SETTING THE CONTEXT

The Book of James was written to people of faith who were prospering in some ways, but who were still going through growing pains as disciples. James confronts, diagnoses and deals with the areas where they are misbelieving and misbehaving.ⁱ He challenges them, and us, to bear the fruit of faith in our daily relationships and lives.

Read James 3:13-18

Today we continue our reading in the Gospel of Mark. Last week we read about Jesus predicting for the first time his trial, death and resurrection to the disciples. He told them that if they wish to be his disciples they must take up their cross and follow him. In other words, they must live self-sacrificially. After this, Mark tells us that Jesus went up on a mountain where he was transfigured and where his disciples heard God tell them “Listen to him!” Old attitudes and habits are hard to change even with that high-powered prompting. The disciples were still not thinking with his wisdom, they were still not getting this life of self-sacrifice for they were having an argument about who is "number one" on the way home.

Read Mark 9:30-37

THE SERMON

Earlier this week, I was visiting someone in a Phoenix hospital. In the restroom, I ran into two young women in Cardinal Cheerleader uniforms. In the elevator, I ran into the Cardinal mascot. All the signs pointed to the possibility that there was an honored guest nearby.

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus warns his disciples then and now to be careful of signs because God’s wisdom is not like human wisdom. Some of the signs that the world tells us indicate an honored guest, like celebrity fame, limousines, power, position and possessions, these are not the signs that God uses to indicate an honored guest. Jesus has to keep working on his disciples to see life in a different way, that was true then and it continues to be true now. As the disciples argue about who’s the greatest, Jesus goes back to the lesson he just tried to teach them. He tries to teach them this different way of thinking that is the wisdom from God. This time the lesson is about true greatness. He said, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then to drive the lesson home, he takes a little child and says, “Here is your honored guest! When you show hospitality to one such as this child in my name, you show hospitality to me and when you show hospitality to me, you show it to God, the one who sent me.” This is very counter to conventional wisdom. As anthropologist Bruce Malina says, “Children had little status in the community or within the family. A minor child was on a par with a slave, and only after reaching maturity (something that fewer than 40% of children did for 60% died by the age of sixteen) only then was he or she a free person who could inherit the family estate.”ⁱⁱ While most families treasured their children they would hardly have been considered honored guests. Jesus challenged the disciples to open their minds to a new understanding of hospitality and a new understanding of significance.

How do we live out God’s wisdom here and now? How do we apply Christ’s teaching to our church? What might opening our minds look like? I’d like to tell you the Tale of Two Churches. Both churches received the same message on the same day, “You are going to receive an honored guest, so be prepared.” They each did what most churches would do in this situation, they formed a committee. Church number one met and started talking about how to recognize the honored guest, what he might look like and I say “he” because they thought it would surely be a man. Maybe he would have a family with him, but he would certainly be well dressed perhaps in a nice car. They thought his English would be perfect and his grammar would be just right. There would just be an air about him that you could recognize that he was the honored guest. So as they prepared their greeters, they taught them to look for this honored guest. They were to welcome him with a warm, honest, friendly welcome, escort him into the sanctuary, introduce him to some people sitting around him and make sure he got invited to a Wednesday evening dinner or one of their classes and studies. They were to help him feel all the hospitality the church had to offer. So everyone was trained and ready.

In the second church, the committee started with some Bible study. What does the Scripture say about hospitality and honored guests? They read from Deuteronomy 10:19 “You shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” They read a number of other passages including the passage from Mark today. They talked about how they would recognize the honored guest. It would probably be a stranger, someone they didn’t know, and someone who was traveling about looking for a spiritual home, perhaps it would be “one of the least of these brothers and sisters” (see Matthew 25:31-46) or maybe a small child like in our Mark passage. Someone was reading a novel and in the novel the monks were taught that whenever a stranger arrived they were to treat that person as if they were Christ. So the committee decided that they would treat all visitors as if he or she were the honored guest. They thought that would be the safest and best approach then they wouldn’t miss the one who was coming. So they trained their greeters who were stationed at every door to welcome any visitor with a warm, honest, friendly welcome, escort them into the sanctuary, introduce them to some people sitting around them and make sure they got invited to a Wednesday evening dinner or one of their classes and studies. They were to help them feel all the hospitality the church had to offer. Everyone was trained and ready. Let’s see what happened.

(Show the film clip Tale of Two Churches starting where narrator says there was a young mother in that city….ⁱⁱⁱ)

Which church would you return to? (By the way, we have plastic boxes for wiggly children with crayons and coloring pages in the back. And take heart for sometimes the wiggliest children get called to be pastors when they grow up, like me!) The church exists to make disciples for Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.^iv We at PUMC say we do that here by “helping people to know Christ and fulfilling the Gospel in our church, community and world.”^v The former Director of Evangelism for our national church, Rev. Roger Swanson, (one of the boys we saw in last week’s film clip) says that we help people move from being a skeptic or a seeker to being an active, fruitful participant in the reign of God by welcoming them, helping them belong to our community and by helping them grow in discipleship. In our welcoming ministries, we reach out to the stranger and receive them as an honored guest.^vi In our belonging ministries, we help the guest become part of the community and help them move from being a guest to being one of the church family. In our discipling ministries, through teaching, prayer, fellowship, sharing, and service the new person is taught about and given practice in this wisdom of God, in this new way of living as a Christ-follower. And as they and we are learning and practicing together, they are sent out to serve as a fruit-bearing disciple. Hospitality like we saw in the second church creates a safe environment in which this happens. By acting as if every person is the honored guest that Christ sent, by having an open house, by opening God’s house, we provide the environment where welcoming, belonging and discipling flourish. Isn’t that what we want for each other? Isn’t that what we want for our church? It requires us to open our minds to the wisdom of God. Rev. Swanson says, “There is no more effective witness to the universal offer of God’s grace through Jesus Christ than a congregation offering a genuine welcome to persons whomever and wherever they are.”^vii Open your minds; you might just discover the honored guest already in your midst. Amen.

Sermon delivered by Rev. Nancy Cushman on September 20, 2009.