\u00a0<\/p>\n
September 23, 2007<\/strong><\/p>\n Jeff Taylor<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Text:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n II Corinthians 5:14-21\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Revelation 21:1-5, 22-27\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Isaiah 60:1-5<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Visit with me, as I recall it, a small apartment in 1990s greater Los Angeles: too many pieces of furniture for its size, a small kitchenette, a dining area with one of those early 70s faux-wood extending tables with the super heavy metal frame; and everywhere you look: mail, piles and piles of mail, almost all of it unopened.\u00a0 Lorina was a capable professional person, a single woman about my age, a lawyer with degrees from Harvard and Stanford, and a judge on the state\u2019s air quality control board.\u00a0 She was a very active member of Pasadena Mennonite church and associated in various ways with other church communities too.\u00a0 She was active in politics, in a campus choir, in church choir, in tutoring poor children, and in several other groups.\u00a0 She was a very competent person, but Lorina just didn\u2019t have an organized home \u2013 clean, yes, but not tidy.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Going back further in time, we visit a home in mid-1970s suburban St. Catharines (is there an \u201curban\u201d St. Catharines?).\u00a0 The front entrance of the Doerksen home was dazzlingly lit by a handsome chandelier, the carpets always seemed new and the furniture was impeccably matched and arranged.\u00a0 The spacious wood dining room table was laden with food that was as beautifully presented as the rest of the home.\u00a0 There was no unopened mail.\u00a0 Mrs. Doerksen — she insisted I call her Lottie even though I am her daughter\u2019s age \u2013 did not work outside the home, but she did raise three children in the home.\u00a0 How did she gain such a tidiness advantage over Lorina? \u00a0 Who is the better host?\u00a0 Lorina or Lottie?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0 It was as we left one of Lorina\u2019s many gatherings of theologians, lawyers, scientists, Star Trek enthusiasts, and choral geeks, that Doreen turned to me and said, \u201dLorina has the gift of hospitality.\u201d Really?\u00a0 Can a person entirely lacking the gift of spatial organization with no matching china have the gift of hospitality?\u00a0 As usual, Doreen was absolutely right: Lorina had and has an amazing gift of hospitality; that is, of welcoming others into her presence and bringing others into the presence of each other.\u00a0 You see, Lorina had a bold determination not to let imperfection prevent her from extending an invitation.\u00a0 Her approach to making others feel comfortable is to err on the side of making less fuss over them, not more.\u00a0 After all, who of us is comfortable feeling we are burdening others?\u00a0 Why would we, then, make others uncomfortable by appearing to be burdened by them?\u00a0<\/p>\n Lorina, much like my wife Doreen, is also an excellent interviewer, she has a long list of comfortably unobtrusive questions at the ready for anyone she doesn\u2019t know.\u00a0 And her gatherings often include people she doesn\u2019t know as well as those who do not yet know each other.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I never felt out of place decked out in torn jeans, nearly bottomless running shoes, and my dingy blue-collar social graces in John and Lottie Doerksen\u2019s pristine home.\u00a0 They never allowed me to believe that I belonged anywhere at that moment but right there with them.\u00a0 The Doerksens, Dave and Elsie Thiessen, and others at Grantham Mennonite Brethren church took me, a gangly, socially awkward, heavily acne-ed, unchurchified teenager with no spiritual parents, into their homes and lives.\u00a0 They managed, I would think only with considerable effort, to look deeply past whatever was out of place to see the seeker\u2019s soul and made a place for me in their homes, lives, and church.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0 I, in turn, made some efforts to acculturate as well.\u00a0 Mercifully, God seemed to have rather suddenly and profoundly unwrapped a musical gift in my life that may have helped with that process.\u00a0 Going to church choir practices for a full year before I was old enough to join just to listen probably made an impression on some, as did years thereafter of singing in Niagara area Sangerfesten, plowing my way through the gothic texts of many German songs, including Die Friendensfuhrst.\u00a0 And I worked hard to acculturate myself in other ways to become culturally \u201cRussian Mennonite\u201d.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t easy: eating all that fleisch piroshki and zwieback, farmer sausage and vareniki, rollkuchen and erboese, and those darned porzselky every new year\u2019s eve \u2013 but I endured it for the sake of the unity of the church.\u00a0 They and I were doing cross cultural integration, even having grown up in the same small city.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0 Cultural identity runs deep in all of us, regardless of our awareness of that. We humans are pack animals to the core.\u00a0 Our ancient ancestors survived not be tooth and claw, but by hunting cooperatively.\u00a0 And today there is little that we truly do alone.\u00a0 Even those who seek to remove themselves from society (perhaps for better spiritual focus) almost always organize themselves into communities of withdrawers.\u00a0 The less gregarious among us may often be found awash in the words of others, secluded in the company of a favorite author\u2019s thoughts.\u00a0 And when we encounter someone on the street who truly has become disassociated, even that person will often take shelter in conversation with imaginary companions.\u00a0 But before you decide someone you pass on the street who is talking to themselves is mentally ill, you should probably just quickly check for one of those \u201cBluetooth\u201d cell phone things in their ear.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0 People are pack animals; we need each other.\u00a0 This is just as the creator intended it from the beginning when God spoke to him or her self and said, \u201clet us make humans in our image,\u201d so male and female God created them.\u00a0 We seem to have a declaration of God\u2019s own internal relationalness.\u00a0 Is this how we are made in God\u2019s image, that we are relational creatures?\u00a0 Of course, we\u2019re not the only relational creatures, but the text itself does seem to tie our relationalness directly to God\u2019s.\u00a0 And so we join God as co-creators to help create or at least prepare for this new world where the Gentiles come to the rising of the Lord, bringing blessing to the house of Isra \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0 This is not just about being nice, educated, tolerant, liberal democrats; it is about the purpose of the church, to draw all people back to the garden of fellowship with their creator where they may mutually bless one another.\u00a0 This is the great ministry of reconciliation that Christ is leaving in our hands.\u00a0 We are simply not fully the church of Christ if we are divided by illusory differences, whether cultural or individual.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0 This call to build the church of God worldwide used to mean the Christians had to go to far-off lands to bring the good news.\u00a0 And whatever mistakes were made in 500 years of Western church missional activity, and there were many, the one mistake they didn\u2019t make was to not go.\u00a0 And while there remain many reasons meet our fellow humans everywhere on God\u2019s earth; there is no need for Toronto\u2019s Christians to go anywhere other than out their doors in order to find people of hundreds of cultural and religious groups.\u00a0 With just under half or the residents of our city having been born outside of Canada, it is no news to any of you that the world is here at our doorstep.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0 We are arguably the world\u2019s leading city in cultural, linguistic, and religious pluralism.\u00a0 Here I want to talk particularly to those under 30, and especially to the teens in our midst.\u00a0 It is you who are going to lead the world in learning how to live peaceably in a global community right here at our door.\u00a0 You are world leaders in working this out, not my generation.\u00a0 I was in grade 8 before the first black boy came to my school.\u00a0 In high school I knew one boy from Pakistan. Today 1\/3 of my students are from Pakistan alone.\u00a0 You are the first generation of people anywhere ever in the world to grow up living and learning with such a variety of people from such a variety of cultures.\u00a0 You have the opportunity no one else has ever had to show the rest of us how to live in peace with such differences.\u00a0 That is magnificent challenge and will be a marvelous accomplishment, a gift <\/p>\n to the whole planet.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0 But the invitation of Christ goes far, far beyond \u201ctolerance of diversity\u201d:\u00a0 the call of Christ is that, for now on, we just absolutely refuse to look at people the way we have been.\u00a0 Just as people at first thought Jesus was nothing special, and now we know differently, so anyone who comes seeking Christ is something new and amazing to us.\u00a0 Stereotypes will not suffice.\u00a0 Even a national policy of \u201cmulticulturalism\u201d is insufficient for the church because such a construct does not require us to see one another beyond the cultural garb, to see one another as individuals as well, and it does not require us to mutually integrate in ways that require us to trust each other.\u00a0 The church is ultimately not a multicultural organization, but a supercultural organism.\u00a0 That we might encourage newcomers to Canada to retain elements of their cultural distinctiveness, or that we have attained the political sophistication to appreciate the musical montage of tongues on the TTC — that we are global communitarians isn\u2019t enough.\u00a0 Though these would all be good steps for our world, and would surely bring the creator some delight, or at least relief; yet Christ makes an even deeper interdependency possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0 If it is true that God loves people from Iran, that he loves Persianness, does God not likewise love the Anglo-Celt?\u00a0 Isn\u2019t being Irish as good as being Iranian? Isn\u2019t being a Schwartzentruber as good as being a Johnston? A Martens as good as a Kim?\u00a0 If God loves us for who we are culturally, then why do I as a member of the host culture have to change or modify who I am culturally any more than the newcomer?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0 And there is the problem: we ask the wrong question from the start because we misperceive the entire relationship from the start.\u00a0 For I am not a host except that Christ was host before me; for this is not my land, nor that of the British Empire, or the French crown, nor (and I say this with respect) is it the land of the first Asian Canadians who came here 20 or 30 thousand years ago: this is God\u2019s land.\u00a0 The whole earth is the Lord\u2019s, and we are the people of his pasture.\u00a0 Everything else is geopolitical squabbling, selfishness, and accident of history.\u00a0 So I do not invite others into \u201cmy\u201d culture, just as I do not welcome others into \u201cmy\u201d church.\u00a0 The earth is the Lord\u2019s, the church is Christ\u2019s.\u00a0 Jesus received us and we simply continue to welcome each other into the presence of Christ and his people.\u00a0 Yes, our cultural identities can run deeper than food, clothing, and language.\u00a0 They run to the core of some of our understandings about what it is to be human, to be a community.\u00a0 There are significant differences in cultural understandings and these can cause frustration and we can hurt each other unawares.\u00a0 We\u2019ve all been the Greek widows and the Hebrew food distributors at times.\u00a0 But we\u2019ve also been the wise ones chosen to be deacons too.\u00a0 We never need to let our imperfection deter us from extending an invitation.\u00a0 And frankly, this just is not an option any longer.\u00a0 No urban church in North America can long hope to remain healthy, vibrant, relevant, or even viable, if it does not become a community open to the blessings of those who come at first as strangers.\u00a0 (Every close friend was at one time a stranger).<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0 Nor will a welcome extended as the power host suffice.\u00a0 A welcome that does not involve mutual bending does not acknowledge Jesus as the prime host.\u00a0 Christ\u2019s church has no dominant culture.\u00a0 If we must, as a practical matter, agree to worship primarily in one language or another (must we?), then those closest to that language will naturally want to acquiesce in some other way: perhaps how meals are shared, or what food to eat, when to eat it, what music to play and sing, how to manage church governance, how and when to include children in the life of the church, how to invest the church\u2019s financial resources, how to call people to ministry: all of these modes of operation are opportunities for sharing power.\u00a0 Some of this is threatening, requiring us to show tremendous faith in each other and in Christ whose church we are.\u00a0 The very process of divesting ourselves of power (if we are in the dominant culture at that moment), needs careful management.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0 Who are the wise ones we may choose to help us continue to manage the transitions from monocultural churches to multi-cultural and perhaps one day post-cultural church life.\u00a0 What are the practical steps we can take now?\u00a0 Can we seek to entrust more of our sisters and people from non-dominant cultures with leadership in our church?\u00a0 I have been advocating for \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0 I\u2019m not comfortable when men are sexually intimate with each other.\u00a0 It bothers me for many reasons that we won\u2019t take time for right now, but it does.\u00a0 But the last time I heard anyone speak from behind this pulpit it was a gay man who spoke wisdom as from Christ, a man whose actions speak the gospel of Christ more clearly than anything I can ever claim to have done.\u00a0 [referring to talk by Jim Loney, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Sept. 20, 2007] In the same statement of welcome that we print in our information sheet and post on our website where we say we welcome people of various cultures, we also say we welcome people regardless of sexual orientation.\u00a0 I\u2019m pretty sure we\u2019re not all agreed about what that welcome aught to look like.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure I know within myself what it aught to look like.\u00a0 But we need to extend a welcome, while we keep listening for what the Spirit is saying to the churches (and not just ours, BTW).\u00a0 But, my discomfort or yours is never a sufficient reason not to extend a full-throated invitation to those seeking the presence of Christ.\u00a0 How Christ\u2019s presence should be ministered we will not all agree on.\u00a0 Some would want to offer an unqualified affirmation, others will have some qualifications, and others might wish to offer a ministry of \u201chealing,\u201d if you will.\u00a0 Can such divergent ways of approaching gay and lesbian people be sustained in the same congregation?\u00a0 They are all present in the worldwide church and in the Mennonite church globally and locally.\u00a0 We certainly don\u2019t yet have this all figured out.\u00a0 But we never need to let the imperfection of our house be a deterrent to extending an invitation into Christ\u2019s house.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0 May our welcome be broad and deep and genuine; and may Christ bless you each as you, with your own God-given gifts, do this ministry of reconciliation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 Christ Our Host September 23, 2007 Jeff Taylor \u00a0 Text:\u00a0\u00a0 II Corinthians 5:14-21\u00a0 Revelation 21:1-5, 22-27\u00a0 Isaiah 60:1-5 \u00a0 Visit with me, as I recall it, a small apartment in 1990s greater Los Angeles: too many pieces of furniture for its size, a small kitchenette, a dining area with one of those early 70s faux-wood extending tables with the super heavy metal frame; and everywhere you look: mail, piles and piles of mail, almost all of it unopened.\u00a0 Lorina…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons-a-worship-audio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nel.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n 4 years to nominate a sister to the position of vice-chair\/chair apparent, submitting lists of excellent women to do the job; and I know that the gift discernment committee has taken my plea seriously but, when I last asked, had found no takers.\u00a0 Is there something about the way we manage our church life at the board level that feels unwelcoming to more than half our congregation?\u00a0 Does the term \u201cboard\u201d itself carry an \u201cold boys\u201d ethos with it?\u00a0 Is the term inherently bor-ing? Could we actively ask new Mennonites to serve our church, or are we suspicious.\u00a0 Could we actively send newcomers to conferences, if not as delegates then as observers on our dime?\u00a0 Could we create a team to care for the needs of newcomers: people specifically trained to actively notice who the first time and returning newcomers are?\u00a0 To help them get connected.\u00a0 To make sure they soon get a directory so they can call the contact people we list on our information page?\u00a0 To gradually extend \u201cadherents\u201d privileges to newcomers, asking if they want a mail folder, or to be added to the church email list.\u00a0 Are we actively integrating newcomers in all facets of our church life?\u00a0 Or are we a little afraid of how things may change?\u00a0 Actually, change annoys me most of the time, it takes me a while to get a place figured out and if the target keeps moving I get frustrated.\u00a0 I would want my church to be rather stable and predictable, just for my own comfort level.\u00a0 The problem is, TUMC is not \u201cmy\u201d church, it is Christ\u2019s.<\/p>\n