There was an older lady in the second congregation I served out West. She was elegant, generous, and aloof. She was liberal in all senses of the word, but, despite regular encouragement from her pastor, hardly participated in the hands-on work of the church she supported with her dollars and occasional dropped in to worship. She was the widow of a prominent citizen of the city, and spent most of her time golfing, or walking in the woods, mostly alone, and seemed to my eyes, to be a little depressed.
It happened one day that this lady, I’ll call her Janet (not her real name), was in the midst of a long walk on an unusually hot afternoon when she lost her balance and fell. When she picked herself up, she was dirty, scratched, and to her irritation, limping from a twisted ankle.
The incident happened closer to the country club than to her home, so she made her way slowly through the field and up to the steps of the country club restaurant, she intended to call a taxi to take her home.
She approached a nice looking couple who stood nearby to ask them for a quarter to use the pay phone, and was shocked when they averted their eyes, hurried into their waiting car, and drove away without acknowledging her.
She continued up the stairs toward the restaurant, and was met at the door by the manager, who spoke before she could open her mouth: You’ll have to leave immediately, lady, this is private property.
I know what it is, Janet snapped, my husband had his membership here for thirty years. I’ve fallen, and I just need to make a phone call to get a taxi. I'm Janet Wilcox, don't you know who I am? And the man replied, I don’t care who you are, lady, I just don’t want you upsetting our guests. You’ll have to leave immediately, or I’ll call the cops.
And he shut the door in her face. And Janet looked at her reflection in the glass, dirty, and upset, and thought to herself, why, I don’t look like myself at all... I look like some homeless person, a crazy woman from the street. And on the two- mile walk home, she had a lot of time to think, and pray.
Church growth expects tell us that it is very import to introduce first time visitors to people who are like them in the congregation. If the visitor is a seventy -year old widow, introduce her to other seniors in the congregation. If he is father or mother with young children, make sure he / she gets to meet other parents with children the same age as his. The first questions they have when they enter a church are sociological, not theological. This I mean, they want to know how hospitable we are, rather than what version of the Bible we preach from. They want to know, is there anyone like them here.
The second question we ask ourselves is do they have what I need here? We want to know if the people in this church have found what we are looking for in our own lives. Is this a church that can help me get to a better place than where I am today? Can they offer me the things I need?
Do they have programs to help my children grow in their faith? Is it going to be fun for them or will I have to drag them here kicking and screaming? Are there opportunities here for me to meet the kind of people I would like to get to know better? Is it an environment that can help me live a happier, healthier, more fulfilling life as a Christian?
If people don’t have a very positive first contact when they come to our church, we won’t ever see them again. They’ll be off to the next church to see if they have anything better to offer.
So projecting the right kind of image is very important. We want people to see us as a community of people who are happy, healthy, well adjusted, upbeat, positive, and hospitable. We only get one chance to make a first impression and we want it to be a good one.
So you can see the problem that Jesus presents in our text for today. He’s drawing attention to all the wrong kinds of people. Imagine yourself coming in the door of this church and being greeted by a homeless person, or being invited to coffee by someone whose last hot meal came from the soup kitchen.
Or imagine sitting down in a pew and being introduced to someone whose life is so burdened with grief that their eyes are flooded with tears and they sit quietly sobbing through the entire service. Imagine seeing someone in church whose picture you recognize as sex offenders. But if we found ourselves, like Janet, mistaken for one of those others…we would be like she was, uneasy, angry, and a little depressed.
Those are the kinds of people that Jesus calls our attention to in the passage known as the beatitudes:
“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven…”
And then Jesus issued stern warnings to the very kinds of people we hope to meet when we come to a church for the first time:
“…woe to you are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”
The image that Jesus projects of the kind of community he is trying to build seems to resemble the sort of clientele you find at poor inner city bus station rather than a local congregation in an upwardly mobile suburban community like ours.
Matthew’s version of the beatitudes is softer and gentler than Luke’s, but they both serve the same function in each of their gospels. They come at the beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry and they introduce us to the kind of community that Jesus is seeking to form as he gathers the people who will eventually become the first Christian church.
So what do the beatitudes reflect about the unique character of the church of Jesus Christ? First of all, I don’t think nor believe Jesus was suggesting that all of us ought to forfeit all of our financial assets, sign over our pay -checks and live in poverty.
I don’t think Jesus meant for us to stop eating, become bulimic, and go around hungry all of the time. I don’t think he meant for us to be sad, depressed or burdened with sorrow. I don’t think God’s goal was for everyone in his church to be hated and despised.
But how do we need to be healed? When we are the ones who Have, and called together with Jesus to serve the Have Nots: to feed the poor, to care for the suffering, to stand up for the excluded, the imprisoned, the forgotten. Jesus was clearly orienting his followers to a very different set of values than the values of our culture today.
He warned us not to invest our lives in seeking wealth, or excess, or happiness, or cheap heaven, or popularity for ourselves. The only life worth living is one that is given away in service to others.
We who are rich must become a source of blessing to those who are poor. We who are full must become a source of blessing to those who are hungry. We who are happy must become a source of blessing to those who are weeping. We who are admired and respected must become a source of blessing to those who are hated and excluded and reviled and defamed. That is the reason we have everything we have. The only life worth living is one that is given away in service to others.
Unlike any other community I know of, the church is a servant community and a prophetic voice in our world. We don’t exist for our own well being. I believe that everything we have, all of the gifts and talents and riches we possess are meant to be shared. We are the stewards whom God has entrusted with precious gifts, not for our own edification, but to be a source of blessing to others. The holocaust survivor and psychologist Victor Frankl, a man who's suffering has earned him the right to tell us what suffering and serving should feel like, put it this way: That which is to give light must endure burning.
When Jesus called people into his community of faith, it wasn’t to show them how they could personally benefit from his ministry. It was show them how they could all participate in his mission of reconciling the whole world in love. The church isn’t an organization that provides benefits to its members. It is an organization that exists to “equip the saints for the work of ministry (Ephesians 4: 12).”
I imagine you can guess what happened in Janet's life after she finally limped home and saw herself not as she believed she was, but as others saw her. What happened for her personally in her sad isolation, and in her life in the church, and in her view of helping and healing others. I’m not going to finish the story for you, because I hope you will finish it for yourself.
And for us at St. Ansgar Lutheran Church, it is my desire that first time visitors have a good impression of our congregation, but I have to say I’m a little apprehensive about the image that our text for today projects for our faith community. The questions people have in mind when they walk into a church for the first time are not theological but sociological. “Can I fit in here?” And that concerns me.
Every year on the first Sunday in November we celebrate all Saints Day. Unlike our cultural heroes, the heroes of the church are not people who have achieved great things for themselves.
Saints are people who touched the lives of others with the love of Christ. The church is full of them. You are probably sitting next to one right now. Today we honour Süster Petersen for her work and contribution to body of Christ. In a moment we will dedicate these sacred hand bells in praises of God. Saints are ordinary people whose lives have been reoriented around the extraordinary values of Jesus. The people you meet when you come in the door the church are people who know that the only life that is really worth living is a life that is given away in service to others.
Amen.
Rev. Samuel King-Kabu
February 13, 2005