A highlight of this past fall was being invited to the courthouse to say a prayer at the ceremony that welcomed new citizens to the United States. I loved watching the hopeful, beautiful, colorful faces of the 60 plus people gathered in that courtroom from around 20 different countries, and thought of how blessed Gainesville is, we are, to have them, for they will bring gifts and graces and entrepreneurship and expertise we need to make our community fuller. It took me back to the day when my daughter Julianna became a citizen. I was awash with emotion that day, remembering her precarious journey to be with me, but she was squirmy and inattentive, a toddler who, like our baptism ceremony says, “knew none of this.” The people in the Alachua County courthouse this past November though, did. They knew. I could see the importance of the moment in their eyes. They had, as the old spiritual says it, “come a mighty, yes, a mighty long way.” I am proud to say, too, that on the day this week as I was finishing this sermon, Andy and others were before the commissioners to propose a strong resolution to make Gainesville officially a Welcoming City.

It is a very strong and apropos worship theme this Lent, this idea of making the road by walking– for our world, it seems, is on that road, on the move. Humans migrate for work, for family, for a new life, to survive. We move from house-to-house in the same town; we move schools and churches. Pushed out beyond comfort or discomfort or home, formed by war and poverty, seeking opportunity and advantage, escaping a violent past, rejection, and injustice… looking for a new place to belong or for adventure or actualization–there are all kinds of reasons to be on the road. The long journey is undertaken always on a road that is both physical and spiritual in its landscape, traveled in anticipation and sometimes with speed. Sometimes it is an unbearably steep and slick trail, and sometimes necessitates an ambulance or a wheelchair, or inching the way forward through fog and darkness. Sometimes we navigate ourselves along the road, and sometimes we help bear up someone else, and sometimes others carry us. And when we, as our Servant Song says it, “walk that mile and share that load,” then compassion and strength build the cairns that line the way. We make the road by walking–oh yes, and the road makes us.

On the one level, the economic and political questions of how human beings move into and out of the places we share, are exceedingly complex. But it seems to me that underneath it all is a fundamental question of ethics that each of us, on another level, decides here and now, and over and over again, in our context–this microcosm that is UCG. And that fundamental question has to do with our very personal response to the invitation to share hospitality or to the promulgation of hatred, exclusion, and fear-mongering in this world. that seem to surround many of those who are on the move . These are spiritual questions, it seems to me–these questions about how we view those who are on the road with us and how we rely on and help or hurt or prevent one another.

Spiritually and physically, what sort of pilgrim do we want to be and what is the nature of the road are we making, in our country, in our city, in our church, in our lives? What does it mean to refuse, or to practice, hospitality?

Céad Míle Fáilte is Irish for 100,000 welcomes. Big, extravagant welcome! A spiritual direction. Welcome to friends or guests, welcome to refugees, welcome to newcomers like me or not like me, welcome because we are on the road together and because it is my bounden duty as the old liturgy puts it, my privilege, my joy, to invite you into the place in the world I inhabit that we now share together. It is my blessing, conversely, to be welcomed when I am on the road, as well, nurtured by others’ gifts that help me, and so on it goes. Compassion as spiritual path. It is Namaste–we honor the divine in one another, such that if we are alike or if we are different, if we are silk or wool, or ragged, it is our ethical choice to have a heart of hospitality. It is the polar opposite attitude to the ones we hear bellowed or craftily whispered on the TV as a way to treat newcomers into our lives. And where does a spacious spirit of 100,000 welcomes begin? Well, David Whyte, Irish poet says, that relational attitude of welcome starts from close in. From the reminder or realization that we have a choice about our own souls and our community and our church. We must begin with our welcome here–

Start close in
Start with the first thing, close in, the step you don’t want to take.
To find
another’s voice,
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
becomes a
private ear
listening
to another.

That starting close in means we examine our own hearts and on new member Sunday and every Sunday to choose to offer 100,000 welcomes. Welcome, to a cairn of hope, an oasis along the road, a church whose heart is bent toward our promise to each other that whatever you believe or don’t believe, that is not the litmus test of our worthiness for welcome. That if you had given up on finding spiritual community and you are lost or broken or strong and independent, and sure of who you are–then this house is your house–come on in and welcome. For when we join UCG, we make a promise to live our family life here as a particular kind of congregation.

So 100,000 welcomes here, new and old members—because though there are many roads we might make, this is the one we have chosen together. It runs through a variety of landscapes, and it looks different to all of our varied eyes of our hearts. But here is the road we will make together–we have promised to live into our beloved Compact which says, “we welcome into our church those of differing understanding and theological opinion…” grow by seeking new dimensions of truth and to find ourselves by “following even imperfectly the way of Jesus in personal involvement with each other.” We will start with that. Close in. We will make that road, and it is sometimes a bumpy and scenic one, with hairpin turns and lots of changing weather, because an expansive welcome means that we will be challenged and worn and treated to new vistas we have never seen before. The Scripture passage in I Peter puts it this way: “Above all, maintain constant love for one another. Be hospitable to one another without complaining. Be good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serving with whatever gift you have received.”

Be hospitable to one another–make home for each other. And is where we start to change the world–we start close in, and take the steps to make the road by walking, by the welcomes we give and receive.

We open our hearts to the challenging work of learning—sometimes, admittedly, in fits and starts, to understand and accept one another, to walk hand-in-hand and work side-by-side, when we agree, and when we don’t. When we join this church, we promise to offer such a welcome because our hearts beat for one another and for the lonely world, and because we have promised, for compassion’s sake, to be an oasis, full of hope, creativity, and abundant life. Amen.