as part of our vision statement at Friends.  But what is hospitality in the context of the Church, capital ‘C’?

Because of our extravagant welcome, this church family is composed of a rich diversity of faith backgrounds.  Yes, we are a UCC church by definition and identity, but at our core is a blend of Congregationalists, Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, Disciples of Christ, Catholics, and, yes, Pentecostals.  And within that variant mixture are those raised in the church, those discovering church for the first time, baptized believers and un-baptized believers, those who believe in the Incarnate nature of the Christ, and those who uphold that Jesus is the utmost example for righteous living in a broken world.

It’s nearly impossible to find any open and public diversity like this in the world anywhere but the church.  And lo and behold, we’re not killing each other in here.  We’re not putting up barricades between one another.  To respect this kind of diversity is an extravagant welcome.  But to nurture this diversity; to learn from it and grow as a result of it in our present context of the church is extravagant hospitality.

This morning we hear words from the Prophet Isaiah telling us about God’s people, how they are living in a desert wilderness, but their great joy is coming.  Not only are they living in parched lands where it seems nothing can grow, they are living in parched times.  Their world is dried out; dead from the manmade tyrannies of division, of intolerance, of oppressive boundaries, of war and endless conquest.

It’s in this desert, where it seems nothing can grow, that God says, “The wilderness will rejoice and blossom.”  Vegetation in the wilderness; different kinds of flowers and plants will cover the face of a dead land.  This miracle will be the people’s great joy; and a highway will stretch through it, and the redeemed will walk on that road, and it will be called the Way of Holiness.

You look around at a lot of churches these days and it seems we’re living in a desert, too.  There are many different thoughts and viewpoints and theologies and traditions that make up the body of Christ, but that body is more broken than blessed these days.  Our differences cause for more division than community, more intolerance than acceptance, more boundaries than fellowships, and more conquest than cooperation.  We appreciate our differences only to the extent that we know where we stand, and we leave it at that.

That is so much like the world, isn’t it?  The world wants you to make choices all the time so that people can know where you stand.  It feels like we’re always being told to choose in life, because the world won’t stop asking us questions that put us in boxes: Are you pro-life or pro-choice?  Do you buy foreign or American?  Are you born again or not?  Are you for the war or against it?  Are you republican or democrat?  Are you for immigration reform or against it?  Do you think homosexuality is a choice or in our genetic makeup?  Do you believe every word of the Bible literally or not?  Who is the best James Bond?  Do you prefer Streisand or Celine Dion?  And who was the better singer for Van Halen: Sammy Hagar or David Lee Roth?

The world wants you to make choices, public choices, choices that will supposedly define you in the eyes of your peers, and those choices are black and white, because that makes it easier for us to draw lines between one another.  The world wants you to choose your preferences not so that people can learn from each another, but so that we can know who to avoid and who to share space with, who to hate and who to love.

As best I can recall, I was raised to appreciate differences, to cherish diversity and to respect all shapes and sizes of human life.  And as a Christian, it was natural for me to reconcile that ethic with the spirituality of Jesus’ teachings.  Everywhere time Jesus helped somebody, people called him out on that person being unfit for his attention.

And Jesus always responded with disarming grace saying, “No one is perfect.  And your definition of sin pales in comparison with God’s definition of love.  And because you draw lines between one another, because you do not tolerate one another, because you do not welcome the stranger and offer him the hospitality of love that God grants freely to all of Creation, I have come into the world,” says Jesus.  “I come into the world to bring living water to your parched souls.”

We are living in desert times that are parched by the public choices that we feel pressed to make on where we stand.  Now, am I supposed to teach my children that this is as good as it gets?

Last Saturday night I sat in a restaurant in Tempe, Arizona with Grant St. Clair.  Grant is about 6 or 7 years old, and he was until recently a member of this church with his mother, Jenny Sandlin, until they moved out to the desert for her to take a great job at Arizona State.  We were sitting next to each other, Grant and me, and we were about to order dinner of off this decadent four-course menu.  It was the reception for his mom’s wedding.

As with our black-and-white choices in life, the menu was limited.  The selections seemed wonderful, and I felt that they were.  My mouth watered as I read about tortilla soup, seared scallops and glazed salmon.  But after I made my order and the waiter asked Grant what he wanted, Grant just stared with his wide, curious, beautiful eyes at that menu and didn’t say anything.

So, I pressed him, “Grant, you have to order something, buddy.”  I helped him read through the limited selections thinking that might sway him one way or the other, but finally Grant just looked up at the waiter and asked, “Do you have anything else?”

Our world is blessed with diversity.  And this church is a microcosm of that diversity.  So how do we reach consensus in this environment?  My question is, “Do we have to?”  In a world where you have to believe one way or the other, think one way or the other, live one way or the other to ascertain whether you are an acceptable citizen, shouldn’t the church rise up and preach from the heart of the liberating Christ saying, “Hey, nobody’s perfect and everyone is chosen by God”?

In a world where you are forced to choose so that everyone else can define you before you can define yourself, shouldn’t the Church offer the hospitality enough to say, “Be who you are and that is enough.  You are welcome here”?

I want to close with words from R. Ellis Roberts, who described St. Martin’s in London years after Dick Sheppard had shared his vision.  He says: “St. Martin’s Church became the church of the solders and the down-and-outs; the church of the classes and the masses; the church of fellowship and of privacy; the church for the cheerful and the church for the desperate; the church of the healthy and the sick; of the young and the old.  It was the church in which the congregation was no more shocked at hearing the minister pray for the street-walkers than pray for school-teachers, for crooks than for the clergy; no more shocked than when the Vicar laughed and told a funny story in the pulpit.  It became a refuge for the unhappy, and the home of the homeless.  In short, it was a Christian church.”

This is what Friends Congregational Church was founded to be.  As we gather this afternoon for our congregational meeting, may we have the grace enough to continue in that vision of extravagant welcome and extravagant hospitality.  Amen.