Christ Our Host
September 23, 2007
Jeff Taylor
Text:
II Corinthians 5:14-21
Revelation 21:1-5, 22-27
Isaiah 60:1-5
Visit with me, as I recall it, a small apartment in 1990s greater Los Angeles: too many pieces of furniture for its size, a small kitchenette, a dining area with one of those early 70s faux-wood extending tables with the super heavy metal frame; and everywhere you look: mail, piles and piles of mail, almost all of it unopened. Lorina was a capable professional person, a single woman about my age, a lawyer with degrees from Harvard and Stanford, and a judge on the state’s air quality control board. She was a very active member of Pasadena Mennonite church and associated in various ways with other church communities too. She was active in politics, in a campus choir, in church choir, in tutoring poor children, and in several other groups. She was a very competent person, but Lorina just didn’t have an organized home – clean, yes, but not tidy.
Going back further in time, we visit a home in mid-1970s suburban St. Catharines (is there an “urban” St. Catharines?). The front entrance of the Doerksen home was dazzlingly lit by a handsome chandelier, the carpets always seemed new and the furniture was impeccably matched and arranged. The spacious wood dining room table was laden with food that was as beautifully presented as the rest of the home. There was no unopened mail. Mrs. Doerksen — she insisted I call her Lottie even though I am her daughter’s age – did not work outside the home, but she did raise three children in the home. How did she gain such a tidiness advantage over Lorina? Who is the better host? Lorina or Lottie?
It was as we left one of Lorina’s many gatherings of theologians, lawyers, scientists, Star Trek enthusiasts, and choral geeks, that Doreen turned to me and said, ”Lorina has the gift of hospitality.” Really? Can a person entirely lacking the gift of spatial organization with no matching china have the gift of hospitality? As usual, Doreen was absolutely right: Lorina had and has an amazing gift of hospitality; that is, of welcoming others into her presence and bringing others into the presence of each other. You see, Lorina had a bold determination not to let imperfection prevent her from extending an invitation. Her approach to making others feel comfortable is to err on the side of making less fuss over them, not more. After all, who of us is comfortable feeling we are burdening others? Why would we, then, make others uncomfortable by appearing to be burdened by them?
Lorina, much like my wife Doreen, is also an excellent interviewer, she has a long list of comfortably unobtrusive questions at the ready for anyone she doesn’t know. And her gatherings often include people she doesn’t know as well as those who do not yet know each other.
I never felt out of place decked out in torn jeans, nearly bottomless running shoes, and my dingy blue-collar social graces in John and Lottie Doerksen’s pristine home. They never allowed me to believe that I belonged anywhere at that moment but right there with them. The Doerksens, Dave and Elsie Thiessen, and others at Grantham Mennonite Brethren church took me, a gangly, socially awkward, heavily acne-ed, unchurchified teenager with no spiritual parents, into their homes and lives. They managed, I would think only with considerable effort, to look deeply past whatever was out of place to see the seeker’s soul and made a place for me in their homes, lives, and church.
I, in turn, made some efforts to acculturate as well. Mercifully, God seemed to have rather suddenly and profoundly unwrapped a musical gift in my life that may have helped with that process. Going to church choir practices for a full year before I was old enough to join just to listen probably made an impression on some, as did years thereafter of singing in Niagara area Sangerfesten, plowing my way through the gothic texts of many German songs, including Die Friendensfuhrst. And I worked hard to acculturate myself in other ways to become culturally “Russian Mennonite”. It wasn’t easy: eating all that fleisch piroshki and zwieback, farmer sausage and vareniki, rollkuchen and erboese, and those darned porzselky every new year’s eve – but I endured it for the sake of the unity of the church. They and I were doing cross cultural integration, even having grown up in the same small city.
Cultural identity runs deep in all of us, regardless of our awareness of that. We humans are pack animals to the core. Our ancient ancestors survived not be tooth and claw, but by hunting cooperatively. And today there is little that we truly do alone. Even those who seek to remove themselves from society (perhaps for better spiritual focus) almost always organize themselves into communities of withdrawers. The less gregarious among us may often be found awash in the words of others, secluded in the company of a favorite author’s thoughts. And when we encounter someone on the street who truly has become disassociated, even that person will often take shelter in conversation with imaginary companions. But before you decide someone you pass on the street who is talking to themselves is mentally ill, you should probably just quickly check for one of those “Bluetooth” cell phone things in their ear.
People are pack animals; we need each other. This is just as the creator intended it from the beginning when God spoke to him or her self and said, “let us make humans in our image,” so male and female God created them. We seem to have a declaration of God’s own internal relationalness. Is this how we are made in God’s image, that we are relational creatures? Of course, we’re not the only relational creatures, but the text itself does seem to tie our relationalness directly to God’s. And so we join God as co-creators to help create or at least prepare for this new world where the Gentiles come to the rising of the Lord, bringing blessing to the house of Isra
el.
This is not just about being nice, educated, tolerant, liberal democrats; it is about the purpose of the church, to draw all people back to the garden of fellowship with their creator where they may mutually bless one another. This is the great ministry of reconciliation that Christ is leaving in our hands. We are simply not fully the church of Christ if we are divided by illusory differences, whether cultural or individual.
This call to build the church of God worldwide used to mean the Christians had to go to far-off lands to bring the good news. And whatever mistakes were made in 500 years of Western church missional activity, and there were many, the one mistake they didn’t make was to not go. And while there remain many reasons meet our fellow humans everywhere on God’s earth; there is no need for Toronto’s Christians to go anywhere other than out their doors in order to find people of hundreds of cultural and religious groups. With just under half or the residents of our city having been born outside of Canada, it is no news to any of you that the world is here at our doorstep.
We are arguably the world’s leading city in cultural, linguistic, and religious pluralism. Here I want to talk particularly to those under 30, and especially to the teens in our midst. It is you who are going to lead the world in learning how to live peaceably in a global community right here at our door. You are world leaders in working this out, not my generation. I was in grade 8 before the first black boy came to my school. In high school I knew one boy from Pakistan. Today 1/3 of my students are from Pakistan alone. You are the first generation of people anywhere ever in the world to grow up living and learning with such a variety of people from such a variety of cultures. You have the opportunity no one else has ever had to show the rest of us how to live in peace with such differences. That is magnificent challenge and will be a marvelous accomplishment, a gift
to the whole planet.
But the invitation of Christ goes far, far beyond “tolerance of diversity”: the call of Christ is that, for now on, we just absolutely refuse to look at people the way we have been. Just as people at first thought Jesus was nothing special, and now we know differently, so anyone who comes seeking Christ is something new and amazing to us. Stereotypes will not suffice. Even a national policy of “multiculturalism” is insufficient for the church because such a construct does not require us to see one another beyond the cultural garb, to see one another as individuals as well, and it does not require us to mutually integrate in ways that require us to trust each other. The church is ultimately not a multicultural organization, but a supercultural organism. That we might encourage newcomers to Canada to retain elements of their cultural distinctiveness, or that we have attained the political sophistication to appreciate the musical montage of tongues on the TTC — that we are global communitarians isn’t enough. Though these would all be good steps for our world, and would surely bring the creator some delight, or at least relief; yet Christ makes an even deeper interdependency possible.
If it is true that God loves people from Iran, that he loves Persianness, does God not likewise love the Anglo-Celt? Isn’t being Irish as good as being Iranian? Isn’t being a Schwartzentruber as good as being a Johnston? A Martens as good as a Kim? If God loves us for who we are culturally, then why do I as a member of the host culture have to change or modify who I am culturally any more than the newcomer?
And there is the problem: we ask the wrong question from the start because we misperceive the entire relationship from the start. For I am not a host except that Christ was host before me; for this is not my land, nor that of the British Empire, or the French crown, nor (and I say this with respect) is it the land of the first Asian Canadians who came here 20 or 30 thousand years ago: this is God’s land. The whole earth is the Lord’s, and we are the people of his pasture. Everything else is geopolitical squabbling, selfishness, and accident of history. So I do not invite others into “my” culture, just as I do not welcome others into “my” church. The earth is the Lord’s, the church is Christ’s. Jesus received us and we simply continue to welcome each other into the presence of Christ and his people. Yes, our cultural identities can run deeper than food, clothing, and language. They run to the core of some of our understandings about what it is to be human, to be a community. There are significant differences in cultural understandings and these can cause frustration and we can hurt each other unawares. We’ve all been the Greek widows and the Hebrew food distributors at times. But we’ve also been the wise ones chosen to be deacons too. We never need to let our imperfection deter us from extending an invitation. And frankly, this just is not an option any longer. No urban church in North America can long hope to remain healthy, vibrant, relevant, or even viable, if it does not become a community open to the blessings of those who come at first as strangers. (Every close friend was at one time a stranger).
Nor will a welcome extended as the power host suffice. A welcome that does not involve mutual bending does not acknowledge Jesus as the prime host. Christ’s church has no dominant culture. If we must, as a practical matter, agree to worship primarily in one language or another (must we?), then those closest to that language will naturally want to acquiesce in some other way: perhaps how meals are shared, or what food to eat, when to eat it, what music to play and sing, how to manage church governance, how and when to include children in the life of the church, how to invest the church’s financial resources, how to call people to ministry: all of these modes of operation are opportunities for sharing power. Some of this is threatening, requiring us to show tremendous faith in each other and in Christ whose church we are. The very process of divesting ourselves of power (if we are in the dominant culture at that moment), needs careful management.
Who are the wise ones we may choose to help us continue to manage the transitions from monocultural churches to multi-cultural and perhaps one day post-cultural church life. What are the practical steps we can take now? Can we seek to entrust more of our sisters and people from non-dominant cultures with leadership in our church? I have been advocating for
4 years to nominate a sister to the position of vice-chair/chair apparent, submitting lists of excellent women to do the job; and I know that the gift discernment committee has taken my plea seriously but, when I last asked, had found no takers. Is there something about the way we manage our church life at the board level that feels unwelcoming to more than half our congregation? Does the term “board” itself carry an “old boys” ethos with it? Is the term inherently bor-ing? Could we actively ask new Mennonites to serve our church, or are we suspicious. Could we actively send newcomers to conferences, if not as delegates then as observers on our dime? Could we create a team to care for the needs of newcomers: people specifically trained to actively notice who the first time and returning newcomers are? To help them get connected. To make sure they soon get a directory so they can call the contact people we list on our information page? To gradually extend “adherents” privileges to newcomers, asking if they want a mail folder, or to be added to the church email list. Are we actively integrating newcomers in all facets of our church life? Or are we a little afraid of how things may change? Actually, change annoys me most of the time, it takes me a while to get a place figured out and if the target keeps moving I get frustrated. I would want my church to be rather stable and predictable, just for my own comfort level. The problem is, TUMC is not “my” church, it is Christ’s.
I’m not comfortable when men are sexually intimate with each other. It bothers me for many reasons that we won’t take time for right now, but it does. But the last time I heard anyone speak from behind this pulpit it was a gay man who spoke wisdom as from Christ, a man whose actions speak the gospel of Christ more clearly than anything I can ever claim to have done. [referring to talk by Jim Loney, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Sept. 20, 2007] In the same statement of welcome that we print in our information sheet and post on our website where we say we welcome people of various cultures, we also say we welcome people regardless of sexual orientation. I’m pretty sure we’re not all agreed about what that welcome aught to look like. I’m not sure I know within myself what it aught to look like. But we need to extend a welcome, while we keep listening for what the Spirit is saying to the churches (and not just ours, BTW). But, my discomfort or yours is never a sufficient reason not to extend a full-throated invitation to those seeking the presence of Christ. How Christ’s presence should be ministered we will not all agree on. Some would want to offer an unqualified affirmation, others will have some qualifications, and others might wish to offer a ministry of “healing,” if you will. Can such divergent ways of approaching gay and lesbian people be sustained in the same congregation? They are all present in the worldwide church and in the Mennonite church globally and locally. We certainly don’t yet have this all figured out. But we never need to let the imperfection of our house be a deterrent to extending an invitation into Christ’s house.
May our welcome be broad and deep and genuine; and may Christ bless you each as you, with your own God-given gifts, do this ministry of reconciliation.