20th Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 2:18-24
Psalm 8
Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12
Mark 10:13-16
God’s Welcome
Throughout our time together we will sing our good news for the morning using
God Welcomes All ACS #987
"God welcomes all,
stranger and friend.
God's love is strong,
and it never ends."
Our theme for this morning is “Welcome” it is one of the themes that has emerged as part of Grace’s vocation during the Vitality Initiative.
What does this mean?
The Vitality Initiative is a process to help congregations examine how vital (full of life) they are. In the past we have used numbers to measure how well a congregation is doing, the number of people in attendance, the size of the offering or budget, the number of programs offered. But notice that these are measures of success by human standards, a congregation can be full of people, have lots of money, and a catchy mission statement and still not be answering God’s call for them, still not be healthy.
But when all those things are in place it’s easier to pretend we’re healthy even if we aren’t. We’re in a time in the life of the church where it is getting harder to pretend. Church attendance is falling (for a wide variety of reasons some of which are completely out of our control) and with it the other usual measures of success and we wonder: “What are we doing wrong?” and we worry about the future of “Our church.” And this is the problem in a nutshell, we’re focusing on ourselves rather than God. (classic definition of sin by the way) but the Good news is that:
God Welcomes All ACS #987
So as things are changing all around us, perhaps it is time for one more change: a change of perspective. A change of perspective where we wonder: “What is God doing right now?” and “How is God using the church to create God’s future?” because if we are truly people of faith we believe and trust that God is already at work in the world and that God revealed God’s mission in the life, death, and resurrection of God’s Son, Jesus. So instead of the church having a mission it now becomes that God’s mission has a church. We also know that God works in the world through us, God uses our hands and so we start to wonder we wonder “how is God using us?” and “How does God want to use us?” The answers to those questions are different for each person and each congregation and they are different because God has given each of us different gifts. This is the image of one body many members, we need all the different parts to be whole. Unity is not uniformity. And the intersection between the gifts God has given us and how God wants to work through us is: vocation.
God Welcomes All ACS #987
So as we’re shifting our perspective from placing ourselves at the center to placing God at the center our definition of health, of success also shifts, now we measure how healthy we are based on how well we are doing at living into our vocation as part of God’s mission. How do we know we’re doing that? Well first we have to figure out what our vocation is and that’s what the Vitality Initiative is about, and the key is simple. To Listen.
Listen to God, listen to each other, and listen to our community. That’s what we’ve been doing, listening and three main themes have emerged the importance of Welcoming, Connecting, and Serving.
When we listen to God, we find the importance of welcome all over the scriptures. Two weeks ago, we heard Jesus tell the disciples “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and who ever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” This was in response to the disciples arguing over who was the greatest. Jesus’ response was to teach them to welcome, especially those without power or status. Last week Jesus warned the disciples about becoming stumbling blocks to those whose faith in Jesus might be on unsteady ground, what’s the opposite of a stumbling block? I’d argue it’s a welcome mat as it smooths your entry into a new place. This week the children are back, and the disciples have not learned their lesson, they’re still trying to keep them from Jesus and Jesus is indignant that they are trying to keep anyone from him.
God Welcomes All ACS #987
We also heard today how God created us to be in relationship with one another and how sometimes it takes awhile to find the right fit. It took God awhile to find the right partner for Adam but when Adam saw Eve he knew they went together.
The same goes for congregations and communities, it can take a while to find the right fit but often we know when we’ve found it. As we were listening to the congregation, we heard several stories where the welcome the person received when they visited this congregation helped them realize that this was the community for them. Welcome is a part of who we are. We also heard a desire to be more welcoming. Something must be very important to want to do it better and welcoming is one such thing for Grace.
When we listened to the community, we heard how important our welcome of the various groups the meet here is to their success in serving our community. We also heard a desire for more welcome and deeper relationships from the community.
These listenings are summarized in the blue quote bubbles on the wall of the atrium. We invite you to think about how you’ve experienced welcome at Grace, how you think we might improve and add your thoughts using the post-it notes on the table by the wall.
Welcome is important to us because it is important to God. Remember:
God Welcomes All ACS #987
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