Welcoming Christ
Sermon
Moving At The Speed Of Light
Second Lesson Sermons For Advent/Christmas/Epiphany
For his sixth grade year his family moved to the new community. They made careful preparations for the husky, freckle-faced redhead to fit in smoothly. They had meetings with teachers and principal, and practiced the route to the very school doors he would enter on the first day. "Right here will be lists of the classes with the teachers' names and students. Come to these doors and find your name on a list and go to that class."
On the big day, all went as planned. Many students had gathered by the time he arrived. Standing in line impatiently, they held new pencil boxes and pads of paper. Up to the front of the line he went to the lists; first one list, then the next, then the next. Shyly retiring to the end of the line, face blotchy red with tears, he hopes no one will notice.
"You new here?" a blonde-haired boy asks.
He nods, wiping his sniffling nose on his sleeve.
"Whose class are you in?"
Heart pounding, he shrugs and hangs his head.
"Didn't you look at the lists!?"
"I'm not on there, my name isn't on any of them."
The bell rings, the doors swing open, the stream of students carrying pencil boxes move into the hallway.
"I'll stay with you and help you until we find your class. C'mon, I think I know someone who can help." So began my first day of school many years ago in my new town.
No Room
An often assumed but unrecorded statement in Luke's Nativity narrative imagines an unnamed, unidentified person saying to the Holy Family, "There is no room in the inn."
It is a gripping moment in the story of Jesus' life because even as he is preparing to enter this world, some are rolling up the welcome mat, taking his name from the list, deleting his place on the guest registry, and it is a powerful moment to us because we also know the voice which says, "No Room."
It is a few weeks before Christmas.
I stand in a long check-out line in a store which advertises discount prices. Listening to Christmas songs mostly audible above the din, we inch forward. Finally it is my turn. As item after item sweeps before the scanner, I wonder if the prices rapidly displayed on the screen correspond to the discount I thought I was to pay. The magic total is announced and I reach for my checkbook, at which time the man behind me raises his voice. I turn, surprised, to see a tomato-red face as if it is ready to burst under close-cropped blond hair. As his arms flail, I expect I will be victim of assault.
"This is a cash only line," he bellows, pointing to the sign.
I have clearly committed the unpardonable sin against heaven and earth. In a moment an army of angels will descend upon me and carry me to a place worthy of only the worst offenders. Now the music is more easily heard because mostly the store has become silent and I know not what to do. Store security has arrived and the manager who grasps my cart, loads all of my purchases in it, takes from the clerk my check-out tape and says quietly, "Come with me, sir.
I will help you over here."
We hear the voice which says, "No Room," and with Mary and Joseph are escorted to the place out back where the animals live.
When he was in college Lyndon Johnson fell in love with a tall, blond 21-year-old with dark blue eyes. Carol Davis played the violin and wrote poetry, loved the out-of-doors, and liked politics. They dreamed together on summer evenings of the future and began to talk of marriage. Sensing that her parents had a right to know how serious they were, Carol arranged to have Lyndon come home with her for dinner. The Davises were among the most respected families in Kerrville, Texas. A wealthy banker, Mr. Davis was an extreme conservative in politics. So, on one June evening, dinner began with an anxious Lyndon attempting small talk, discussing his travels and college activities. "But the atmosphere, which was cold to begin with, just got colder and colder as I talked. I realized there was nothing I could do or say that night that would be considered right. Carol's father hated everything about me."
Numb and angry, Johnson left dinner that night determined to wash his hands of the whole family, Carol included. And, excepting three instances, he never saw her again.1
We hear the voice which says "No Room," and sometimes love shatters and treasures are lost. But Paul says, "Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you to the glory of God." Welcome as Christ welcomes, but how does Christ welcome and who does Christ welcome? Christ welcomes the child, the paralyzed one lowered through the roof by his friends, the thief on the cross, the shepherds, the kings, the mother who gives nourishment, the father who provides protection, the lame, the leper, one who climbs a tree so he can see, a soldier whose daughter is dying, one who nets fish for a living, another who collects taxes. Welcome as Christ welcomes.
In this season we prepare to welcome Christ, and he prepares to welcome us.
Welcoming Grace
In our experience "no vacancy" happens. We sometimes hear the words "no room," but we also hear a different voice. "Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be open to you" (Matthew 7:7). Lewis Smedes writes: "Why do we call grace amazing? Grace is amazing because it works against the grain of common sense. Hard-nosed common sense will tell you that you are too wrong to meet the standards of a Holy God; pardoning grace tells you that it's all right in spite of so much in you that is wrong. Realistic common sense tells you that you are too weak, too harassed, too human to change for the better; grace gives you power to send you on the way to being a better person."2
We can welcome him because he first welcomed us.
This past summer a group of radio control model airplane pilots had a public demonstration of their skills: flying aerial acrobatics hundreds of feet in the air, explaining the techniques of flying, and building the model planes. The highlight of the day was when the children in the crowd were invited to become "pilots."
With an instructor by their side and with special dual controls, the children flew the planes high into the sky -- two mistakes high. This implied that there was little a child could do to place a plane in irretrievable danger (beyond an expert instructor's ability to recover) if it was high enough. And it was almost a perfect rule that day, until a child and an instructor crashed the club plane, the one which had been purchased by club members so that young people could learn the sport without incurring at first the expense of a plane.
Club members didn't seem to mind much. After all this is what the club plane is for: to bring along another generation in the sport they love.
Risking what you have to share your joy. A welcoming grace which creates free space, welcoming space for those who will come. Thus, welcoming grace is the hospitality of which Henri Nouwen speaks when he writes, "Hospitality, therefore, means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend...."3
And Paul instructs: Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you. So two travelers offered lodging to the stranger who had joined them on the road to Emmaus, and he made himself known to them as their Savior and Lord in the breaking of bread (Luke 24:13-35). When No Vacancy or No Room is converted into welcoming, hospitable grace, "fearful strangers can become guests revealing to their hosts the promise they are carrying with them." Welcoming grace diminishes the distinction between guest and host and allows sharing of gifts precious.4
Welcome Brings Glory To God
A couple of years ago on a Saturday morning at 8:30 a.m., shattered car window glass was everywhere and the back seat empty. A shocked Julia Whalen, fresh from an early morning hair appointment, stared in disbelief. Her wedding dress purchased eight months before had been stolen from the back seat of her parents' borrowed car and the wedding was hours away. "I was hysterical, crying, 'My dress has been stolen! We'll have to cancel the wedding!' "
"We'll find you a new dress," a friend reassured. A sympathetic security guard heard the commotion and called several stores until he found a store detective at Marshall Fields and asked if he could open the store early so a young lady could shop for a dress and get to her wedding.
"My heart really went out to her. I wanted to do whatever I could do to help," the detective said, "Yeah. She will be in Marshall Fields shopping for a dress. Send her on up." Several Fields employees were waiting for her when she arrived. They didn't have a bridal department so they found an off-white sleeveless formal in the hard to find size two. Then off to the shoe department they went while her friends went in search of pantyhose. Surprisingly calm, Julia finally blitzed the cosmetics counter because the thieves, along with the dress, had taken even the bridal make-up kit.
Arriving at the church for photos at ten, the bride told the pastor of her adventure. In the service the minister reminded the couple of obstacles already faced and overcome. "No matter what kind of obstacle you encounter, you can always overcome it with faith, family, and friends."5
Paul says welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you to the Glory of God until the God of hope fills you with all joy and peace in believing. Sometimes in a very dark hour, we welcome one another, even the stranger, in ways which bring hope, peace, and joy.
Multiply The Welcome
There were shepherds seated on the hillside keeping watch over their flocks by night. And an angel of the Lord came to them and the Glory of the Lord shone around them and they were filled with fear. The angel said, "Be not afraid for today I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people. For to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord." And there was with the angel a multiplication of voices singing Glory to God in the highest and peace among men with whom he is pleased. And the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go to the place and see this thing that the Lord has made known to us." And they saw there our welcoming Christ: a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. And they saw all these things as it had been told them.
Then the shepherds returned to their flocks praising God for the things they had heard and seen.
When Christ comes, we offer to him our humble welcome, and we can welcome him because he first welcomes us. It is he who provides welcoming grace. It is he, by his lack of reserve in welcoming us who are undeserving, who sets celestial voices singing ... And it is he who welcomes us and those we would be slow to welcome. It is our welcoming Christ who comes, welcoming a child, a leper, a thief, a shepherd, a king, and welcoming you, welcoming me.
____________
1. Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1976), pp. 56-58.
2. Lewis Smedes, How Can It Be All Right When Everything Is All Wrong (New York: Harper and Row, 1982), pp. 25, 26.
3. Henri J. M. Nouwen, Reaching Out (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1975), p. 51
4. Ibid., p. 47.
5. Marshall Hood, "Wedding Gown Thief Couldn't Keep Her From Getting To The Church On Time," The Columbus Dispatch, June 18, 1997, p. 1D.
On the big day, all went as planned. Many students had gathered by the time he arrived. Standing in line impatiently, they held new pencil boxes and pads of paper. Up to the front of the line he went to the lists; first one list, then the next, then the next. Shyly retiring to the end of the line, face blotchy red with tears, he hopes no one will notice.
"You new here?" a blonde-haired boy asks.
He nods, wiping his sniffling nose on his sleeve.
"Whose class are you in?"
Heart pounding, he shrugs and hangs his head.
"Didn't you look at the lists!?"
"I'm not on there, my name isn't on any of them."
The bell rings, the doors swing open, the stream of students carrying pencil boxes move into the hallway.
"I'll stay with you and help you until we find your class. C'mon, I think I know someone who can help." So began my first day of school many years ago in my new town.
No Room
An often assumed but unrecorded statement in Luke's Nativity narrative imagines an unnamed, unidentified person saying to the Holy Family, "There is no room in the inn."
It is a gripping moment in the story of Jesus' life because even as he is preparing to enter this world, some are rolling up the welcome mat, taking his name from the list, deleting his place on the guest registry, and it is a powerful moment to us because we also know the voice which says, "No Room."
It is a few weeks before Christmas.
I stand in a long check-out line in a store which advertises discount prices. Listening to Christmas songs mostly audible above the din, we inch forward. Finally it is my turn. As item after item sweeps before the scanner, I wonder if the prices rapidly displayed on the screen correspond to the discount I thought I was to pay. The magic total is announced and I reach for my checkbook, at which time the man behind me raises his voice. I turn, surprised, to see a tomato-red face as if it is ready to burst under close-cropped blond hair. As his arms flail, I expect I will be victim of assault.
"This is a cash only line," he bellows, pointing to the sign.
I have clearly committed the unpardonable sin against heaven and earth. In a moment an army of angels will descend upon me and carry me to a place worthy of only the worst offenders. Now the music is more easily heard because mostly the store has become silent and I know not what to do. Store security has arrived and the manager who grasps my cart, loads all of my purchases in it, takes from the clerk my check-out tape and says quietly, "Come with me, sir.
I will help you over here."
We hear the voice which says, "No Room," and with Mary and Joseph are escorted to the place out back where the animals live.
When he was in college Lyndon Johnson fell in love with a tall, blond 21-year-old with dark blue eyes. Carol Davis played the violin and wrote poetry, loved the out-of-doors, and liked politics. They dreamed together on summer evenings of the future and began to talk of marriage. Sensing that her parents had a right to know how serious they were, Carol arranged to have Lyndon come home with her for dinner. The Davises were among the most respected families in Kerrville, Texas. A wealthy banker, Mr. Davis was an extreme conservative in politics. So, on one June evening, dinner began with an anxious Lyndon attempting small talk, discussing his travels and college activities. "But the atmosphere, which was cold to begin with, just got colder and colder as I talked. I realized there was nothing I could do or say that night that would be considered right. Carol's father hated everything about me."
Numb and angry, Johnson left dinner that night determined to wash his hands of the whole family, Carol included. And, excepting three instances, he never saw her again.1
We hear the voice which says "No Room," and sometimes love shatters and treasures are lost. But Paul says, "Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you to the glory of God." Welcome as Christ welcomes, but how does Christ welcome and who does Christ welcome? Christ welcomes the child, the paralyzed one lowered through the roof by his friends, the thief on the cross, the shepherds, the kings, the mother who gives nourishment, the father who provides protection, the lame, the leper, one who climbs a tree so he can see, a soldier whose daughter is dying, one who nets fish for a living, another who collects taxes. Welcome as Christ welcomes.
In this season we prepare to welcome Christ, and he prepares to welcome us.
Welcoming Grace
In our experience "no vacancy" happens. We sometimes hear the words "no room," but we also hear a different voice. "Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be open to you" (Matthew 7:7). Lewis Smedes writes: "Why do we call grace amazing? Grace is amazing because it works against the grain of common sense. Hard-nosed common sense will tell you that you are too wrong to meet the standards of a Holy God; pardoning grace tells you that it's all right in spite of so much in you that is wrong. Realistic common sense tells you that you are too weak, too harassed, too human to change for the better; grace gives you power to send you on the way to being a better person."2
We can welcome him because he first welcomed us.
This past summer a group of radio control model airplane pilots had a public demonstration of their skills: flying aerial acrobatics hundreds of feet in the air, explaining the techniques of flying, and building the model planes. The highlight of the day was when the children in the crowd were invited to become "pilots."
With an instructor by their side and with special dual controls, the children flew the planes high into the sky -- two mistakes high. This implied that there was little a child could do to place a plane in irretrievable danger (beyond an expert instructor's ability to recover) if it was high enough. And it was almost a perfect rule that day, until a child and an instructor crashed the club plane, the one which had been purchased by club members so that young people could learn the sport without incurring at first the expense of a plane.
Club members didn't seem to mind much. After all this is what the club plane is for: to bring along another generation in the sport they love.
Risking what you have to share your joy. A welcoming grace which creates free space, welcoming space for those who will come. Thus, welcoming grace is the hospitality of which Henri Nouwen speaks when he writes, "Hospitality, therefore, means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend...."3
And Paul instructs: Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you. So two travelers offered lodging to the stranger who had joined them on the road to Emmaus, and he made himself known to them as their Savior and Lord in the breaking of bread (Luke 24:13-35). When No Vacancy or No Room is converted into welcoming, hospitable grace, "fearful strangers can become guests revealing to their hosts the promise they are carrying with them." Welcoming grace diminishes the distinction between guest and host and allows sharing of gifts precious.4
Welcome Brings Glory To God
A couple of years ago on a Saturday morning at 8:30 a.m., shattered car window glass was everywhere and the back seat empty. A shocked Julia Whalen, fresh from an early morning hair appointment, stared in disbelief. Her wedding dress purchased eight months before had been stolen from the back seat of her parents' borrowed car and the wedding was hours away. "I was hysterical, crying, 'My dress has been stolen! We'll have to cancel the wedding!' "
"We'll find you a new dress," a friend reassured. A sympathetic security guard heard the commotion and called several stores until he found a store detective at Marshall Fields and asked if he could open the store early so a young lady could shop for a dress and get to her wedding.
"My heart really went out to her. I wanted to do whatever I could do to help," the detective said, "Yeah. She will be in Marshall Fields shopping for a dress. Send her on up." Several Fields employees were waiting for her when she arrived. They didn't have a bridal department so they found an off-white sleeveless formal in the hard to find size two. Then off to the shoe department they went while her friends went in search of pantyhose. Surprisingly calm, Julia finally blitzed the cosmetics counter because the thieves, along with the dress, had taken even the bridal make-up kit.
Arriving at the church for photos at ten, the bride told the pastor of her adventure. In the service the minister reminded the couple of obstacles already faced and overcome. "No matter what kind of obstacle you encounter, you can always overcome it with faith, family, and friends."5
Paul says welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you to the Glory of God until the God of hope fills you with all joy and peace in believing. Sometimes in a very dark hour, we welcome one another, even the stranger, in ways which bring hope, peace, and joy.
Multiply The Welcome
There were shepherds seated on the hillside keeping watch over their flocks by night. And an angel of the Lord came to them and the Glory of the Lord shone around them and they were filled with fear. The angel said, "Be not afraid for today I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people. For to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord." And there was with the angel a multiplication of voices singing Glory to God in the highest and peace among men with whom he is pleased. And the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go to the place and see this thing that the Lord has made known to us." And they saw there our welcoming Christ: a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. And they saw all these things as it had been told them.
Then the shepherds returned to their flocks praising God for the things they had heard and seen.
When Christ comes, we offer to him our humble welcome, and we can welcome him because he first welcomes us. It is he who provides welcoming grace. It is he, by his lack of reserve in welcoming us who are undeserving, who sets celestial voices singing ... And it is he who welcomes us and those we would be slow to welcome. It is our welcoming Christ who comes, welcoming a child, a leper, a thief, a shepherd, a king, and welcoming you, welcoming me.
____________
1. Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1976), pp. 56-58.
2. Lewis Smedes, How Can It Be All Right When Everything Is All Wrong (New York: Harper and Row, 1982), pp. 25, 26.
3. Henri J. M. Nouwen, Reaching Out (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1975), p. 51
4. Ibid., p. 47.
5. Marshall Hood, "Wedding Gown Thief Couldn't Keep Her From Getting To The Church On Time," The Columbus Dispatch, June 18, 1997, p. 1D.
