6/29/08                                                                          MATTHEW 10:40-42

“WELCOME, WELCOME, WELCOME..

   Rev. James Singleton

Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me…

I am intrigued by the word “Welcome” which is used six times in these two verses of Scripture this morning. There is a politeness, a civility, an embracing openness about the word and concept that is slipping away from our society today. In fact, the word almost sounds old fashioned and like a left over from the days of our grandparents.

In years past, many homes had a “Welcome” mat on their front porch to receive visitors and people looked forward to the ring of their doorbell. But today “Welcome” mats have all but disappeared and most of the time we resent people for intruding upon our privacy.

There was a time when a game show host tried to make the guests feel welcomed and treated them with respect, but now the most popular reality game show, American Idol, is one where the hosts are often insulting, demeaning, rude, obnoxious, and belittling of the guests.

WELCOME: to greet, to receive cordially, to admit gladly, to accept, to be hospitable toward, to be friendly, open, kind, warm, generous; to take into one’s heart another person.

The OPPOSITE OF WELCOME: to be disagreeable, unpleasant, cold, rejecting, critical, judgmental, making no room inside of you for another person.

Have you ever felt unwelcomed? It’s no fun, is it? I have done a lot of visiting in my ministry and I can say that most every time I have called upon a home, I have felt the welcome mat out. The door is opened and I am invited inside and into your lives.

But I still vividly recall a day shortly after I began my ministry here that I was told that one of our members had some issues with the church that stretched back to before I came here, so I went out to see her. I felt a little reassured as I approached the door and saw a “Welcome” mat out. But welcome was not exactly what I got. The door opened just a crack, and this voice barked out, “Who is it?” I told her that I was the new minister of the First Christian Church and had come to visit. She promptly replied, “Go away” and slammed the door in my face. Needless to say, despite what her mat said, I did not feel welcomed and it didn’t feel good.

Churches, likewise, often have signs that say, “Welcome,” or “Everyone Welcome” or if they don’t have a sign they always consider that they are a friendly and welcoming congregation. I’ve never heard of a church yet that bragged that it was an inhospitable place or that put out a sign that read, “Go away.”

 But is the church always such a welcoming place? After all, Jesus says, “Whoever welcomes you,” meaning a disciple or seeker of Jesus, “welcomes me.” So welcoming one who seeks to follow Jesus is important because it determines whether or not we are welcoming Jesus Himself.

So one of the challenges that our passage presents to us, the members of First Christian Church, is this—are we in fact as welcoming to others as we like to think our reputation announces—or is our attitude more like the woman who barked out at me, “Go away”? That is an examination that every church needs to make of itself.

Did you know that most visitors decide within the first seven minutes of their visit whether or not they will return? In other words, the most influential factor in determining whether a visitor will return is not the sermon and not the music—but whether the members make that visitor feel welcomed when they first enter the church and sit down.

The first criteria that visitors to a church use to determine if they will return to a certain church is whether or not that congregation is welcoming. Are people glad to see them? Do the people around them actually speak to them; does anyone shake their hand and give them a smile? Or does the church make them feel invisible, unwanted, or as though they are intruding?

When a visitor in church has someone come up and say, “Excuse me, but you’re sitting in my seat,” does that make that visitor feel welcomed? Jane Ross tells about the time she was visiting a church and was forced to move six times before she finally found a place that was not “reserved” for a member. No one can be more territorial than Christians.

But we Christians must never forget that the Church exists not only for us but for those who are seeking Christ. Evangelism begins with how we treat those whom God has sent to us. Do we give them the best seats or do we reserve those for ourselves? Do we speak to them or are we too embarrassed to introduce ourselves and get to know them? I realize that to reach out to another requires risk, vulnerability, courage. But isn’t that exactly what Christ calls upon his followers to do when he calls upon us to pick up our cross and follow him?

Whenever we welcome a visitor we welcome Jesus. Whenever we ignore a visitor or force a visitor to feel like a stranger, so we do to Jesus.  

But it’s not just visitors we are called upon to welcome, but we are also called upon to welcome the other members of the church. To welcome others is to make non-judgmental and uncritical room in our life for them.

One of the issues that churches struggle with is the tension between those who like traditional worship and those who like contemporary style worship. It has caused many a rift in churches.

But think about it. If Traditional worship Christians criticize and try to censure Contemporary worship Christians because they like songs and guitars and keyboards in their worship, are those Traditional worship Christians welcoming Contemporary Worship Christians into their lives?

And, likewise, if Contemporary worshippers judge and demean Traditional worshippers as old fashioned, stuffy and boring because they like the organ, they like a more meditative pace, they like hymns, are Contemporary worship Christians welcoming Traditional worship Christians into their lives? Or does each side wish the other would just “go away.”

Church critic, Robert Bellah, says that the tendency in churches is to become a community of exclusion, celebrating what he calls “the narcissism of similarity.” In other words, we are all welcoming to those who are like us, but all critical of those who are not.

Certainly there are church members who get on our nerves, who disappoint us, and who even irritate us. But the Church is the one community where we are called upon to handle differences in a hospitable manner. We are intimately tied to one another through our ties with Jesus. And when we treat each other in an unwelcoming manner, Jesus says it’s the same as slamming the door in his face and telling him, “Go away!”

A minister relayed the following episode that took place in his church: “One night the Committee on Social Concerns was meeting, dealing with big, important issues such as lobbying City Council on impending legislation and calling the governor about their stand on capital punishment.

“In the heat of discussion, one person was so rude and thoughtless in his comments to another, so cruel and inappropriate, that she ran out of the room in tears, vowing never to come back to church.

“One of the committee members said, ‘Isn’t this something? How do we love the people whom we have not seen when we can’t even love the people right here in our own church?’”

She was right. Church is where we train in how to live like Christians, so, if we get good enough at it, we might live like Christians out in the world. We are not in church to merely think long thoughts about God so much as we are in church to practice meeting the living God among ordinary people.

How grand the term Body of Christ sounds. How easy it is to think of people in general making up the Body of Christ, but how difficult it can be to turn your head to take a good look at the person beside you, before you, behind you and realize that this specific person is whom the Body of Christ refers to.

We learn to welcome Christ by learning to welcome each other. We learn to love Christ by learning how to love each other. We can read our New Testament in the privacy of our homes, we can be cordial to our neighbors over the fence, but until we come into the community that is the church to specifically welcome others into our lives we have not yet really received Christ into our lives. 

The theme of welcome does not sound like one of the great life changing themes of Christianity. Grace, Sin, Righteousness, Heaven and Hell all sound like pillars compared to a Welcome Mat. But Jesus emphasized the importance of welcome because He knew both the power of exclusion to destroy lives and the power of welcome to save lives.

 Today every person in this congregation needs to feel welcomed. There are people here today for the first time who are wondering if anyone cares that they are here. How will they know unless we show them through a word of welcome, a smile, a handshake so that they don’t feel alone? And Christ promises us a reward for every person we welcome and maybe that reward is the return of that visitor who will eventually become a member of the church and follower of Jesus Christ. 

There are people here today who need our prayers, our understanding, our forgiveness, and our patience. And if we welcome them into our lives, then Christ promises us a reward and maybe that reward is that we find a friend where we thought there was only an irritant.

But Christ promises no reward for not speaking to another, no reward for making another feel like a trespasser, no reward for criticizing another, no reward for gossiping about another, no reward for projecting an attitude that barks, “Go away.”

            A room-service waiter at a Marriott hotel learned that the sister of a guest had just died. The waiter, named Charles, bought a sympathy card, had hotel staff members sign it, and gave it to the distraught guest with a piece of hot apple pie.

After his sister’s funeral, the guest wrote a letter to Mr. Marriott, the president of the Marriott Hotel chain. "Dear Mr. Marriott, I'll never meet you. And I don't need to meet you because I met Charles. I know what you stand for. I want to assure you that as long as I live, I will stay at your hotels. And I will tell my friends to stay at your hotels."

“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me…” Jesus wants people to know who He is and what he stands for by the way they are treated by his disciples. Sometimes I think the most powerful part of church happens, not during the service, but before and after the service when people are either made to feel welcomed or excluded.

            Realtors have a saying that there are three rules to buying real estate: location, location, location. Today we are reminded that there are six rules in church relationships: welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. If we obey those six rules, our church will not lose its reward because the visitors among us will return, the members will feel accepted, and Jesus will feel at home. 

            Have you welcomed someone today?

                                                                                                AMEN