September 21, 2025: Creating a Culture of Welcome

Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray
How do we create a culture of welcome in our community and in our own lives?

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Sermon Text

Creating a Culture of Welcome

Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray

UU Church of Bloomington

September 21, 2025

READINGS

This month we are diving into what it means to be a community of welcome and I have two short readings connected to this theme.

The first is from Unitarian Universalist minister David Pohl, who reminds us why we gather in liberal a religious community. I share his words, because in the midst of the frightening violence and injustices of these two weeks, these words remind us of the good that continues to call us forward into action, into community, and into hope.

He writes:

“We come to this time and this place:

To rediscover the wondrous gift of free religious community;

To renew our faith in the holiness, goodness and beauty of life;

To reaffirm the way of the open mind and the full heart;

To rekindle the flame of memory and hope; and

To reclaim the vision of an earth made fair, with all her people one."

May we welcome this spirit and vision into our hearts today.

Our second reading comes from the Letter to the Hebrews in the Christian scriptures, but it is calling back to the Book of Genesis. The verse 13:2 reads simply:

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

SERMON Creating a Culture of Welcome

When I think about creating a culture of welcome, one of the first things that comes to mind is the 1980s TV show Cheers. For those who are not familiar with the show, it was a sitcom about a bar in Boston called Cheers.

And the theme song went like this:
“Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name;
and they're always glad you came;
You wanna go where people know;
People are all the same;
You wanna go where everybody knows your name.”
(Writers: Gary Portnoy/Judy Hart)

And, as if to echo or punctuate the theme song, in every episode, there would be a scene where one of the bar regulars, Norm - played by George Wendt - would walk in to the bar and everyone would yell out (if you know it, say it with me) “Norm!”

What a welcome, right? Coming into a place where everyone knows your name, and is glad you came.

This captures a feeling of belonging that is rooted in both knowing a place or community and being known by it - and loved by it. That feeling of belonging is powerful; it is important. We all need that sometimes.

And this sense of belonging begins with a culture of welcome. It starts when you meet someone or come into a community and people show you right away that they are glad to see you. Even if they don't know you, they welcome you with enthusiasm and a smile and work to get to know you and help you get to know them.

Now, not everyone at the Cheers bar is welcomed like Norm. One of the ongoing tensions in the show is Diane, a character from a wealthy background with lots of education, and the struggle to find community and belonging across cultural differences.

It is a good reminder that sometimes, if we are very familiar with and known in a place - it can feel so welcoming. But that may not be everyone's experience. In our own congregation, in our own neighborhoods and communities, how do we keep our attention open for those who are new - those who are just arriving and seeking welcome and community.

This is one of the challenges of aspiring to be a community that welcomes all. What feels welcoming - what creates a sense of belonging for one person, might not feel welcoming to someone else. Differences of culture, background, nationality, ability, needs, even age, and generation can shape what feels welcoming and what does not. For example, even with the Cheers example - I bet there are people here who have never heard of Cheers - so maybe the reference is hard to relate to, or left you feeling a bit outside.

Here's another example. Something I have learned about this congregation is that generally, you are a clapping congregation! I am a clapper myself so I didn't quite notice at first how much you clap. But, did you know that for some people a lot of clapping creates sensory overload and is quite unwelcoming? It's true.

I was a member of a church once where we intentionally did work to show appreciation in ways other than clapping to try to be a more welcoming and inclusive environment for members who struggled when there was a lot of clapping. We learned silent applause in ASL to show appreciation. We didn't prohibit clapping, but by learning other techniques and becoming more mindful of the variety of needs in the congregation, it meant that many people began to use silent applause - and that reduced the loudness overall when the congregation was showing appreciation - through both clapping and silent clapping.

On the other hand, there are also a lot of particular norms and expectations built into being quiet in the service. Some of this is cultural. I have been in churches where the slight sound of children, or of an amen would draw stares. And I imagine that can happen here too. Although for some who have hearing loss, they can really struggle to hear speakers when there is other noise happening.

I name all of this to illustrate how complicated and varied each of our needs and preferences are - and how creating a culture of welcome is challenging. It means stretching beyond our own perspective to try to understand others. It means being willing to be flexible, to make mistakes, to be forgiving, to be open to learning, to trying new things, to making change.

It is not about what is right or wrong - it's about welcoming differences, mistakes, and flexibility. And while any one community cannot meet everyone's needs or preferences - in fact to do that, the community would have to be pretty monolithic and monocultural - it's important to recognize and make room for different ways of being - and not assume that everyone likes it the way I like it.

More than anything, welcoming is about creating openness and kindness - openness to others, openness to listening and learning, and openness to a variety of needs and perspectives.

I almost scrapped this topic of welcome as the news of the week unfolded and got worse each day - but this topic of welcome matters. It matters not just to this congregation's ability to live its values of inclusion and equity. It matters not just because diversity actually helps us all be stronger and more curious and less isolated and less fearful. It matters because as more and more people find themselves targeted under the tyranny of the current administration - for their beliefs, for their speech, for their place of birth, for their gender or sexual orientation, for their need of medicaid and a social safety net - creating spaces of sanctuary within our walls - within our homes - and within our hearts - that offer welcome, safety, and belonging is absolutely necessary. It matters that as our government sews fear in the lives of so many of our neighbors and attacks the fundamental rights of everyone, that we need to be nurturing welcome, sanctuary, and places where people feel safe, feel belonging, and know they are loved and valued. And as Unitarian Universalists - and as religious people - we know this is the right and necessary thing to do.

And why is it the right thing to do? Well, because our faith teaches us this. Specifically, as Unitarian Universalists, our chalice - the symbol of our faith literally - was born out of our work to resist the Nazi's and provide safe passage for refugees. And that work was rooted in hundreds of years of theology and practice to recognize the inherent worthiness and dignity of each person and the ability and necessity of people to live peacefully across diversity. Today, we speak of it as our core value of Pluralism. The roots of this value go as least as far back as the 16th century Unitarian minister Francis David, who famously said, "We need not think alike to love alike," and who helped create the first official law of religious tolerance in Europe. For Unitarian Universalists - our tradition teaches us that beyond belief, what is primary is the call to love our neighbors as ourselves. Compassion, equity, justice - these are how we live our faith.

But it is not just Unitarian Universalists who teach the importance of compassion, care for those at risk, hospitality, and welcome. This is a core message of the Christian and Jewish scriptures as well. For example, from the Letter to the Hebrews, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers,” and also in Exodus 23:9, “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers” and Leviticus, “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Again and again, this obligation to hospitality and welcome - particularly to strangers and foreigners who are often vulnerable, and who may be fleeing persecution - the clear call is to welcome.

I am going to talk about a story that doesn't get talked about a lot in UU churches - and when it is talked about in some Christian churches, the message seems to be lost. It is the story of God's destruction of the city of Sodom and God saving the one good person in that city, Lot.

I want to thank Guy Loftman, who loaned me an R. Crumb's illustrated version of Genesis as well as Naomi Alderman's recent speculative fiction novel, The Future, whose character unpacks the meaning of this story - particularly for today.

In Alderman's book, one of the characters wonders, what did it feel like in Sodom in the days before God destroyed it? The character writes: “So the Talmud says it was an evil place.....It was a crime in Sodom to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Beggars were given marked coins that no shop would accept. Welp. [she goes on] In the USA right now there are places where it's a crime to help homeless people. Plenty of stores don't accept food stamps. So are we in it? Do we have enough sense to get ourselves out if we are?"

According to the Talmud, the crimes of Sodom are greed, abandoning the poor, and refusing to welcome strangers in order to hoard the abundant resources of the city. This does sound familiar, yes?

In Genesis, God tells Abraham he is going to destroy the city - burn it to the ground and everyone in it. And Abraham, carefully, respectfully, questions God about whether there might be good people in Sodom, even as so much evil is happening. And Abraham asks God, would you still destroy the

city even if there are good people there? And God says no, that even if there are only 10 good people, he will not destroy the city. So God sends two of his angels to Sodom - and they only find one good person - Lot.

And what makes Lot good according to the story?

Lot welcomes the strangers! He knows how dangerous his city is for foreigners and insists they come to his house. He offers them food, hospitality - and then when because they are strangers - the men of the city literally come to Lot's door attempting to drag the strangers out to torture and abuse them, Lot protects them. Reading it again today, I have images of ICE agents dragging people from their homes, from their jobs, from the streets and disappearing them to tortuous prisons and unknown confinement.

Lot welcomes and protects the strangers from danger. He is the one good person in Sodom and so God saves Lot and his family and smites the rest of the city and its inhabitants.

Now you may hear other interpretations of this story - but again and again in the Bible, when the story is referenced - the lesson is about the obligation to generosity and helping the poor and welcoming the stranger. As in the Letter to the Hebrews, it says “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” This is a literal call back to Lot and his protection of those strangers, who were God's angels. Even when Jesus references this story, it is in the context of the obligation to welcome the stranger.

These stories of the Jewish and Christian tradition are also among the roots of Unitarian Universalism - and they are part of the foundations of our commitments to inclusion, to equity, to justice, to pluralism, and to belonging.

So many stories of the Bible remind us that humanity is capable of compassion and generosity, but also tremendous cruelty and the tendency among particularly those in power to hoard wealth and control and oppress the masses. There are powerful tyrants and criminal kings throughout the Bible. But again and again - there is the reminder of what is good in us - and what is required of us. As the Hebrew prophet Micah says in my favorite verse in the Bible, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?”

Again and again, these lessons call us away from our basest instincts of fear - of fight and flight - to find a way to live justly, peacefully and honorably within ourselves and our chosen faith.

Welcoming the stranger is not easy, welcoming changes in culture and norms is challenging - whether we are talking about our own individual community or for a county. Some might say it is not in our human nature. Perhaps that is exactly why religion calls us to it.

A caveat: when religion gets tied up in nationalism it becomes the opposite - reinforcing fear and isolation and, too often as we witness today, the persecution of those seen as other. But liberal religion is meant to lead us beyond the fight and flight instincts of our amygdala - our reptilian brains. And this has been important - for life is change. Throughout human history people have migrated and cultures have met - collided - and have learned again and again that peace and prosperity grow when we learn to welcome pluralism, diversity, and change.

Today, Donald Trump is exploiting people's fear to destroy free speech, to disregard civil and human rights, and to undermine our democratic republic - all in service of his own wealth, corruption, and authoritarian desires. We must name it, reject it, and resist it clearly and non-violently.

For our religion as Unitarian Universalists - and not just our religion - have throughout history reminded us fear is not the answer - love is the way; compassion and service is the practice, and hospitality, generosity and welcome, particularly to those experiencing persecution, is our obligation.

I'll end with the words of David Pohl that I used for our reading - words that call us to remember what is good, what is just, and the vision to which we remain committed:

“We come to this time and this place:
To rediscover the wondrous gift of free religious community;
To renew our faith in the holiness, goodness and beauty of life;
To reaffirm the way of the open mind and the full heart;
To rekindle the flame of memory and hope; and
To reclaim the vision of an earth made fair, with all her people one.”