All Are Welcome Here

I don’t remember exactly when it began.  When you’ve been married over 30 years, and a parish pastor for nearly 40, sometimes it is hard to trace a habit or custom or ritual back to its origin.

What I know is that nearly every time I celebrate Holy Communion, after the consecration and before the distribution, I say “All are Welcome Here.”

At first I didn’t think much about what that might mean to folks in the pews.  But over time, many people have expressed  to me how deeply meaningful and welcoming these words have been to them, and now I try never to forget to announce communion in those exact words.

I think they may go back to when I was a pastor in Fargo.  I once attended a Catholic funeral service, and I was scrambling to see if the bulletin stated anything about whether I was welcome at the Eucharist, or not.  I couldn’t find anything, and the priest didn’t say anything, so I just remained in my pew.

It could also be because often we ELCA Lutherans will have visitors from Lutheran Church Missouri Synod congregations.  I knew that in some of those congregations you could not participate in communion unless you were approved by the local pastor.

I wanted to make it clear that I was not the one deciding who could come to communion.  It was up to each worshiper to decide, and I simply wanted them to know that for me no one need feel excluded.

Now, of course, the church throughout the centuries has excluded all kinds of people from worship and communion.  Even though, as Marcus Borg and others have clearly demonstrated, Jesus was trying to overcome the purity laws of Judaism that excluded all kinds of people from aspects of worship and fellowship, the church has continued to do so.  Most of the time this is not done through written rules or regulations, or statements in the bulletin.  It is done through a lack of welcome, a lack of genuine warmth, a lack of friendliness.

I have never been involved in a church that did not think it was friendly.  But all you have to do is talk to visitors and you will find that most of them in most churches do not feel welcomed.

Sometimes that lack of welcome has been because of race, social status, sexual orientation, a criminal record, or a host of other external or internal factors.  Sometimes it is because of the desire to not let anyone new into our clique.

Or it may because we do not do a good job of proclaiming Jesus’ message of radical inclusion and welcome.  Many years ago I took a group of clergy to Cuernavaca, Mexico.  We were visiting in the home of Adela, a Christian Base Community leader.  She asked us if we thought the Gospel was “good news to the poor.” Oh, yes, we quickly exclaimed,  “Well, then,” she said, “I imagine your churches are just overflowing with poor people!”

For years our churches have had available study booklets on hospitality and welcome.  But all the studies in the world cannot make a difference unless two other things are present.  The first is a spiritual heart that constantly asks God to make it possible for us to really reach out to and love all people.  The second is a willingness to receive the gifts of new people into our self-understandings and our congregational life.

I think Ram Dass’ famous phrase gives us good guidance into how to soften our hardened hearts,  “We’re all just walking each other home.”  That is one of those simple but profound lines you can’t help but like, and, like poetry, may lead to our own individual images and interpretations of exactly what it may mean.

In a recent interview Dass has explained what he means by the phrase.  “Home“ is God, the One at the center of all, being in one’s “spiritual heart.”  The second part is experiencing the unconditional love of other people, and the inner realization that we are all One in God.   He then explains: “If we can find a way to walk each other home, we could reach a point where there is no more conflict between egos and nations.”  [In "Read the Spirit," blog, the Ram Dass interview, July 2013.]