Welcoming Jesus Extravagantly

Welcoming Jesus Extravagantly

Acts 2:14a, 36-41
(new--listen to the spoken word here)

I begin with a hard question for progressive Christians: 

Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?

Some of you are squirming in your seats at  hearing this phrase from Plymouth’s pulpit.

And some of you are, no doubt, waiting for me to reject it straight out as bad theology.

Many of us (me included!) are very uncomfortable with the ways this question has been used

to bully and manipulate anyone who doesn’t have the “right answer” –

the “right answer” being whatever the questioner believes.

But let’s hold on a moment and try to put aside our previous encounters with this question,

and think about it: Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?

I’ll begin with a few of my theological problems with the phrase.

“Personal”—I challenge the idea of a personal savior because it gives the sense of

individual salvation. And I believe that God is bigger than be personally;

that my way of living interconnects with all that is, all of creation;

and my salvation is not possible outside of this interrelationship.

            “Lord”—most of you are familiar with my critique of patriarchal, hierarchal language

to define aspects of our faith, particularly when the specific images (like King and Lord)

are no longer experienced in our lived reality as they were in biblical times.

Kings and Lords simply don’t hold sway over our life and death in the 21^st century.

            “Savior”—savior from what? If you mean a fiery hell, then we can stop there,

because that doesn’t fit into my theology of a loving God.

So there are some of mine, and you may have other critiques…

but now that they’re out on the table, I’d like to think again about this question:

Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?

            “Personal”—do I, myself, choose to follow the Christ? Do I attempt to live my life according to his

teachings as I understand them? And does my interrelationship with the world reflect that?

“Lord”—Is Christ the one I look to through and beyond all my actions? Is Christ holding me

accountable and pushing me to do the hard work? And if I live as if Christ is Lord,

then do I live as if government is not lord, the rich or successful are not lord,

my finances or my comfort or my security are not lord?—Jesus is Lord.

            “Savior”—Is Christ the Way by which I find new life, wholeness?

Is Christ’s message of “the Kingdom of God on earth”—

God’s Realm or God’s Shalom here in this world—

a hope for new life, wholeness, salvation for all creation?

Yes: Jesus Christ is my personal Lord and Savior despite my many lingual and theological critiques;

I can reconcile personal and Lord and Savior, and I can say yes!

But have I accepted him? Now, there is the word that I cannot reconcile this morning: accept.

It’s too weak! Have I extravagantly welcomed him? Well now, there’s a question!

~~~~~

Hopefully you’ve noticed that staff and Church Council and committees have been trying to live into the theme of extravagant welcome this year.  This is the first of a 3-year theme intentionally reflecting Plymouth’s mission statement of inviting, transforming & sending. As church, we’re exploring different meanings of extravagant welcome, and how we live it out here and throughout our days.

Hal and I are also moving through the lectionary texts in the book of Acts as we celebrate the season of Eastertide—all the way up to Pentecost.

And this morning in Acts, we hear Peter preaching to a crowd of

Jewish foreigners who’ve traveled to the Holy City for one of the pilgrimage festivals.

Some of them had been present for the Passover events leading up to Jesus’ execution,

but very likely they didn’t know more of the story than maybe Jesus’ name.

So Peter decides to tell them about it:

“Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that

God has made [this Jesus] both Lord and Messiah.”

And after Peter was finishing expounding on the life and death and resurrection of this man,

the crowd responded with an extravagant welcome of Jesus into their lives—

they were baptized, beginning a new life in Christ.

Unlike those pilgrims in 1^st century Jerusalem, we’ve already heard Peter’s testimony—

as well as those of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Paul.

As well as Francis of Assisi, Hildegard of Bingen, Mother Teresa and countless others who’ve extravagantly welcomed Christ into their lives in meaningful and lasting ways.

How do we? What does it look like for us non-saints to extravagantly welcome Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior? What does the extravagant welcome look like?

~~~~~

One of the rules of the Benedictine religious community is to “welcome everyone as Christ.”[i]

But in order to know how to welcome others as Christ,

don’t we first have to know how to welcome Christ?

Or: might one truly reflect the other?

Saint Benedict’s reasoning for this particular rule he based on Matthew 25: Jesus says,

“When the Son of Man comes into his glory… [he will say],

‘I was hungry and you gave me food,

I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,

I was a stranger and you welcomed me,

I was naked and you gave me clothing,

I was sick and you took care of me,

I was in prison and you visited me.’

Then the righteous will answer him,  ‘When?!’…

And the king will answer them,

‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it

to one of the least of these who are members of my family,

you did it to me.’”[ii]

An extravagant welcome of Christ means relationship.

There is no personal relationship with Jesus Christ without personal relationship with all.

And where did Jesus get his notion of this relationship?

In the Hebrew Scriptures, in Jesus’ holy texts, there is a word sedeq.

Sedeq, translated, means right relation between humans

and the relational covenant between God and people.[iii]

For short, sedeq is most often translated as righteousness, but it is most fully right relationship.

Where is sedeq visible?

In Micah 6:8—“He has told you, O mortal, what is good;

and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice,

and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

And in Amos 5:24—“But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” 

Sedeq! Right relationship with all.  

This is an extravagant welcome of Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior!

Justice activist and theologian Rhea Miller writes of Jesus, “He was not pre-occupied with rules; he never asked people to be right. Instead, drawing on his own cultural heritage, he called people to be faithful, faithful to relationships and the Relationship.”[iv]

That question we so much love to hate, can be a question—not of being right—but of being in right relationship with Christ and all.  Have you welcomed him?

And Ram Dass writes, “‘In India when people meet and part they often say, “Namaste,” which means:

I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides; I honor the place in you of love, of light, of truth, of peace. I honor the place in you where if you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us…. “Namaste.”’[v]

Saint Benedict saw the same thing, as he noted in his ancient rule: “By a bow of the head or by a complete prostration…Christ is to be adored and welcomed in [each guest].”[vi]

Having heard the testimonies of diverse voices throughout history,

we have the opportunity to testify as well.

I believe there is truth and deep faithfulness in asking ourselves

this question that other Christians have had the courage to ask us:

Have you extravagantly welcomed Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?

And how does that manifest in your life?

            How are you in right relationship

with your family, with your beloved, with your neighbors?

            How are you in right relationship

with the stranger you pass on the street,

with the stranger who shares your pew?

            How are you in right relationship

with the suffering man at Poudre Valley Hospital,

with a homeless woman in Library Park,

with girls wanting education in Angola,

with the citizens of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya?

And how have we sometimes fallen short in those relationships?

Theologian Carter Heyward offers this advice: “We ought probably to meet this Jesus much in the way we meet poetry or music—with all the heart and soul we can bring.”[vii]

That’s what Peter’s preaching did;

that’s what our saints and remembered ones did.

That’s what we’re called to do: bring heart and soul.

Sometimes welcoming Jesus so extravagantly can seem overwhelming—

with all the injustices we’re called to help right

and all the pain we’re asked to help heal.

And then there are moments when that extravagant welcome emanates so naturally and softly from us—

like meeting poetry and music.

So I leave you with my tweaked version of the question with which I began :

Have you extravagantly welcomed

 Jesus Christ

as your personal Lord and Savior?

Amen.

---

[i] Joan Chittister, The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages (New York: Crossroad, 1996), 140.

[ii] Matthew 25:31a, 35-40.

[iii] Carter Heyward, Saving Jesus from Those Who Are Right: Rethinking What it Means to Be Christian (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 13.

[iv] Rhea Miller, Cloudhand, Clenched Fist: Chaos, Crisis, and the Emergence of Community as quoted in Heyward, 12.

[v] Chittister, 141.

[vi] Chittister, 141.

[vii] Heyward, 5.