Entertained by Angels

I had just had two distinct conversations on the topic: essentially about loving your neighbors, all of your neighbors. The first was about connecting to people out in the world, like on the MARTA train or in line at the grocery store. The second was on the way to church yesterday morning, when my stepfather Ron mentioned that my little brother David had posted this on his Facebook page:
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION is not a new problem...Natives Americans used to call it WHITE PEOPLE

I do not know if it was that we’re almost to the fall season (Sunday School in two weeks) or that I missed church last Sunday, but I was really looking forward to church yesterday morning knowing that Patricia would be back from summer vacation, knowing others would be back, too.

I was right. Walking toward the Parish Hall, I saw Peachy and Helen through the glass in deep conversation in the garden. Claudia was in the kitchen putting out coffee cups. Michelle walked in with three big paper bags of goodies. Nancy Dillon was back from visiting her son and we were looking at the scratches on her ankles from hiking expeditions. Tom Gibbs stopped in the kitchen for coffee just before choir rehearsal, and we all tried to figure out the fall timing that allows the choir to go to Sunday School.

Not long after, Connor Mark appeared maneuvering expertly in the wheelchair from the front hall. (All the children are fascinated by the wheelchair we keep out for Sheila.) He’s now entering third grade, as all the children at St. Dunstan’s are entering a new year of life and learning.

I asked how his sale had gone -- two weeks ago he was walking around with a sign-up paper and a catalog filled with all things Christmas. The sale was over, he told me. There wouldn’t be any more this year. He thought the exercise was just so the kids could get to “know people in their community.”

So by the time we all took our seats for the main service, by the time we bowed toward the cross processing toward the altar and sang at the tops of our voices, there was an air of anticipation, but no one could have guessed the sermon entitled: "Glenn Beck’s God is not my God." In fact, no sooner had Patricia blessed us than I heard the words “Glenn Beck and I may both call ourselves Christians, but we don’t worship the same Christ or the same God.”

If you haven’t read it or didn’t hear it yesterday, I say read the whole sermon below. But here’s an excerpt:

"We see it in the Arizona immigration law that recently went into effect, a law that gives police the authority to ask people to prove their citizenship or immigration status – questions that most likely none of us would ever be asked.

"We hear it in the congressman who, on the House floor, urged the repeal of the 14th Amendment guaranteeing citizenship to all people born in this country because, he claims, terrorists have a scheme to have babies here and then raise them to kill Americans.

"We hear it in efforts to amend the law so that our places of worship can become armed fortresses where the stranger is greeted with suspicion, not hospitality.

"We see it in polls that show increasing numbers of Americans believe that our president is a Muslim and not really an American citizen, and in Glenn Beck’s claim that the president has 'a deep-seated hatred of white people.'

"We hear it in Christian ministers who plan to commemorate September 11 by burning copies of the Koran."

So I posted the sermon on this blog when I got home yesterday and I’ve received so many comments from people thanking me. We are aroused. We are incensed. We are indignant. The Glenn Beck sermon spread like wildfire, making its way around twitter, around the internet to people of like minds everywhere. In short, Patricia gave a name to and said clearly that which is unchristian.

I can’t say I was surprised. I mean the message that I hear from Patricia about what Christianity is and is not is pretty simple: Love your neighbors, all of them. So I don’t really think the idea of the sermon was to hate poor Glenn Beck. He needs all of the prayers he can get, in fact, I’ll say another one for him right now. (May Glenn Beck find peace. And I don’t even know him.)

But it’s a reminder that as we love and take care of each other as a community at St. Dunstan’s, we should extend that love in our hearts and actions everywhere.

Like the reading from the Letters to the Hebrews yesterday morning, also quoted in Patricia’s sermon: "Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it."