LGBTQ

You Are Welcome

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “You Are Welcome” Acts 8:26-38

Not everyone feels welcome in church.

Visitors or newcomers to churches can feel uncomfortable. On Sunday mornings as the church fills and old friends turn to one another in the pews to chat and catch up on the latest news, visitors may feel like socially awkward outsiders who have crashed a private party. A national survey found that over 70% of newcomers say that being singled out as a visitor in a church service is deeply uncomfortable. Asked to stand and introduce themselves or to turn and greet their neighbors with the peace of Christ, they feel the painful discomfort of public scrutiny as every eye checks them out or complete strangers want to shake their hands—or worse—hug them.

Lord, forbid that someone new sits in our pew. One Sunday a number of years ago, I spotted those golden girls Dot Shene and Norma Neese, sitting in a different place in the sanctuary. During the passing of the peace, I congratulated them on trying a seat near the front. Dot, clearly irritated, said, “We had to.” Then, Norma turned and pointed to a couple of guests, seated in their beloved back pew. “They took our seats!” she lamented loudly.

I thought that was pretty bad until I had a Sunday off and went to worship at the Tupper Lake church, where I have served as the moderator for many years. I arrived a little early and chose a seat. Then during the opening hymn, two late arrivers came and stood next to my pew. I smiled at them. “You’re in our seat,” I was told. Although I offered to move over or let them by, they weren’t happy until I had moved to a different pew.

It’s not unusual for church signs out front to bear the words, “All are welcome,” but are they really?

The Ethiopian Eunuch knew how it feels to be unwelcome in church. He was a man of status and power. In an ancient world that prized the beauty of black skin above all else, he was gorgeous. He served in the royal court of his homeland, managing the great wealth of his queen, the Candace. In a world where few people were literate, he was cultured, fluent in Greek, and a student of the Torah. He had spent a small fortune on the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah. He had come to Jerusalem on a great pilgrimage of many miles with a retinue of servants to worship and pray.

The Bible scholars point out that when the eunuch arrived at the Jerusalem Temple, he would have been denied entry. We don’t know how he came to be a eunuch, whether he was born that way, was injured in some horrible accident, or had to say goodbye to his “manhood” before he could become the Treasury Secretary, but it was who he was. He couldn’t do anything about it. He probably heard some less than welcoming scripture quoted to him in Jerusalem, like Deuteronomy 23 and Leviticus 21, which say that anyone with his “problem” cannot be admitted to the assembly or approach God with an offering because it would profane the sanctuary. 

I wonder if we can imagine what it would feel like to be the Ethiopian eunuch, to love God and fear that God did not love him, would never love him, no matter how many pilgrimages he made or prayers he said. As the Ethiopian Eunuch rattled home in his chariot, he read the words of Isaiah 53, which tell of God’s servant who silently suffers in humiliation. Those words must have tugged at his heartstrings, as if they were written about him.

Of course, we don’t have to be a church visitor sitting in the “wrong” pew or the Ethiopian eunuch to wonder if God loves us. Our feelings of welcome and acceptance are also shaped by who we are. The church universal has historically been less than hospitable to some people more than others. Many have had bad church experiences in which they feel judged and condemned. Those who have been divorced may not feel welcome. Those who choose to live together outside of marriage may not feel welcome. Those who are single parents may not feel welcome. My LGBTQ friends and family all have painful stories to share of leaving churches where they were not accepted unless they stayed in the closet. Young people with blue hair, plenty of piercings, or an abundance of tattoos describe the shocked stares and alienating whispers of people in the pews. Even when we look like everyone else, we may harbor secret hurts or shame or bad experiences that make us wonder along with the Ethiopian eunuch, “Is God’s love for me? Is God’s love for us?”

The Ethiopian Eunuch might have stayed an outsider if the Holy Spirit hadn’t stepped in and taken some bold action. The Spirit found the right man for the job, Philip. He wasn’t afraid of those who had been labeled outsiders. In fact, Philip got his start as an evangelist by taking the gospel to the Samaritans, traditional enemies of Israel. So, when the Holy Spirit sent him running down the Gaza Road, Philip was ready. He climbed into the Ethiopian man’s chariot, caught his breath, and began to tell his new friend about Jesus of Nazareth, the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy about a holy servant who was rejected by those he was sent to redeem and suffered for the world’s sins.

As Philip told the good news of Jesus’ ministry, of how Jesus welcomed the outsider, healed the sick, blessed the children, and counted women among his disciples, his Ethiopian neighbor began to get excited.  Really excited. He imagined the possibility that if Jesus had anything to say about it, God might just welcome him, might welcome a person who looked and felt like he did. If the eunuch or Philip questioned what the Holy Spirit intended for them, those questions disappeared as a strange sight shimmered on the desert horizon: a pool of water, sparkling in the midday sun. It was unthinkable, impossible even, but there it was, a big baptismal pool in the middle of that dry and dusty landscape.

Finally, the Ethiopian Eunuch could contain himself no longer, this man who had been excluded from the Temple and made to feel unwelcome in God’s House dared to imagine that he, too, was loved. “Look, here is water!  What is to prevent me from being baptized?” And in response, Philip did not quote Deuteronomy 23 or Leviticus 21. Instead, by the power of the Holy Spirit that had sent him running down the Gaza Road, Philip knew that no one is ever beyond the limits of God’s unfathomably big love.  All were welcomed. All might be claimed in the waters of baptism as God’s beloved children. The driver reined in the horses. The chariot came to a halt. And Philip with his new Ethiopian friend waded into the waters of a love that would not let them go.

It’s a wild and scandalous story that tugs at our heartstrings. It tells the simple truth that God welcomes us when the world—or the church—will not. All are welcome to these waters and claimed as sons and daughters of a holy parent who has a place for us at the table and a home for us in the kingdom. It’s a story that invites us to know our belovedness. It’s a story that dares us to be a more loving people. The Holy Spirit calls to us, as the Spirit did to Philip, setting our feet on the path to welcome and inclusion, to meet people where they are at, to open our eyes and hearts to those who are new. The Spirit calls us to judge less and welcome more. Perhaps we’ll even loosen our death grip on that favorite pew. Perhaps one day all churches will be as welcoming as Jesus.

The freshly baptized Ethiopian Eunuch rode off down the Gaza Road, full of joy and alleluias.  They say that he became the great evangelist of Africa, telling the Candace—and anyone who would listen—all about a God who loves limitlessly, who became flesh, lived and taught, healed and suffered, died and rose again to make that limitless holy love known to all people—a God who is still trying to get that message out even now.

Resources

Matt Skinner. “Commentary on Acts 8:26-40” in Preaching This Week, May 2, 2021. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-of-easter-2/commentary-on-acts-826-40

Mitzi Smith. “Commentary on Acts 8:26-40” in Preaching This Week, May 6, 2012. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-of-easter-2/commentary-on-acts-826-40-2

Richard Jensen. “Commentary on Acts 8:26-40” in Preaching This Week, May 10, 2009. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-of-easter-2/commentary-on-acts-826-40-3

F. Scott Spencer. “Commentary on Acts 8:26-40” in Preaching This Week, April 28, 2024. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-of-easter-2/commentary-on-acts-826-40-5

Acts 8:26-38

26 Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a wilderness road.) 27 So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship 28 and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. 29 Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it.” 30 So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” 31 He replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. 32 Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this:

“Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,
    and like a lamb silent before its shearer,
        so he does not open his mouth.
33 In his humiliation justice was denied him.
    Who can describe his generation?
        For his life is taken away from the earth.”

34 The eunuch asked Philip, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” 35 Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. 36 As they were going along the road, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” 38 He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him.

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Mercy, Not Sacrifice

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Mercy, Not Sacrifice” Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Timmy feels like an outsider. He’s at that awkward adolescent stage where his legs have gotten too long for the pants his Mom bought for him in the fall, but he still hasn’t outgrown his baby fat. When it comes to gym class, he’ll be picked last for a team. Timmy asked a girl to the school dance, but she said “no.” Lately, the popular boys in his class have been bullying him. They call him by a mean nickname. They ridicule the ankles that show beneath his too short pants, the thick glasses that he needs to read, and the pimples that are beginning to erupt on his chin. Timmy spends a lot of time at home in his room, reading or playing video games. He tells his parents that he doesn’t want to talk about it.

Sara hasn’t been to church since she was a teenager. Last year, she got married to her longtime girlfriend. It was a sweet ceremony, outside in a garden with vows they wrote themselves. A friend with one of those online ordinations that you can buy for $10 presided at the service. Sara loved church, but one day in Youth Group, as she was coming to terms with her sexual identity, the Youth Pastor told everyone that people who are gay or lesbian are an abomination. Sara didn’t really know what that word meant, but she knew it wasn’t good. Later, when she looked it up, it hurt her heart to think that people would actually believe that God hated her for the way that God had made her.

Martin and Adele feel like outsiders in their own family. It started with the 2016 Presidential election when family members split over the two candidates. What started as a minor squabble at the Thanksgiving dinner table over the election outcome has exploded into years of animosity. You should see the insulting and demeaning partisan emails and Facebook posts that have fanned the flames of conflict. Disagreement has escalated to division. Martin and Adele may love their family, but they find it hard to like them these days. Last year, they skipped Thanksgiving, and they don’t know if they’ll ever return to the family table.

Our reading from Matthew’s gospel serves as an extended example of how Jesus responded to first century distinctions between outsiders and insiders to God’s love. It all started when Jesus saw Matthew sitting at his roadside toll booth and invited the tax collector to become a disciple. The Pharisees were scandalized. Didn’t Jesus understand that Matthew was an outsider? He was an unclean collaborator, who had profited from the Roman occupation. Matthew wasn’t fit for decent society.  Didn’t Jesus understand that breaking bread with Matthew was risky business? After all, you know what they say, “Birds of a feather flock together.”

Then, there was that woman, the one with the bleeding down there. She had been unclean for longer than anyone could remember. Ten years? Twelve? A long time. Leviticus fifteen taught that a woman with a discharge of blood was impure. Anyone who came into contact with her was rendered unclean. She was an embarrassment to her family, shunned by the neighbors. Everyone in Capernaum knew to steer clear of her.

How about that little girl? She may have been the daughter of the synagogue leader, but dead is dead. The professional mourners were already wailing. In a world where six out of ten children didn’t grow to adulthood, this death was no rare tragedy, and she was a girl, after all, not a higher status boy. The Torah taught that anyone who touched a corpse was rendered unclean for seven days, a whole week of prayer and separation. There would be purification rites to undertake, too, on the third and seventh days. Jairus should have known better than to waste Jesus’ time. This little girl wasn’t worth the trouble.

Matthew, the woman, Jairus’s daughter. All were unclean outsiders in the eyes of first century Israel. Beyond any social stigma—and there was plenty of that—people like the Pharisees believed that Matthew, the woman, and Jairus’s daughter were separated from God. Matthew had willfully disregarded the Torah to consort with Gentiles. That woman must have been a terrible sinner for God to afflict her so shamefully for so long. And that little girl? Dead! Perhaps God would raise her on the Day of Judgment.

We all have times when we feel like outsiders. Like Timmy, we may have been rejected or bullied by siblings, classmates, or colleagues. Like Sara, we may have been told that God can’t and won’t love people like us. Like Martin and Adele, we may have fallen victim to the bitter divisions of partisan politics that cast those with differing opinions as mortal enemies.

The world is full of other neighbors who feel like outsiders. They live in poverty on the margins of the community. They cope with autism that makes it daunting and difficult to connect socially. They wrestle with mental illness that makes them want to go back to bed and pull the sheets over their head. They grapple with addictions that fill them with guilt and shame.  They feel like they don’t belong. They may even wonder why God doesn’t love them.

Jesus chose to reach outside, to move beyond the traditional limits of first century Judaism, to stretch the bounds of the Torah. When the Pharisees challenged him on the company he kept, he quoted for them the words of the Prophet Hosea, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” Jesus chose to practice mercy rather than become a prisoner of purity. Jesus came for tax collectors, hemorrhaging women, little girls, and all the others who had been made to feel like they lived life on the outside, looking in, unwelcome at the table of the righteous, unwelcome in the Temple of God.

Jesus’s ministry was a bold witness to God’s love and mercy for those who felt unwelcome and excluded. Of course, Matthew was called to serve as a disciple. Of course, that woman was healed and praised for her faith. Of course, Jesus took that little girl by the hand and tenderly restored her to her family.  Rather than sacrifice a sister or brother on the altar of holiness, Jesus chose mercy. Jesus knew that God’s love longs to welcome the outsider in.

There must have been great rejoicing that evening in Capernaum. Matthew threw the biggest dinner party ever. He broke out the best wine. He killed the fatted calf. He invited not only Jesus and all his former colleagues in the tax booth, but also all the Pharisees to feast at his sumptuous table.

That woman, who no longer had the issue of blood, sang praises to God. She was celebrated by her neighbors who had never really seen her before. They had only seen her disease. They realized how lonely she must have been all those years. They saw that just touching Jesus’ prayer shawl must have taken tremendous courage. Then, she went home to her family filled with rejoicing and together they wept tears of gratitude and joy.  

That funeral wake for Jairus’s daughter turned into a birthday party. The weeping turned into cries of jubilation. The sackcloth was traded for some festive party hats and Mardi Gras beads. A conga line danced through the streets of the village with Jairus, his wife, and daughter leading the way.

This morning, we who have been made to feel like outsiders join the party. We are loved in the midst of our gawky adolescence. We are loved whether we are LGBTQ – or even straight. We are loved regardless of our political sensibilities. Jesus wants to spend time with us, whether we are poor or rich, have autism or social anxiety, contend with mental illness or feel enslaved by our addiction. Jesus is for us, his mercy and love abound.

If we listen closely this morning, we who feel at home inside the church, inside the tradition, may even hear Jesus calling us to reach outside, to follow him in extending the boundless love and mercy of God to those who need it most. May it be so.

Resources:

Rolf Jacobson, “Followed by the Lord” in Dear Working Preacher, June 4, 2023. Accessed online at www.workingpreacher.org.

Cleophus LaRue. “Commentary on Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26,” June 11, 2023. Accessed online at www.workingpreacher.org.

Greg Carey. “Commentary on Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26,” June 8, 2008. Accessed online at www.workingpreacher.org.

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

9As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. 10And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. 11When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 12But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

18While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” 19And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. 20Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, 21for she said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” 22Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well. 23When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, 24he said, “Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. 25But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. 26And the report of this spread throughout that district.

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