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.
But I digress. Isaiah is reminding the people that God’s ultimate design is all about reaching outside their ingroup, that one of their chief purposes in life is to display God’s character and wisdom to the world so that people will start to move in his direction. With the first line of this passage he reiterates that obedience to the covenant is part of their witness to the world. But then he moves his attention to those members of the community who aren’t yet sure of their welcome.
Who exactly are these people, these “outsiders”?
Isaiah 56 refers to two groups in particular: verses 4-5 speak to the “eunuchs,” and verses 6-8 speak to the “foreigners.” These represent groups and classes of people who would have been kept at a distance by the religious establishment at various times during the Old Testament. In Jesus’ day this outsiders' club would have included various kinds of sinners such as prostitutes and tax collectors, diseased persons such as lepers, and Gentiles. In New Testament times Paul insisted on the inclusion of the Gentiles and James focused the attention of the Jerusalem church on the poor, the “widows and orphans.”
What the people of Isaiah’s day had trouble realizing was is that the despised “outsiders” who wanted to be devoted to the Lord were welcome to God. He expected them to be included in the privileged place of access. It staggered the minds of most Israelites to think that there might actually be outsiders, foreigners, pagans for goodness sake, whose yearning for God was strong enough, and who wanted to live a life holy enough, to gain them entrance into the chosen people. “After all,” they reasoned, “we’re the ones who’ve been here for the long haul; we’re the ones who worked and sacrificed to build this Temple; shouldn’t we be the ones who get to enjoy it? Why should we be forced to compromise that enjoyment by letting outsiders come in, unqualified, immature outsiders, who might mess up or, God forbid, change the way the Temple is run?” The Israelites forgot that what they had was a gift. They had come to think of it as their own possession, and that they had a right to charge admission. That is what got Jesus so upset, you know, with the money-changers at the temple. They were selling access to God.
That is what prayer is, you know. It is interaction with God - whether in a group or alone. It includes five classic elements: Praise, Thanksgiving, Confession, Petition, Intercession. One or more of these five elements happens every time God’s people gather in God’s house. And in Isaiah’s time the only place people knew God was present was in the temple, which was why it was so displeasing to God for them to raise the barriers so high that no one could enter but the “in group.” And although we know that God is everywhere, and Jesus is present wherever two or three are gathered together in his name, still we have the same responsibility to allow, welcome, invite strangers - foreigners “who join themselves to YHWH to minister to him, [who] love the name of YHWH ... and keep the sabbath... to [God’s] holy mountain, and make them joyful in [his] house of prayer.”
Who are we - as today’s religious establishment - tempted to exclude? Single parents? Homosexuals? People of other races? The list varies from church to church. Some have dress codes that effectively keep out people in jeans, or people with pierced eyebrows, or people with noisy children. Others exclude the poorly educated, still others close ranks against people with different accents, or skin color, or politics.
There are still other churches who genuinely welcome all people - on the surface - but are really uncomfortable with the change that new people bring. I’d wager that nearly all churches believe that they’re putting the Great Commission into practice, sponsoring missionaries and gathering new converts from the ends of the earth, but in reality some aren’t even willing to open the door for the seekers that are already banging on the door, wanting desperately to get a piece of what we’ve got in here in our “house of prayer.”
I hope that’s not us. But I want to ask each of you to be prepared to examine your own heart to see if you might not be secretly - or even not so secretly - ambivalent about the prospect of growth. Because most of us dislike change, even “good” change. And one of the things that we love most about this church - its close relationships, the familial warmth and trust that has grown over so many years - may make it difficult to accept the changes that inevitably come with new faces and new decision-makers. It is uncomfortable to walk into the sanctuary and find someone sitting in your place. It’s uncomfortable to see faces that you don’t recognize. It’s uncomfortable to adapt to new ways of doing things. It is unpleasant to have to face and confess the fact that we - you - might not really want to pay the price of change that comes when the church begins to grow.
But it is not we who call the shots on this. God has made it clear that it is his will to gather others and join them to those he has already called. “Thus says YHWH GOD, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.” [Is 56:8] When God calls people to us, it is our job to gather them in his name and share the joy he provides for all in his house of prayer. And that doesn’t just mean sitting here passively. It means preparing the house for visitors, it means making sure the guest room has clean sheets and that there’s enough food in the pantry. It means sharing our space and our stuff and our special privileges. It means that no matter how uncomfortable you may be with welcoming the stranger, they are probably even more uncomfortable being the stranger, unsure of their welcome from you, maybe unsure of their welcome from God. And God may be asking more from you than just shaking a hand during Sharing of the Peace. But if they are here at all, God is involved. There are no accidents. Each person who walks into the door is beloved of God, and God’s gift to us. It’s up to us to make sure that we are God’s gift to them, as well.
The Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis once described an experience of returning to his native Crete. As he walked along, an elderly woman passed by, carrying a basket of figs. She halted and lifting the two or three fig leaves which covered the basket, she picked out two and presented them to me. "Do you know me, old lady?" I asked. She glanced at me in amazement. "No, my boy. Do I have to know you to give you something? You are a human being, aren’t you? So am I. Isn’t that enough?"
J. Walter Cross, who tells this story, continues: “You are a child, I am a mother. That’s enough. You are a son, I am a father. That’s enough. We are brothers and sisters. That’s enough. I am your God, you are my people. That’s enough.”
God’s house is open to all. Are you?
