When we make room for God, who is always among us, we open our lives in vulnerability to the power of love. Love isn’t a soft, insipid emotion. It is a power for transformation. Today as we gather, let us pray for a greater openness to God; let us set an intention to make more room in our lives for what is holy and good; let us commit to an expansive, inclusive way of life. Here’s a sermon based on the Gospel of Mark 2.15-17 and “The Guesthouse” by Rumi. Second Sunday of Advent 2021

In the early part of Mark, chapter two, the Gospel writer sets up the story we’ve just read about Jesus at a table with a bunch of “tax collectors and sinners.” The writer is expanding a theme in these two stories, illustrating the ways the gospel of Jesus is about creating a bigger table.

The writer of the Gospel of Mark shows us that Jesus is on a teaching tour. He comes into the rural Galilean town of Capernaum, and, there, Jesus heals a paralyzed man by simply telling him that his sins are forgiven. The religious traditionalists in the crowd are appalled. “This is blasphemy!” they grumble. “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” The writer tells us that Jesus knows what they’re grumbling about.

Sensing their anger, Jesus asks, “Which is easier, to say to a paralyzed person, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and walk?’”

Which is easier?

It’s one thing, an easy thing, to say someone's sins are forgiven. Frankly, no one would know if they are forgiven or not. Forgiveness is internal, intangible. It’s quite another thing to tell someone to “Stand up and walk” and see them do it. In this case, if the paralyzed person didn’t stand up or couldn’t walk, Jesus would have been a fool, a charlatan, a poser, an imposter.

The story says that Jesus did the harder thing. And by doing so, Jesus challenged the grumblers—those who preferred to close doors rather than open them; those who wanted to erect walls instead of build bridges; those who had it in their minds that God is the exclusive prerogative of those who do the right things and believe the right ways. Jesus challenged those who want to fence the table and keep themselves on the inside with God and keep out those who they think are far from God.

Building fences and defenses are what a lot of religious people do. In fact, religion itself can be a defense. We can do things and believe things that can make us presume to feel safe, feel righteous, feel superior, but miss the transforming power of God, for our own lives and for our societies. Jesus often confronted religious people who used religion this way. He challenged people who were merely religious but not spiritual.

And he’s doing that in the stories before us today.

The grumblers are grumbling against Jesus who has taken the spiritual authority to forgive a person’s sins, something they want only God to be able to do—because if the boundary between God and us is too low, if the fences are removed you never know what kind of riff-raff you’ll get crowding into your house or synagogue, mosque, or church.

Jesus pushes the grumblers still further. He says to the paralyzed person, “I want you to know, that God has given me authority to tear down the fences the self-righteous are trying to put up between God and every child of God, no matter who they are or what they’ve done or how they believe—I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.”

And the paralytic stood up on legs that had never felt their strength. The paralytic rose up and walked home on his own two feet. And all the people were amazed and said, “We have never seen anything like this!”

No, they had never seen anything like this.

But the writer of the Gospel of Mark seems to want us as readers to realize that there is more amazement coming—that this healing is a symbol of something greater yet to come. By healing the paralytic, the writer declares the gospel: there is no one outside the circle of God’s mercy and affection, no one far from God’s presence and love. In the next story, our reading today, we readers learn that this circle runs wider still.

In the next scene, we see Jesus walking beside the Sea of Galilee. Jesus is teaching people about God. Suddenly, he comes upon an opportunity to make his teaching more clear; he decides to show them what he means.

A Jewish man named Levi is sitting in a village at his tax collector’s table. It’s a small table, just big enough to hold his documents. There are Roman soldiers around him; they want no trouble from the villagers; they’re there to ensure that Levi collects the Emperor’s tax; they’re there to hold the money he collects, kind of like a Wells Fargo armored vehicle.

For the religiously orthodox, Levi is a traitor. Levi’s a Jew who works for the oppressing enemy. The Romans are outside the circle of God’s love, and so is anyone who works for them. The conservatives want a big, strong fence between themselves and Levi and the Roman soldiers. They’re willing to pay the tax because they have to, but they’ll hate doing so and they’ll despise Levi for fraternizing with the enemy.

In the healing of the paralytic, the Gospel writer has just shown us that in Jesus, God is in the business of tearing down walls. There is no disease, there is no sin, there is no condition that puts a fence between any of us and God. God’s circle is wide, wider than most religious people believe it is. They want God to work for them; they want to believe that their enemies and those who work for their enemies can never climb over the fence and get anything but judgment from God.

My guess is that both you and I have known plenty of religious people like this. My guess is that both you and I have, on occasion, been religious people like this. There are people who we want to keep outside the circle.

(And just so I’m clear: that the gospel means that God loves all people, that God includes all people, doesn’t mean you have to when doing so might actually endanger you physically or emotionally; sometimes we have to set boundaries to be safe. The trick is to set those boundaries without becoming self-righteous, hateful, or intolerant.)

Alright, back to the story: Jesus walks up to Levi and his little table—Levi, the compromiser, the fraternizer, the enforcer of Roman economic injustice. Jesus isn’t stepping up to pay the tax, and he’s not going there to upbraid Levi for collecting the tax for the Romans. Instead, Jesus looks Levi in the eye and says, “Follow me.” And, the story goes, Levi stands up and walks home with Jesus.

If the story of the healing of the paralytic was astonishing, this one may be more so.

Jesus goes home with the compromiser, the fraternizer, the enforcer of Roman economic injustice. And there, at Levi’s house, Jesus enjoys a dinner party with a bunch of “tax collectors and sinners.” And when the religious traditionalists saw this they went into a frenzied fury.

“Downright wrong,” they said. “Absolutely unacceptable. Heretic. Blasphemer. This false teacher has crossed the lines. We denounce him; he’s dangerous to everything we stand for. He is an abomination to God.”

“Actually, no,” says Jesus according to the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke—for all three Gospel writers agree almost verbatim on this part of the Jesus story. “You can stay in your holy huddle; you can hide away inside your sacred circle. But God raises no fences; God’s circle of who’s included is wider than you ever dared imagine. Yes, I’ve stepped over the line,” says Jesus, “because God is over there where you refuse to go. And so, I will welcome and entertain them all, no matter who they are—for all are equallybeloved of God, and to know those you’d rather not know is to know the grace of God, to embrace those you’d rather reject is to embrace the presence of God, to cross over to those you’ve fenced off is to cross over into the fullness of God. God sets a place at the Table for everyone, no one excluded.”

The spiritual truth the Gospels want us to know is that when we fence ourselves off from others or when we try to fence off others from us, we will never be whole, never complete, never fully alive. We will always be missing something, for none of us is an island, entirely to ourselves. To disown any human being, any part of nature, or even any part of ourselves is to remain incomplete.

Today, we celebrate Holy Communion. This pandemic reality has forced us to create fences. We’ve fenced ourselves off from each other in order to avoid transmission of a dangerous disease. But we’ve also raised fences between us politically, economically, and racially. There are fences that now run through our families, friendships, and even through our houses of worship. None of us are exempt from the suspicion, insinuation, and frustration toward and about people who wear masks or don’t wear masks, get vaccinated or don’t get vaccinated, vote red or blue or not at all. And so on it goes. The fences are many and the walls are thick.

Today we participate, we cooperate together in Holy Communion. There’s no fence around this table. There must not be, not if Communion is worthy of the God we worship. There’s a place here for everyone. Communion is a sign in this weary and wounded world of what we can become, of the spiritual truth that we are all kin, all family, and that the only way to survive and thrive is to learn to welcome each other in peace, in curiosity, in mutuality.

You likely know all this. But living into it is another matter.

So let me offer a suggestion, a very personal way we can each move toward this better world.

Jesus once summarized the whole of the Bible in a simple sentence: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”

There’s a spiritual and universal truth in this. If you love yourself, you will find a way to love your neighbor, or the family member who votes differently than you do, or the coworker you wish worked somewhere else.

And the opposite is true: if you don’t love yourself, you’re not likely to love your neighbor, family member, or coworker. In fact, it’s a proven psychological reality that the things we dislike in others are the very things we dislike about ourselves. In fact, if you were to make a list of the things you dislike about someone else who annoys you, it’s likely that you have those same traits hidden away in you—things you’ve disowned and rejected. Maybe for good reason. But maybe not. And keeping up those fences inside us means we also keep up fences outside us: we disown and reject people we don’t like, because there are things in us we don’t like.

This is why I find the poem, The Guesthouse, by the thirteenth century Persian poet, Jalaladin Muhammad Rumi, so valuable spiritually.

Rumi invites us to do what Jesus taught, to widen the circle by first widening it within ourselves, loving the parts of us we’d rather fence off, reject, despise. Rumi, like Jesus, knows that if we despise parts of us, it’s not a far leap at all for us to justify despising others. But if we welcome our whole selves personally, we’re more capable of welcoming the wholeness of our humanity collectively. Only then do we have a chance at healing the world. Listen:

This being human is a guest house.

Every day a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweeps your house

clean of its contents—

still, treat each guest honorably.

They may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

There’s a place in the House for all of us, a place at this Table for all of what’s inside of you. Today, welcome and entertain the whole of you—even if there’s a crowd of sorrows or rage or desire or fear within you. Bring it to this Table. All that’s within you is welcome here and if you welcome all of you here, you’re more likely to welcome and entertain others as well.