"Welcoming the Saint, the Strange, ALL!"
First Congregational Church -- Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
4th Sunday after Pentecost -- June 8, 2008
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts: Genesis 12:1-9; Romans 4:13-25; Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26]

"We are God's chosen few, all others will be damned.
There is no room in heaven for you.
We can't have heaven crammed!"

The satirical words of Harry Emerson Fosdick, one of the great Protestant preachers of the early twentieth century, leap over the more than eighty years since they were spoken. They recall the perennial problem of who may be part of a religious community. A problem, I might add, which rears its head right now in just about every church or religious group in America: Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Jewish, liberal, middle-of-the-road, conservative notwithstanding. All are facing the problem. Our sisters and brothers in the Anglican Communion will gather this year at the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury to discuss these very kinds of issues; and tensions of who is in and who is out continue to build in every major mainline Protestant denomination and they go to their great annual meetings in fear and trembling. The Roman Catholic Church, again, has made it quite clear to women that when it comes to ordination – well, obviously they’re not in the chosen few. Tie to it the whole question of which rituals or practices are to be observed and you have a heady, emotionally charged, and more than potentially divisive situation.

As Jesus walked along that day in Galilee, saw Matthew, and called him into his company, he confronted those problems. Jesus invited Matthew to "follow him," to leave where he was and what he was about to go on a new way. The call Abram heard was no different and the promise offered carried the same implications. God did not call a king to be the source of a "great nation," a nation which would be God's own "chosen people." No, Abram was an idol-maker in an out-of-the-way city. God called him to leave his country, his family, his belief system, his livelihood in order to bring him to a whole new way of thinking about faith, about life, about himself. We ought not to be surprised, then, at whom the Son called to be his followers.

Jesus sought out fishermen, and political dissidents, and a tax collector to be his followers. Tax collectors were a particularly hated bunch -- strange how some things still haven't changed, eh? The Romans let out contracts for collecting taxes and tolls. The highest bidder, scholars tell us then hired locals to collect the fees. In this system the bidder and his employees were responsible for paying the taxes to the government. All the Romans cared about was getting their due, if the collector could get more that was fine; this system, then, sort of licensed extortion and fraud. Even if a collector didn't cheat, they were still suspect.

A Jew who collaborated with the Romans, exploited his own people for profit, and had regular contact with non-Jews must have been religiously suspect, if not outright unclean. Yet, Jesus called just such a fellow -- Matthew by name -- to be his follower. Just as his Father had called an idol-maker to become the father of the nation dedicated to the One, true God. In short, God doesn't hold the same standards we do. And there's something wonderful about the Divine sense of humor that would make an idol-maker patriarch of a nation of idol-breakers and an unclean, outcast tax collector a herald of restored humanity, an evangelist! All I could think of as I read these Scriptures was Groucho Marx's remark when he was informed of an invitation to join a prestigious Hollywood country club: "I don't want to join any club that would have me as a member!"

God’s desire is for ALL of God’s people to come to know God’s love, be embraced by God’s grace. Membership in his club is inclusive. This inclusivity is why Jesus responds as he does to those critical Pharisees who wonder how a teacher of the Law could spend time with sinners. Jesus responds to them in three ways. First, he reminds them of a commonly held proverb about the sick not the well needing a physician. Second, he quotes the long-suffering prophet of God's love, Hosea, who spoke God's word that "I desire mercy and not sacrifice." Third, he pronounces his authority and mission: "I have come to call not the righteous, but sinners." What Jesus essentially says to them is, “You’re saying I’m eating with the wrong people. Well, sorry, because given who my Father is, I’m eating with exactly the RIGHT people: those who have gone from him and know it; those who are sick and know it; those who realize that righteousness doesn’t come from them, who look for mercy and know it. God is a merciful God and since I am the presence of this God where else could I be, but among those who are broken, wounded and lost?”

In the midst of this powerful discourse Jesus is asked to come to lay hands on a synagogue leader’s daughter. She has just died, but this leader is sure that Jesus can bring life to her. He hears in this man’s voice the desire, the longing, the hope for the life that only God can give and Jesus follows that voice. Along the way a woman who has suffered for years from a disease that made her ritually unclean, that effectively cut her off from polite company, sneaks up hoping for the same touch that the synagogue leader wants for his daughter. She doesn’t get the chance to sneak her touch, because Jesus “outs her” and bids her be healed. There is so much in these few verses and it builds and builds to make one grand point – God is merciful. It is God’s desire to touch and to heal God’s people. It is God’s will that we should be healed, made whole and know life in all its fullness.

Where do people find this merciful God? Oprah and her guru Eckhart Tolle would tell you that it’s not in the church, but in some sort of fuzzy feel-goodness as we come to understand our own personal spiritual power. I respectfully and adamantly disagree. It’s here, because it should be clear that the ekklesia, the gathering of the called, the church should be of those unrighteous made righteous by mercy and grace. It should be clear that the church is, as the old saying goes, "a hospital for recovering sinners and not a rest home for retired saints." It should be clear that this is where you come not because you’re self-righteous, but because you want the righteousness that can come only from God. Still, we've gone through the same situation as the Jews who criticized Jesus for eating with tax collectors and sinners, forgetting they were offspring of an idol-maker! Which is why people have so often criticized the church – and why the church, we, have so often deserved it.

Our Congregational forebears went through this same problem. They wanted "reform without tarrying for any." The followers of Pastor Robinson would call themselves "saints" and the others on the Mayflower "strangers." The framers of the Cambridge Platform said that the church must consist of "visible saints." And, they were right, but over time they also realized that there was room for the "stranger"; there still is.

When Jesus makes the point of love being the fulfillment of the law and prophets in Matthew's Gospel, it's not incidental that it takes place around a table. When Jesus calls, it is a summons, an invitation to a feast. Jesus invites these outcasts to share in a meal that anticipates God's reign, God's present kingdom, and its visible proclamation in his own teaching, actions, and healings. As one scholar says, "Such inclusive, joyous meals must have been a frequent occurrence during the ministry of Jesus, for they created for him a reputation as a 'glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners' (Matt. 11:19; Lk 7:34), and they led to a church that continued the practice of communal meals long after his death (cf. I Cor. 11:20-32; Gal. 2:11-13; Acts 2:42)."

To eat and drink together is a sign of God's presence, a sign of the ongoing invitation to the feast. We forget what the sign means, cheapen its significance, when -- like our Puritan forebears and some of our brothers and sisters in the faith -- we "fence the table" and limit who may sit down at the Lord's Supper. We do the same thing when we think that we bring the meaning to what God gives in Word and Sacrament by our understanding, or own application of significance to what we do. NO! What we do has meaning far beyond anything we can give, because it comes from God, it's God's gift, it's God's invitation to participation in God’s life, God’s love, God’s mercy, and it leads to life in God.

This church, this table has room for both saints and strangers. What we do on the Sundays we don’t celebrate communion still points to that meal, that gathering around the Lord’s Table which reminds us who we are and Whose we are. So, what we do here today as we break open and share the Word and as we gather for fellowship after worship should speak volumes to those who need to know forgiveness, healing, mercy, and peace. (Yes, there is a reason I’m an advocate of more frequent communion. I hold with the early Church and with our Congregational forebears that we should celebrate it weekly.) It is absolutely essential, then, that we be as intentional at welcoming the stranger as we are in sharing time with the saints. We may think of ourselves as a “friendly church” – I mean, is there a church in the world that doesn’t? – but is it because we have friends at church and not because we reach out to those who come among as guests?

You see, as God's people we are called to INVITE to the table, not push people away from it! God sets the table of his Word and Sacrament before us to nourish us, to draw us into God’s very life. God also sets it to restore our true humanity, to realize what began with Abram's call and was brought to fulfillment in Jesus the Christ. As Paul says, "now there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free; there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise." (Gal. 3:28-29) All barriers, whether of human or natural origin, are broken down and the human community is invited to share in the banquet of God's presence, peace and love.

We are more than God's "frozen chosen," we are to be a living Eucharist, a living thanksgiving: broken, poured out, shared for all people -- as Jesus was. Heaven has many rooms, it won't be crammed and we must make the church a welcoming place for saints and strangers alike. I once read about a church which had "lemonade Sunday" and the children were running up to the people in the parking lot with cups of lemonade, welcoming them. It was a mess, but people felt welcomed. When people come among us, we need to come to them, welcome them, as God has welcomed us in Christ. Jesus calls us to share his banquet -- he calls us, too, to be living invitations to the feast. So . . . come to the banquet and let's see if we can cram heaven full, starting with this church! Amen!