|
Dear Church,
I hope that you are caught up on your sleep and enjoying the brighter evenings this spring is bringing us. I look forward to backyard dinners, the pending cherry blossom bloom, and evening walks as the sun sets. What are some things you are looking forward to this spring?
I was inspired to walk more after last Sunday’s memorial of Lauria Carey. I heard so many stories about how she loved to get out into God’s creation and be an active part of the world. Regardless of what society said, if Lauria was interested or even passionate about something, she put her whole self into it. Perhaps that is why, in 1956 she was the first Black person looking to join National City in membership. It took Lauria and our community five years to covenant in membership, but in 1961 she officially joined National City and we are a better community because of her love of God.
Lauria helped our community grow in our radical welcome in a time, much like today, when we must speak up for, welcome, and protect the most vulnerable among us. That work to protect and care for the most vulnerable in our midst is our holy and sacred scriptural call, and it is also the theme of our week, The Good News is Protection and Care for the Vulnerable. So, beloved church, let us be faithful to our work and read together the Good News offered to us in our devotional this week.
I look forward to seeing you Sunday!
Grateful for the Good News and all of you,
Pastor Stephanie
Weekly Theme:
The Good News is Protection and Care for the Vulnerable
Sacred Text:
Matthew 19:13-15 and Deut.24:17-22
Then small children were brought to Jesus so he could lay hands on them and pray for them. The disciples began to scold the parents, but Jesus said, “Let the children alone—let them come to me. The kindom of heaven belongs to such as these.” And after laying his hands on them, Jesus left that town.” (Matthew 19:13-15, ILB)
…
Do not deprive the foreigner living among you of justice, or the orphan either; nor take the cloak of the widow or widower as collateral. Do not forget that you were slaves in Egypt, and God, your God, redeemed you from that place. So it is that I command you to do these things.
When you are harvesting in your field and overlook a sheaf of grain, do not go back for it afterward. Leave it for the foreigner, the orphan, or the widowed, so that God, your God, may bless you in all the work that you do. When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time. Leave what remains to the foreigner, the orphan, or the widowed. When you harvest grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines a second time. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the orphan, or the widowed. Remember that once you were slaves in Egypt, and this is why I command you to do this.” (Deut.24:17-22, ILB)
Reflection:
By The Rev. Dr. Brian Blount
For the Children
For children, we would do anything. Children are the closest thing to a miracle in most of our modern human lives. They are blessings we indulge with the best of our energy, support, protection, attention, and acceptance. We not only welcome them into our company—we make them the center of our attention. We watch what they do. Marvel at how they grow. Attend to what they say.
It was not always so. In Jesus' time, in the company of adults, particularly adults with a sacred agenda, children were an invasive distraction. Humble in both physical stature and emotional maturity, children occupied one of the lowest rungs of social status. Leaders like Jesus were not expected to climb down to their level, and parents ought not to presume lifting them up into his presence. That was the attitude of Jesus' disciples. They mirrored the ethos of their time when Jesus so desperately wanted them to challenge it-by treating children the way they would treat him.
Earlier, Matthew 18:1-5 records an incident where Jesus warns that only those who humble themselves like children will receive entry into the reign of God. He follows up that startling revelation with the even more striking declaration that in welcoming the lowly child, one welcomes Jesus himself. Just a brief time later in Matthew 19:13-15, the disciples attempt to bodyguard Jesus, pushing away every child in range of Jesus' sacred space. In rejecting the children, they are rejecting Jesus.
So, Jesus rebukes, not the parents and their children, but his dull disciples. They refuse to entertain the radical truth about God's reign that Jesus is trying so desperately to teach them. The reign of God belongs to children and everyone who, like children, is not granted polite society's respect and acceptance.
The children, then, are a metaphor for all who lack societal status, who so-called decent folk find distasteful and undesirable. The migrant worker. The immigrant. The alien. The homeless. The powerless. The undocumented. Harking back to Deuteronomy 24:17-22, where God commands the people to care for the socially downtrodden because they themselves had been beaten down in Egypt, Jesus issues a clear, if not controversial, command for his followers. They are to live as an ekklesia, a "church." And this church is to exist in this world as a refuge of radical welcome.
In this season of Lent, the good news is that God, through Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, extends the same radical welcome even to us. Because we are all lowly sinners, we are all unworthy of acceptance in God's reign. And yet, God promises to receive us as if heaven is our home. Jesus wants his church to offer the same hospitality-to greet those of the lowest stature with the grandest welcome.
Reflection Questions:
- Thinking of the radical welcome of Jesus, when was a time you extended that welcome or had that radical welcome extended to you?
- Does radical hospitality, the way Jesus is hoping for, take risk? Is there privilege involved?
- What is one small thing we can do to make our community more radically welcoming.
| 
