Proper 8A 2020 – my final sermon at Trinity Church Newtown, CT June 28, 2020
Jeremiah 28:5-9; Ps. 89:1-4, 15-18; Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10:40-42
In January 2017, the Vestry of Trinity Church affirmed my three-year appointment from Bishop Ian to serve as your Priest in Charge. As a means of introducing myself to you, I recorded a short video on my phone which was played when the announcement was made public. Then after saying good-bye to St. Andrew’s in Arlington, Virginia, Joe and I, along with our dog Ruby, drove to Newtown and moved into the beautifully refurbished rectory on Main Street.
Fresh flowers, rooster hand towels, and basic food necessities were left in the kitchen as a means of welcome. To further welcome us, you hosted a St. Patrick’s Meet and Greet on March 17 and the following Sunday Bishop Ian came and welcomed me more formally into ministry at Trinity Church. We were off and running!
I remember several weeks later, once the warmer weather arrived, putting on my vestments and proceeding to the back of the church before worship one Sunday. I then open the red doors onto Main Street and stand there on the front steps of Trinity ready to greet people coming in for worship. It isn’t long before a parishioner curiously pokes her head out the door, apprehensively asking what I am doing. “I’m welcoming people to worship!” I eagerly exclaim. This seems to be a novel idea for her, maybe a “Southern thing” that by the look on her face might not bode so well for New Englanders. Nonetheless, I give it a try. And I’m glad I did because after a while opening those red doors onto Main Street became the norm, literally and figuratively.
“Welcome to Trinity Church!” we say every Sunday. And we mean it—not just in the simple, basic acts of genuine welcome of one another, also to those unknown to us, even now living with COVID-19 to those worshipping with us virtually, we say “welcome.” What we’re talking about and what I think our gospel is asking of us, is compassionate welcome. The kind of welcome that encourages us to respect the dignity of every human being, to be open, to share what we have, to live faithfully as disciples and apostles, to be loving and merciful to all.
Compassionate welcome means putting the grace-filled hospitality of God’s love at the center of our identity as the church. For example, in the past three years we have welcomed into the household of God these twelve beloveds as the newly baptized: Greta, Zelda, Connor, Myles, Nova, Marta, Joseph, Harlan, Quinten, Ayla, Emilia and William. And over the course of these years Trinity has opened her doors to all in the community—Christians, Muslims, Jews, atheists, agnostics, for services of remembrance of the Sandy Hook School shooting, immigration reform, refugee resettlement, and gun control advocacy. You’ve been an outward and visible sign that Black Lives Matter here, that impoverished young people in El Salvador deserve more, that hungry people in Danbury must be fed and the homeless in New Haven cared for by you.
And yet the question before us this morning is how might we become more responsive and supportive of oppressed people to accomplish much needed social reform? How can we radically change our world to be more in line with God’s loving ways? What needs to change in us so that our practice of compassionate welcome also includes repentance, turning from comfortable practices that do not welcome others, repenting of positions of privilege, acknowledging our sin of white supremacy.
Regardless of the fact that in Paul’s day slavery was inevitable, our reading from Romans this morning cannot help but evoke in us the urgent need to repent of the 300 years of the sin and evil of slavery known in this country. For Paul understands well that the very reason God liberates us from sin is so that we may “become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which (we are) entrusted.” Throughout this chapter in Romans, Paul is encouraging Christians to walk the walk, to live for Christ, knowing they are dead to sin. And yet, this is a daily choice each of us makes—to no longer be instruments/participants of wickedness/oppression/inequality instead to become members/practitioners/instruments of righteousness, justice and peace. Through baptism into Christ, God has given us the ability, the grace, the courage, the strength to do the right thing.
And yet, we still must choose whether or not we will do it. Our actions speak louder than words. Our actions reveal our true allegiance and character. And there’s no shortage of the tangible and visible ways people are choosing to be agents of change for the good of all. Young people are standing up and speaking truth to power. Whole communities are taking decisive actions to dismantle racism—removing statues that are hurtful, legislating reform, peacefully protesting against injustice, working for change and freedom for all. Generations of white people are finally waking up to the fact that there’s work we must do in order to become anti-racists.
Hearts are being opened.
Minds are being changed.
Barriers are being broken down.
And there’s more work to be done.
There’s a need for more truth-telling so that reconciliation, healing and forgiveness can happen. For, I believe, truth-seeking is a process of dialogue, mutual understanding, not your truth vs. their truth but our truth; both/and thinking; multiple perspectives; curiosity about differences and consensus building. Discerning truth, seeking God’s will, begins on our knees, in a posture of humility. Such times of discernment and seeking after truth compel us to invite God into our discernment. To listen more deeply than we have ever listened before, to pray that we may get far enough out of the way so that God’s truth will find its way into our hearts, into our lives, into our church, into our community and into our world.
Our reading from Jeremiah today invites us to become bold instruments of radical truth telling and radical hope, both of which are at the heart of God’s radical dream for Trinity Church. Are you ready to be discover God’s will for Trinity, to find what is true for Trinity today, truth that will carry Trinity into tomorrow? Are you ready to have your heart broken open by compassionate welcome? Are you ready to lose yourself for the sake of love?
Perhaps you’ve seen the movie Shadowlands, a semi-fictionalized account of C.S. Lewis’s meeting and eventually marrying the American Joy Gresham. As the movie begins, Lewis is a safely circumspect, closed-off “religious” man, molded by routine and his own certainty about religious truths. His life is safe, controlled and predictable. Gradually he takes the risk of being hospitable to this somewhat eccentric American woman and her son. He moves from offering a cup of tea in a hotel, to tea and conversation in his home, to an invitation to Christmas dinner and a week’s lodging, and eventually to an agreement to offer citizenship through a surface marriage. With each new offering of hospitality, Lewis himself is transformed. Eventually he finds a deep love, one that he never knew from his books and bounded life of safety.
What makes this story of hospitality considerably more than a romantic story is that as Lewis discovers his love for Joy, they also discover her terminal cancer. The joy that comes from his hospitality mirrors the discipleship Jesus so fully describes in our gospel, for it comes with a cost. When we open our hearts in compassionate welcome to others, we run the risk of heart break, grief and loss. But as C.S. Lewis discovers, the reward for such risk-taking is being enfolded into the ever-loving arms of Jesus. The circle of discipleship and compassionate welcome ever expanding.
No doubt about it, there is a cost of being a church that welcomes all with compassion and kindness. Just like with relationship commitments your lives will be interrupted. You will be asked to make sacrifices. You will need to think of others, often putting their needs before your own. Your ways of thinking will be challenged…your patience tried, your long-held beliefs dismantled. As the contemporary writer Joan Chittister puts it “Hospitality means we take people into the space that is our lives and our minds and our hearts and our work and our efforts. Hospitality is the way we come out of ourselves.” Being agents of God’s compassionate welcome and being the presence of Christ is what it means to be followers of Jesus. For as you reach out, open the doors of your hearts and welcome others as well as your new rector into Trinity Church, you welcome Christ as well.
I’m so grateful for the ways you welcomed me and Joe into Trinity Church three and a half years ago. We will not forget your kindness, your compassion, your faithfulness, your goodness and we will miss you! May God’s steadfast love be with you now and forever. Amen.
Sermon sources: my 2011 and 2017 sermons; also commentary in Feasting on the Word for all three readings.