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Sermon preached at Zion Episcopal Church, Washington NC
Sunday December 4th, 2022
The Reverend Alan Neale
“Oh, you’re welcome!”
Romans 15:7 “Welcome one another, as God in Christ has welcomed you to the glory of God.”
Message Translation: “So reach out and welcome one another to God’s glory. Jesus did it; now you do it!”
In 1975 and 1979, the BBC broadcast the hilarious situation comedy, “Fawlty Towers”. The series is set in Fawlty Towers, a fictional hotel in the seaside town of Torquay on the English Riviera. The plots centre on the tense, rude and put-upon owner Basil Fawlty (Cleese). The idea of the show came from Cleese after he stayed at the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, Devon in 1970 where he encountered the eccentric hotel owner Donald Sinclair. Stuffy and snobbish, Sinclair treated guests as though they were a hindrance to his running of the hotel (a waitress who worked for him stated “it was as if he didn’t want the guests to be there”).
In 1979 the series broadcast an episode entitled “The Psychiatrist”. Here is part of the script:
At one point a terse and tense conversation takes place between Basil and his wife Sybil…
Sybil Fawlty : I have had it up to here with you.
Basil Fawlty : How, dear?
Sybil Fawlty : You never get it right, do you? The guests – you’re either crawling all over them, licking their boots, or spitting poison at them like some Benzedrine puff adder.
Basil Fawlty : Just trying to enjoy myself, dear.
And only yesterday, we were watching the new television mystery series (Three Pines), based on books written by Louise Penny. The crabby old poet, Ruth Zardo, tells Gamache, a homicide investigator with Canada’s Sûreté police force, probing the murder of a hated neighbor, “This village is the most welcoming place on Earth. But if you don’t belong here, Three Pines will find you out and chase you one way or another.”
“Welcome, one another, as God in Christ has welcomed you to the glory of God”.
Welcome: the arena, the model, the purpose.
“Welcome one another…” – the arena. You know, it only occurred to me yesterday while thinking about this verse, that I realized Paul was writing to the church in Rome, to a gathering of Christians. I have always thought that this verse primarily spoke to the attitude of the church towards guests; but no… Paul urges the Romans to work out, to practice, to exercise their welcome with one another before they should feel confident in “practicing on the unknowing guest”. I have heard of churches that almost totally ignore the guest, as if they need somehow earn recognition; but then, I have heard of churches that almost throttle the guest with bonhomie, sign-up lists and police-like interrogations. To such churches Sybil Fawlty would say (as she said to her husband Basil) – “you never get it right, do you?”. Every church should pray to grow, but needs first pray to be a place where love and welcome, kindness and acceptance is practiced. “Welcome” commands St. Paul – a present imperative, never fully achieved, always constantly attempted.
Welcome one another as God in Christ has welcomed you…” – the model. The model before us as we welcome one another is of God in Christ welcoming us and all people. Jesus welcomed the despised tax-collector, the adulterous woman, the outcast foreigner, the untouchable lepers. He welcomed a motley crew to become his disciples, and even in their desertion and betrayal, he welcomed them. The word “welcome”, Jesus shows, means to “take to myself, to take aside and give time, to welcome”. Sometimes it is translated by the somewhat tame and lame word “accept”; we can accept someone and pass on by, but to welcome is to stay and listen and share.
Welcome one another as God in Christ has welcome you to the glory of God…” the purpose. When we welcome in the pattern of Christ we bring praise and glory to God, we bring joy and happiness to the divine heart. We have the power to evoke, arouse, conjure the very presence of God. As we welcome others, as we share with them our own experience of the welcome of God, so we establish the Kingdom of God and open wide portals into the divine presence.
Isaiah today shares with us the vision of the peaceable kingdom, the kingdom of welcome. In this kingdom mere stumps and roots, though often overlooked, are welcomed as signs of the Lord’s presence. In this kingdom wolf welcomes and lives with lamb, leopard welcomes and lies down with the lamb.
In today’s Gospel, the established and traditional elders refused to welcome John the Baptist with his weird diet and outré clothing. How would we welcome a John the Baptist at Zion, would we be ready to welcome challenge and change, even confrontation?
In my parish letter this week, I mentioned that Merriam-Webster Dictionary said the most used word in 2022 was… gas-lighting, the practice of psychological manipulation. This wicked practice is exercised by those who not only fear truth but create their own truth. In 2023 the church everywhere, all who name themselves Christians, will fight for truth, though unpalatable, to be welcomed and not manipulated so that God may be praised and His glory evoked.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, our energy, our commitment, determination to be welcoming is empowered as we rejoice and know that we have been welcomed already by God. Our welcome is a done deal (look at the Cross), past perfect tense. It is pathetically and chronically painful for those who feel unwelcomed to offer welcome to others.
I finish with a true story. While serving as Rector in Philadelphia it became my custom to say, just before the Communion, “Wherever you are on your spiritual journey, you are welcome at this the Lord’s table.” One Christmas Eve a couple came for the first time to the church for many years; they (especially the woman) had been grievously hurt by another denomination and were wary of church and ministers and the like. As Communion drew close, the man pointed out to his friend the words I was about to say. She read them, paused and said, “But that’s not meant for me”. After a while they became part of the church putting behind them what had hurt and damaged them.
God’s welcome… but that’s not meant for me! God’s heart must ache, and so should ours and move us to be always a welcoming community for one another and our guests. AMEN