Before Faith Came

We were locked in the maximum security prison of our own choices, our own pride and envy and malice. We were on death row, with nothing to look forward to but execution. But once faith came...

SJF • 1st Sunday after Christmas • Tobias Haller BSG
Before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came.+

I’m sure that all of us here remember the fairy tale of Cinderella — maybe I shouldn’t have sent the children off to Sunday School first, because they may remember it better than most of us — either we heard the tale when we were children, or we’ve seen one or more of the many film or TV versions, or maybe even the ballet or the opera. This tale of rescue from drudgery has remained so popular not only because it tells a story that we all can sympathize with and relate to — I mean, who doesn’t like a happy ending?— but because it serves as a parable of an important truth about human life and our relationship to God.

We all relate to this story because we all dream of release from whatever drudgery affects our lives. We all dream that someone magical will come along and wave a wand and transform us into something wonderful, and we will be lifted from the dust and ashes of the hearth to start a new life in the palace.

Many adults have their own version of this story. Some put such hopes in being a guest on Oprah Winfrey to find the keys to a new car under their seat; some hope for the arrival of that giant check from Publishers Clearing House; some prefer to hope for rescue by the magic wand of the slot machines in Atlantic City or Yonkers, or the MegaMillions Lottery — and there were two big winners a few weeks ago! But what I want to say to you this first Sunday after Christmas, is that our rescue has already happened. It has come to each of us and to all of us, though not in the way we expected.

That expectation, that yearning, that dream to be released from prison, to be restored to a high position, or to be lifted up to one, that dream burned deep in the hearts of the people of Israel in their captivity. In the midst of that dark time, in the midst of that imprisonment, Isaiah sings — he just can’t keep his mouth shut, as he admits! “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,” he sings, and will sing and sing again that the deliverance of the Lord is coming, as sure as grass grows in the spring, as sure as when you plant a seed it will sprout up at the right time. This isn’t supernatural, Isaiah sings, but the most natural thing that is, that God is coming; and at his coming the whole world will see Daughter Israel raised up from the desolate ash-heap of captivity to be crowned as a royal princess. Not a fairy tale of a prince with a glass slipper or a coach made from a pumpkin and a wave of a wand and a Bibbidy-Bobbedy-Boo, or a jackpot on the slots in New Jersey with a ringing Badda-Bing — but a real, live, true restoration of a people held in captivity in a foreign land — returning home, restored and raised up.

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So Isaiah sings. But 600 years later that song needs a reprise. Deliverance has come in the meantime, but it was followed by yet other captivities and occupations. The people have gone from the frying pan of Alexander’s Greeks into the fire of the Roman Empire. Under that Roman occupation, deliverance once and for all has begun to seem as hopeless as ever it was, unreal as any fairy tale; a story perhaps to amuse the children but no use in the hard, cold world of politics and commerce, the world of rule and law and judgment and punishment, the world of power and corruption, under a pagan Emperor and a puppet king, Herod, who isn’t even a proper Jew, and has no right to be King, but is a hated Edomite, put in place by Rome. The world is dark, its heart grown cold and bleak, and hope is dim.

But into that darkness another strong voice speaks, a voice so long expected that expectation has grown weary, a voice so long expected that when it comes it comes as a surprise! The speaker’s name is John, and he comes to testify that something wonderful is about to happen. It isn’t about him, mind — he’s just the fairy godfather in this story — it’s about something else, someone else whose coming is about to light up the world.

And John, like Isaiah, can not keep silent; he will testify and cry out, “Here he is! This is the one I was talking about, the one who outranks me; the one who is from the beginning; the true light of the world!” So John proclaims the faith, faith in the true light that enlightens everyone.

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Saint Paul reminds us of what it was like before that faith came, when we were like prisoners guarded by a disciplinarian; like Cinderella under her nasty step-sisters and even nastier step-mother! And Saint Paul, every bit as much a fairy godfather as Saint John the Baptist, ushers us in to meet our new Father, the Father who is adopting us, who raises us from the status of an orphan to the status of one with the rights of inheritance — no longer a slave, but a child of God and if a child then an heir.

That’s what we all are, my beloved. We were all once prisoners and slaves, Cinderellas doomed to drudgery and captivity. But since Christ has come, we have become, each of us, a prince or a princess in the royal household, draped with the garments of salvation, clothed with the robes of righteousness, and crowned with the royal diadem.

And just as Cinderella didn’t come to her happy ending because of any virtue of her own, so too we do not come to this our happy ending because of any action or virtue of our own. No, we come into our inheritance from God as adopted children — it is God who has chosen us, not we who have chosen God. Faith is not something that we have in our selves, from our selves, as if we possess it: no, faith is something that happens to us, happens to the world in its darkness, happens to the world and brings it light and life.

Faith is not our doing any more than light is our doing — the sun rises because God makes it rise — and it is not some magical supernatural act but the most natural thing that is: something the God of nature has ordained to be just so — just like that grass that comes up in the spring, just like that seed that when planted, sprouts at the appointed time. This is something God has made to be.

And faith comes to us just as naturally. For God is the love that created all that is, and his love overflows from his own nature as the love that moves the sun and the other stars — the overflow of God’s grace has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit that is given to us. Faith is not our doing any more than being adopted or being born (or being born again) is our doing. Life — and new life — is just not our doing. It is God who picks us up and says, “You are mine!” Faith, in short, is not us discovering God, but God revealing that everlasting Love to us. As John assured us, “No one has ever seen God...” that is — none through their own power have ever or can ever see God; rather “it is God the Son who has made him known.” who has revealed God to us, pulling aside the veil of darkness that blindfolded human vision, so that we might see God literally face to face. It is as natural and fitting as that glass slipper sliding perfectly to fit on Cinderella’s foot. For we were made for God just as that slipper was made for her — and it is altogether fitting and proper that God should be at home with the creatures he created in his own image and likeness.

God — and faith in God — came to us, not we to him. Before faith came, we were simply prisoners who could never escape through our own efforts. We were locked in the maximum security prison of our own choices, our own pride and envy and malice. We were on death row, with nothing to look forward to but execution. But once faith came, came in person, came in the person of the Son of God, who opened the door, who opened that lock, who called us forth into the light, who lifted us up, who clothed us anew, who dressed us and crowned us and presented us to the court of heaven — once faith came, we were no longer what we were before, prisoners. Once faith came, we were the adopted children of God.

So let us then, beloved — for that’s what we are, God’s beloved — rejoice in our deliverance, rejoice in our freedom, rejoice in the light that shines in the darkness, and which the darkness can never overcome. Let us rejoice that we are children of God, chosen by him, adopted by him, rejoicing with our brother Jesus who came to us to save us, to show us how much God loved us, and who took us for his own, on that Christmas long ago.+

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Christmas Child's Play

We are called to welcome Christ, yet how often is he left out, outside in the cold in the feed-trough?

SJF • Christmas Eve 2013• Tobias Haller BSG
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.+

And so we come once again to this holy night, as the old song says, the night when the Savior was born. We hear the story as the historian Luke tells it, fixing the date by means of names of the rulers — that’s how people kept track of things in those days before we had B.C. and A.D., they referred to the politicians in office at the time, emperor and governor. Luke fixes the place by naming the towns and the regions: from Nazareth in Galilee on down to Bethlehem of Judea. And he pins down the people on the basis of their heritage — descended from the house and family of David. Nowadays we would call them Davidsons, of which this parish had its share in its early days, and for whom Davidson Avenue just a block to the east is named. History can teach you some unusual lessons!

So we gather here, in the first year of the second term of the presidency of Barack I, during the governorship of Cuomo son of Cuomo, in the church of Saint James on the road named for Jerome of Brooklyn and the Bronx, nigh unto Davidson Avenue. We, like the shepherds of old, are gathered to welcome a child; a promised child, who had been spoken of hundreds of years before he was born, and has been spoken of every Christmas since. This is the child of whom Isaiah spoke, the child who has been born for us, the son given to us; upon whose shoulders rests the authority of God, and to whom is given that powerful, wonderful, mighty, everlasting and royal name.

But let us not forget he is still a child — a newborn child; born in the cold season, in an uncomfortable place; wrapped to keep him as warm as possible, but placed in a feeding trough instead of a cradle, because there was no room for them in the inn. A child has been born to us; but where do we put him?

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I spoke this past Sunday about how we ought to welcome Christ and the grace he brings. As the hymn says, we are to “fling wide the portals of our hearts” to welcome Jesus in, to welcome his gracious entry into our hearts. And yet how often is he left out, outside in the cold in the feed-trough? We might hope to say, well we would never do that! But remember how he said, as you have done to the least of these you have done it unto me?

I could remind you that just the other day a man threw his three-year-old son of the roof of a building, and then jumped to his death himself. I could tell you that earlier today in the fantastic slums built upon and around the city dump in São Paulo Brazil, a little boy was picking over the few items he rescued from that stinking, dangerous, poisonous garbage pile, those few torn and tattered things which he can trade for a few cents. I could tell you that earlier today somewhere in Soweto there was a young girl, 9years old, moaning quietly and weeping on her cot as she tried to fall asleep and forget the pain and hurt and abuse she suffered when her uncle raped her, because he believed the fable that sleeping with a virgin would cure him of AIDS. I could tell you that even as I speak a 12-year-old boy in the suburbs of Denver Colorado holds his father’s unguarded handgun in his hands, ready in a moment to end the interminable bullying he has suffered by putting an end to his short, miserable life. I could tell you countless such stories; stories that show what this world too often does to children. After all, it is so terribly easy to say, “We would never send a newborn child off to sleep in a feed-trough.”

Nor was it different back then — not only was this special child Jesus born in a barn and laid in a feed-trough, but in short order the king sent shock troops to the town to kill him; and just to be sure they killed all the little boys in the village. Some things haven’t changed. Syria and the Sudan have taught us nothing new about genocide. There is nothing new about horror and abuse and poverty and tyranny.

It has been said that you can judge a society on the basis of how it treats its children — well, maybe other people’s children. How would our world be judged against the world into which Christ was born? Is it really any better, for all our advances? Will it stand well in the judgment? For believe you me, it will be judged, and by that same Christ! He will have all the experience he needs to judge just how well this world has done in welcoming him, compared to how well he was welcomed in the days of Augustus and Quirinius in the city of David called Bethlehem. Beware the judgment of this child; beware the wrath of the Lamb.

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But my! What a heavy message for Christmas! And it would be if I left us there; but there is good news in all of this, even if we have to hear those unpleasant truths first to get there. The good news is that the child born in the stable and laid in the manger is still with us. And he is mighty, he is wonderful, he is everlasting, and he is the Prince of peace. He is our Savior — and if we have failed to open the portals of our hearts to invite him in, he will not give up on us yet. Christ the Child will stand outside and knock, and call us to come out to him. He has the unparalleled patience of a child and a voice just as piercing! And remember that he not only said “as you have done to the least of these you have done to me” — he also said, “anyone who does not come to the kingdom of heaven as a child cannot enter it” and “You must be born again.”

He comes to us as a child, and calls us forth as children — and if we cannot open our adult hearts to let him in, he will help us to open our hearts so that we can go out and be born again, so that we can come out to be with him as children once again, out into the world where we can join with all of our brothers and sisters.

Jesus the Christ Child stands at the doors of our hearts and calls out in the bright voice of the child, “Can you come out to play?” His voice is so strong and clear he can call even to those who have been laid low by the sleep of death itself, a voice so powerful that it can not only wake the dead but call them forth, “Can Lazarus come out to play? Can Monica come out to play? Can Rosetta come out to play? Can Russell? Can Charles, and Sarah, and Diamond and Raquel? He is calling us, calling us all forth, this wonderful, mighty child! He is calling us forth to be born again, to be rejuvenated and restored to the innocence of children, to play with him, tonight, and every night and day.

But, be warned, this is no ordinary child’s play — this is the serious and earnest play that children play when they are most intent. They play with strict rules, children do: and among the most important is that the game can not begin until all of God’s children are gathered together. And the children will come streaming from the city dumps of São Paulo and Mexico City; they will come in procession from the South Bronx and Newark and Appalachia and Darfur; they will come in solemn procession from Newtown and Damascus; they will come running as fast as their little feet can carry them from the smokey toil of factories, from the backbreaking work of the pit-mines, from the slums, and from the cemeteries. And only when all of God’s children are gathered together — all of God’s children, from every family under heaven and on earth; from every place and every time — only then will the great game begin. Then, and only then, will the song the angels sang come true in earnest — true peace on earth, to all united in Godly wills.

So harken, my sisters and brothers, to the voice of the Christ Child when he knocks at the doors of your heart. Be born again, become a child, accept his invitation. Turn not that Child away, but join him in that newborn world; go forth and join him in his gracious play.+

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Two Christmas Presents

Grace and Peace are wrapped and ready... under the bed or in the hall closet... for us!

SJF • Advent 4a 2013 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
To all God’s beloved... who are called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Over these weeks of Advent I’ve been preaching on the three of great virtues embodied in the season: love, hospitality and patience. Today, as Christmas is nearly in sight, I want to turn to look ahead to two of the Christmas presents towards which our Advent preparation points us. These two Christmas presents are summed up in Saint Paul’s greeting to the Christians in ancient Rome: “Grace to you and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Grace and peace: what better things could we wish for! We live in the midst now of the winter of our discontent, in a time of terrorism and war, when all the premature Christmas carols in the shopping malls cannot drown out the somber voices droning on twenty-four hours a day on the cable news channels; when all the well-spiked holiday punch and egg nog cannot numb us to the sobering knowledge that war is still raging, and a generation is perishing in horror in that same Syria of which Isaiah spoke — a land tearing itself apart in a most uncivil war. We are hungry and thirsty for grace and peace, and long for God’s promises to be fulfilled, yet wherever we look, they speak of war.

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So too it was for King Ahaz to whom Isaiah prophesied; so too for the Roman Christians to whom Saint Paul wrote; so too for Joseph troubled in his mind that his wife-to-be was already pregnant — and not by him! Our present turmoils and troubles, foreign or domestic, are nothing new, my friends — the world has always longed for the promise of grace, the fulfillment of peace.

The good news is that this promise of God does not go unrealized. God does come through! God delivers those Christmas presents of grace and peace more efficiently than Santa and his elves, though the gifts of grace and peace often come to us in ways that we do not expect and sometimes don’t even recognize. So often the gifts of grace and peace come as a surprise — not as what we expected, but as what we most assuredly need.

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So let’s take a quick peek in the hall closet or under the bed to see what Christmas presents lay in store for us. First the gift of peace — man, do we need that, not only in the world but in the church! Yet this is the promised gift, the gift promised by God through Isaiah to that war-weary King Ahaz of Judah. You see, his ancient enemy, the Syrians of Damascus — that same Damascus that is going through so much trouble today — those Syrians have allied with the northern kingdom of Israel against his own land of Judah in the south. This is long after the split that came after the death of Solomon, when the empire that son of David built was torn in two in the kind of civil war that has plagued the Middle East ever since — and Israel in the north was partitioned from Judah in the south.

So God sends Isaiah to Ahaz and tells him to ask for a sign. When Ahaz is reluctant, Isaiah tells him that God will give him a sign anyway: and there follows that wonderful vision of a young woman whose child will soon be born and who will receive a wonderful name, who will be a sign of God’s deliverance. This was a vision so powerful that it would nourish hope in that land for hundreds of years — until an angel would remind a certain righteous Judean carpenter of the promise... But I’m getting ahead of myself; I’ll get to Joseph in a moment.

For now let’s stick with Ahaz, and Isaiah’s promise that peace is coming, and coming soon! How soon? A young woman is with child and will give birth — so we’re talking less than nine months. This child will bear the name Immanuel — God is with us — and by the time this child is weaned from nursing, able to eat the baby food of curds and honey, by the time he is old enough to know that he likes the curds and honey but doesn’t care for that evil broccoli — say, another year and half — the enemy lands of Syria and Israel will be devastated, their kings defeated!

Now this may seem like a round-about way of promising regime change, but this was the promise none-the-less. Regime change will come; Judah will be delivered, the enemy kings of Syria and Israel will be deposed. Peace will come! Now, it won’t be the best kind of peace — unfaithful Judah and its weak King Ahaz don’t quite deserve that! This will be the peace of occupation — as an invading army will come in from outside and destroy those kings of Israel and Syria — but at least it will be peace; it will remove the threat of destruction be set to one side and people will be able to get on with their lives — much as even today we might hope that the UN or some other force would go into Syria and take it over and stop the war. Occupation is not the best peace, but it is better than a terrible war. And so, even today, many would long for such a peace as a precious prize.

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And what of grace? Well, as we know from the great and well-loved hymn, what? Grace is amazing! That is part of what makes it grace, after all: it is not what we expect, but comes as a wonderful surprise, a gift we do not deserve but which it turns out is exactly what we most need.

This Christmas present of grace comes to us wrapped up in the story of Joseph and Mary. Now, if anybody needs gracious good news it’s poor Joseph. He discovers that his bride-to-be is already pregnant; but since he’s a good and righteous man, not hard-hearted, he’s unwilling to make the kind of fuss he perfectly well could, including, under the laws of those days, dragging Mary into the town square and putting her to public shame, and possibly even being stoned. Rather, he prepares to take the option ending the marriage quietly, putting her away with as little embarrassment as possible. That’s what he’s decided to do; he’s going to call it off — and then, amazing grace happens! The angel comes to him in a dream with exactly the same message delivered hundreds of years before to Ahaz — only this time the promise is not of earthly peace, but of heavenly grace, the full and perfect fulfillment of that ancient prophecy. You see, that prophecy had a double meaning: it wasn’t just a word to Ahaz; it was a word for Joseph, and a word to us. This child is not the result of infidelity on Mary’s part; rather this is the act of God the Holy Spirit, descending into the created reality over which the Holy Spirit moved at the beginning of all things, now to bring forth from the womb of a human mother a child who shall be the savior of the world — not just of a small Middle Eastern kingdom, but of the whole world.

This is the wonder of grace: instead of a prudent end to a scandalous episode in the life of a Judean carpenter — a sort of first century Downton Abbey — instead we overhear Joseph being told, and hear ourselves, of the earth-shattering and life-changing arrival of God himself in the person of a child to be born in Bethlehem. This is the grace to which we look, my brothers and sisters in Christ, a grace that is amazing and unexpected and yet exactly what we need.

So let us, in this last few days before Christmas, in the hustle and bustle and the last-minute shopping, remember what it is we are waiting for. Let us make use of all of those virtues of love and welcome and patience, as we look forward to the great gifts of grace and peace, the peace which passes understanding, and the grace that announces the presence of our Lord and Savior, Immanuel — God with us and all who believe. Let us prepare for the salvation of our souls and the redemption of our bodies, for the restoration of all that is broken and the lifting up of all that is fallen, so that our consciences, being purified and made ready to receive him, may at his coming be as mansions prepared to welcome him, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, even Jesus Christ, our only Mediator and Advocate.+

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Welcome You All

God's welcome mat is big enough for Jew and Gentile both to wipe their feet before coming into God's house...

SJF • Advent 2a 2013 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.

We come now to the second Sunday in Advent, one step closer to Christmas. Last week we heard a splendid sermon from Deacon Cusano about being alert to the signs of God’s presence, and responding with the love of God. This week I’d like to reflect with you about putting that love into action, in terms of the virtue of hospitality. Since we are in the midst of preparing to welcome the Christ child on Christmas, and Christ the King when he comes in glory, it would be well for us to look at how well we welcome our brothers and sisters (as well as his brothers and sisters) in the meantime. For he has told us that it is in how we treat the least of those who are members of his family, that we will be judged.

In his letter to the Romans, Saint Paul was addressing a Jewish congregation in Rome — that is a Jewish Christian congregation. One of the biggest issues facing the church in its early days was the tension between those Jews who had come to accept Christ and the Gentiles who had done the same. It seems so simple and obvious to us two thousand years later, but believe me, at the time it was as hot a topic as the debates on human sexuality that we are going through the churches today. So let’s put ourselves back in time and look at what Saint Paul said from the perspective of his original hearers.

The first thing to remember is that most Jews in the time of Christ and Saint Paul regarded Gentiles as lower than dirt. One of the prevailing Jewish sects at the time was concerned primarily with purity, almost to the point of an obsession. This obsession with purity played a large part in their opposition to Jesus — you may remember all the fuss they raised about the disciples not washing their hands before eating. Concerned as they were with such matters of ritual purity, those Jews regarded Gentiles as more or less permanently unclean — since they were outside of the Law of Purity, they couldn’t be trusted to be pure: their food, their manner of life, everything about them was considered unclean. Even today you may notice on the subway an ultra-orthodox Jew, following the rules laid down in the fifteenth chapter of Leviticus, by avoiding sitting down on the subway seats, because according to the biblical law anyone who sits on a seat upon which an unclean person has sat becomes unclean himself. And while some may call the Jews who follow such rules today “ultra-orthodox,” in the days of Jesus and Paul, this was the belief and practice of the vast majority of Jewish believers: keep as far away from Gentiles as you possibly can; don’t let one touch you, don’t touch anything that they’ve handled; certainly don’t sit down to eat with them — because both their food and their seats are likely unclean!

So imagine the consternation when Peter and Paul both come along saying that God means to welcome the Gentiles into his kingdom — and not just in the way that the prophets had promised. This is no longer a promise, this is a reality. And we all know that sometimes it is easier to deal with an idea than the real thing. Peter and Paul both were saying, “Folks, this is real now. It’s happening. Now. God is welcoming the Gentiles into his household.” God’s plan is bigger than just a Messiah to rescue Israel from its troubles; God’s welcome mat is broader than imagined. It is not just for the descendants of Abraham, but for all the peoples of the earth.

You know how hard it is to change habits — especially religious habits! Well, this obsessive concern with purity was hard for many of them to let go of, even after they came to accept Jesus as Messiah. So Paul, writing to these Roman Jewish Christians, tries to prove that God welcomed the Gentiles as well as the Jews by citing those other passages of Scripture, pointing to the words of the prophets. He claims that Jesus came as a servant to the circumcised — that is, to the Jews — in order to confirm God’s promises to their ancestor Abraham, and in order to show mercy to the Gentiles, so that they also might give glory to God, who is not just the Lord of a small Middle Eastern tribe of nomads, but of the whole earth and all who dwell therein. So Saint Paul quotes the Psalms and Isaiah to prove that God’s welcome mat is big enough for Gentiles as well as Jews to wipe their feet on as they come into the kingdom.

Now the sad news is that Saint Paul didn’t convince everybody. There were still some who insisted that only they were welcome in God’s kingdom. In fact, the ongoing controversy runs through many of Paul’s letters, and right up to the end of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, when Paul finally gets to Rome and the Jews there tell him that all they have heard about the Christians is bad news! So too, many of the Jewish believers in Christ still ignored the preaching of John the Baptist, who told them that relying on their Jewish ancestry as children of Abraham meant nothing to God — God could raise up children of Abraham up from the very stones of the riverbank if need be. And so too some ignored the preaching of Paul, and insisted that only Jews were welcome into God’s kingdom, or at most Gentiles who had gone through the whole nine yards of conversion to Judaism. That included circumcision and the promise to follow the whole of the Jewish law. That law included all the rules that would separate them from their Gentile sisters and brothers, shunning even the benches they sat on and the food they ate.

Fortunately for us, the church eventually came around to Saint Paul’s way of thinking, accepting his preaching, in large part because of the experience that Saint Peter had when he was preaching to the Gentile Cornelius, and even before Peter could finish his sermon, the Holy Spirit came down out of heaven revealing that God shows no partiality, and welcomes all who turn to him in faith. God’s welcome mat is there for all, all of the children of Abraham and all of the Gentiles, all God’s children by birth or adoption.

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Let me close with a story about another Abraham, the 16th president of these United States. I don’t know how many of you have seen the Steven Spielberg film that came out last year. A point it makes is that even many of those who agreed that slaves should be free still couldn’t imagine that they were equal them, or should be treated as full citizens. Many even of those who opposed slavery would still, by any standard, then or now, be considered racists — because for them, race made a real difference; for those people, race made them superior. Into this atmosphere, Lincoln won a second term in 1864, as the War raged on, and as this very church building was being constructed — some things don’t stop for war.

And neither did the inaugural ball, which was a grand affair. Guests arrived by coach and on foot, and were ushered in to the festivities. Among them was a tall, sturdily built African-American man, with an impressive mane of white hair and a beard that Moses would have envied. He came up the steps and approached the front door of the White House. Out of nowhere, two policemen rushed up and blocked his way.

Well as I said, the gentleman was a large, powerful man, and he just brushed the two officers aside and stepped into the foyer. Once inside, two more officers grabbed him, all the while yelling insults at him that I will leave to your imagination. As they dragged him from the hall, he remained surprisingly calm and called out to a nearby guest, “Please tell Mr. Lincoln that Frederick Douglass is here!” At that name the officers let go , still standing on their guard. Soon enough, orders arrived to usher Douglass into the East Room. And as he came into that room, a hush fell as Lincoln, seeing him enter, took three big strides across that room, and stretched out his hand as the crowds parted like the Red Sea, and he walked towards his guest, with hand outstretched in greeting, and speaking in a voice loud enough so that none could mistake his intent, and said, “Well here’s my friend Douglass.”

And I can’t let pass another great man, who died this past week, known to his people as Madiba, but to us as Nelson Mandela. After 27 years in prison on Robin’s Island, he was elected president. And at the inauguration, people noticed among the guests seated on the platform the warden of the jail where he had spent those 27 years. And many people shook their heads to see this sight. But Madiba said, “We are all South Africans now.” That was what he fought for, that was what he lived for, that was what he spent 27 years in prison for — that all, all, would be there, on the platform. Just as Paul and Peter and Jesus preached, that all would be there in his heavenly kingdom. And it is our challenge to be like God, to say, “We are all God’s children now.”

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My sisters and brothers, Christ has called us to be his friends, as Lincoln welcomed Douglass. He has invited all, and his welcome is still open to all. We dare turn no one from the door of this church for any reason, any more than God turns them away from his welcome mat: for the color of their skins, or the nature of their ancestry; because they eat foods we might find distasteful, or have habits we might disdain; because of the languages they speak, or the relationships they form; for what they have done or left undone. God’s welcome mat is there for all who are prepared to enter his kingdom. Let us, as we prepare to welcome the Christ Child at Christmas, and Christ the King when he comes to judge and rule the world, also be prepared to welcome all of our yet-to-be-known brothers and sisters in him, that we may all together as Saint Paul said, “with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Welcome one another, therefore, as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”+

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