May 6, 2007: HOSPITALITY (Blessing Nurses)
Acts 11:1-18, Revelation 21:1-6, Psalm 148
Eileen Parfrey      Springwater Presbyterian Church

My kids grew up hearing anti-smoking rhetoric from us, so you can imagine how they reacted the day they saw their dad puffing on a cee-gar while fishing with one of his buddies. My daughter became hysterical because her dad was going to drop dead on the spot from smoking. We think our parents ought to be perfect, don't we? And they are, up to a certain point. Kids need their parents to be perfect, and even grown ups need certain role models to be perfect. When they aren't (think of the priest sex abuse scandals), devastation goes deep.

The need for perfect leaders is going on in today's Acts text. Peter, with at least a thousand years of faith teaching behind him, finds himself in a situation where he's right and God is wrong. Gentiles can be Christians, but they've gotta be Jews first. The holiness of God's people is at stake. Which is why, when Peter's mind is changed, the Church hierarchy calls him in for a chat. Peter's got a vision simultaneous to that of the Gentiles, observable activity of Holy Spirit, and the reliable testimony of twice the required number of witnesses. His objections overruled, he brings the show to Jerusalem, with the same result. God gets to choose; Gentiles are in.

Jon Walton, in Christian Century, claims this is one of the first instances of tension between the two images of Holy Mother Church-Virgin Mother and Earth Mother. Pure, unstained Virgin Mother Church reminds us no one is perfect enough to see God. She is vigilant in protecting her kids from contamination, and her clergy are models of morality and self-control. Earth Mother Church gathers her wayward, grass-stained, frogs-in-their-pockets kids to her tie-died skirts, reminding them of God's abundant (if slightly smudged) life. Her clergy are earthen vessels. Those are graphic images, but a close examination of any congregation reveals a mixture of those mother types. Springwater is a case in point.

Walton suggests we chuck the Virgin versus Earth Mother images and think instead of churches as hospitals for the soul. Kathleen told me about her tour last week of Kaiser Hospital's new surgery wing. What she describes is pristine, height of technology, machine-like in scale and design, a place for everything and every surgical purpose. I could almost see the orderly flow of patients, the planning and management of medical and financial implications of health care. Churches aren't like that. Churches, Walton says, are more like MASH units-Mobile Army Surgery Hospitals-taking in the maimed and mangled amidst chaotic conditions. How appropriate that today (May 6) is Nurses Sunday. We'll recognize and bless our nurses after the sermon.

So here's the question: How is a church supposed to maintain "holy community" with all this earthliness and mess? How holy do we need to be to fulfill our purpose of reminding each other of God's grace? Today's word is "hospitality." The Presbyterian Church (like most mainline churches) struggles to balance "exclusionary holiness" with "holy hospitality." That's Biblish for the tension between Virgin Mother Church (stay away from the obvious sinners) and Earth Mother Church (we're all sinners in need of grace). As mainline denominations struggle to protect the "peace, unity, and purity" of the church, they continue to lose membership hand over fist, while evangelical fundamentalists, with clear definitions about sin and sinners, grow like wildfire. Presbyterians argue about ordination of homosexuals and same-sex marriages, evangelicals flat-out condemn it. Presbyterians avoid talking about marital fidelity, divorce, and at what point can you start dating again; evangelicals have clear-cut rules. Maybe if we took a stand, our sanctuaries would be overflowing.

Maybe we're giving too many mulligans. "Mulligan" is a golf term, which my lectionary group has adopted as a theological term. Golf's mulligan is a second chance, a free do-over. I understand there are certain circumstances under which a mulligan may be taken, but to take a mulligan means re-taking the shot with no penalty. God declares a mulligan in the book of Revelation today. What's at stake is who gets to decide about the mulligan. The appropriate answer is, "God." Where the Church runs into trouble is when we have to decide who got the mulligan, whether we take them in or keep them around. Are we supposed to just take in everyone, no questions asked? That seems to be what's going on in Acts. "What God has made clean, you must not call profane."

But then life gets complicated. Does that mean we ignore the conflict and pain that comes with these sinners? No. Do they get a free pass on consequences? No. But if we get mulligans, they do, too. We get to say what hurt, and they have to listen to us, if they want the mulligan. But we have to listen to them too. We need each other to know how absolutely we are forgiven. We also need each other to know how much we need to be forgiven. When I see the consequences of other people's bad choices, I might recognize the similarity to hurtful things I did in my life, things about which at the time I thought I had no choice. When I recognize my bad choices in theirs, I know again my own deep need of forgiveness. And maybe we can experience some holy hospitality together.

What happened in Acts today was nearly as consequential for our salvation as the event on Calvary's mountain 2,000 years ago. The Church said, "Yeah OK, God gets to decide who is counted as Christian." Time was, to be a Christian, you had to either be born or converted to Judaism, then you could also be a Christian. But here, the Gentiles approach Peter. They know their need of forgiveness, don't make excuses, and rely solely on God's grace. Their behavior changes. Not who they are but what they do. We are the Gentiles, the ones whose story changed with Peter's speech. Walton writes, "It would have been so much easier if the Spirit had left well enough alone and not blown where it did. But the Spirit is a spirit of love and cannot resist drawing disparate elements together; it has a broader vision of the future and a greater hope for our humanity than we have ever imagined." [my italics] Martin Luther warned the church in reformation 400 years ago not to get in the way of the Spirit. Still today we question, to whom is the gospel to be preached, how wide God's embrace? The way we answer that question may call into question what we know about church, but we can be assured that the God whom the church serves has not changed. "See, I am making all things new. . . . To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life." Drink deeply, friends. It is life itself that God offers. Christ has risen indeed.

Quotations from Jon Walton appeared in the April 17, 2007 Christian Century in "Living By the Word: Dreaming in Joppa."