Good Shepherd United Church of Christ

Welcoming the Stranger:  A Christian Practice
May 9, 2010                             Acts 16: 9-15
Metairie

Will you join me in prayer?  Ever guiding Spirit, open us to the paths you call us to travel.  Open us to the ones with whom you would have us minister.  May we welcome one another with hearts of grace that together we may be hospitable to your purposes.  In Jesus' name we pray.

I struggled long and hard with the sermon title this week- especially with that word "stranger", with its variations of meanings.  However much the word itself, "stranger", could be read as a neutral word, even a positive word, say akin to "novelty" (something new sounds like a delightful gift)) in most languages (well, the ones that I know) the word "stranger" has negative overtones, even threatening connotations.

To categorize someone or some idea as "strange" indicates outside the norm or on the very edge of social expectations.  In Hebrew the word "goyim" means "not-Jew" and this could be just descriptive, but in fact it separates the world into "us" and "them", them outsiders.  Similarly, the word in French "L'etranger" has connotations of one who is an outsider, one who may disturb the local customs.  And in Japanese "gaijin" translated "stranger" is associated with distrust and fearfulness.

There is a word "xenophobic" which means fear of strangers and anthropologists suspect this is a universal human experience.  Strangers make us anxious and sometimes that anxiety translates into suspicion or hostility even when there is no threat.

If Douglas Anders said about a candidate for ministry that he had "strange ideas"  I doubt we would hear that as a recommendation;  more likely that candidate would drop to the bottom of our Search pile.

Welcoming the stranger is thoroughly counter cultural and perhaps even counter-instinctual.  In our times the stranger is still an object of suspicion, rather than a welcome opportunity to encounter something new, learn something new, or perhaps even a gift from God, as in the Bible story of the old folk who entertained angels when they welcomed strangers to supper.  Or in Mather when Jesus tells his disciples that the passport to heaven is your efforts to provide for the stranger who is hungry, homeless, ill, naked or otherwise in need.

In the Book of Acts we trace the disciples and apostles as they spread out from Jerusalem to bring the gospel to strangers.  Indeed the various journeys, the mission of the early church, could be described as one great Spirit-empowered outreach to strangers and travel to strange lands where people have strange customs.

Incidentally, or maybe not so incidentally, we need to notice that "the church" is "out there", according to Acts.  The church does not stay in Jerusalem or Galilee- "the church" is out in the public square, speechmaking at great risk of persecution, like Stephen.  The church is on the road where the Ethiopian eunuch (strange person) is baptized.  An "Ethiopian" was a far-off native of an exotic land, at the edge of the world, a person of dark complexion from North Africa .  And Philip baptizes this stranger and declares the Holy Spirit "unhindered", set loose in the world.

And today's story from Acts, the church is not cooped up in some protective hidey hole where the gathered say a creed, rather "the church" has gone out on a journey from Jerusalem to Samaritan land, beyond that to Gentile territory and now to the borders of Europe .

Where does the Spirit lead them?  To a riverside where women are gathered.  Who are these?  They are a gathering of gentiles "goyim" who Paul and Silas join in conversation, following the call vision which directed them to Macedonia .

And they encounter Lydia , a strange woman indeed.  According to the norms of her day, Lydia was for sure an "uppity woman", independently wealthy, who ran her own successful business and was the authority of her household, all of whom she introduced to the gospel.

For Paul and Silas, respect for women and their roles in God's plans would be no surprise.  After all, the women had been disciples of Jesus since the earliest days and it was the women, chief among them Mary Magdalene, who were first entrusted with the good news of Jesus' resurrection.  It was the Samaritan woman who opened Jesus' vision to go beyond the Jews in his ministry, when she said to him,” Yes, Rabbi, but even the dogs get to eat the crumbs that fall from the Master's table."  So while Paul and Silas were convinced that women were fully included in leadership and prophetic roles of the church, this notion was an affront to conventional Jewish and Roman ideas about women.

Indeed Celsus, the first pagan author to write a book to discredit Christians, alleges that the church "only appeals to the foolish...slaves, women and little children".  Notice that women are classified with other inferior people.  But Lydia was hardly childish or slavish, the conventional notion of a "good woman".  Rather Lydia is an independent operator, a successful entrepreneur and she provided for a household..  According to Roman and Jewish traditional  customs, Lydia was acting like a man.  Very strange and threatening to the status quo.

Let me recap:  According to the Book of Acts the history of the early church was not contained, but rather through the work of the Holy Spirit, disciples and apostles were driven out beyond Jerusalem .  The gospel was uncontained by creed or theological dictum.  Conversions happened unrestricted by set liturgies or set rituals.  Baptisms occurred at the side of the road, at a lakeside gathering of women, spontaneously, not bound up by conventions of the day.

In addition, the social culture of the early Christian Church was likewise unconventional.  As in today's story and contrary to the rigid class structure of the Roman Empire , Christians gathered across socioeconomic and racial and educational barriers.  The Ethiopian eunuch, though a sexual minority, was a sophisticated, wealthy and well educated person.  Lydia , though unconventional in her work, was a person of high status.  So Celsus was both right and wrong in his depiction of the early church.  Yes, people of "low estate" like Mary and Joseph and the humble fishermen disciples originated Christianity- so did various people of wealth like Zaccheus, the tax collector.

My main point about all this is that the early church, the Spirit-empowered church, which rapidly spread through the Roman Empire, was counter cultural, a very strange collection of strangers, who the Holy Spirit called.

Furthermore, when the church becomes captive of conventionality, then it is not very likely to be Spirit led.  Nothing wrong with rituals.  Nothing wrong with favorite hymns.  Nothing wrong with reciting a creed.  But when the conventions become idolatrous or ways to exclude people, then that's a sign that the Holy Spirit is at a distance.

Using the text about Lydia , I would say that the church which excludes women from leadership roles is captive to the conventions of Roman (pagan) society.  The Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church are perfect examples.  Without welcoming "the stranger", and women are the ultimate strangers to Roman Catholic exclusively male ecclesiastical hierarchies, then the church is NOT in synch with the movement of the Holy Spirit, according to the testimony of all four gospels and the book of Acts.

But let's extend the metaphor- any church that excludes other unconventional persons from leadership by a caste system is not in synch with the movement of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is no respecter of boundaries or walls or divisions that keep people out.  The Holy Spirit works her way with these people who are conventionally excluded.

Here is a story on that account.  It used to be that the Southern Baptists did ordain women to ministry, but in the last few decades a very conservative wing of that denomination got control of their seminaries and many church voters.  At one of the seminaries, a very prestigious one, prizes were offered annually for the 3 best sermons.  These sermons were submitted anonymously and judged by well respected academic theologians.  The very year that this seminary would not longer permit women to take preaching classes was the same year that the 3 preaching prizes all went to...guess what?...WOMEN!  True Story!  Evidence that God has a sense of humor and that the Holy Spirit calls and ordains persons that conventions would exclude.

When our own Search Committee filled out the U.C.C. profile to describe Good Shepherd, they had to address the question:  "Is your church a non-discriminatory employer?"  As a consultant to the Search Team I was interested (and ultimately pleased) to see the group tackle that question.  Well, of course, they would welcome a woman minister. (Though a few people have mentioned to me that, at first, they were uncomfortable with the idea of a woman minister).  And then began the "what abouts?"  "What about a person not of Caucasian background?"  Yes, of course, that could be the best person.  We have enjoyed Cheryl Cramer and P.J. Banks and Don Morgan in our pulpit.  We can go there- it's about the best candidate, not about racial or ethnic background.

"What about, what about a person with a physical disability?"  A sight impaired person or a person in a wheelchair?  Well, if that's the best match we might have to do a bit of construction with the chancel or the pulpit, perhaps.  We can do that.  Sure we can.  Yes we can.

From the ministry and model of Jesus, from the example and practice of the early church, and sometimes even now, dear friends, the Holy Spirit propels the gospel through conventional barriers to bring the stranger to communion.  From the ministry and model of Jesus, the Perfector of our Faith, and from the example and practice of the formation of the early church, those who were strangers have become friends.

Being that we are normal human beings, we are inclined to be somewhat "xenophobic", anxious when we encounter the stranger.  This anxiety sometimes leads to sin, that sin would be setting up walls to inclusion on account of any God given characteristics like gender, like race, like various abnormalities that are used to exclude.

The gospel of Jesus Chris is absolutely open to anyone who seeks inclusion.  The same goes for leadership in the church., even for persons who are socially marginal for one reason or another.  Like Lydia , that uppity woman, who against all convention talk a significant economic household role, one reserved for men.

We don't know if Lydia was a biological mother, only that she presided over a household.  We don't know, but we doubt that Mary and Martha, where Jesus went for hospitality and who, according to some scholarship, may well have been the transmitters of many stories we find in the Gospel of John, we doubt that they were biological mothers.  Ditto for Mary Magdalene.

So, on this Sunday when we celebrate Mother's Day, we celebrate the mothers of the church.  We celebrate those in Biblical accounts, those among the saints, and those who sit in the pews.  We celebrate biological mothers, adoptive mothers, informal mothers who might never get called "Mom".  Especially we celebrate those courageous mothers endorsed by the Holy Spirit to step beyond conventional boundaries to welcome the stranger.

Our assignment as Christians on the journey is to cross conventional boundaries, to provide hospitality to strangers as if they were family.  Because by our baptism we ourselves in all our particularity and occasional oddities, we ourselves have been welcomed into the new family, the extended family of Christ. Amen