Everyone. Everyone is welcome at church. That is the way it should be. If you ask me, that’s a lot to live up to.

I was thinking about how Easter changes the world this week and was reminded of the claim often found on Episcopal Church signs and in our published materials, “The Episcopal Church Welcomes Everyone.”

To some that might seem like a new and radical claim. Or to others it might seem like a statement of the obvious. In fairness, it may be one or the other depending on how you were taught about who the church is and what it means to be a Christian.

The church has failed at welcoming everyone. Some have even converted the purposes of God’s love into moralist authoritarianism. Telling themselves, and others, to keep out those who don’t measure up or conform to arbitrary standards that are unequally applied besides.

The earliest records of the Christian tradition tell us that the early church was mostly slaves, the poor, outcasts, and women (who were oppressed and disenfranchised) that responded with faith to the message of Jesus Christ.

Support for the church came mostly from women with access to funding or other resources.

These were not “respectable” people in their Sunday best. Many persons gathered around those early Eucharistic tables would be struggling to survive. Education would not have been common. Sin and suffering would both be close at hand.

These are the forebears from whom we inherit the faith and its traditions. The welcome in our churches is radical and open because of the example set by those who came before us. Everyone is welcome at church. God, I pray that it will be so.

Seeking peace,

Fr. Chip