A Church Without Walls (Matthew 10:40-42)

Sermon as preached at Lambs and Evington UMC 6/29/14




If you have ever driven in downtown Memphis Tennessee, you know that it can be quite an adventure. With all of the allure of the bright lights and sounds of blues emanating from Beal Street, with the great history of places like Sun records where many legends of early rock and roll played  Elvis and Johnny Cash just to name a few, with the appeal of world class bbq on almost every block, one knows that with one wrong turn you can be in a very unfamiliar, uninviting, and quite frankly frightening part of town. This is situation that faced one of my good friends and me during my senior year of college. We had travelled to Memphis, already having taken in Graceland we now made our way downtown to see a basketball game and to grab something to eat.  We see the arena, we see the lights of Beal street, but one thing we don’t see is parking. So we have to make a few turns down some roads that seemed to be leading us away from the celebration of the city, into a more turbulent area. Finally we find a place to park on the side of the road, near some small park and as we get out we notice some strange columns just standing in the park. It almost looked like Stonehenge here in the middle of downtown Memphis.  As we were standing there, it must have been apparent that we didn’t know what we were looking at, because a stranger walked up to us and said, “it’s a church.” They call it “the church without walls.” He went on to tell us about how members of the community would meet here in the park for worship. How every week lines of people would form as this church fed those in the community. He told us the church without walls has no barriers, nothing keeping others from coming in, and nothing to stop members from going out to serve.  What does it mean to be a church without walls?

            What purpose are our walls serving?  Now I don’t mean what purpose are the walls literally serving, Of course these walls give us a place to gather for worship, a place for Bible studies and Sunday school and much more where we are safe from the rain or snow or Sun. The walls of course serve to be a place to escape the blistering heat of summer or the freezing cold of winter, but beyond this, what is the purpose of these walls, and have we become too familiar and comfortable with them?

            Somewhere down the line we as Christians have  lost the meaning of Church. Just the fact that we can say I’m going to church, or that our church is located on Lambs Church Rd/  Church Ln, shows that we have gotten things so mixed up that we don’t even know what we are saying anymore.  If we look at Acts we don’t find stories of buildings, we find stories of communities. We find stories of Peter and Paul, and Barnabas, and Timothy and Apollos traveling all around spreading the good news of Jesus Christ, baptizing new members into community of Christian fellowship and serving the poor, the sick, the orphaned, the widowed and the downtrodden. That was Church. Even in the letters that we find Paul writing to the churches in Corinth, or in Ephesus, these are not letters to some steepled building, these are letters to a community of believers, letters to a counterculture working through the power of the Holy Spirit to transform the world while they themselves are being transformed. Fast forward many many years to 18^th century England and we see the development of church buildings have become common practice, and still John Wesley did not call these buildings churches, but rather they were referred to as part of a parish. A parish is a small divide or community of a greater church. Even still the building was not the parish, the community that worshipped there were. I bet if we look back into the history of this church we will find that it too is centered around a community. I bet we would find a community of believers who wanted to gather together in worship and service, and I would bet you that moment is when this building was built.  Throughout history church has always  been about a community of believers gathering for worship and service.

And yet something has changed. It is as if these walls hold some power, that over time these walls have convinced us that church is not this community gathered together, but the walls themselves. When coming to worship or to some meeting how often do we say we are going to church as if church is where we meet rather than those who are gathering.  Shouldn’t we be saying that we are going to be the church?  We say our church is located on this or that road when shouldn’t we be saying our church gathers at Lambs Church Rd/ 20 Church Ln? 

            Over time, these walls have a profound effect upon us.  Over times these walls can talk to us, the can trick us in to believing that we are not the church, but that church is only what happens within these walls.  These walls coax us into a false sense of entitlement, that this is our church, and it should be done the way we want it.  These walls can even become a barrier, instead of being a place to drawn the community together, they can become a way to separate us from those around us.

            This is our human nature, Jesus knows that we can become insular, Jesus knows we can become too comfortable with the status quo and in the process can become unwelcoming to the stranger. This is why as many of the followers of Jesus are gathered around him, listening to his instructions and be prepared to be sent into the world to serve, he tells them, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” Jesus is preparing these ministers for the reality that they will go out in his name and at many places will be unwelcome. That they will go to fellowships of believers and they will be rejected. Yet those who welcome the guest, those who practice radical hospitality welcome Christ, and welcome the Father.

            Now we in the south know a little something about hospitality. We know how to clean up real nice for our guests, to offer them a glass of lemonade or sweet tea, then how to go about telling them how they are the most idiotic, misguided person, but it’s all ok, because we said bless your heart. Isn’t that how it goes, you can say the meanest thing to or about a person, but if you say bless their heart then it’s all good. This isn’t radical hospitality.  Radical hospitality is the one who accepts the sinner, the outcast, the one we’re afraid, and accepts them as equals, in fact puts them above themselves. 

            I am reminded of a story, of a poor man, his clothes all torn, his face dirty, a stench just radiates off of him. He walks into a church one day and sits down. He hears some mumbling and a few minutes later feels a tap on his shoulder; it was the usher. The usher tells him he’s sorry but he’s going to have to ask the man to leave, he is causing a distraction during worship. The man goes outside, sits outside the doors of the church and starts weeping. Suddenly another man comes and asks him what is wrong. The poor man replies, “I wanted to go to worship, I wanted to hear the choir and see the excitement from the children, but they won’t let me in”. The stranger replies, “It’s ok, my name is Jesus, and I’ve been trying to get into that church for years, but they won’t let me in either.”  Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”

            Are we a church that welcomes Jesus? Abagail Van Buren once said, “The church is hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.”  Are these walls acting as the home of a spiritual triage,  or are they protecting the rare artifacts housed inside?  You see, not only do these walls often serve as a barrier to keep others out, they can also become a way from keeping us from going out into the world. It can become a way of containing the church, and yet the power of the Holy Spirit cannot be contained. We see that even the earliest followers of Jesus, those who were even able to sit and listen and learn by his side did not remain there. They did not set up camp and say this is where Church is. In our scripture today, Jesus is sending his followers out into the world to serve. Are we prepared to go into the world and serve, and are we prepared to welcome those who come to lead us in service?  I think it is an amazing gift from God that this scripture is part of our lectionary reading on this day in which many churches around the conference are welcoming new pastors.  I pray that this scripture guides those churches, opens them up to receive the gifts the pastor has to bring. I pray that prophets around the conference will be heard, I pray that the righteous will be welcomed.

            And yet if we fall into an understanding of the pastor being the only one who is called go, called to reach out into the world, then we are deeply mistaken. Sure Christ tells people to welcome the prophet, to welcome the righteous. Yes this means those appointed to be evangelists and leaders of the church are called to go forth, but Christ also says, “And whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple -- truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.” When Jesus says one of these little ones he is not talking about children, he is talking about the average Joe, he is talking about the power of the laity. He is saying that all  followers of Christ are called to go and serve, and that all followers of Christ are to be welcomed.

 Are we going?  Are we welcoming?  Are these walls hindering us from serving as Christ truly calls us to serve?  Do these walls act as a gate to keep out that which is outside, and to keep us in? What would it look like to be a church without walls?  What would it look like to once again recognize the church not as a meeting place but rather a community of follower of Christ gathering to worship and to serve our risen Lord?  What would it look like to offer radical hospitality? To welcome the stranger, the outcast, the sinner into this community, and even give them the power to change us? Imagine a church without walls, where the community could see something strange, the would see a collection of people from all over the community gathering and giving praise to the Lord almighty, gathering and learning and serving the Son of God. And imagine those people gathered, that even as they gather the see the world around them, they see the hurt, the injustice and the pain, and go into their community to change it.  Imagine a church without walls where every day we are reminded of sacred beauty of creation, that with each breath in which we are able to smell the daisies, each gentle gust of wind is a reminder of the power of the Holy Spirit working within us. Brothers and sisters this church exists for we are that church. This building and the ministry that is able to be done in this place is special, but this is not the church… we, we are the church, we are the church without walls.