The other day I was out in the Sooke Hills for a trail run and a couple in their forties made the mistake of asking me for hiking recommendations. Considering I only know a few trails with a lot of elevation, I recommended a shorter hike up to a waterfall and lake. There is no cell service in the parking lot, so they couldn’t look up the hike they had found on All Trails. They asked me if I knew where the River Trail is and I said I didn’t. So they started hiking a fairly steep uphill section. I had mapped my run which started along the Sooke Potholes and fifteen minutes after talking to the couple I saw a sign along the river that said “River Trail.” Whoops! My guess is they returned to the parking lot and found the River Trail before long, because my loop took me past the waterfall and lake and I never ran into the couple again. In fact I didn’t see anyone on the trails for five of the six hours I was out on the trails. Just me and wildlife, which thankfully I didn’t see any bears or cougars. An owl hooted at me at one point and swooped through the trees, as it was getting late afternoon. Otherwise just the typical birds and chipmunks.
I am training for a trail race in the Sooke Hills in a couple weeks. I’ll be here on Sunday, but if I’m a bit out of it, you’ll know why. The trail race has only one piece of required gear – a paper map of the course. Because as this couple discovered, you can have a subscription to All Trails, you can have Strava, you can have all kinds of apps on your phone, but if you don’t have cell service, pretty quickly you discover you have absolutely nothing. Good old paper map to the rescue. The race directors don’t care if you run barefoot, if you use hiking poles or don’t use hiking poles, if you carry extra food and water. All you need is a paper map of the course so you don’t get lost.
Wouldn’t it be nice if life were like that sometimes? If we just had a map for the plan we are trying to follow. We make plans but they constantly need interpreted and revised. Even Peter discovers this in our first reading from Acts. He thinks he knows what evangelism is all about, spreading the gospel to other people like him. But in a dream, God reveals a wideness to inclusion and love. Evangelism is about more than just welcoming people who look and talk like us. Perhaps that sounds like a truism, but it’s a lesson the Lutheran church and other mainline churches have struggled with. We made such strides with mission starts rooted in ethnic churches that offered worship in Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, German, etc. When the initial waves of Northern European immigration ended, we needed a new map and struggled to find one. Some congregations pivoted to English worship, with second-language worship falling to the background, but by that point it was too late for many churches. They had already established their identity as mainly for one group of people. Other people would show up and say, “Hey, do you also go along the mostly flat River Trail? And if the answer is, we only go up this steep hill, not everyone will find that welcoming.” Even if that hike takes you past a beautiful waterfall.
Peter’s mystical dream is for us today as well. For decades Lutheran churches in Canada pivoted toward sameness. Something a colleague pointed out the other day. The good news is the sameness hasn’t been true for some time. We look around and lot of people already in the church are not the same. We witness increasing diversity and now we can tell that story with joy. And so, we need to acquire new skills. Both in reading maps, redrawing maps, and being flexible in planning routes that work for everyone.
Consider how we welcome new people attending the congregation. For example, asking the question, “Where are you from?” Depending on who is doing the asking and who is being asked, this may imply the person is not from Victoria. It can be othering if someone assumes they are not from around here, especially when asked by a white person to a racialized person. Small talk is something we all need to learn. Asking an open-ended question like “Good to meet you. How was your experience at worship today?” I know these are things are something I often reflect upon as well. Another question to add to this list is asking someone whether or not they have kids or if they are planning to have kids. If the personal has raised the topic themselves, then perhaps better to start with something else. Let’s be empathetic and flexible with our questioning, rather than asking questions that come with uncomfortable assumptions. We can ask one another about summer plans, favourite activities, etc.
On the subject of assumptions, as I was leaving Sooke Potholes Provincial Park, I stopped at a Tim Horton’s. I was a bit dazed and confused after being in the forest much of the day. I changed into slides and a random t-shirt, paired with muddy running shorts. A man was outside smoking and he said to me, “Hey, you look like a guy who would know. Where’s the closest liquor store around here?” I don’t mind strangers asking me questions, but it’s the specific descriptor, “you look like a guy who would know.” I apologized that I didn’t know, but imagined if he drove into Sooke he would find something. Which is what he said he would do.
The good news is that God is granting us the boldness of Peter to trust our dreams. To trust that the Spirit is doing new things in our midst. Why? Because the gospel is one of unconditional inclusion. A gospel of grace is God already knowing we feel we fall short. God knows we are lonely, suffer anxiety, and struggle in life. A theology of grace short-circuits the way we sabotage our own self-talk, saying we’re not good enough or that we don’t matter. Nothing is sadder to me than meeting a bereaved family of a church member and they say, their loved one’s last will and testament was not have a funeral. How do you square that with a gospel of love? The reality is this person internalized a message of making themselves smaller, not wanting to be an inconvenience. But the reality is we are not an inconvenience. We don’t need to make ourselves smaller. We ought to celebrate one another, including while we are living.
As we continue journeying through the season of Easter, how do you want to celebrate resurrection life? What are ways you want to celebrate a gospel that is more expansive? What are ways we can include this expansiveness in our evangelism? Questions we can ponder on our own and together over coffee and cake following worship, speaking about hospitality and inclusion.
Keep in mind that you are all the best evangelists at Church of the Cross. Each one of you is an ambassador for Christ, just like Peter. This past week both kids had adjusted schedules at schools because one was helping show around grade 5 kids moving up to middle school in the fall. And the other kid had grade 8 kids visiting high school. No one is better at welcoming people to a school or church than peers. There is only so much I can do as a pastor. Most of the evangelism happens by all of you. Thank you for your work as followers of Christ. And know you are evangelists welcoming others into the same love Jesus has for each one of you. Amen.
