....you can't possibly mean them.

You and I both know we've thought this even if we haven't said it aloud.  We frame these sentiments around issues like appropriate dress, or good manners or adequate hygiene or educational background.  All these categories are defensible in particular areas of our lives......

but not in the church.  Because the church isn't ours.  It is God's.  God's Spirit calls the church into being and our being is centered on the crucified and risen one.  This is 'God's tent' as Pastor and author Nadia Bolz-Weber puts it in her book Pastrix.  God can and will and does extend the tent to include ....well....everyone (bad manners, adequate hygiene, poor education and appropriate dress notwithstanding).

When you find your life in the crucified and risen Jesus, when you take your seat at the table in God's tent, well, you are called to follow the house rules......EVERYONE is welcomed, loved, accepted.  Hurrah! when it is us.  Oh no! when it is 'them.'  You can't possibly mean them.

You'll never believe how this plays out in the House for all Sinners and Saints, a congregation Pr. Bolz-Weber serves in Denver.  This is a fellowship for all the folks who have a hard time fitting in with the conventional world. [Or you could say, the conventional world finds it hard to make room for them.]  You can fill in that blank however you want, but picture all the folks who wouldn't be at my suburban congregation on any given Sunday.  They come because they heard of God's love and experienced that radical acceptance at HFASS,  in that fellowship of believers.  It is a safe place for them.

...and then the word of this alternative, radical fellowship of believers got out to the mainstream.  Turns out that folks who 'wear dockers and button down shirts,' were also seeking a fellowship where acceptance was the norm, where folks were trying to live the radical grace of Jesus.  They wanted to be a part of it all so they showed up at church.

Really?  You can't possibly mean them!  That was Pastor Nadia's response!  Those folks who are soccer moms and dads with corporate jobs.  Those folks who take vacations and have retirement accounts and family Thanksgiving celebration.  Those people.  Was God's tent at House for All Sinners and Saints large enough for them too?  How could they fit in with the LGBTQ crowd, those fighting addictions, those who lived on the street?  Wouldn't they ruin HFASS?  Were they really to be welcomed?

I'll bet that you never imagined that your washed and ironed button down shirt could keep you from a fellowship of believers.  In the end, neither could Pastor Nadia.  In spite of what she might have wanted, this was God's tent and God welcomes all.  Even them.  Even us.

It's a radical invitation that we too often want to dilute with meaningless exceptions.  God says come.  Will you stand in the way?