The Openness of the Church: Krikor’s Reflections – February/March 2013
‘The Openness of the Church’
Recently I watched the movie Argo, which is the dramatization of the 1980 joint CIA-Canadian secret operation to extract 6 fugitive American diplomatic personnel out of revolutionary Iran. At the conclusion of the movie, there were the real pictures taken when welcoming the fugitives back with the sign “Welcome Home”. What a heart-warming message. We are urged in both Old and New Testaments to exercise hospitality and entertain all. That means we have to display “Welcome Home” signs to everyone. The Mosaic Law goes even to the extreme of commanding that strangers be accepted as natives among the “chosen people” and should be loved (Lev. 19:34). In the New Testament, the author of the letter to the Hebrews says, “Do not forget to entertain strangers” (13:2). Evidently, these and similar passages, exhort the faithful then and the church today to welcome strangers home.
As Christians and a church, that is the least we can do, because the supremely meaningful “Welcome Home” sign was first displayed by God Himself. He made it manifest to all men but in a totally different way. He made it in a much higher level than the highest level men could possibly attain to. And the difference is this: While men, poetically, stay by the lane and invite strangers in, God goes out to the strangers and brings them home. The one and only message of the Incarnation is: To welcome strangers home. God went after them. We admire the Doxology of the angels of the Lord, sung at the night of the Nativity; but the actual and factual translation of that song is, “Welcome Home, strangers”. Had it not been for the Incarnation, we could not be aware of our having a home.
The same truth repeatedly expressed in the Gospels can be traced back to the Old Testament. In the person of the prophet Hosea, we find a man who, to welcome his estranged wife home, goes out to the marketplace, buys her “for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley” (3:2) and brings her home. Hosea’s story is a living parable of the God of the Gospels. In Christ Jesus our Lord, God welcomes home the strangers, but to do this, He goes after them. That is God’s method of hospitality and entertainment and that is the message of the church.
Our Lord spoke some live commentaries through parables about some truths. Who can deny the modest beauty of the parable of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin? In both cases we find the outgoing persons, the shepherd and the woman, eventually commended for their heroic courage and their dramatic welcome home “ceremony”. The same idea we see in the story of the movie Argo, where the CIA agent goes out, puts himself in danger and returns home the fugitives, who were hiding in the Canadian ambassador’s residence in Tehran.
Many years ago during the week of prayer for Christian unity, the subject was “Welcome Home: The Openness of the Church”: No doubt, the church must be open. It is in the nature of the church to be an “open house”. The concept of a monastery or a convent is alien to the church of the New Testament. History testifies to the utter failure of the ascetic stand of those medieval clerics, who ostracized themselves from the society they should serve, in the incorrect belief that they served the God who gave His only Son to welcome all men home. What an irony! No, dear friends, the church must be an “open house”; otherwise it jeopardizes both its identity and its mission.
In the late 60’s a church in the city of Aleppo faced a serious problem. The sanctuary was built in a quiet street next to a cemetery and a hospital. The cemetery was demolished and relocated and the hospital dismantled and vacated. In the place of that cemetery there emerged a beautiful square with many shopping facilities and surrounded by multi-storeyed buildings. The quiet street was transformed into a very busy avenue. Some of the committee members of the church were seriously disturbed by the unwelcome change. They proposed to sell the church building, purchase a piece of land in the suburbs and build a new sanctuary away from the chaotic city centre. But the proposal never materialised, because the minister blocked it. His argument was that, because the church stood for the world, it should remain in the world, in its everyday life, and that it was symbolic of this particular church building to remain situated in the middle of the busiest city centre.
Yes, the church has an open door, so that people may get in. That is part of the truth. The other, often forgotten, part of the truth is that the door of the church is open, so that messengers may go out, identify themselves with outsiders and proclaim its openness to strangers. Then and only then, is the sign “Welcome Home” meaningful for the strangers who really need the real home — the home of the loving, outgoing and gracious saving God, the God of the Open Church.
Rev. Krikor Youmshajekian