The Dichotomy of Welcome

If you want to accomplish a task while thinking, repainting the knick-knack cabinet is not a bad thing to do. As I covered the old paint with new, I began to think about last Sunday.

On that day, instead of my usual Sunday afternoon pursuits, I accepted the invitation of the local bishop to participate in St. Anthony Cathedral's grand celebration of their 100th Anniversary and several other significant events in the life of the local Catholic church. Along with religious leaders of other denominations and faiths, I truly enjoyed the experience, especially since it is all too rare that our faith communities gather in worship, and felt welcomed to be a participant in this event.

And yet, I didn't feel welcomed.

One of the songs during the worship had to do with everyone being "welcome in this place". As I sang along, I felt the irony of not being completely welcomed into this community as a woman called by God to serve as a leader of a congregation, in effect a priest, and as a Protestant not completely welcomed into the celebration of the Lord's Supper.

There is a dichotomy of welcome.

It's a dichotomy that one is not particularly aware of until you discover that, in some respect or another, you are indeed an "outsider", not truly welcomed into complete community, not completely part of the "family". There is welcome and there is "Welcome!"

As I thought about this, I thought about our own worship services and meetings. On Thursday at our Session meeting, I unthinkingly ended our meeting as I usually do after someone makes a motion to adjourn, "All in favor, please stand and join hands in prayer." Oops! We have a person on our Session who has recently begun to have difficulty standing. Did I inadvertently exclude her by making it seem she was not in favor if adjourning? Well, yes and no. We're a small group, and everyone understood what was happening, but I certainly could have been more inclusive in my invitation.

When we celebrate Communion, we do have several people who are not members, and a couple who are Catholic, who worship with us. Our invitation to the Table is fairly open, "All who trust in the Lord are invited to the Table which He has prepared." Yet our Catholic friends honor their faith tradition and do not partake of the feast.

A guest speaker at seminary spoke of his wife's Buddhist parents attending his worship service where Communion was served. He knew that his mother-in-law probably didn't have the foggiest idea of what was happening, yet she came forward for the meal. Should he single her out and not serve her? Or should he trust that God could handle the situation and include her in this faith-meal of the community? He chose to trust God.

In the work of the governing bodies of the church, I serve on a committee whose purpose is to lift up those areas where we have been exclusive in choosing the leaders of our church. Historically, various racial/ethnic groups have been left out of leadership roles, and that is the most obvious area people think of when looking at inequity.

At various times and in a variety of ways, we have not been particularly welcoming to women, clergy or lay; youth and young adults; and those with disabilities or differently abled. Sometimes we aren't even aware that we have turned away those whose call is to serve within the smaller congregation, or who don't happen to already live conveniently within the main urban area where meetings tend to be held, or whose work and family schedules don't fit comfortably into meeting structures we've forged into place. It's all too easy to simply put things together "the way it's always been done", without realizing that perhaps we are excluding those who can't easily arrive on the leadership dais because there is no ramp and they are in a wheelchair or who don't have the necessary materials because they were provided on hardcopy but not available in a format their adaptive technology could handle. In what ways do we exclude those who don't have a handle on Robert's Rules of Order, but manage quite gracefully in a more collaborative manner?

In what ways do we say, "Welcome, but, no, you aren't truly WELCOME!?"

Gee, those are mighty deep thoughts for one rather small knick-knack shelf! But then again, maybe it isn't the size of the shelf or the thoughts that matter. Perhaps what is more important is to become aware of the dichotomy of welcome which exists in our daily and corporate lives, and learn what it means to be truly Welcoming of others. I'd think the world would be a much nicer place if we could all figure that out and then live it.