Extending an
Invitation—Again!
14 Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed
me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the
captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”
20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant,
and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he
began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your
hearing.”
[This sermon was preached on
Have you ever been to the T stop in the
middle of
There always seems to be a small crowd
of young adults there. Not just your
average group—a very colorful group of young adults. They’ve all got pink hair, blue hair, purple
hair, most of them have chains and leather pants, funky shoes.
To someone like me, they look pretty
odd. But what do I know? To them I probably look pretty square.
Last month I was waiting for friend was
coming in from the airport. Her flight
was delayed—surprise, surprise—so I got to sit there for a while.
And as I was waiting, I couldn’t help
but watch these quote on quote “freaks.”
There conversation seemed normal.
They laughed like anyone else.
One of them bought take out food and they were all sharing it.
I was there for about 20 minutes when I
realized that I couldn’t imagine one of these kids going to church on a Sunday
morning. I couldn’t imagine a church that
would be comfortable with these pink-haired people in their pews. But what was most interesting to me was that
I couldn’t imagine those kids feeling comfortable while sitting in a pew in
most churches.
Why is that? Why don’t pink-haired young adults come to
church?
Well, Greg, that’s simple! They don’t want to come to church.
This may be true, but why don’t they
want to come to church? Why is church
for us a place of community and hope and support? And for them, it’s the most boring hour one
could imagine?
Is there something in the message,
something in the gospel that makes church unappealing to young adults? Or is it something in our tradition, our
presentation?
Is it what we’re saying or how we’re
saying it?
To answer this question, I have been
trying to look at church from their perspective.
What does the average church look like
for them, from the outside?
This is what I came up with:
It’s a place where you have to dress
up. You have to bow your head and recite
prayers in a monotone voice. Stand up,
sing, sit down, no! Just kidding! Keep standing! There is a whole choreography that the group
has to follow, with no place for the individual to break out. You hear little buzzwords like: “salvation,”
“sin,” and “grace;” words that don’t mean a whole lot on their own and may not
resonate in your own experience. You
can’t talk about sex, or politics or drugs; you can’t be gay; you can’t
disagree with the preacher. But that’s
ok, because you can never stay awake for the entire sermon anyway.
I know, I know, it sounds pretty harsh
but it’s exactly how I felt in high school.
In the past few months, I’ve been meeting and talking with a lot of the
people, some who are in church and some who are not. A lot of them feel this way, or felt this way
in the past.
The underlying thought behind all of it
is the impression that you can’t be yourself at church. The young adults in
[pause]
I know what that feels like. For a long time, I felt that I wasn’t allowed
to talk about the fact that I am gay. I
thought I wasn’t supposed to be gay at all.
I thought that it didn’t have any relevance to my relationship with
God. If I were to talk about being gay,
it would interfere with that relationship.
At the very least, it would interfere or distract someone else in the
church. Therefore I had to leave a big
part of my experience at the door. And
because of that my relationship with God had little impact on the rest of my
life.
Is this why pink-haired young adults
don’t want to come to church? Is this
why young adults in general don’t want to come to church?
This is how I imagine pink-haired kids
from
That’s so not what being Christian is
about. Being Christian is about
gathering together around a table. Being
Christian is about extending an invitation to the people at the fray; it’s
about welcoming.
In today’s scripture reading, Jesus
reads from Isaiah: “God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the
captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free…”
In the time that Jesus lived, the poor,
the captives and the blind were more than just people who had a rough
life. They were the outcasts, the
society’s throwaways. They were the
ancient version of pink-haired young adults.
They were excluded from participating in society because they didn’t fit
the mold of what was normal.
But when Jesus says “the scripture has
been fulfilled in your hearing,” he is saying: “Those people who you cast
away? Those ones you thought were
odd? They are worthy of God’s love. And they should be invited back to the table,
back into the life of society. And they
should be welcome for who they are.”
Jesus spent his life inviting
people. He did this over dinner. He ate with tax collectors—I mean, who likes
tax collectors?—he ate with the people society thought were unworthy. This was a big deal for that culture. Imagine your favorite political leader – go
ahead, pick one – imagine them walking into McDonalds and just as you’re about
to take a bite of your Big Mac when they ask you: “My I join you?”
Jesus didn’t just say that these people
were worthy. He went to their homes and
sat with them, cared about who they WERE, what they thought.
Are you holding anything back? When you come to church, when you come to the
table, do you leave something at the door?
Are you afraid it will get in the way?
[pause]
We are all worthy of God’s love.
Jesus knows who we are, where we came
from and what we’ve been through. It is
precisely because Jesus knows what we’ve been through, that he invites us to
the table.
Communion is very important to me. It is how we continue Jesus’ ministry and
Jesus’ invitation. We make a table, and
we say that it is open to everyone. We
invite people to join us around it. And
at the table, I know that I am welcome.
The Life in the bread: knowing that
someone is watching over me and encouraging me forward. The Grace from the cup: knowing that whenever
I stumble or fall flat on my face, God is there to pick me up. The Good News that a child of God was born on
this earth and when he died he was resurrected that we may have eternal life in
Heaven. The whole story, it all includes
to me. And it includes to you. We can bring all of who we are to the table
and know that we will not be turned away.
Is this the message that is turning
young adults away? Is this the message
that bores pink-haired people?
I don’t think so.
It may be easy to assume that pink
haired young adults don’t want to come to church. It’s easier to make being a young adult a phase…
to assume that as soon as they grow up, they’ll come back. But that’s not the gospel message. Jesus didn’t set the table and then wait and
see if people would come.
As a congregation we need to be rooted
in the gospel. We need to extend an
invitation to the people who aren’t here.
We need to make our invitation explicit and our welcome inclusive.
And we can do it. This church has done it before. The decision to be Open and Affirming was a
seven year process of creating an inclusive welcome. When I arrived in Boston in October I was
searching for a spiritual home. I found
it here. I felt welcome because this
church had taken the time to say, we accept you as one of God’s children.
This reminds me of when I was a
kid. After being nagged for weeks, I
would finally break down and spend a Saturday afternoon—which is an eternity
when you’re 8 years old—and cleaned my room.
At the end of the day, exhausted from all that work, my mother would say
to me: “It’s a good staart!”
ONA was a good start—a big start. But we have to continue to do the same work
for young adults. We have to reevaluate
who we assume this church is for. We have
to be willing to risk inviting people who look different than we do. Creating an inclusive welcome, and extending
an invitation is not a program, or a 5-step solution. It’s an ongoing process that never ends.
When I was in Harvard Square, I watched
these young adults. But I couldn’t bring
myself to talk to them. After praying
about this and after writing this sermon, I want to go back. This time, I don’t want to just watch the
pink-haired people; I want to introduce myself.
I want to ask them how their day is going and listen to what they have
to say. I’m not going to try to convince
them that they need to go to church. I’m
not going to try to make them look like us, make them dress up on Sunday
mornings, make them stand up, sing, and sit down.
It’s going to be hard, really hard and
scary. It’s going to be hard because I
assume, as you probably do too, they don’t want to hear what we have to
say. After all, if they were interested,
wouldn’t they be here in church already?
No. Not necessarily.
How we present our message must always
be revised so that what we’re saying can come through. We need to do this because someone may want
to hear the gospel. There may be a young
adult with pink hair, or black hair, brown hair, even blonde hair, who’s
looking for God or who’s just starting to ask the question, what else is there?
Is there someone you know whose not
here? Who are your pink-haired people?
Will you encourage me to go to
God’s with us, and God will watch over
us. Let’s do this together.
Thanks be to God.