Scripture texts: Acts 10:23-36, 44-48, Matthew 9:9-13
I’ve mentioned a few times in my sermons that among my various geek and nerd activities are attending conventions. Most folks I suspect are not all that familiar with this not-so-little corner of fandom, where thousands of people will gather at a convention center for a weekend. Star Trek kinda started it all back in the 70s with their fan conventions, but since then there are fan conventions for comic books, Star Wars, Doctor Who, My Little Pony, and lord knows what else.
Image from the Columbus Dispatch
About 8 or 9 years ago, before we were married, Sarah and I decided to take a vacation together to Origins, which is one of the larger tabletop gaming conventions. It’s held in Columbus, OH each year around July 4 weekend. Emily tagged along and we had a really good time together, playing games, seeing the people in costumes, buying some new games in the dealer's room, and so forth. There’s no lack of things to do at one of these events. And then on Sunday morning, we went to church together, not at a local congregation, but at the chapel service held at the convention itself.
Wait, what? There was Sunday morning worship scheduled as a part of a giant gaming convention? As a matter of fact, yes. And there were probably about 50 to 60 people there, not all that different from a typical Sunday morning at most congregations around the country. And that’s what it felt like too. Just another Sunday morning, worshiping our Lord, albeit in the most unlikely of settings.
One of the things I’ve always appreciated about geekdom is how diverse it is. People of all stripes become fans: men, women, young, old, black, white, gay, straight, Christian, and all other religions as well. Despite the stereotypes, it’s often really hard to pin down precisely what a “typical” geek is.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the church. If you ask any one of us what a “typical Christian” is like, and odds are good you’ll end up describing someone almost exactly like you. Diversity has not been a strong suit in the church. You have white churches and black churches. Straight churches and gay churches. Often times, churches for older people and churches for younger people. And rarely do they intersect or even interact with one another.
Sociologists have noted that human beings often unconsciously gather in homogeneous groups. In other words, like attracts like. But I fear we’ve taken that a bit too far. There’s a reason people say that Sunday morning is the most segregated time in American society. It does not reflect the wider world. And there are a lot of dangers in that.
Last Sunday, in my children’s sermon, I told the old story about the pastor who disguises himself as a homeless person on the front step of his church. Ask yourself why no one in that church invited him inside? You might come up with a lot of different answers, but they pretty much all boil down to one thing. He was different. And especially in recent years, in our country, different has become dangerous.
But is it really?
Jesus doesn’t seem to think so. In fact, you can pretty quickly lose count of the times in the Gospel stories when Jesus encounters people who are not mainstream Jewish folk and yet he still shows them some manner of grace and compassion. Countless lepers and those dealing with disabilities, who were considered taboo by the good law-abiding Pharisees and other community leaders. Roman centurions, Gentiles and Samaritans, and, of course, Matthew the tax collector in our Gospel lesson today; to Jesus, they’re all just people in need of his message, in need of his salvation.
Unfortunately, we haven’t gotten the memo.
We’re in good company there, however. For all of the wonderful things Peter accomplishes in the first years of the church, this proves to be one of his blind spots. The book of Acts dedicates an entire chapter (chapter 10) to Peter’s somewhat forceful education in this regard. And again, it involves a Roman, here a centurion named Cornelius. Here is one hungry to learn of Jesus and yet Peter would likely have rejected this dirty Roman out of hand had God not sent a powerful vision to Peter in a dream.
Peter, to his credit, learns his lesson (at least for a time. Paul calls him out later when he reverts to his old ways. Can’t say Peter isn’t human.) But about us? Are we going to limit our outreach and evangelism to those simply like us in race, economic status, political opinion, and the like? Or is the Church going to see the world as it is, a great mix of different individuals all hungry for what we have to offer?
The truth is, while we may not realize it, we need one another. We need people who are different. A big part of the reason different has become dangerous in these times is that we are having a very hard time seeing the humanity of those others. We base our opinions on biased news reports, prejudices, and often extremely limited contact. We blame whole groups for the actions of a few individuals. And yet, when they try to tell us the truth, try to show us their humanity, we do not listen. We lecture, we frown, we look down on them, and tell them that their life experiences aren’t real because we know better.
It’s astounding how often this happens, even among the most well-intentioned. On Facebook, there is an ELCA clergy support group where Pastors like myself can go and ask questions, request prayer, and mingle among the like minded in cyberspace. But there’s a problem, the same problem I’ve been talking about for most of this sermon: the group is almost entirely white. And when a person of color chimes in about their life experience, about the racism they receive in both society and in the church, there’s invariably retaliation by the majority telling said person they don’t know what they’re talking about. That their experiences aren’t real, that they’re being too sensitive. Yeah, like we white folk know precisely what it means to be black or Latino or whatever.
You’d think we pastors would know better, but nope. Even there, we refuse to listen. Christ shakes his head and weeps. We are all his children and we refuse to see it.
Not all black people are criminals. Not all Muslims are terrorists. Not all immigrants are rapists. Not all young people are lazy and privileged. And if some of them were here now, in our midst, telling their stories, we might realize that. They’d stand up and tell us what it means to be them. How life really is for them, not as we presume it to be. Were we to listen, were we to open our ears, our minds, and our hearts to them, we might start to truly see them as human. Made in the image of God and beloved of him. We might finally take off our blinders and see the world and its people as Jesus does.
This is what Christ has called us to do. This is who we are supposed to be as the Church. The ball is in our court. What are we going to do with it? Amen.
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