Mary,  More Radical and Challenging Than We Iimagine

Vanilla theologies portray Mary as a passive and obedient “yes” person to God. Such theologies glorify her passive and subordinate role to a male God. Mary’s subordination as a woman has been abusively misapplied by a number of churches to keep women subordinate to men and docile to male church leaders. But there have been other consequences beside religious male domination. Mary has been socially and theologically constructed as a model of women, mother and virgin, an ideal woman that no woman can ever achieve. For centuries, Christian values around Mary claimed that women should not know “carnal pleasure.” She became the chaste icon of sexual morality within a heterosexual economy of grace that damages women as well gender-variant and non-heterosexual. Mary experienced no carnal pleasure in conceiving Jesus and had no labor pains during the birth of Jesus. Christian constructions of Mary supported heterosexuality while denigrating sexuality altogether by holding her as a “perpetual Virgin” and denigrating alternative sexualities and sexuality outside of marriage. Thus, Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, and a few Protestant churches use Mary for an entrenched sexual moralism. The Spanish and Portuguese conquerors forced indigenous peoples to adopt the sexual mores of Catholic Europe under the banner of Mary, the Virgin Mother. Mary became the sacred representation of how women are to live and subordinate themselves to men, church, and society. She became an icon of a heterosexual economy of subordination of women and indigenous peoples to a vision of imperial Christianity.

In recent decades, there has been a tug of war over the image of Mary– between fundamentalist Christians holding to the above values and opponents who want to recover Mary’s original voice as a real flesh and blood peasant woman in history. I naturally am inclined to the latter position. I think Mary has an affinity to women, gender variant, the poor, the migrants and refugees, folks who are different religiously and anyone falling into a category of “other”, including nonhuman animals on Earth. She is the voice of resistance at this season. Her voice this season may echo ours as we read and listen anew to her story and the words of her song of resistance and envisioning a new world.

Mary comes from a poor family, and she is a teenager when the angel Gabriel announces the offer from God to bear a child. And she accepts the offer without hesitation. God complexifies her life beyond anything she can imagine. And Mary responds with a song of praise, and it is this Canticle (Luke 1:45-55) that I want to focus my Christmas reflections to celebrate Mary as queer model for ourselves this Christmas.

My soul magnifies your greatness, O God, And my spirit rejoices in you, my Savior.

God is bigger than we can imagine, and our God is not bound by male structures, heterosexist power, structures of economic greed, and the fossil fuel lords. God has the ability to surprise Mary and us by coloring outside the lines of heterosexuality and stepping outside of religious boundaries. Mary welcomes a vocation to stigma and otherness, and she takes seriously that God will work through her otherness to transform herself and her world through her child.
Mary’s soul has humbly accepted the invitation of unprecedented grace to carry God’s child, and her acceptance magnifies the greatness of God. Her bodily response over time actually makes God more than God was before. There is something new happening in the life of God: God will embody God’s self in her womb and take on human flesh. And the incarnate one will be born in a cave with nonhuman animals and placed into a manger, a feeding trough. And her spirit rejoices because ultimately it is this transformation within God that will save her and others whose voices have been silenced. .

For you have looked with favor upon your lowly servant, and from this day forward, all generations will call me blessed.

She is from a poor peasant family, a nobody in Palestine and in the powerful Roman Empire. She becomes controversial in her own family and is at risk of rejection and perhaps even stoning to death because she accepted God’s offer and became pregnant while betrothed. I am sure in the midst of her explanations to parents, family, and to Joseph her betrothed that consequences of her acceptance to bear the child of God were not seen as a blessing. Mary carries the stigma of otherness, a pregnant unwed mother from a poor family, and we understand the stigma of otherness among Christian Pharisees.

She made a decision for God, and that choice places her at risk. Elizabeth reminds Mary of Gabriel’s earlier message, “God is with you. Blessed are you among women.” The young teenager comes to see that God is working through her stigma and otherness to transform herself. She accepts her vocation to bear God’s holy word with a glad heart and the challenges from her parents and Jewish society..

Mary queers the patriarchal economy that understands women’s bodies as not belonging to themselves. She is free to answer as an equal to God’s invitation to bear Jesus; she has ownership of her body and remains an active agent in making a decision for herself and a decision to accept God’s offer. But she models for us authentic queer discipleship, for she accepts her otherness not as a burden but as a grace.

God and Mary break the patriarchal and exclusive economy of grace, for Jesus is conceived without male agency and outside of marriage by the Holy Spirit overshadowing her. These two points are backgrounded by many churches in the idealization of the Virgin Mary and Christmas. Both Judaism and early Christianity perceived the Holy Spirit as the feminine principle in God. Some early Christians genderized the Holy Spirit male rather than female because of the implications of same-sex conceptualization of Jesus. Yet if God’s Christ was conceived in a non-heterosexual manner and born out of wedlock, what does this say about narrow regimes of Christian marriage and sexual morality? What does it say to the many who are excluded from heterocentric economies of grace?

For you, the Almighty have done great things for me, and holy is your Name. Your mercy reaches from age to age for those who fear you. You have shown strength with your arm; you have scattered the proud in their conceit; you have deposed the mighty from their thrones and raised the lowly to high places.

After accepting God’s invitation to bear the messiah, Mary prophetically sings how God will upset the social world, bringing down the mighty and elevating the lowly. God’s action will literally queer the world by turning it upside down, for Mary will bear a child who will challenge the world, disrupting the social world and conventional notions of God. God will disrupt through her pregnancy the notion of compulsory heterosexuality as the only means to salvation. God scatters religious bigots who pride themselves upon their excluive privilege or even their Christian privilege but exclude the infinite diversity of sexualities, gender variances, or other religious traditions found in their midst. God disrupts fundamentalist Christians who promote that there is no salvation outside of Christianity as they fire-bomb mosques and harass women in their Islamic garb. .
You have filled the hungry with good things, while you have sent the rich away empty. You have come to the aid of Israel your servant, mindful of your mercy—the promise you made to our ancestors—to Sarah and Abraham and their descendants forever.

Mary’s song is a radical proclamation of good news for women, indigenous peoples, undocumented, those outside of heteronormativity, and for the Earth and the community of life, for she now praises God for turning the world upside down. She praises God who has promised compassionate solidarity with those who suffer from personal, political, racial, and environmental injustice.
Mary’s vocation is a thoroughly queer vocation; she stands with the underside, the marginal, and the outsiders—those yet unimagined as outside
A twelve or thirteen year girl lifts our eyesight to the profound realization that God breaks boundaries of male power and agency. God breaks the boundaries religious people build. Mary conceives Jesus outside of marriage and religious values. She realizes the grace of otherness and how God uses her otherness to transform her and the world.

But moments of grace generate other moments. Author Nick Page writes, “The story of Jesus’ birth is not one of exclusion, but inclusion…Joseph’s relatives made a place for Jesus in their heart of their household. They did not shun Mary, even though her status would have been suspect and even shameful (carrying an illegitimate child) they brought her inside. They made room for Jesus in the heart of a peasant’s home.”

Mary is not the passive but a pregnant virgin, chosen to bear God’s child, not as constructed by many Christians as the bearer of Christian sexual morality. The real teenage Mary bursts into song–singing about the end of human oppression and religious tyranny in the name of God. She anticipates the powerful will be brought down, the hungry fed, and the rich sent away empty. God will turn the heterosexist world upside down by the baby growing inside her womb.

Mary anticipates that God’s promise of Jesus’ birth will continue to turn the world upside down and that those who are excluded will have their rightful places in God’s reign. As Jesus preached and challenged religious bigotry and oppression, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!’ But Jesus said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the Word of God and obey it!’” (Luke 11: 27-28)

Blessed are we who take the model of Mary’s courage and otherness to thank God for our diversities as transformational grace, for she truly became a breath of heaven when in all her humanity boldly said “yes” to God’s grace of Jesus the Christ. . But blessed are we who hear God’s Word and live it with the boldness and courage of Mary. May heaven continue to breathe through us that queer grace that Mary carried to birth and transform countless lives.

This Christmas I finally share this youtube video with you: “Breath of Heaven.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icilgwdHiZg

This morning’s gospel we hear two stories connected together. The first is Jesus’ criticism of religious scribes, perhaps Pharisees or some functionaries of the Temple. They wear long robes, demand they be greeted with respect, and have the best seats of honor in the synagogue or at a banquet. Jesus say, “They devour widow’s houses, and for the sake of appearance say long prayers.” Hear Jesus’ criticism, “They will receive the greater condemnation.” In the first story, Jesus addresses religious hypocrisy.

Over the years, I have heard so many sermons on how Jesus praises the poor widow who gave her two copper coins worth a penny to the treasury over the many rich people who gave large sums. Her gift is insignificant but to God her contribution is valued because God has seen her heart and what she has contributed. She has given all her life savings.

But I want to come back to the story of the widow’s contribution. There is another way to view this story.

The Didache, meaning Teaching (of the Twelve Apostles) a Christian text from the 2nd century CE, gives some criteria for determining the legitimacy of a genuine religious person:

Now about the apostles and prophets: Act in line with gospel precept. Welcome every apostles on arriving, as if he were the Lord. But he must not stay beyond one day, In case of necessity, however, the next day too. If he stays three days, he is a false prophet. On departing, an apostle must not accept anything save sufficient food to carry him till his next lodging. If he asks for money, he is a false prophet.

The term apostle is loosely used in the 2nd century for one “sent on a mission.” Paul was not one of the twelve apostles, and yet he called himself an apostle. Prophets and apostles were held esteem, and they were welcomed by various communities, and they were accorded leadership roles in Christian worship. They were also worthy of financial support in the form of assistance.
But the Didache was very aware that Jesus instructed his disciples to go out two by two and they should take nothing for their journey, except a mere staff– no bread, no bag, no money in their belt.

What would happen today if we evaluated televangelists as authentic Christians from this text? I can think of the Georgia Minister of a megachurch who maintained that he needed a 65 million dollar check, or Joel Olstein who has an 11 million dollar home. Or the hundreds of millions of dollars each year Pat Robertson makes from the millions who watch his Christian Broadcast Network and contribute to him from their fixed incomes. “You should see the thousands of social-security checks that are sent over to CBN, (Christian Broadcast Network)” one former employee told Newsweek. The Christian Broadcast Network receives notation of nearly $300 million dollars, and those donations do not go to feed the poor and homeless.

Or how Catholic German Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst spend $42 million renovating his episcopal residence and spending $20,000 alone a bathtub? 1.1 million dollars went for landscaping and fountains. The bishop of bling was removed by Pope Francis I.

Or two ministers at the former MCC church, Glory Tabernacle Christian Center where the Pastor has BMW and the Associate Pastor a Mercedes? The ostentatiousness of religious leaders is certainly problematic to me but also to Jesus. Do religious leaders need more money, plush residences, or high-priced cars than the people are called to serve? How many the above examples and others would fail the criteria of the Didache instructions on dealing with itinerant prophets and apostles?

Christian communities have valued spiritual leaders through the millennia, and there have been leaders and churches that have grown wealthy from the business of religion, selling salvation.

Conscious of these Christian leaders, I look at the story of the widow’s contribution, and I see another conclusion from Jesus that has often been overlooked by years of sermons on this passage. We have made Christianity a salvation religion, forgetting the valuable message of Jesus has abut God’s companionship of empowerment (reign of God)?

Jesus points how the Temple administration preys upon the piety of the vulnerable and the poor, extracting monies that the poor cannot afford to pay. Jesus commends the devotional piety of the poor of giving their all to God. This is commendable for the genuine gift of the poor, but what Jesus condemns is the pressure of the Temple or church administration “devouring” the meager savings of the poor. They pressure the poor to contribute not what they can afford but on what they need to survive upon.

Let me read how this scripture is sadly alive:

A viewer wrote Pat Robertson that she and her husband have been tithing for many years, as they “both love the Lord and give willingly and our tithe is over 10 percent.”

But she noted that, “we never have an extra penny after our monthly bills are paid.”

“Our old car just broke down and we had to borrow money to fix it,” she said. “We both need dental work, but we can’t afford it. I constantly have to use our credit card to pay for medical needs … What could we be doing wrong?”

Robertson showed zero concern for the fact that she could barely pay her medical bills, because the obvious solution is for her to “ask God to show you some ways of making money.”

“There are many ways of making money, even at 80 years old. You know, you can get on the telephone and people are hiring … there are all kinds of things you can do. For example, you may have a bunch of junk lying around in your garage that you can sell on eBay, and get some money that way,” he said.

He then chided her for complaining about her bills. http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/pat_robertson_tells_80_year_old_tithing

Here is an example of what Jesus describes a religious person “who devours the houses of widows.”

The above examples illustrate how the religion of Jesus confronted the greed of religious leaders, taking advantage of the poor then, and still now the church leaders of our time pressure people with the notion of salvation. The salvation business of churches has long been used to oppress people, to mute silence of the very poor over the wealthy, and the wealthy and the religious leaders conspire to get wealthy. Maybe Robertson should send some of his personal wealth to help the 80 year old woman or television empire of 300 million dollars could spare some to help viewers. But no, he tells her to get a job at 80 years old so she can pay tithes to him in the name of Jesus. What would Jesus do? Overturn the Christian Broadcast Network as the new Temple. .

Now do not get me wrong, I do think clergy and church leaders should be paid a fair and equitable wage. It is the exploitation and the outrageous salaries and extravagant living that Jesus would object.

In our own society, capitalism has been made into a religion that the very wealthy export. It has impacted Christianity in the negative.

Let me give you a couple of examples: Prosperity Christianity preaches a gospel about tithing and giving more, and that God will reward true faith with financial blessings. This preached by many evangelists. What happens when something bad happens? You lack true faith. Poor people live on the streets because they have lacked true faith. This is double-victimization of the poor. True faith is rewarded with great financial blessings. Televangelists model extravagant wealth selling this idea of prosperity intertwined with salvation.

Other versions are: The more generous you give, the more God will reward you in heaven. I consider this another version of the medieval practice of selling indulgences. It plays on the fears of pious.

This practice of pressuring vulnerable people for monies is the practice that Jesus is critical in today’s scripture. I read today’s gospel as an instruction to his disciples. Jesus warns his disciples with the widow’s giving beyond anything she afford. On another occasion, he bluntly says, “You cannot serve God and mammon,” the Aramaic word for money. He is right. Greed and the gospel cannot co-exist.

I read recently about a group of 40 Catholic bishops on November 16, 1965 while the Vatican II was being held. They gathered in an ancient Christian underground basilica, the catacombs of St. Flavia Domitilla to celebrate a mass. The church marked the location where two Roman soldiers were executed for converting to Christianity, and it connects to 10 miles of catacombs under Rome. One of the concerns of Pope John the XXIII was to make service of the poor a key part of revitalization of the Catholic Church. I loved John XXIII.

Some 40 progressive bishops and cardinals from Europe and Latin America world gathered secretly and signed a commitment, named the “Pact of the Catacombs.” They committed themselves to “try to live according to the ordinary manner of our people in all that concerns housing, food, means of transport, and related matters.” They vowed to renounce fancy vestment, personal possessions and titles. They were commitment to make the church of the poor for the poor. The manifesto read:

We will seek collaborators in ministry so that we can be animators according to the Spirit rather than dominators according to the world; we will try to make ourselves as humanly present and welcoming as possible; and we will show ourselves to be open to all, no matter what their beliefs. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pact-of-the-catacombs_563930c3e4b0307f2cab1c23

One of the signers was one of my college heroes, Dom Helder Camara, the Brazilian Archbishop of the slums of Recife. I was introduced to his writings in 1968 in a philosophy class taught by a French atheist and existentialist philosopher. Archbishop Camara deeply felt the gospel call of Jesus to live in service to care for the poor and the homeless. Archbishop Camara once said, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.” It is okay to feed the poor, but you step on dangerous ground when you ask “why are they poor?” The wealthy are committed to keep the minimum wage to sub standard as they make even greater wealth. It depends on keeping people poor.

The bishops who signed the Pact of Catacombs kept this underground for years. They feared that openness would result in being labeled as communists by wealthy Catholics and bishops. It was dangerous to mention this document in the Catholic Church or in public until Francis was elected pope. One signatories of the document was a former Archbishop of Buenos Aires, who assassinated by the military and wealthy for his commitment to the poor.

Francis has lived the dream of the Pact of the Catacombs, a “poor church, for the poor.” Before he was elected pope, he as cardinal and Archbishop of Buenos Aires did not have a car and driver as most Catholic bishops, he used public transportation. He lived in an apartment and did his own cooking. Next to rare among Catholic bishops.

Francis has shunned the extravagant papal garments or the red Prada shoes of Benedict XVI. He decided not to live in the elegant papal apartment in the Vatican but lives in a room in the Vatican guesthouse. He has open the Vatican for 40 homeless men from Rome to eat, bathe, and be sheltered. This is a first in Vatican history.

Jesus’ instruction to care for the poor is one of the central practices of the Christian church. Beware of the greedy religious leaders who “devour the homes of widows.”

I gave a 45 minute sermon today, the longest ever for me off the top of my head. Here is the sermon Intended to give.

Today, we celebrate the 43rd anniversary as a church. Eleven and half years ago I came to the Valley church. The actual numbers of members were then 30 something. The facility was not kept up, and I observed layers of dust and pizza stains on the banners in the sanctuary. One clergy, interested in the position of pastor, attended a Sunday service quietly while the search for pastor, he later told me the bathrooms on the street side were “terrifying.” He declined to apply. I later learned that the MCC denominational office in West Hollywood had written off the church and gave this church a year or two of surviving.

Here we are eleven and half years later. Like most Protestant denominational churches our size, we are principally an older congregation. And our numbers decrease through attritions: people moving because of jobs or the expensive cost of living in California; folks becoming more house-bound as they age or through illness. The MCC denomination from which we originated has shrunk from 40,000, when I joined in 1995, to well below than the 8000 globally, with fifty percent or more of churches smaller than our own. MCC has lost its cutting edge and prophetic voice when Troy Perry retired. This is not Troy’s fault. It is the lack of qualified leaders and leaders with a passionate vision for service. Their concern is maintaining their own positions. We have lost talented pastors, flourishing congregations, and theological thinkers. More importantly, there is no vision of the movement for a viable future. Maintaining your position or institution is not vision that sustains anything but decline.

One social change author writes,

Ultimately, the relation and legitimization of established authority and power structures weaken the bonds of religious community and threaten to dissolve the fascination of the original movement. (Wolfgang Vondey)

I have to confess that I was fascinated and attracted to MCC as a movement through its Pastor in St. Louis, Brad Wishon, and then Moderator Troy Perry. In 1995, we shared a protest on the steps of St. Louis City Hall together. Then there was creativity spirituality, passionate energy fighting for our human rights, laced with a vision of radical inclusive love and prophetic courage to stand up against cultural hatreds and discrimination. Many were fighters and prophets for LGBT justice. But the fascination disappeared after Troy retired. We shifted from prophetic to preservation mode.

The mission was lost for maintenance of the institution. And that is always a dangerous turn. The denomination has been unable to adapt to the realities of changes that the millennium brought: greater acceptance of LGBQI folks, the marriage and family movement, the migration of more 30,000 members to other churches because they no longer wanted to be part of a ghettoized church and because other churches have welcomed them back. But more important the prophetic and cutting edge fascination was no longer there.

What lesson can we learn from this picture? The lesson is that mission, not preservation, defines a movement and a church. When mission is no longer the central driving force of church, it becomes a museum whose mission is preservation of artifacts, dead bones, and past memories. I am reminded by today’s reading “Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” Mt. 9:17

Jesus makes it clear that disciples need to live out the tensions between the claims and memories of tradition and the contemporary warrants of the gospel mission. Our inclination as human beings is toward the safety of tradition or what we are familiar with. The mission, Jesus understood very well, involves inconvenience, energy, passionate commitment, and the desire to follow Christ. The easier path for us, and I include myself, is to fall back on what we know.
Let’s move to today: Many are churches are unable to adapt to change, they become increasingly evolve into museums, preserving the past. I can’t tell you the number of stories how congregations in decline have to choose whether they can afford the expenses of the church facility or a pastor.

This church in the last eleven years had its ups and downs, with the ebbing and the increasing of membership. Early on I grieved every person who left the church, and finally I realized that no one church ever meets the needs of all folks for all times. I found myself prayer for those folks and grateful for their time spent in community and prayerful for their journey.

But we are here today, while you may celebrate the 43rd anniversary, I thank God that the church has existed these past years, despite the prognosis that it had one or two years left. What has let us to this point?

First, we had the ability to adapt. We had a make-over of this church. I heard for awhile from a current board member that this was an ugly little church, but when he and others tapped their creative and decorating genes, this church became a lovely church with a spectacular garden, with a new pipe organ, solar panels, a new altar with a redwood burl, and comfortable seats. One of our deceased members Bob Cross complained that his butt hurt from the uncomfortable seats we had. Many times when I sit down I am aware of his comments about the chairs. For him, one of the greatest positive changes were the seats you now sit in. So thank Bob Cross for his complaining, it brought the change you are sitting on.

While making-over the church to be more welcoming is part of our mission of hospitality, our primary mission as church is to imitate the radical inclusive love that Jesus practiced in sharing the good news of the gospels in word and in the witness of our lives and the actions of the church.

Rev. John Dorhauer, the newly elected General Minister of the United Church of Christ, calls for the church to be “risk-taking, creative, and cultivate ingenuity.” These were the virtues exemplified earlier by Troy Perry that MCC has sadly lost. They are virtues for adaptability to change and thus survivabilty.
Adaptability to change has been a central virtue of the Jesus movement. A bunch of Galilean and Judean outcasts, fisherman, tax collectors, and housewives from the countryside, single women like Mary Magdalene after the resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit, transformed the Jesus movement ragtag bunch of rural misfits and outcasts into an urban movement. Within three years of the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Jesus movement spread through the cities of the Roman Empire; all of Paul’s letters are addressed to communities in cities. They were house churches that brought men and women, upper class and slaves together in the weekly worship around the Lord’s Supper. Women found equality with men in this Jesus movement. Slaves dreamed of the freedom that they experiences in these churches. Remember Paul’s baptism formula in his Letter to Galatia: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Gal. 3:28 Slaves could dream of freedom, and there was only one identity generated from baptism, being in Christ.

These country social misfits of the Jesus movement were charged to spread the good news, and the good news of Jesus Christ challenged the power structures of the Roman Empire and it cult of Emperor worship. Risk-taking, creativity, and ingenuity were descriptive of the post-Easter church.

Risking-taking is about radical inclusion and openness, and I will add openness to change. Barbara Fiand asks Christians a significant question, “Why is it that many of us do not even connect anymore in the day-to-day living out of our religion with Christ’s ancient vision of inclusiveness?” We have become a radical inclusive church. What is preventing us from filling these chairs on Sunday?
We have actively worked to move beyond just being an LGBT church to welcome heterosexual folks at worship? How often have we bragged about or church to others? Or invited folks to join us for events and worship? The strongest drive for inclusion comes from the outside. And this was the ingenuity that Jesus had. He invited strangers, outcasts, the poor, women, men, and children to dinner with himself. It is our mission as congregants not only to live the good news of Jesus but imitate him. We will become more inclusive as individuals see that as part of the mission of the church and as community we market ourselves as an open and inclusive church. Let’s not keep that a secret any longer. Tell a friend. Tell someone each week and invite them to join us.

Creativity is built upon risk-taking. How willing are we to explore various spiritual practices, change our worship style and experiment? There are few churches as creative as us. Look at our fund-raisers over the years. We may need to become creative in the style of worship to attract folks to our service. I am now talking to Roxy Mountains about a gospel drag fundraiser for January or February.

Ingenuity is built upon the previous two virtues: It differs from creativity because it involves cleverness. How clever are we for the Lord? For the church? Cleverness has traditionally been called “discernment,” the ability to listen to God as God calls us to mission and service. Can we initiate and implement new things to realize our mission of radical inclusive love?

Let me give you example: We were ingenuous enough to make the Earth a member of our congregation and embark upon a journey of greening our church with solar panels, efficiency saving and conserving measures for water. How do we reach folks who care for the Earth and life and invite them to the church? You might say, “That’s the pastor’s job.” You would be partially right and partially wrong. It is our job together.

These characteristics must transform us enough to engage the gospel mission. There are those who are consumers and those committed to mission, and many in between. The consumers come on Sunday and take away the message and grace home with them. We all hope that it provides for a seeding of their lives in God’s grace.

But we be transformed to become missional. Besides the above, we have vacancies on the board. We are down in our numbers of people for our feeding program. We need volunteers for caring for our garden. And we need people to take an active interest in bringing folks to church. We can’t be just consumers or what I understood as Sunday Christians as I called them as a child. We must be the living word of the Gospel, and our mission is to share the good news of God being with us and inviting us to create a mission to transform the world. God bless you!

Today’s gospel healing story is the only story that names a person healed, excluding Lazarus raised from the tomb. Bar means son in Aramaic. I first thought it could mean the son of Timaeus, a Greek man who was with Socrates before he was forced to take his life for corrupting the youth of Athens. If “timaeus” was borrowed from the Greek, it would translate as “honored one.” A second possibility is the Aramaic word means “unclean, impure, unchaste, or abominable.” One translator has used the second to name Bartimaeus, “Son of Poverty.” A case could be made for either, but I choose the second.

Bartimaeus’ name could be symbolic of the poor and those afflicted with blindness. He is a no-body in Jewish society, a sinner and unclean and abominable. Persons born with disabilities were not allowed in the Temple, nor were blind priests allowed to serve in the Temple. Bartimaeus was literally side-lined in Jewish urban life, moved to the margins of Jewish social life. He was on the road to Jericho when the crowds gathered on the road outside the gates of Jericho. That was the best place to beg for assistance. Have you noticed the places in society where the poor and the homeless beg for assistance? I have seen mothers asking for monies at the traffic light entrances to the entrance of the Empire Square Mall or homeless veterans with a sign pleading for help as I have come off a highway such as Lake St. in Pasadena. There are many others.
Now Bartimaus probably heard something about Jesus from those gathering to meet him. When he hears Jesus is passing by, he calls out to him: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

When he raised his voice (10:47), people were quick to remind him he was a no-body. The reaction of the crowd to Bartimaeus was to threaten him to keep quiet. “Shut up, blind beggar, sinner, abomination; you have no right to speak to the teacher.” Or perhaps one of Jesus’ disciples said, “You can’t approach him without first going through us. We are in charge and have to clear you first.” Disciples have become gatekeepers to Jesus, monitoring who had access or not, and they are not unlike the attitudes of many clergy who claim such power.
Have you ever noticed how people silence the poor or make them invisible? The poor are crying in our midst, and we pass them, unable to hear their cries or see them as people.

But Bartimaeus is persistent, he cries out louder, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” By calling Jesus the Child of David, Bartimaeus recognizes Jesus as a prophet, a person of power. The blind Child of Poverty forcefully engages the Child of David despite the crowds threatening him and shushing him. .

The mood of the crowd changes as Jesus calls him to be brought forth. Jesus asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man asks, “Rabboni (my teacher), let me see again.” Jesus heals him and says,”Go your faith has made you well.” Simple right, I end my sermon here. Wrong!

No there are three levels of meaning to this healing story.

My first point is a simple observation, often missed. When Jesus call him, Bartimaeus stood up, threw aside his garment, left the few coins he may have received from begging, and came to Jesus. He threw aside all he had to come to Jesus. These could easily been stolen. This reminds of the story in the same chapter I preached two weeks ago about the rich young man whom Jesus asked to sell everything he has and give the monies to the poor and follow him. A poor, blind man has greater faith than a pious religious man who refuses to give away his wealth and follow Jesus.

But have you ever notice in the stories of healing, Jesus never says, “God heals you,” or “I heal you.” Jesus speaks of having faith to move mountains. Albert Nolan, in his book, Jesus Today, writes,

…it is clearly faith in God, not only in the existence of God or even the power of God, but as Jesus saw it, faith in God as the loving and forgiving Father (Abba). Faith is a particular kind of consciousness, the consciousness of God, or the divine, as loving and caring for us. And that is why, the faith that Jesus speaks of includes trust. Jesus was able to do the things he did because he put all his trust in God. And the lives of others were transformed when they learned to trust God.

Secondly, Jesus’ healing of Bartimaeus becomes a critique of the crowd. Jesus criticizes the crowd who judge Bartimaeus that his parents have sinned against God and he carries the burden of their sins. He was named by them Son of poverty, unclean son, abominable child. Jesus explodes their shallow notions of sins. His healing says clearly, “You are the sinners in your judgment of the blind man. How dare you silence him for his speaking up and speaking with faith! You are completely wrong.” On other occasions, Jesus discouraged his disciples to judge blindness as punishment for sin. Humans during Jesus and other times have understood a baby born blind or any affliction was a curse, a punishment. Often parents would leave the infant exposed on the hillside to die from the element, starvation, or wild animals.

Bartimaeus has faith, he has placed his trust in God and Jesus. He is literally blind but his eyes are open in faith. For the Jews at this time, the heart and eyes are the seats of emotion; they are connected. Bartimaeus’ heart is wide open with faith, not blind. So he cries out to Jesus to bring healing to eyes to reflect the faith of his heart.

Jesus also chides his disciples as gatekeepers of access to himself. Bartimaeus does not have to access Jesus through them. He can speak up for himself, not through yourselves. He is an adult child of God with faith shining forth. There is no need for a go between faith and God. How often we silence the afflicted and the ill, treating them as children and attempting to speak for them. Jesus criticizes such behavior of muting the voices of the afflicted.

My third point is the location of the story in the gospel and Mark’s criticism of the disciples. Jesus’ journey starts in chapter 8, the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida. This is an example again of a Marcan sandwich, placing significant narration in between two stories of healing blind men. The two stories of healing blindness highlight the difference sight and blindness of among Jesus’ disciples.
Between the two stories, there are a number of occasions that the disciples who accompany him and are with him on a nearly daily basis are blind since they are unable to see truly who Jesus is and hiss mission. For example, Peter answers the question of Jesus, “Who do you say that I am?” He affirms that Jesus is God’s Christ, but when he Jesus predicts his passion and death. Peter denies, and Jesus responds: “Get behind me, you evil one.”

Or just before this story, the sons of Zebeedee ask him, “Teacher, grant us that we may sit, one of the right and the other on your left side, in your glory.” Jesus asks whether they can endure the baptism that he be baptized, in other words, his passion and death. Jesus’ disciples are irritated Jesus tells in very clear language:

You know that those who are considered rulers over he Gentiles lord it over them, and their great one exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you, but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your slave. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be a slave of all. For the Child of Humanity did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.

Mark wants to point out how blind are Jesus’ disciples to his teachings and understanding his mission. It seems that real blindness is among the disciples rather than the two men born blind and who are healed because of their faith. The blind men healed become models of discipleship and faith. Their eyes are opened, and this means that their hearts have become open to Jesus and God. It is a heart to heart trust and placing their hearts in the heart of God.

This brings us to today. What blinds us or the faith of hearts? What stops or prevents us from trusting Jesus in our discipleship?

Nolan notes that Jesus worked healing through steadfast faith in God:

He (Jesus) trusted God without hesitation or reserve. He could then quite confidently challenge others to trust God too. He encouraged, strengthened, and liberated people to believe that the impossible could happen. An example of this which would be the way in which he challenged the lame, the paralyzed, and the crippled by issuing a simple command, “Stand up and walk.” Empowered by his confident faith, people found that suddenly they could stand up and walk. In such circumstances, it seems that miracles do happen, that people’s lives are transformed. Healing becomes a reality.

The great miracle Jesus performed was to help facilitate people to trust that God was with them, to place their trust in God. Jesus’ faith in God was contagious, and that contagious faith enable the sons and daughters of poverty—the abominable, the sinner, the unclean, and impure to escape at the religious judgment and silencing of the crowds and religious elite.

The term “Truth decay” was coined by Matthew Fox in his book Creativity for addressing how religion distorts the message and experience of the gospel. Today’s gospel ends our five week exploration of Jesus’ sermon on the Bread of Life. After his teaching, Jesus notices a reticence of some of his listeners and hears some plaints of his disciples, saying, “This is a hard saying; who can understand it?’ And Jesus responds, “Does this offend you?” It offends some, and they walk away.

In John’s Gospel, in particular, Jesus not only speaks in parables as he does in the other gospels, but he speaks on a non-literal level, a symbolic level about his mission and Abba God and himself. And generally there is a lack of understanding between Jesus and his audience and his disciples. Nicodemus confuses Jesus’ message about being born again in the Spirit. He literalizes the conversation, or the Samaritan woman at the well. But she fares better than Nicodemus because she persists in her conversation with Jesus and realizes that he is talking metaphorically about “living water” and eternal life.

At the end of his sermon on the Bread of Life, Jesus has confused and offended the fundamentalists among the crowds. He has proclaimed, “I am the living bread come down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I give is my flesh.”

Immediately, the fundamentalists ask, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” It is cannibalism, it violates the purity laws. This problem of literalizing the message exists equally strong with contemporary fundamentalists. Truth decay happens in the politics as we listen to candidates for the presidency, but it also occurs in religion equally. In both cases, I would this decay of truth a crisis of imagination. Literalizing Jesus’ words distorts Jesus’ message. You do not exercise your imagination in interpreting Jesus’ words and stories literally. What is so threatening about using our imaginations?

Religious fundamentalism has an endless capacity for simplification, generating uniformity and authoritarianism, and hatred of those with imagination. It encourages neither understanding of, nor sympathy for, nor an expansive appreciation for the plurality of new possibilities. It fosters unconditional belief while actively discouraging any folks to think for themselves.

Matthew Fox tells a story that a county election of a new school board in New Hampshire resulted in a majority of Christian fundamentalists. Their first decree was that no teacher in the school district could use the word “imagination” in the classroom. Fox narrates how he asked some citizens why they were afraid of the imagination, and their response makes me cringe, envisioning Church Lady from Saturday Night Live: “Satan. Satan lives in the imagination.” They insecurely identify our imaginations with evil.

Christian fundamentalists oppose fantasy-role playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons or the myriad of computer fantasy quest games. What they attempt to preserve is their own socially constructed reality as God given, and they fear any other possibilities. Fantasy-role games, however, teach people how to imagine and play with possibilities.

I feel sorry for fundamentalists who exclude their imagination because they also exclude the powers of creativity. The response of the New Hampshire fundamentalist indicates a fear-based world, where imagination might reveal new possibilities, new dreams, many interpretations of texts, and hopes for ourselves and our world. It is the place where the Holy Spirit works to generate creativity and thinking outside the box.

Fear of imagination leads to a system where thought police censor us, and authoritarianism kills the imagination and transforms mind control into a god. It is the rule of law over Spirit. I have fought my whole life against such narrow mindedness and lack of imagination. For myself, imagination is the fount of our personal creativity of the artist, the poet, the musician, the gardener, and the many ways each of you express your creativity. We co-create our lives with the Spirit. Creativity and imagination are the playground of God’s Spirit.
When l look back at my childhood and education, I credit my imagination for stretching my mind, dreaming and freeing me to imagine what Jesus means by the reign of God. I fell in love with the English romantic poets in high school, fantasy works such as Lord of the Rings, and science fiction. They helped me to imagine a world where people might be free, loving, caring for one another, establishing peace, and living with nature. I have taught courses on religion and the Lord Rings, or with Gene Roddenberry’s series, or science fiction. I found students using their imagination anconstraints d the language of science fiction and Star Wars as means to express their spirituality and finding meaning in the world.

I understood that Jesus hardly ever spoke literally, maybe with the exception of the commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That could be taken literally, or when Jesus proclaims the forgiveness of sins. And his notion of neighbor was illustrated by the parable of the Good Samaritan, Our neighbor was the stranger, and he broke the imaginative constraints of his disciples by widening the definition of neighbor to include Samaritans, “a hated group” and a Gentile.

Jesus was a brilliant storyteller, and he spoke in parable and metaphor to talk about God as Abba. The name of God was so holy that Jews would piously replace the name of God with “My Lord” (Adonai). He spoke intimately that God was Abba, “daddy”—an intimate metaphor. God was like an intimate loving daddy, and he spoke of God as the father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. This broke with traditional orthodox Jewish piety.

But Jesus used his imagination in the creation of his parables and stories, or when he symbolically acted out God’s reign through inclusive meals, washing the feet of his disciples, or riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. Through his own creative imagination, Jesus spoke to our imaginations, to inspire an imagined world where we and God meet, where we respond with awe and wonder, where our hearts and emotions are touched by Jesus and God. Jesus’ religious imagination has poetry to enchant rather than coerce, to touch our hearts and move us to imaginative engagement and action than command blind obedience.

Matthew Fox writes, “Imagination takes us to nothingness, to emptiness, to what is not yet and therefore to hat might still be. The space of elsewhere, indeed. No wonder the prophets relied so heavily on the imagination.” Imagination allows us to imagine the elsewhere from our social conditions.

I will make two bold claims this morning about our imaginations and scripture:

First, we cannot read or listen to the gospels or scripture without imagination. Fundamentalists try their best to read the gospels literally for a sake of notion that truth is unchanging and easily measured. This style spiritualizes Jesus, makes him safe and unchallenging. It strips power from the historical ministry and message of Jesus; it flattens the message of Jesus who spoke in poetry, parable, symbol, and metaphor. He performed archetypal and symbolic acts. His storytelling and symbolic actions entertain paradox and ambiguity, and through your imagination and faith, you fill in the ambiguity gaps with your own experience. You play with his words with your imagination, and the Spirit opens new meanings to stories you have heard so often and discover unexplored or surprising meanings.

If Jesus is a poet and storyteller, one can only approach Jesus’ poetry and symbolic saying with imagination, intuition, and our emotions. When we imaginatively approach these stories of Jesus and his stories and action, we perceive multiple levels of meaning and are enrichened a range of new possibilities that we have previously missed. The living word—Jesus—is encountered through imagination and prayer.

Let me give you a technique I use when I approach the gospel. It is called “imaginative composition of place:” This is a prayer or meditative technique used in reading scripture. You enter a scriptural text by imaginatively envisioning yourself in the story as much detail as you can visualize. I would ask folks in bible study on a given text: Where are you in the gospel story? Who are you in the story? What do you see around you? Jesuit Joseph Tetlow writes about this technique: “You do not merely imagine the event as though you were watching it on film….You enter into the scene as though you were a part of it, standing warm in the temple or ankle deep in the water of the Jordan.” Try this approach to scripture; it is like entering a virtual reality or the holodeck of Star Trek.

Secondly, I want to claim that there is no possibility of faith or a heart to heart relationship with Christ or God without imagination. If you tap into your imagination, you move into a spiritual realm of faith, for heart will have little difficulty of envisioning a gospel story. Your emotions and passions are stimulated along with your imagination. The living word—Jesus—becomes alive, imaginatively connects deeply into your emotions and experiences of life. Suddenly it reveals or unveils or perhaps awakens to weaving your story and Jesus’ story into a new interwoven story in which Jesus and you participate. Imagination opens the paths of hope and love. Without imagination in prayer, we cannot travel the path of discipleship that invokes compassion, love, forgiveness, peace, hopefulness, and working for social justice and caring for the Earth and neighbor.

Jesus expresses God’s dream for us. When I say “God is incarnated in Jesus” in John’s opening prologue. Jesus is described as God’s Word (logos), and that Word was present at creation and has become enfleshed in our stories and our imagination. And the Spirit hovers over creation and continues to be in our creativity. Are not fundamentalists suppressing the Spirit and the incarnate Christ when they suppress the imagination?

The brilliant Austrian psychologist, Otto Rank, a member of Freud’s inner circle, taught that artists give through their creations a gift to God. Our many gifts of creativity originate from God, and they are places where we intimately encounter the Spirit and Christ. When we express these gifts of art and creativity, we express God’s grace. It becomes an act of generous gratitude and intimate and imaginative connect with Christ and the Spirit.

One of my favorite mystics is the 12th century Hildegard of Bingen, who wrote music, poetry as well as texts on gardening, medicine, and theology. She writes, “The Word manifests in every creature.” It was an expression of God’s greening grace—constantly creating, refreshing our imagination and inviting us to imaginatively appreciate the creative present of the Holy Spirit and Christ in our creative abilities and ability to love. God has touched our hearts through Christ and the Holy Spirit. And our art and imaginative creativity touches, in return, God’s heart.

Now you protest that you have little imagination and no artistic creativity. I will counter your protests with the claim that each of us are creative and that we artists of our lives. Let me give you examples: The two Gregories express their art in gardening; Cindy and the happy hookers with their work to knot a 170 scarfs for a women’s shelter by Christmas; Rev. Joe in his creating pyskany or decorated eggs; or Joe’s facilitating The Artist’s Way, the choral group and out musicians, our feeding program, our commitment to care for God’s creation, and all what we do personally and communally to realize God’s dream for us and all creation. My creativity comes out in ministry and my theological writings. We are all artists and poets of our lives. Tap into your imagination, live faith, and unleash the power of the Holy Spirit who colors outside the box and brings a creative play in our relationship with God.

On Pentecost, The Holy Spirit inspired Peter to quote the prophet Joel:

I will pour my Spirit on upon all flesh,
And your sons and daughters will prophesy, and your young men and women see visions,
And your old men and women shall dream dreams.
Even upon the slaves both men and women I will pour my Spirit.

Our imaginations need to be unleashed in our hearts and to be touched by the Holy Spirit.

Diarmuid O’Murchu borrows the Jesus biblical scholar John Domenic Crossan’s translation of Jesus Aramaic word, malkuta meaning kingdom as “a companionship of empowerment.” It was empowerment through mutuality and living in the presence of an unconditionally loving and forgiving God. Jesus empowered people through healing, including, forgiving, eating with them, and imagining with them a world living with God. He proclaimed that this was God’s dream for us. We often translate in our worship as ‘kindom” to capture the flavor of a movement of family of faith choice in Jesus’ use of kingdom.

The issue that Jesus confronted was his own experience of God whose love was unconditional and radically inclusive while his religion maintained a system of exclusions. This still is our problem today: a radically inclusive and loving God and an exclusive religions that try to limit access to God. We seem through history to deal with human religious leaders and groups who fall into the temptation to try to control access to God’s grace by making it exclusive.

There is a raging cultural war in Christianity not just about same-sex marriage or women’s right of reproductive choice. It crosses so many other issues social issues, including the homeless, climate change, race, undocumented immigration, peace, economic justice, AIDS, health care, and more. It lacks a compassionate heart for the stranger or for people suffering who are different from themselves. This type of exclusivist Christianity is very disturbing, for it seems to lack the passion and heart of Jesus’ message of a companionship of empowerment. It envisions an exclusive God and narrowly focused practice of Christianity that rules out so many. It seems heartless to me and lacking Christ. It is obsessed with a sin management strategy that pushes drives so many people away from God just as Jesus experienced in his ministry. It does not care if it excludes anyone who differs in the practice of their sin management Christianity.

I have heard so often from exclusivist Christians, “Have you been saved?” Their world is exclusively divided into saved and damned. But more importantly, such a statement plays on emotional insecurity of people. Such Christians play God, making a judgment who is saved and who is not. If there is ever a sin against the Holy Spirit, it is to use and make God wrathful and not loving, inclusive, unconditional in offering a share in the divine life.

The danger, confronting churches through history, is the distortion of the gospel of Jesus. Wendy Farley says it very well in her book, Gathering Those Driven Away,

Christianity moves through history carried by the impulses of domination an exclusion. It despises uppity women, no-hellers, contemplatives, queers, and thinks even less of those people outside Christianity altogether. But without their witness to the nearness and tender mercies of Emmanuel, the memory of Christ is impossibly distorted.

I grew up Catholic, a church driven and obsessed with sin management, guilt, and shame. It was hard to get to the core of the gospel as grace and not as judgment, punishment, and penance for sin. When I look back at Christian history, it makes me cringe in horror how many people have been harmed, driven away, excluded, or even killed in the name of Christ. They acted in the name of an exclusive god.

In his message of about an inclusive and loving Abba God, Jesus attempted to shift his people and religious tradition from religious exclusivity to religious inclusivity: “No one is out, everyone is in.” Those who have only known exclusion, the poor, the marginalized, the despised, and the disenfranchised. Jesus was not obsessed with sin management; he preached a gospel of grace, forgiveness, compassion, and love.

It is the upside down empowered companionship–transgressing all boundaries and tearing down walls of religious exclusion and ethnic and gender prejudice. I want to call Jesus’ life and ministry as “grace gone wild.” He preached a wild grace that could not be domesticated, controlled by anyone or any institution. It was totally under the inspiration and outside guidance of the Holy Spirit. He gathered back those people driven away and excluded from religion.

Companionship denotes community, mutuality, co-creating together and empowering one another to form a loving and hospitable community where everyone has a place at table. The meals, the healings, and parables of Jesus imagined a freedom, equality, and compassionate care. Jesus awakened the imagination of his disciples and audiences through stories and symbolic gestures—to empower the new vision of God. His parables are subversive stories to stimulate our imaginations to envision a world where we all are living with God in our midst.

Today’s gospel, Jesus flees from the crowds after the feeding by boat since they wanted to make him king. But there is no way to escape them. Thus, he instructs them in the beginning of the Bread of Life midrash or sermon. Jesus says, “I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never hunger and whoever places his faith in me will never thirst.”

There is no room for exclusivity in his teachings and ministry, and he rejects the attempt to make him king. Jesus rejected power over people as kings or priests exercised. Power was shared, for he empowered them to act on God’s dream of inclusive love and understand that the greatest would be a slave to all.

Central to companionship of empowerment is sharing food. Jesus shared food with a wide range of people at the table or in field feeding thousands; these were meals of radical inclusiveness, marking not merely a revolutionary concept with far-reaching implications but deep expression of companionship of empowerment. Companionship is made possible when people gather around the sharing of food. Friendships are formed and deepened, love and care are reinforced. We help and serve one another in love and because of love.

Celebrating a meal of God’s grace of forgiveness and unconditional love provided occasions for healing empowerment to take place. People began to dream of a new future with God. They did not dwell on repentance, guilt, and shame.
For Jesus, the open table is a symbol of communal sharing in which nobody is ever hungry. The open table was a place of God’s wild grace operated. For Jesus, there seems to be no doubt the table always had to be open. Nobody was to be excluded. From highways and the byways all are brought into the banquet—prostitutes, sinners, tax-collectors, the outcasts and the marginalized of every type.

Anne Primavesi has noted for many churches today: “The table companionship of Jesus has lost its true bite and scandal. The salt has lost its taste.” There are so many conditions placed around the communion table: the correct words and gestures by an ordained clergy, open to baptized members of that church or denomination, correct beliefs and doctrines, correct state of purity to receive the bread of life and drink the from the cup of life. When you take mirror to other church practices of exclusion around the communion table, you upset and offend Christians. They give back justifications for their actions, just as the Pharisees justified why only the pure could sit at their tables or the priests justified who could be excluded from the Temple. Whatever justifications are used, it is still excluded. There is a wonderful line from the prophet Micah 4:6: “Beloved, I will assemble the lame and those who have been driven away.” No question the Pharisees and holiness groups in Jesus’ era would exclude the lame from their gatherings. But God goes on to say, “I will assemble those who been driven away.”

How many people have driven away from churches and from God’s communion table? Hundreds of million! Because they are insubordinate women, a different race or ethnicity, LGBT, homeless, have a fetish lifestyle, a different religion, fight against climate change and find God expressed in nature, or some other difference. Jesus’ unconditional invitation to the open table is lost within such church eucharists. Christians from another denomination or non-Christians are not welcomed at the table. The inclusive God’s table has become exclusive. The invitation of grace of the open table, subversive and radically inclusive, is no longer accessible to everyone. Insiders are welcomed, outsiders are excluded from the inclusive God.

Radical inclusion means God’s wild grace! Many clergy from exclusivist denominations or churches will give you theological excuses for their practice of limiting access. You have to be baptized first before you come to the table. Or you belong to another church. Or you don’t believe the doctrine we believe.
The only possible reason for exclusion from the communion table is when someone disrupts the safety of the sanctuary. Over the nearly eleven years as pastor, I can recall a few such individuals at this church who threatened the safety of the sanctuary or assaulted someone at service, were drunk or high, or inappropriately touched someone. I have spoken to such individuals that such behaviors violated the hospitality of the sanctuary and not acceptable. In a couple of extreme occasions, we have to ask someone to leave. Or even threaten to get a restaining order on attendee who assaulted myself and JJ during the service.

Hospitality is another form of inclusivity, but as family members we welcome folks to the dinner table of God. When you enter a home, you are welcomed to share a meal. That was my Greek grandmother’s notion of hospitality who welcomed anyone coming to her home.

Do we invite people to service and then tell them that they are not welcomed at the dinner table? As a newly ordained Catholic priest, I celebrated the eucharist at my family’s home. Do I follow Catholic legal exclusion of my Greek Orthodox grandmother from communion because she is not Catholic? Do I exclude my niece from communion because she had not made her first communion from communion? Both actions would been harmful to my family.

I invited a Hindu classmate to dinner, and she came for mass before dinner. She came to the table for communion, and I did not turn her away. Or a Japanese Buddhist friend who I also welcomed at the table for communion? He was so touched that he was baptized and became a Catholic several months later. Hospitality touches people who then decide they want to be part of God’s family because of their extravagant welcome and inclusion. I like the UCC welcome:

No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here. We believe in extravagant welcome. This is why we insist that God’s communion table is open, not closed, and God’s gift and claim in baptism are irrevocable. We advocate justice for all.

To the horror of Jewish exclusivists and Christian exclusivists, Jesus sat down, indiscriminately eating and drinking with suspect men and women who were sinful and impure. He told them that they were “beloved children of God,” already forgiven before they even asked God. He was accused of being drunkard and sinner because he associated with sinners. He did not care about sin management but making God’s grace thoroughly accessible and inclusive to all. He proclaimed a universal salvation based on a divine mercy and love like the father of the prodigal son who ran out to greet his son, hug and kiss him. God’s extravagant love exceeded the example of the father in the parable.
Just as the religious exclusivists—the fundamentalists, the Pharisees, scribes, and Temple clergy—were upset and brought charges against him, so today when we proclaim the inclusive grace and love of God many churches become upset. They have invested too much time and effort in their sin management strategies to control the faithful and become wealthy. They control access to God’s table, and I believe in my heart that is not what Jesus did during his ministry. He did not exclude Judas from the table at the last supper, nor Peter who foretold of his denials, or disciples who suspected would flee at the first sign of danger.

Jesus died because of his meals symbolized that there are no more outsiders! He died because of the people he shared an open table with. Everyone is in—irrespective of religion or any condition. Radical inclusiveness is a core value of empowered companionship with God and with one another. It is accomplished not me but by a community who is welcoming, caring, and inviting.

Christians for centuries have maintained that Jesus died for our sins. There is truth that creedal statement. He died because of human sinfulness. Human sinfulness—exclusive religion and ruthless political power—arrested, tortured, humiliated, and crucified Jesus. But Jesus died for God’s wild grace of radical inclusive love! That is why I understand the mission of our church and the Christian church as “gathering in those who have been driven away.”