^{“Ultimately we are all guests, not hosts, in this world that God has made. We are not the ones in control. We are the ones being welcomed. We are the recipients of God’s unfathomable grace. And it is only because of God’s grace that we are able to extend that welcome to others.”}

Sermon Preached: Sunday, July 2, 2023 at Trinity on the Green

Proper 8, Year A (Track 2): Jeremiah 28:5-9 | Psalm 89:1-4,15-18 | Romans 6:12-23 | Matthew 10:40-42

May I speak in the name of God, who made us, and loves us, and walks on this journey with us.

Over the past month I’ve been a part of a number of conversations about how to make Trinity a more welcoming place– some of them completely spontaneous, and some of them planned by groups such as the Pastoral Care Committee, or vestry. These are conversations that are both exciting and vexing. Exciting– because people genuinely want our church to be a loving, welcoming place. But also vexing– because there is no “one size fits all” for what makes people feel welcome. Exciting– because there are many people with resources who have years of experience making Trinity a more welcoming place. Vexing– because these are conversations that people have been having for years, and we keep asking the same questions and, at times, coming up with the same solutions. The work of welcome is a never ending process.

I was intending to leave the topic of welcome on the backburner for a little while, to let the ideas and feelings simmer down into something a bit clearer; a bit more useful– and then I read today’s Gospel passage. There it was– welcome, too obvious a theme to ignore– and I felt the way I sometimes feel when reflecting on Helen Oxenbery’s famous kid’s book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt: “You can’t go over it, you can’t go under it, you’ve got to go through it.”

Well, this morning we are wading through welcome. It is a conversation that is, by no means, new. People have been thinking about welcome since Trinity Church was incorporated as a group of people wanting to worship together three hundred years ago, and we are still talking about it today. I hope that long history isn’t discouraging, but rather a reminder of how important welcome is. How we welcome others isn’t simply a matter of filling up our pews. It isn’t a matter of getting more members so that we can reach our financial goals when we put the budget together. Instead, welcome is, first and foremost, a matter of faith. Welcome is all about how we open our hearts to our neighbors, to God, and to ourselves. Welcome is how we follow Jesus Christ– who sat at tables with sinners and tax collectors, and in doing so showed us the way of our salvation. 

In today’s Gospel passage Jesus says, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” The surprising part about this verse for me is how it begins. Jesus doesn’t start by instructing his disciples to welcome others (though he will later in the passage). Rather, he starts by letting his disciples know that they will be welcomed by others. In other words, the first step to being welcoming is to be a guest yourself. We have to be willing to receive hospitality in order to give it back. In this way, welcome is always a reciprocal thing.

Now I know that it is hard to be a host. I know this firsthand from watching my mother (an excellent host) meticulously dust floorboards and plan recipes and then execute those recipes. It can be a lot of work to welcome others– and in this summer season, I’m sure that some of you are in the thick of it. Nevertheless, I would wager that for some personalities in this congregation it is far more difficult to be welcomed than to welcome others. Sometimes it is far more difficult to let go of control, and to enter into someone else’s world– to enter into someone else’s welcome. It may be a lot less physical work, but it can be more emotional work: to show up just as you are, to an unfamiliar place, and receive whatever welcome is given.

I experienced that reciprocal feeling of welcome this week, as my husband, daughter, and I moved from our apartment into a house. We packed the material stuff of our lives into countless cardboard boxes, watched as it was packed into a truck, and then drove fifteen minutes from New Haven to North Haven to unload it all again. Within 24 hours at our new place we were greeted by several neighbors. One next door neighbor brought a box of pizza from a favorite local place and dropped it off with a six pack of beer and a bottle of wine. Perfect. Another neighbor knocked on our door with fresh eggs from his daughter’s chickens. In both cases we felt so welcome. And also: we were covered in sweat, surrounded by boxes, and unable to offer much in return. This is how welcome goes: we have to be welcomed, in order to welcome others somewhere else down the line. We have to be the new kids on the block before we can extend that welcome to others.

A similar thing applies with church. All of us were new to this place at some point. Some of us may be new to this place today. Take a moment to think about what it was that first made you feel welcome in this place. Was it a face that greeted you at the door? The music that wrapped you in holiness? Was it the building itself, the beautiful architecture and the mysterious sense that people have been worshiping in this place for centuries? Or was it our connection to everything outside of the church– to the city, and the people that live in it, that made you feel welcome in this place? 

Remember that feeling of being welcomed. And if there are any experiences or moments where you felt unwelcomed, remember those too. I’ve come to believe that this is our greatest resource in being welcoming to others: when we remember what it felt like to be a guest ourselves. When we remember what it felt like to be a stranger in a new place– that feeling of vulnerability, and not knowing what would come next. It’s in those vulnerable places that we are most human– and most able to connect with other people, even when we are overwhelmed by the newness of it all. The experience of being welcomed creates what some people call a thin space, a moment in time when we are more connected to God, and the line between this earth and the realm of God feels wonderfully thin.

Ultimately we are all guests, not hosts, in this world that God has made. We are not the ones in control. We are the ones being welcomed. We are the recipients of God’s unfathomable grace. And it is only because of God’s grace that we are able to extend that welcome to others, as much as we can– perhaps by sharing  a cup of cold water with a stranger, as Jesus suggests in our Gospel reading today. Perhaps by feeding a free meal to anyone who wants to join in behind the church on Sunday afternoons at 2pm s perhaps by being the best that we can be on a Sunday morning – recognizing that our “best” will look different from person to person.

This is our calling as Christians: to be welcomed, and to welcome in return. To be welcomed just as we are: not changing ourselves for the sake of some outdated doctrine, but learning instead to love ourselves, just as Jesus loves us, and to be the best possible version of ourselves by following Jesus’ example of love and justice. And having been welcomed, we are called to welcome others in return: not expecting them to be one particular thing, but expecting to be surprised by the ways that God’s light shines through them. Welcome is always a reciprocal action. We are welcomed, and we welcome others— again, and again, and again. If we do it right, it will change us. But rest assured, that change is good, because it comes from God.Now I have to admit that I was tired when I was writing this sermon, after a day of unpacking (or attempting to unpack) boxes, and this is the moment when I ran out of steam. But I felt that this sermon needed some kind of blessing at the end, for all of us who are going out to do that difficult work of being welcomed, and welcoming others in return. Then I realized that the blessing I needed wasn’t written by me, or any canonical saint or theologian throughout the centuries. The blessing I needed, and want to share this morning, was written by one of our youngest members here at Trinity Church on the Green. Last week during Sunday School, our Children, Youth, and Families Minister Angela Arpino invited the kids outside to plant flowers and write welcoming messages in chalk on the front steps. One of of those kids, a saint among us, Violet, wrote this: “God loves you in any shape, color, sex, form, dress, religion. Come as you are not who you pretend to be.” Those words have been long washed away by the rain by now, but I hope you take them with you this week– as a blessing. Come as you are not who you pretend to be. These words are not just for newcomers. They are words for all of us who are being welcomed again into the presence of God– welcomed again and again into deeper love and deeper authenticity. Jesus said, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” Allow yourself to be a guest in the house of God this morning. As members of Trinity’s Spiritual Fellowship so often say, It isn’t our house; it’s God’s house. So come and let’s be faithful guests together, in this world that God has made. Amen.