September 10, 2006. Homecoming Sunday

Welcome Home

by Julianne Stokstad

Welcome Home! Welcome back to your church home! It's good to see all of you and it is good to be back! I am eager to hear what happened while I was gone and to tell you the stories of my adventures. I want to catch up with everyone.

Home: what do I mean by home? Home is the place you are accepted, respected, comfortable and safe, at least it is supposed to be like that. It has been said it is the place where when you go, they have to take you in.

Home is more than the physical place, it is the safe space for our restless hearts. Edward Abbey said, "Every man, every woman carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary."

I know there are some here who when they first came into this church felt a remarkable shock of recognition that they had found their home. The most important thing that creates home is the relationships. Healthy relationships are built upon sharing: shared meals, like we just had before church, shared work, shared spirit, as I hope we find here in worship and some basic shared values. However, there can be too much of a good thing. When we demand total agreement to values in doctrine and dogma, we shut down our human spirit and do not respect our individual human experiences. When we develop the comfort of familiarity, of being at home, this can appear as exclusivity to the newcomers, who are just coming to visit. Hospitality involves a friendly open welcome, a recognition of the common seeker and child of God.

Here in our church home, I hope we can provide shelter for the spiritually homeless. I hope we can provide a place of welcome, safety and acceptance for those who not been welcomed in other places. I believe this is a mandate from Jesus himself.

Our scripture today from the gospel of Mark tells the story of Jesus and the Syrophoencian woman. Jesus was traveling out of his own territory into a new land, across the border to Tyre in modern Lebanon. There I suppose he thought he could find some peace and quiet from all the hassling by the Pharisees. But no, he couldn't escape notice even there. A woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him and went and bowed down at his feet.

She begged him to heal her daughter. First of all, he was on vacation. Second, she was a woman and women, good faithful women weren't allowed to beg at men's feet in public. She was of a different ethnicity, a Greek, and of a different religion. Jesus was a Jew, a man, a teacher. It would be like a Muslim woman dropping to her knees and begging a Jew to heal her daughter. Imagine what a radical crossing of boundaries this was. It was even more shocking in those days and Jesus made a shocking reply to her: I'm here for the Jews, the children of Israel and you, woman are an outsider and an unclean one to boot. He insulted her, even calling her a dog. Jeez!

But she was not put off and I love her assertiveness and passion. "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Even outsiders get God's love. God's love is for everybody not just those who look like us, dress like us. Not just for those who believe what we believe, who follow the same rules we do. God's love is for everyone!

How can we live this and still retain who we are? How will our church reach out to the spiritual seekers? One of my deepest concerns is how will our future church be?

It must change, but how?

Let me tell you about the baptism of my little granddaughter Erika on the shores of Lake Michigan. My son and his wife asked me to baptize her while we were in Michigan on vacation. The reason was because it was the only time her Godparents could be together. Now as a minister, I am fully aware the baptism is more than a personal event, it is a community event, to be done in church. It is the welcoming of the one baptized into the church.

Yet, their request was heartfelt and I know they are not church folk. My daughter-in-law is a disaffected Catholic and my son is best described as an agnostic. I asked Paula why she wanted to have Erika baptized. She said because she wants her to start out and belong in the Christian church. What could I say?

It was foggy, there were no other people as far as we could see. We walked down carrying this two and a half month old baby dressed in a simple long white gown I'd made for her, wrapped in the beautiful blanket, Jean Nadell made and with the lacey white satin shoes that Dorothy Trotter gave to her. I was struggling internally with a sense I needed to do the baptism with integrity to the requirements of the church and yet have it meaningful to those present. I had the UCC Book of Worship in my hands and as we gathered, we stood in a circle not five feet from the edge of the Lake. It was quiet, not a breeze, cool, foggy light and as I began, our circle became a sacred circle, blessed by God's spirit. The parents and Godparents spoke of their intentions for Erika, of their love for her. I spoke of God's love and at the time, I went down to the water with a very large shell I found in the beach house and filled it with lake water. And so we baptized her on a Saturday afternoon down on the beach in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. She screamed! (Her mother said it was the devil being scared out of her) We prayed and afterwards as I looked around, I saw in the faces of the parents such joy and light, I remembered this wasn't really up to me or my words. God was there. God's love for this child, for all of us was the point. God's presence was so tangibly felt and known by everyone there. It was not about perfect words, or rigid rules. It was about the intention of loving blessing and including in the Christian church home. It is something she will now grow into.

God's love is here for all people. The point of church is to bring God's love and longing for justice and healing into our world. I don't know if there is an ideal church, but I'd like to end with the words of William Sloane Coffin:

"An ideal church, then, is a body of members grateful, beyond any telling of it, to a God whose amazing grace leaves all standards of fairness in the dust. They work in the vineyard, to ease the lot of the marginal, peripheral, oppressed, forgotten, victimized, bearing the burden of the day and the scorching heat, bringing to all God's suffering children strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow. Such is life in the Kingdom of Heaven. Such is life in an ideal church."

May it be so here.

Amen.