A few years ago, as
worship was about to begin at a small Lutheran community in Spokane, WA, a
woman in a black velour sweatsuit with caked-on foundation, thick mascara, and
dark eyeshadow came into our church along with a man and sat in the back row of
our church. To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what was going to happen. Our
little congregation kept talking about wanting more people to come and not
being sure how to make it happen. I’ll confess: I was a bit nervous that our
“All are Welcome” sign would find its limit that day as people sat silently
guessing this woman’s background, her work history, her current marital status,
why she found her way to our church
door. She seemed so out of place, so lost as we began worship, turning the
pages of the bulletin, trying to figure out how it worked, how we worked. And I
prayed. I don’t know what I prayed, I don’t know that I prayed for anything… I
just prayed. Because sometimes God shows up when we least expect in people and
in things that are easy for us to say, “God would never do that.” Dear brothers
and sisters, I have become increasingly convinced that “God” and “never” don’t
belong in the same sentence.
Not
everyone will admit it, but most of us have an idea about things that are good
and wholesome for a person and things that are bad for a person. Whether it’s a
proper diet and exercise, avoiding certain behaviors while maintaining others, we
have a way of creating boundaries that keep us safe. What about our boundaries
for what keeps us holy? What about the boundaries about who belongs and doesn’t
belong in our communities of faith, in our churches? Most of us probably want
to think of ourselves as welcoming to the stranger, but often, we’re welcoming
to strangers who look like and think like us.
It
is really easy to focus on the external “signs” of holiness, whether it’s a
clean-cut appearance, the ways in which we drive (there are good reasons for
not putting a in ichthus on a person’s car…), how often our cars are outside the
church, how generous we are toward others, and on and on the list goes. We have
been programmed from a very young age to make quick judgments based on
appearance. Studies have shown that defendants who are more attractive are less
likely to be convicted of crimes than less attractive defendants.[1]
Sometimes, it’s easier to leave the man for dead in the middle of the
road than it is to risk our own reputations, to risk helping someone who may
not be trustworthy. There are people who are easier to ignore or look past, there are people whose
external appearance causes us to shrink back, to wonder how someone could get
to that point in life… there are people who are easier to forget than they are
to remember as we drive to church, focusing on our own “stuff,” on keeping
ourselves out of trouble, of keeping ourselves “clean,” not associating with
anything that might raise a question mark as to our moral status.
Time and again, people say to me,
“If you’re a good person and you do your best, you will be saved.” But what
does “being good” mean? Often times, for most of us, it means “looking good,”
or looking as though we have it all together, looking as though we might be the
sort of people Jesus would want to save. And then Jesus turns the whole thing
on its head. “Jesus, why are your disciples eating without washing their
hands?” “Why are they disregarding the traditions of the synagogue?” and we ask
“Jesus, why are you hanging out with unclean people?” “Why are they disregarding
the traditions of the church?”
It’s
a tough question. These traditions, kept by our ancestors, taught by countless
Sunday school teachers, parents, pastors, and mentors, have bored the roots of
our faith deeply into the fertile soil that has kept us steadfast through good
times and hard times, kept us hungry for the Word of God to be a lamp to guide
our lives. It was a tough question for the Pharisees in Mark, too. “But Jesus,
without any external signs, how do we know these people are saved?” Jesus responds,
“It’s not what on the outside that determines the cleanliness of a person, it’s
not the external boundaries you draw between yourself and those whom you
perceive to be ‘sinners’ or ‘out’ that keeps a person holy: it’s what’s in your
heart.” Jesus makes it far more uncomfortable for us, who externally look like
good church going people, peering into the depths of our hearts, into the
motivations behind our doubt and fear, into the motivations that cause us to
welcome some folks and not welcome others, into the motivations that lead us to
help some people and not help others. What comes from the heart affects our
external behavior toward our neighbors. And most of us – by this point in time
– know better than to ask Jesus who our neighbor is because we know that Jesus
will rarely choose the people who we already think of as our neighbors. Jesus
will choose the people who we would never want to consider our neighbors, whom
we’d rather leave for dead on the side of the road.
Some
of us might be relieved that what defiles comes from the inside and not the
outside. As good Lutherans, we know that there is nothing that we can do to
save ourselves. This is most certainly true. By the grace of God, we have been
saved despite ourselves and our obsession with our external appearance, with
“what the neighbors think,” with how others perceive us. But, in the same way
that evil thoughts and inclinations come from the inside, so too do the good.
Belief – even belief as a Lutheran – is not a “get out of jail free card,” absolving
us of our responsibility to and for our neighbors whom we would rather not help
and then point to grace as that which saves us rather than our works. Luther
himself says
Truly,
if faith is there, [the Christian] cannot hold back; he proves himself, breaks
out into good works, confesses and teaches this gospel before the people, and
stakes his life on it. Everything he lives and does is directed to his
neighbor’s profit, in order to help him – not only to the attainment of this
grace, but also in body, property, and honor… for where works and love do not
break forth, there faith is not right, the gospel does not yet take hold, and
Christ is not rightly known.[2]
Our salvation was
never conceived of a private event that takes place in our hearts; it was never
meant to be between just us and Jesus. Salvation is that which binds us to
Christ and, by being bound to Christ, we are bound to all those to whom Christ
has bound himself. Our salvation continually points us toward our neighbors,
toward those stuck on the side of the road, stuck on the highways of their
lives, and beckons us to see in them the face of Christ.
I’m not sure what the woman’s
background was that came to the church 3 ½ years ago. When she was invited to
the communion rail, I asked her name, and she said – seriously - “Trinity.”
“Trinity, this is the body of Christ, given for you.” It wasn’t at this moment,
though, that I saw God moving through this woman. It wasn’t after church, when
I watched with my heart swelling as my reasonable respectable and well-to-do
congregation approached Trinity, curious, wanting to genuinely welcome her and
get to know her better. We learned that she had never seen the man she came
into church with before that morning. Standing on the corner outside our
church, this woman – who had never been to our church before – had the courage
to ask a complete stranger, “Will you come to church with me?” She never came
back to our church, and I have become convinced that, on that day, Christ
worshipped in our midst.
[1] Bruce W. Darby and Devon Jeffers“The
Effects of Defendant and Juror Attractiveness on Simulated Courtroom Decisions,” Social Behavior and Personality 16
(1988):39-50; R. Michael Bagby, James D. Parker, Neil A. Rector, and Valery
Kalemba, “Racial
Prejudice in the Canadial Legal System: Juror Decisions in a Simulated Rape
Trial,” Law and Human Behavior 18 (1994):
339-350.
[2]
Martin Luther, “Prefaces to the New Testament,” 361.
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