Welcoming Arms

St Mary’s, Handsworth

Zechariah 12:10-11; 13:1, Psalm 62, Galatians 3:26-29 Gospel: Luke 9: 18-24

For anyone who wants to save His life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, that man will save it. (Luke 9:24)

Last week, we heard that fantastic Gospel Reading of the sinful women who anointed Jesus feet and wiped them with her hair. The owner of the house, Simon, who guest Jesus was didn’t even welcome Him.

Jesus has the ability to literally turn everything on its head. He mixed with people who no body else wanted to mix with. He touched people that others cast aside. He condemned self-centredness and created a family of love and truth. He made the poor rich and sent the rich away longing for more! He was seen with prostitutes and tax collectors- the despised. Wow!

While I was in Africa, I had the amazing chance to visit a leprosy camp. It was set up for lepers to be able to live freely and easily according to their condition. Some of the people there had no ears, or noses, or hands, or feet. When I stepped into one of the little huts I saw this, quite honestly, awful looking man. I wondered how I should greet him. As I went to shake his hand, I realised that he didn’t have one. I felt a fool. But, in my foolishness I just thought, how would Jesus greet this man. So, I flung open my arms and hugged him, nearly knocking hi off his crutches. Poor bloke! I’d never met a man with leprosy before. That day I met about 50 lepers. Wow!

In Suffolk, a few years back over the Christmas period, five prostitutes were murdered. It was a scary time for everyone in Suffolk. I knew a mother of one of the girls who was killed from a local church. She stood up to speak to a Churches Together prayer meeting, obviously distressed and tearful. But she said, the only way I can cope with my loss, is to think of Jesus. He touched a prostitute and blessed her. Then, on the cross He forgave us all. We are already learning from Jesus how to forgive this murderer. Wow!

A friend back at home was on the verge of killing himself because he was gay. He loved God and called himself a Christian. You could tell he loved God! He had met some Christians who had plainly said that he was a sinner and that he wasn’t welcome at their church. They also said ‘God doesn’t love you.’ To my ears, this statement is a sin itself! It was at an evening service he attended that the preacher recognised his pain and hurt and stopped his sermon and said ‘God loves you. He wants you to know.’ At that, the preacher sat down. Wow!

This is the God I know. A God who is proud to be identified with the poor and those in need, those who have problems and those who admit they are sinners. A God who still cares for people even when they turn their backs on Him. A God who, no matter what we’ve done, always welcomes us back. These are the places Jesus went.

So, what does any of this have to do with today’s Gospel? Carrying your cross, denying yourself, loosing your life to follow Christ? Well it is everything to do with it! When we decide to become Christian we actually choose to carry the cross of Jesus with Him. We give up the me, me, me about us and we follow Christ. By sharing that cross with Him, by loosing ourselves and by becoming Christ-like, we follow Christ into the places where no one else wants to go. To be seen, privately or publicly with prostitutes, gay people, Asians, Muslims and other religions even! Not just to be seen with them, but to be loving them.

Knowing Christ means knowing yourself. He offers to complete our lives in every way. He wants to know us, even though He knows us better than we know ourselves. The more we tell Him about ourselves, including our failures and flaws which we often miss out, the more He can tell us about Himself. And that is the amazing part! We think we know God, but just as we tell Him about ourselves once more, we find that we hardly know Him at all. O the length, the depth and the height of God! The most refreshing thing I have done lately was go to confession at Walsingham. Sometimes after confessing our sins it’s nice to hear a voice declare the promise of Jesus – child, go, your sins are forgiven.

Once we know ourselves, and once we tell Christ about ourselves, we can then lose ourselves. Literally, we can lose ourselves by being lost in Christ. Then it doesn’t matter where He leads us, we rest in the knowledge that we are with Jesus, carrying the cross. Carrying that cross with Jesus means we follow Him into the gutters of society. Daring to be seen with those who are simply not understood, those who don’t feel they are loved and those who have no time for God, until they realise that God has time for them.

It’s really hard to welcome people who have drink and drug problems, people who can be disruptive. Can we ask ourselves what we would do if a gay couple, or a prostitute came into our congregation? Could we cope with people with mental problems? I think we know that Jesus would welcome them. Maybe we need to ask Jesus to help us understand how we can make St Mary’s the kind of church that can live as Jesus did? St Mary’s is a loving church. You’ve all been very loving to me! But love always needs to grow. And when God asks us to make our love grow it can seem we are losing control on our life; but in fact we discover a whole new kind of life. Amen.