February 2, 2025 · Rev. Derek van Gulden · Genesis 18:1-8; Hebrews 13:1-6
Abraham's welcome of three strangers, no questions asked, opens Rev. Derek van Gulden's sermon on radical hospitality, from the feeding of the five thousand to the small things that make a church truly welcoming: clear signs, the Lord's Prayer printed in the bulletin, and explaining what “the Old Sloop” means. Rev. Derek also remembers joining a UCC church only after someone took the time to explain it.
Transcript
People of God. Would you join me in a moment of prayer? Gracious and holy God, this morning I ask you to move the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts by your loving hand. And help me this day not to be the instrument of my own or anyone else's oppression, but to be an instrument of peace in every step, in every breath, in every moment of every day. Amen.
It's interesting that last part of what may seem rote to people that I say every time I preach is a reminder to me how easy it is. To oppress others. To not welcome people. I will share with you for the last two weeks. I say that twice a day. Twice a day, just to remind myself.
Today's scripture. Two beautiful passages. The Genesis one of Abraham and Sarah is one of my favorites because for me, early on in Scripture, it shows us what it means to provide hospitality, to be welcoming. When these three strangers come, Abraham doesn't know who they are. He doesn't ask who they are. May I see your IDs? May I see your credentials, your family history? What part of the country do you come from? Whether you're this or that? He simply says. Sit down. Let me bring you water to wash your feet. Food to nourish you. Drink to quench your thirst. And then we'll chat.
It does happen throughout scriptures. It's amazing if you go through. Well, I went through the Bible once, front to back. It took me a long time, but I had a lot of not a lot of free time, but I was floating around the Pacific and a lot of it didn't make sense to me, I will tell you. But then it started to. Everywhere you find in Scripture, there's always something going on around a table. People are breaking bread. People are sharing what they have.
The feeding of the five thousand out in the middle of nowhere. Really. There was probably more like ten thousand plus because As it was in that society. The men were the only one that were counted. And we know that there were women, and we know that there were children. It doesn't matter the number really, which is a huge number. What's matter is Jesus. Enabled all those people. To practice radical hospitality by sharing what they had in that culture at that time.
When people went for a trip, there wasn't a market basket to stop at beforehand to fill up on car snacks. There weren't convenience stores. When you got gas, you could get more food. There wasn't all night diners. There wasn't any of that. People carried the sustenance they needed with them, both food and wine or water. So the scholars are pretty sure that those five thousand, ten thousand, fifteen thousand had stuff with them.
What Jesus did was open their hearts in a radical way to share. And I say radical because these five thousand plus were not just Jews, they were Gentiles as well. And even in the Jews, people weren't standing up. Jesus had them sit in the grass of fifty to one hundred people, and no one got up and said, all right, whose meal is kosher? Explain how it works. This is very serious stuff. Where do you do it? This, this and that? Or somebody else didn't stand up and say, well, our tradition is to do this. I'll give you this if you give me that. they opened up their hearts and they shared what they had radically. I love that word radically. It goes beyond just saying, okay, I've got a sandwich. You can have half. It was going way outside their cultural norm and just pouring out love in what they shared. And as we're told, there was even enough left over actually more than Jesus started with. Multiplied. Miracle. An amazing miracle.
But what does that mean to us today? We here in this congregation have a sign in the front when you come. All are welcome. We have our banner, which is now, I won't say permanently adhered to the wall, but every summer it falls down. So it's it's up there pretty good. And it hasn't hit the piano. But it's another way of welcoming people by saying, this is what it means to us. We hope you can find something in that that you can identify. This is what we do or we say we do.
But I had the opportunity. I met with some of my clergy friends. I said, I've known them for thirteen years. We get together once a month. And this time we went to a church that we'd never been to because it was not a church that was being pastored by somebody in our group, because the place we usually go was under construction and has the pastor said, they're after this construction, I'm not getting anything pretty, which meant they were working on the foundation of her church, where it had started to sink into the earth. And we went to this other church. And I think we all noticed because pastors, we go into sanctuaries. My habit is to look and go, wow, the history, the beauty. Would I be able to preach and feel comfortable here? What is here that I could take back with me?
First thing I noticed was that the door outside was this big sign that said, welcome, welcome to the church's name. These are our worship hours. This is the phone number to the church. This is the pastor call. We stepped inside and there was signage that said sanctuary straight ahead. They had a big narthex. Off to the side was the baby room, which is we have the bride's room, which in recent times has been more the feeding room for youth when they're here because moms and dads can watch on the monitor in their live. And then when you enter the church, they had.
Because we sat in the pews for a bit when we went through some prayer time together and I noticed they had a monthly bulletin. This I love in the bulletin with the prayers. For the month. And they had the scripture of the day there and the music was listed up on. We don't have them. I forget that ten years ago we got approval to put up the things that put the hymn numbers up. I'm just saying. But what they had was they had two big monitors. I mean, this was a much smaller sanctuary, but I think there were fifty inch and they could flash up there, the lyrics to the hymns, anything else they needed. If there were announcements of stuff coming up and all that.
Now, these are not things for every church. But one of the other things that I noticed was in the pew, printed on that monthly bulletin were words to the Lord's Prayer. And I am so guilty of doing this. Very rarely do we print them in the bulletin. And yet we ask people every Sunday to join us. And some people don't know what it is. I never knew that day I experienced communion for the first time. A lot of the stuff they did, I had no clue. Some I knew, some I didn't.
So today, hopefully you all got the Lord's Prayer printed out for you. And today we'll be using the Lord's Prayer from the New Zealand Book of Common Prayer. And if this is the first time you've seen it, it's a little different, but I think it's beautiful as well. We rotate.
And as we walked through the church, I noticed that they had signs and we have those on the walls. This is where you are. This is where the exits are. All that. And the other thing I noticed was the pastor there joined us and she led us through the, our worship time together. And I noticed that there was some terminology, some language that I guess was normal for that congregation that I couldn't figure out what it meant. And I realize a lot of these things, a lot of churches as welcome as we think we are, there are things that we can do more to be radically welcoming, to live out this always live out that sign out front. Always our open and affirming statements.
We have two flags. I will admit, the one in this corner gets beat constantly from the wind. Since we've had those up, no one has ever come and torn them down. It's always the wind and the tree. We actually order two or three at a time now so that when they fall. And the other thing that happens is the wind snaps the poles.
But one of the things we do here and, someone in my family noticed that when they were here a while ago and said, what's this old sloop thing? I thought this was a church. And I said, it is a church, First Congregational Church of Rockport. And they said, but we keep hearing old sloop, old sloop. No clue what it is. And I forgot that. That we use that terminology lovingly. And we embrace our heritage and the history of this place and what that means to be the old sloop. But we need to explain it in places that are a little more obvious. It took me a while. Liz Rice-Smith sat down with me and said, let me tell you where you've ended up and what it is and what it means. But simple things like that. Just remembering.
And the thing I remember the first time I joined a UCC church, I'd been going for three years. I've shared with you the church that I went before. After my wife and I got divorced. They told me I wasn't invited because I was one of them. And that meant I don't know what it meant. I do know. But I just lost my train of thought. Sorry. It took me back to a place.
So the church where I was at, my daughter asked me to start going to. She said, it's a UCC church. I don't know what that is, but all my friends go there. A lot of the people you work with go there. Your oldest friend, they go there. So I started going, and the first Sunday I sat in the back and thought, wow, this is what I remember growing up. And I grew up a Unitarian. So it was not exactly, but it felt like home.
Three years later, somebody came up to me after worship and said, Derek, we'd like you to join the diaconate. No clue what that was. And she said, you're a member, right? And I said, member of what? No one had ever approached me to be a member. I didn't really understand what it meant. And she said, well, you know, we can make you a member real fast so that you can get on the things that can be voted on. So you can be a deacon because we need some young people. I think I was in my early forties. Then eventually a year later, I did join the church and I become a deacon, but only after somebody took the time to explain it to me.
What I'm trying to say is there's a lot of stuff we do on Sundays throughout the week. Whenever we gather, that for us is normal. It's the vernacular we use. And we have to remember that when we welcome people here that they may not know it. Just a few things. And the bells reminded me it's time for me to be quiet. Amen.