Love people - a radical welcome

Last week I introduced the theme, Love God, love people, love in action. We started with Love God: an invitation and a challenge. An invitation into a relationship and a challenge to sacrifice your life.

This week we are examining the phrase “love people”. To love people is part of the sacrifice of life God challenges us with. We need to offer a radical welcome.

I want to think first about our need for people and for relationship.
How, if the church is to offer anything it must first love and accept people. Our community must offer a radical welcome.
If our community loves people what will that look like? How will we know?

The need for love and relationship

It is popular these days to esteem those who seem to be highly independent individuals without need for friends and helpers.

We are in awe of Simon Cowell – seemingly untroubled, rich, smiling and in charge. Only recently engaged. But he has the aura of being a bit detached. It’s hard to imagine any intimacy with him, or that he might be spontaneous or lose control of his affairs. Is he an island? deserted-island

According to the writer John Donne who wrote this whilst suffering from a serious life-threatening illness: No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent

John Donne is partly saying that if someone breaks away from the community it is we who are the losers – not just the independent soul. He is talking about death in particular.

But the image reminds me of Paul’s description in the bible of the body – if the toe hurts the whole body feels it. If the toe were cut off the whole body would suffer. Alison ripped a finger nail last night and her whole body felt it – in fact so did I!

Another way of putting it is that we are better off together than alone.

We bumped into a guy called La Bonte the other day. He sneaked up on me outside a guitar shop asking for money. A homeless guy, he said he was living in some bushes behind the retail park. He had long, straggly, dirty hair. His face was covered with scabs and his hands and nails were filthy. Although it was a warm day he was wearing layers of shabby clothes and a woolly hat. He smelt. His story was one of broken relationships and ill health leading to homelessness and alienation.

As we talked with him and prayed for him we couldn’t stop him from kneeling and abasing himself. What does his condition say about us? Here is a man, created and loved by God, precious to Him. One of us but do we hurt as a result of his pain? If I were to bring him to housegroup or on Sunday how would he find us?

People’s most basic need in life is relationship. People connected to other people thrive and grow, and those not connected wither and die. It is a medical fact, for example, that from infancy to old age, health depends on the amount of social connection people have … Virtually every emotional and psychological problem, from addiction to depression, has alienation or emotional isolation at its core.

Henry Cloud & John Townsend, How People Grow, Clinical Psychologists

We talk about how if a coal falls out of the fire it loses heat. We are the same; we need to be amongst others in order to stay hot. And we know it. We look for people to do life with: our family first (if it is functioning), friends, work colleagues, team mates, neighbours. Facebook astutely captured the tag, “friends” to describe your virtual connections.

Those hurting from the pain of broken relationships and even those amongst us who enjoy our own company, need, eventually, to seek out companions.

At the other end of the social and wealth scale from La Bonte: Fay Weldon, the feminist writer of the 70s and 80s – described as witty, provocative and casually libidinous – became a Christian in her 60s (about 10 years ago). She is interviewed in a recent issue of Christianity. She describes how after “50 years of neglect” she started going to church again, “It wasn’t a great moment of enlightenment or sudden conversion. Partly, I think, I wanted to belong.”

I am convinced that in our society the structure for relationship is weakened by our changing attitude to authority and morality as well as the increasing tendency to communicate remotely (text, email, facebook, twitter). Little by little it is breaking up what were, beforehand, the tribes in which we operated: the village, the extended family, the workplace, the social life of the pub, post office and town square.

The tribes don’t always work very well, they often let us down. When life goes wrong people increasingly rely on a remote structure or system – the social services, the internet, the counsellor or even the celebrity. Whether you are Fay Weldon, Simon Cowell or my new homeless friend La Bonte, you need to be loved and to be part of a loving community.

The church can offer a radical welcome

Dave Tomlinson, a vicar and author, wrote an article in a recent issue of Third Way arguing for what the church needs to do to survive, “In a fractured world where many starve for relationships, the capacity to offer a place to belong is an immense asset.”

The church is a tribe, a community, an offering of relationships which can be incredibly attractive to the lonely and alienated. But it can also be a scary place when the welcome is unfriendly and judgemental.

How welcoming is our community? Do we have subtle membership criteria? Do we really let people come as they are?

Luke 15:1,2.

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering round to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners, and eats with them”.

The tax-collectors and sinners came because they knew they would be accepted and loved by Jesus, the religious leaders came because they wanted to catch Him out and print lurid tabloid headlines about Him. “Tax collectors” was a catch-all phrase to describe the most hated people in the country. There aren’t many popular tax collectors anywhere in the world but ones that collected taxes for the occupying Romans and traitor Herodians were particular hate figures.

“Sinners” probably describes those whom the religious leaders considered a bunch of less-than-worthy people: either the poor and ill-educated or those who behaved badly.

(they did things like breaking the speed limit, booking restaurant tables and not turning up, nicking coat-hangers from hotel rooms, not clearing away their trays in McDonalds or their dog’s poo in the park, taking ten items through the nine items or less aisle, phoning their brother in Australia from the work phone, unfolding all the sweaters in H&M).

The religious people equated good behaviour and religious knowledge with closeness to God. In their judgement if Jesus was God he shouldn’t hang around these people. What are you more like? The religious people or Jesus - in the way you think of people?

But Jesus welcomes all of them to Himself and goes onto to illustrate how important every individual is with three stories about how they are to be rescued: the shepherd leaving 99 sheep to rescue one; the woman who rejoices over a lost coin she finds; the father running with ungainly strides to welcome home a son who has shamed his family and really messed up his life.

Jesus’ welcome is radical not just in what He demands of His followers, we spoke about that last week, but in that He welcomes everyone – both the sinners and the righteous. He doesn’t seem to have a dress code or behaviour code or belief code.

It does seem part of the deal with Jesus that you get your relationship with Him right before you make much progress with matters of belief and intellectual truth.

It is true that we want to share what we believe to be the truth. In fact we believe in God and we follow Jesus because He said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14:6

However, I don’t expect everyone to agree on theology and belief - certainly not until you have experienced the touch of God in your life and have heard the invitation I described last week. But then neither did Jesus expect everyone to agree with Him. What came first was relationship.

When people came to Jesus, I think they came first because they liked him. Because he loved them and accepted them. They could come as they were. The bible is full of stories of Jesus welcoming people as they are: the tax collector hiding in the tree, many untouchable and diseased people, the woman caught in adultery, an occupying military leader, a prostitute from an immigrant community, children, a demon-possessed man, even a religious leader in the dead of night.

Once they had come to Him, then they learnt the truth. They come to him first, accept the invitation into relationship and then they find the truth. In other words, if you want truth it starts with relationship.

People seek out people they like and tribes to which they can belong. Initially for fun and relationship but in the hope that they can also provide safety, counsel, wisdom for life and support when things go wrong.

Generally, emerging generations do not ask, “What is true?” they are primarily asking, “Do I want to be like you?” John Burke, No Perfect People Allowed

And this is precisely what we should expect in our community of faith, in our church. We should welcome people without judgement; we say “come as you are” and we should mean it – and do it. And once people are in relationship with us they might just listen to what we believe. It isn’t the other way around. Are we like that?

Do we love people? What are we like?

We are called to love people – with a radical welcome.

I want to lead an accepting, loving community where the common factor is the love for Jesus. I want to create a safe place, a safe environment where you can come as you are and be loved. Of course as you grow you won’t stay as you are, but you can come as you are, you don’t have to be perfect. A community which is attractive to those looking for a place to belong.

We will wear different clothes to each other, there is no uniform.
People will behave in ways you don’t think are right. They will have different sexual practices and values to you. Their families will not work the way you think they should.
Some of you will have addictive behaviours – maybe you smoke … marijuana, or drink a lot, or take something stronger. Maybe you have eating disorders, maybe you shop a lot or gamble or enjoy piercings.
People will use their money differently to you – some will have very little and their poverty makes them feel outcast. Some will be wealthy and not very generous and spend their money extravagantly. There will be many people who are ill – some obviously so and some who suffer mental illness and depression.
Differing stages on your spiritual journeys. Some may be investigating other faiths, trying to recover from disillusionment. Some may be asking the tough questions.

How welcoming are you going to be? Are you going to raise an eyebrow, sit somewhere else, gossip behind backs? Or are you going to walk across the room and say “Hi, my name is David, you are very welcome” – without feeling the need to judge or comment?

Yes, to love people may lead us to seek change but first comes a radical welcome.

There are several ways we can test what sort of community we have, what part we play in it. I want to first look at the signs that indicate that people are committed to this bunch of people and willing to make it work, willing to give of their lives to extend a radical welcome to the lost, lonely or searching. These are rather matter-of-fact – but if someone is doing these things I find they are usually contributing to loving people:

Join a housegroup, this is where you will know and be known. This is where Loving People makes great progress;
Find somewhere to serve, join a team which requires a sacrifice of time and effort as well as your gifts and passions;
Pray for the church, in particular for Alison and me;
Don’t hide for long, make sure we know who you are!
Give money, aim for 10% of your income or whatever God invites you to give. It is a sure sign of where your heart is.

One Anothers

Another way we can interpret how we love people is to examine how the bible commands us to treat each other.

There are several exhortations in the New Testament which finish with the phrase, “Love one another”. Four of them say that we should give one another a Holy Kiss. I am not absolutely sure what that means,

Before I heard doctors tell the dangers of a kiss,
I had considered kissing you the nearest thing to bliss.
But now I know biology and sit and sigh and moan;
Six million mad bacteria, and I thought we were alone.

We’ll talk about that another day perhaps…

Nine times it says simply, “Love one another”. And Jesus sums it up by pointing out,

“By this will all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:35

But here are the other verbs that accompany “one another”. They describe action, what each of us aim to do or not do (not what we expect to be done to us!). See the separate document “One Anothers”.

Wash feet, be devoted, honour above yourself, live in harmony, be willing to associate with people of low position, do not be conceited, stop passing judgment on one another, accept, agree, serve, be completely humble and gentle, be patient, bearing with, be kind and compassionate, forgiving, submit, encourage and build each other up, spur on toward love and good deeds, let us not give up meeting together, do not slander, live in harmony, be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble, offer hospitality, be submissive, clothe yourselves with humility.

This draws a picture of what the community of faith should strive to be like. We can’t possibly do it without the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives and without bucketloads of God’s mercy. You may want to check out the person sitting next to you but I think you will find that they are human too. We will make mistakes, we will hold grudges, say things we regret, get proud and so on – but we will also repent, give & receive forgiveness and steadily become more like the people Jesus calls us to be.

As we learn to love people and to extend a radical welcome, perhaps people will look and say, “I like you, I want to be like you, if this is following Jesus, tell me more”.

Conclusion

To love people you can’t be an island. You have to commit yourself to the community both practically - with time, money and energy - and also with integrity to address the way we deal with each other and love each other.

This is not the easy option, it is part of the sacrifice. It is part of giving up of our lives in order to follow Jesus. But it means that we are learning to love God and love people.

There are some of you here today for whom it was a very big deal to walk through those gates. It took a ton of courage, it was a risk. I want you to hear this, “You are welcome. I want you to come as you are. You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to agree with what is said, but I invite you to hang around and journey with us for a while. Experience what it is like to have the Holy Spirit of God come and fill your life with His grace and mercy and peace. Learn to receive His forgiveness and have hope again. The banqueting table of God’s love is spread with good food and drink and there is plenty for all.”

Love God, love people, love in action

We Love God, responding to his invitation into relationship and a challenge to sacrifice our lives.
We love people, extending a radical welcome and learning to love one another.
Next time we will talk about love in action.

David Flowers, 15/09/2010