Between Sundays
A year ago this week, I was the newcomer.
I did not know your names. A few of you liked to quiz me on them, and I will admit, I am still learning. Still learning names, still learning faces, still learning the stories and the lives behind them. What I knew right away, though, was how it felt to walk in as a stranger and be received as if I already belonged. You made room for me, and my family. And a year later, I am still in wonder at it.
I shared in this video above, a small line from one of Jesus’ parables. A great banquet is being prepared, the invitations go out, and the servant comes back with a report: it has been done as you asked, and still there is room. Still there is room. The table is fuller than anyone expected, and there is room yet. So the host sends the servant out again, to the roads and the lanes, to go and bring more in.
Here is what I have come to see. In that story, the host sets the table, but it is the servant who goes out to the doorways and says, come, there is a place for you. That servant is us. The welcome I received a year ago did not fall out of the sky. It had names. It was Cathy and Paul and Amy and Jenn, the volunteers, the person who caught my eye that first Sunday and smiled like they were glad I was there. Welcome is something people do.
Paul writes to the Ephesians and tells them what happens on the other side of that welcome. You are no longer strangers, he says, but members of the household of God. That is the whole arc in one breath. Someone goes out and says there is room. A stranger comes in. And by grace, the stranger becomes family. We have all been on the receiving end of that sentence. Now we get to be the ones who speak it.
So this is my invitation to you. This week, be the servant sent to the doorway. Notice the person sitting alone. Learn the name of someone new. Save the seat, start the conversation, walk them to the Parish Hall for coffee and a donut instead of just pointing. Someone out there is still looking for a community of faith, a third place, somewhere they can come exactly as they are, seeking or doubting or simply wondering. When they find us, let them find a household, not a lobby.
Because we are a community of welcome, affirmation, and love for all. And still, thank God, there is room.
Thank you for an amazing first year of ministry. Thank you for the welcome you gave me, and for the welcome I know you will keep giving to everyone who walks through our doors. I cannot wait to see who we make room for next.
Until Sunday, and all the days between,
Dr. Hutton