“A House of Prayer for ALL Peoples”
Isaiah 56:1, 6-8
Rev. Désirée H. Gold
St. Mark’s United Church of Christ, Baltimore, MD
Sunday, 17 August, 2008
Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
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 The church in which I was raised was built in a style called “praying hands.” It is essentially an A-frame building, but the two sides are curved upwards, in order to look like two hands joined in prayer, like this: [demonstrate]. The church was perhaps built that way to remind all who saw it and entered of these words from Isaiah: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
Unfortunately, Isaiah’s words are too often forgotten by those viewing and entering that “praying hands” church in Fargo, and by those in “houses of prayer” throughout the world. Our churches too often become “houses of division,” “houses of suffering,” “houses of injustice” -- even, in some cases, “houses of violence.” Prayer shrinks to the back of the church’s priorities, as we deal with all our “human stuff”...without remembering how we have been called to handle it.
The first fall from grace is easy. We simply forget to pray. Sure, we pray every Sunday morning a few times during church, and we might even pray daily at home, but as a church we spend a lot of the rest of our time taking care of business rather than taking care of the business of prayer. We worry about the roof. We wonder how the bills will get paid. We express concern that the doors were left open after an evening meeting. We hold planning meetings for new programs. We talk. We organize. We talk some more. Granted, all of this stuff is important. A church with a building needs a roof over its head. The 12-step meetings that take place here in the evenings are an important outreach ministry. In this modern day, we cannot escape the world altogether, and as such we are considered a “nonprofit organization,” which carries with it certain legal responsibilities. If we are to keep our ministry going, we need to stay afloat financially. But the God of Isaiah calls us back and reminds us of our primary purpose.
We are, first and foremost, a house of prayer. We are a sanctuary, where we, and others, should be able to come and...pray. We are a gathering place place for holy fellowship -- not just idle chitchat. We are a gathering place of communion -- not just eat-and-run. We are a place of discovery, of wonder, of amazing grace. We are the church.
When we forget to maintain our houses of prayer, we forget the “requirements for membership” and this causes us both to fumble in our own responsibilities as “members of the house of prayer,” and to exclude those whom God would have us embrace. The first verse of this scripture describes very clearly the “terms of membership.” If we want to be a part of this holy club, we are to maintain justice and do what is right. As one preacher points out, why would anyone, especially the foreigners and outcasts God calls us to embrace, want to belong to the community of God if that meant facing injustice, and if right relationships did not exist there? Still, we too often ignore that part of our membership clause, or covenant. We fight amongst ourselves. We want to shut others out. Acts of violence -- physical, emotional, or spiritual are committed within the very church community. Keep in mind that the Catholic church is not the only denomination that deals with abuse.
We hurt one another in simpler ways too. I have heard more backbiting and exclusiveness in churches than just about any place else. I feel blessed to belong to a church that, for the most part, maintains good relationships with one another. Still, messy conflict occasionally pops up here too, and it is not always resolved in the most just manner. If I have not seen much messy conflict since I’ve been here, I have no doubt that it has been present in the past, or that others have come to this place because of injustice experienced in other “houses of prayer.”
When we forget to maintain our houses of prayer, we begin to forget other things too, like embracing the outcasts among us, inviting the “foreigners.” We like things to be the way they always have been, and to allow those outcasts or foreigners in would be to become vulnerable to -- heaven forbid it! -- change!! Or downright difference!
We know that others have been excluded throughout the ages too. For many centuries, the mentally ill were demonized, and they faced exclusion and often violence as a result. The physically ill were called “sinful” and blamed for their illnesses. Women who practiced the healing arts, who did not go to church as often as they should, or who were simply different were called witches and burned at the stake, whether they were followers of Christ or not. And in more recent centuries, the physically disabled have been excluded by “houses of prayer” -- St. Mark’s included. My guess is that St. Mark’s was built at a time when people didn’t even consider that having no wheelchair access, no accessible restrooms would be necessary in order to become a “house of prayer for all peoples.”
The Church has excluded people in other ways as well. Church conflict not only breaks hearts; it sometimes downright shuts people out. I know of a church that has faced such conflict in recent years that a large portion of the members are no longer welcome inside the church. They have become outcasts as a result of the conflict, and tensions run high. Every time a church faces schism, someone is being unjustly excluded from the house of prayer.
The United Church of Christ advertises itself as the church that accepts everybody, and indeed the denomination as a whole is, I believe, very welcoming. The “all the people” Steeples ad shows a wide diversity of people, and I have seen all of those diversities represented in UCC congregations. But we need to be careful that we are walking the walk, not just talking the talk.
The church I served in Sacramento, California was the product of racial segregation. While that church was formed decades ago, Sunday morning remains the most segregated hour of the week in this country and the United Church of Christ is not immune to the problem. The fact that that church in Sacramento is 60% African American and 35% white is a huge anomaly.
Not all UCC congregations are Open and Affirming, and those of us that carry the official designation do not always carry out the mission behind it. We might welcome gays and lesbians and transgendered folks but exclude others.
...It is easy for us to speak of historical and modern-day exclusions by blaming others. We speak with sadness of the racism that excluded many people several decades ago and continues to exclude too many today. We speak with horror of the witch hunts, the mistreatment of the physically and mentally unwell. We speak with disgust about the mistreatment and exclusion of homosexuals. We speak with anger of churches that allow conflict to shut out people of God from their houses of prayer. It is so easy to blame. But what are the ways in which we do not “do what is right”? Who do we exclude? Which foreigners would we prefer to keep foreign? These questions are not ones for which I expect an immediate answer. It is my hope that we will think about them deeply, over time, and then respond over and over by making our sanctuary a house of prayer for all people.
Let us not profane the Sabbath by getting too caught up in our daily business that we forget our primary purpose, to be a house of prayer. Let us not profane this space by excluding those who are different from us. Let us not act with the injustice that we have seen throughout the ages. Let us be a house of prayer for all peoples. And now let us pray.
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