This morning we are continuing to explore what it means to be a welcoming church, as we live out our core value of loving others. Over the past weeks we’ve thought about how it is the responsibility of all of us to be intentional and active in welcoming people, and about the importance of welcoming children in particular. If you missed either of these, then you can check them out on Facebook, Youtube, or on the sermon podcast.
Today’s title – “Welcoming Sacrifice” is a bit of a play on words. There’s a sense in which welcome others can involve sacrifice, so “Welcoming Sacrifice” means “The sacrifice involved in welcoming.” and there’s also a sense in which as disciples of Jesus, we are called to actually welcome opportunities to sacrifice, so we are people that are deliberate about “Welcoming Sacrifice.”
One of the things that we are seeing through the whole of this series is that our attitude to welcome is patterned in what we see in God’s welcome of us. Our welcome is a response to, and flows out of our gratitude for, God’s welcome of us. We see this in relation to sacrifice clearly in our reading from Paul’s letter to the Christians in the city of Philippi.
Here we find one of the most beautiful and well known descriptions of Jesus’ sacrifice for us. Before we get to that, thought, let’s notice what we find in verse 1,
“if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ….”
The verses continue with different aspects of this first foundational reality of the people of God. “We are united with Christ”. Just think about that word “united” for a moment. What kinds of things are “united”? Football teams? Married couples? A kingdom? Trade Unions? What does the word “united” mean? It means “made one with” – with common intent, purpose, direction.
Now let’s think about how things get united. Players get signed to a football team. Fans buy season tickets. Couples develop a relationship and decide to commit to each other. A kingdom grows by conquest or treaty. People join a trade union.
How are we united with Christ? We are invited into a relationship with Jesus, we are welcomed into God’s family. The way is opened for us by Jesus’s sacrifice, which is detailed by Paul as we read further on. First Jesus gave up his place in heaven and came to earth, he sacrificed by emptying himself, taking the nature of a servant. But that’s not all. Then he sacrificed himself by being obedient to death, even death on a cross.
This is what we remember when we come to share communion, when we take the bread and wine, we remember his body torn and blood spilt in sacrifice so that we could be welcomed into God’s presence, and united with Christ forever.
This truly was the “Welcoming Sacrifice” – it is the sacrifice that welcomed us in to a life saving relationship with God. It involved Jesus laying down all that he was, all his status and power, his role and position, even his life.
But did Jesus welcome this sacrifice? To be honest, I think it would be a bit of a push to be that positive about it. We know that in the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before he died, that he prayed and asked his Father if there might be another way. But, in the end, he said, “not my will but yours be done.” So, even Jesus struggled to welcome sacrifice, but he did, it seems to me, accept it, and even, perhaps embrace it. What is definitely true is that he welcomed the result of his sacrifice, the reconciliation of creation to the Creator.
And, so, what does Paul encourage his readers to do in response to Jesus’ sacrifice?
“Have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had”
“value others above yourselves”
It’s not actually very complicated. It can be really hard to do, but it’s not complicated. When we are making the decision to welcome people into the church family, we are choosing to welcome them as Jesus welcomes, with the sacrifice that values them above ourselves.
We’ll come back to what this might look like practically in a few minutes, but first I want to have a quick look at our reading from John’s eye witness account of the good news of Jesus.
We pick up the story quite early in Jesus’ ministry on earth. His relative, John the Baptiser, has had a ministry for some time, and has been preaching, calling people to turn away from their sinful ways of life, and to come back to God. All through his ministry, John the Baptiser had been pointing ahead to someone who was going to follow him, to God’s chosen one, who would rescue people from sin and the consequences of evil in the world. We know this from this reading, and from the first chapter of the John’s gospel (written by a different John) There we find some of John the Baptiser’s teaching, and we hear that he baptised Jesus and that some of his disciples had left him to go and follow Jesus.
Back in this morning’s reading, we hear of an attempt to stir up conflict between John and Jesus, but John isn’t into competing with Jesus, in the best of ways, he knows his place. His attitude is summed up beautifully by the last verse we heard.
“He must become greater; I must become less.”
“He must become greater; I must become less.”
This seems to me to be a great example of welcoming sacrifice in practice, in both senses. In his welcome of Jesus, John was prepared to sacrifice his own role, reputation, status, followers. He knew that it was his time to become less, so that Jesus had space to become greater. And I think that John did welcome this sacrifice. He could see the great good that was going to come from Jesus’ ministry and he welcomed this, and he welcomed the opportunity to sacrifice as part of his contribution towards that ministry.
So, having seen our primary model of welcoming sacrifice in Jesus, and one way that worked out in practice in John’s attitude to his ministry and to Jesus, what might it look like practically in our church family?
Let’s start by considering the things that we’ve explored in the last couple of weeks. In our first exploration of this subject, we thought about “everybody welcoming”.
I have wrestled a bit with how I was going to talk about this. You see, I think that there are a lot of good examples of how we welcome people here at All Saints, and I want to celebrate that.
However, I also want to be real about the fact that we’re not perfect. I know that there are people sitting here, in church this morning, who haven’t felt welcomed, who don’t feel welcome. So. I am going to share a difficult story, just to help spur us into action.
I heard a story at the midsummer fayre last Saturday of a lady who had visited a service at All Saints, and had gone down to the Parish Centre for coffee. She had approached a group of people talking, and had said that it was her first time at All Saints, and they had turned their backs on her and continued their own conversation. Now, I wasn’t there, and don’t know the context, or exactly what was going on, but I know that it stayed with that lady, and she hasn’t been back.
Now, I know that when we talk from the front about “everybody welcoming”, those of us who find it difficult to go up to a stranger and start a conversation shrink a little bit inside, because we don’t know how to do it, and feel ashamed that we don’t feel equipped for it. I’m immensely grateful for those in our church family who are particularly gifted at coming alongside new folk and starting conversations.
But, I do think that all of us can choose whether we are going to be willing to sacrifice the conversation we wanted to have with the friend we already know to engage with a friend that we haven’t yet made.
This applies to our friendship groups, to our small groups, to where we like to sit on a Sunday morning, to a whole load of things. Are we willing to welcome the sacrifice of our own preferences and desires to make space and truly welcome people?
Last week we were exploring what it means to welcome children. This can mean sacrificing our own desire for quiet and order. It brings a while load of life and energy to the church, which is amazing, but there can be sacrifice involved for some of us. Are we willing to welcome that?
The final practical aspect of welcoming sacrifice I want to suggest we consider is that captured by John, “He must become greater; I must become less.”
I wonder if sometimes, for some of us, there is a bit of a proprietorial attitude to the things we do in church, and if that takes up some of the space that new folk might have wanted to step into, as they are welcomed into the church.
Personally I find this particularly difficult when someone steps into something I used to do and they do it in their own way, not in the way that I used to do it, or think it ought to be done. To be honest, I don’t think there’s a lot of this at All Saints, but I do think it’s worth guarding against in our own hearts.
I know that there have been some challenges in what I’ve said this morning, but I hope that we can welcome this opportunity to take seriously the things that can be hard about welcoming, that we can count the cost and decide, together, that we welcome that cost because we know the cost of God’s welcome of us, and God’s desire and command for us to show that same welcome to others.
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