Open House

Almost 40 years ago, July or August of 1984, I was at my very first Bible camp. It was the annual women’s retreat for the Northwest Women’s Caucus of the Evangelical Free Church of America, and I was scared to death. Well, maybe that was putting it a little strongly, but I was pretty nervous. You see, I had been a Christian for only about 6 months and hadn’t even been baptized yet! And there I was with about 500 nice prosperous suburban women, with their nice houses and nice husbands and nice children and my goodness, I was just sure they had all been raised Christian and had never done anything they couldn’t tell their mothers about and knew their Bibles backwards and forwards and well, you get the idea.

I found out as the week went on, of course, that my view of the other women was more than a little skewed by my anxiety. There were other new converts and immigrants from other countries and divorced women and battered women and women who had been rescued from cults and countless other people who felt just as out of place as I did. And the nice prosperous suburban women I was so scared of were among the kindest, most welcoming, and most understanding people I had ever met in my life. But it took me a while. And one of the bits that I remember best was the piece of Scripture we just read.

You see, every morning we met for worship and were then sent off for solitary prayer and meditation on selected Bible verses. And as I read these words:

"And the foreigners who join themselves to YHWH, to minister to him, to love the name of YHWH, and to be his servants, all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant -- these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples." [Is 56:6-7]

I felt a sort of untying of the knots of anxiety inside me, and it began to dawn on me that I really was welcome, that I even if I had once been a stranger, a foreigner, an outsider, I wasn’t one any longer. And when I shared that later, in my small group, I started hearing the other women’s stories and realized how off the mark my initial impression of the others had been. And many of them - especially the ones from my own church whom I had just barely begun to get to know - were surprised to find out how insecure I had felt. Because I looked just as good on the outside as they did. And they had viewed themselves as warm and welcoming - and they were - and so didn’t realize that I had brought my own barriers with me.

It’s hard to remember, sometimes, that God created the church at least as much to reach outsiders as to shelter and encourage insiders. If not more - I don’t have to remind you of the parable of the lost sheep, do I, and how the shepherd could not rest until the 100th sheep had been found, even though 99 were safe at home. It can also be difficult to realize how hard it is to believe in the love of God until you’ve experienced it. Some of the people who come to us have never been part of a faith community at all, and others have been wounded or betrayed by their previous religious experiences. Reaching out beyond our walls takes more than generalized niceness. It takes commitment. It takes compassion. And it takes prayer.

The Israelites were in the habit of forgetting that their covenant with God was aimed at a wider audience than just the original twelve tribes. God’s promise to Abraham had been an inclusive one: all the people of the earth were to be blessed through his offspring. [Gen 12:3, 18:18] And the laws Moses gave to the people had also made it clear that everyone who wanted to worship YHWH was welcome in the community, on the same footing as the original refugees, as long as they would accept circumcision and follow the rest of the rules.

But as time went on, the people wavered between being too lax in their worship and too rigid in their standards. Doesn’t it sound familiar? We can see the same thing happening in our own day. We have churches that never call their people to repentance at all - it’s as if they’ve gotten their theology from Love Story. You know, “love means never having to say you’re sorry.” On the other hand, there are churches that don’t let people in until they satisfy the behavior police. I like to think that we’ve found a pretty good middle road here - everyone is welcome, wherever they’re at in their faith journey, and then we try to help them grow in faith and encourage them to be in a continual process of conforming their lives to God’s design.