Sermon: All That Sparkles

Preached at First Christian Church of St. Paul on July 2, 2023. The text is Matthew 10:40-42.

Earlier this week, there was another one of those controversies on Twitter is just like a car accident in that you just can’t look away.  The controversy that went viral is actually local, involving a pastor at Edina Community Lutheran Church here in town.  The pastor, Anna Helgen said the Sparkle Creed which is kind of a take on the historic creeds of the church but set for an LGBTQ audience.  You can read the creed for yourself by googling sparkle creed to learn more.

Again, it became a controversy among some conservatives.  Some went as far as to call it heretical.  As for me, I’m not impressed by Sparkle Creed.  It’s not a surprise that I think LGBTQ inclusion in Christ’s church is important, but I tend to think the creed is too cute by half and kind of assumes who LGBTQ people are in a way that renders us a stereotype  I also just don’t like sparkles.  Maybe that means I have to turn in my gay card, but I’ve hated sparkles since I was a kid.  It gets everywhere.

The Sparkle Creed has become another notch in the culture war where we all get to run to our sides and make our arguments.  Like I said, I think the creed is too cute by half and I think there are better ways to welcome LGBTQ people other than reciting this creed.

But if the Sparkle Creed isn’t a good way of welcoming people, then what is?  The detractors are good at talking about how this goes against doctrine and they might have an argument, but then the question is, how does one welcome someone who is LGBTQ in the name of Jesus Christ?  The people I see on Twitter have no response other than this is heretical.  I don’t know what this all says, but I don’t think it has anything good to say about the church and the followers of Jesus.

In Matthew, Jesus is finishing up a talk to his disciples.  He is getting ready to send them out to preach the good news, and to heal those in need.  One of the things he stresses is that people might not accept our message. Jesus says that he didn’t come to bring peace, but division and how his message would split people.  

And then Jesus ends this speech to his disciples and talks about how communities are to receive his followers.  “Whoever welcomes me, welcomes you,” he tells them.  “If you give a cup of cold water to a little one, your reward is great!”

In Romans, Paul is talking about sin, righteousness and grace.  The main point of this text is we are now free in Christ.  We were once enslaved in sin, but now we are free and bound to the righteousness of Christ.  We are free, but we are free to serve God and others.  

A few years ago, someone said that hospitality was important to the Christian faith.  I was a little skeptical at first.  I’m an orthodox Christian that believes in all of the things in the Nicene Creed, the virgin birth, the divinity of Christ, the resurrection and the second coming.  What matters is basically following Miss Manners?  

But more and more it feels like God is saying to us that if our witness of welcome isn’t there, no one will listen to what followers of Jesus have to say. How are we receiving each other? How are we welcoming each other? How do we treat strangers, especially those who don’t agree with us?

The Didache, an ancient teaching document in the church dating to the Second Century, says “you shall love God who made you; second, love your neighbor as yourself, and do not do to another what you would not want done to you.” The Didache calls on Christians to follow an ethic of life which includes hospitality and generosity instead of the ways of death which include “loving vanities, pursuing revenge, not pitying a poor man, not laboring for the afflicted, not knowing Him who made them, murderers of children, destroyers of the handiwork of God, turning away from him who is in want, afflicting him who is distressed, advocates of the rich, lawless judges of the poor, utter sinners.”

The church is called to live a way of righteousness and be a community of hospitality and generosity.  We need to welcome those who cross our paths.  And our welcome has to be more than just welcoming people we would welcome anyway.  How do we show hospitality that might have a different theology?  How do we echo what the former General Minister and President of the Disciples of Christ Sharon Watkins says that we need to stay at the Table?

I’ve shared the story of the two women that I saw 30 years ago in the basement of a Baptist Church.  One of the women was going to be an Associate Pastor and favored LGBTQ inclusion.  The other was an evangelical that didn’t favor this issue.  But these women were friends.  The evangelical woman defended and voted in favor of her friend to be an Associate Pastor.  The two welcomed each other into their lives.  This was hospitality in action.

Doctrine matters.  But as Paul says in that famous chapter in First Corinthians, if you don’t have love, none of it matters.  Which is why I go back to the Sparkle Creed.  Again, I am not a fan.  But how do you show hospitality to LGBTQ people or whatever group you want to talk about?  Because if you can’t do that.  Then whatever else you have to say about God, or Jesus won’t matter.  To be blunt, no one is going to listen to the love of God from a jerk.

A few weeks ago, I suggested we need to look at changing the name of the church.  I don’t think First Christian really fits anymore and we get confused with our neighbors in Minneapolis.  If I could make a suggestion of a name it would be this: Xenia.  It’s the Greek word for hospitality.  It is derived from another Greek word, xenos which means stranger.  In ancient thought hospitality was not being nice, but a moral obligation. It also beings with the letter “X” which is a cool letter.

I don’t know if Xenia defines who we are, but it is something to live up to.  In this world where tribalism seems to rule, we need to be a place that has a spirit of hospitality, that welcomes others who are aliens in all the senses of the word.

I’m not going to start saying the Sparkle Creed, but I do pray God to give me and all of you a spirit of hospitality, a spirit of Xenia.  Because it is only through the spirit of welcome that people can become to know the love and grace of God.  Thanks be to God. Amen.