Church doesn't fall on Halloween very often, does it? I wonder if people will wear the same costumes to Halloween parties or out to Trick or Treat that they'll put on when invited to dress up for Sunday worship!

It's really been quite remarkable to see all the ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties that have scampered through the halls of Play Care this week ­ bees and bugs, lions and tigers and bears, O My! -- as well as some superheros, pirates, gypsies, ballerinas, and old fashioned witches and skeletons. I want you to know, in case you've never seen her in this guise, that Carol Cleary has the most amazing collection of Halloween vests and hats that she can wear a different one every day of Halloween week. It's wonderful! And on Friday, she wore the most perfect Sorcerer costume that I have ever seen ­ she was right straight out of Fantasia.

So all kinds of interesting persons and critters have been welcomed and enjoyed the premises of First Congregational Church this week. Here they were, and are, in worship right here! Can we say, with a whole new dimension of understanding, that "All Are Welcome" at First Congregational Church?!

So, on and off throughout this week, people have been asking me, "So, Elice, what are you going to 'come as' on Halloween morning" ­ as if what I usually wear in the pulpit isn't sufficient costume for anybody. But, then, it wouldn't really be dressing up, would it? You would all recognize me. (I don't know what it says that I haven't seen anybody else dressed up like minister in our Halloween festivities this morning!)

So on this Sunday of Halloween, what should be my costume?

On this Sunday when we honor the Reformation ­ that historic root of our Protestant tradition, which we might say was the very first time that Christians began to hear from church leaders that "God is still speaking" ­ what should I come as?

In this time of transition and anxiety about the future of First Congregational Church, with church attendance dwindling and leaders fighting burnout ­ what should I be?

On this morning when we welcome a guest to remind us that not only is God still speaking, but the United Church of Christ is urging us to extend a hand of hospitality to those who may have found expressions of God's word off-putting and censoring in the past ­ what should be my costume?

Hospitality! Ah, there's a good topic for Christians seeking to share their message with others. So after some thought, it seemed like a good idea to be (put barbecue apron over clergy robe) ­ a hostess! Note that I am hosting an informal gathering; I'm wearing my Snoopy Barbecue apron. This is a "come as you are, from wherever you are on life's journey" party. Many of you at Deacons, and at Church Council, and last week at coffee hour, have seen the new United Church of Christ TV commercials that emphasize inclusiveness and welcome, and you'll recognize that phrase, "wherever you are on life's journey." If we desire our sanctuary to be crowded, our Sunday School to be bursting at the seams, our budget to swim in black ink, and the vision of a loving, generous, caring, supportive, prophetic community to be fulfilled in us ­ we are going to have to be hospitable. So that's my symbol on Halloween morning ­ I'm Ms. Hospitality!

Hospitality means more than a handshake and a name tag. It means more than just assuming that, of course, everyone knows they're always welcome here. I had occasion to learn a few years ago, in a setting very different from where I usually live my life, that hospitality means, first, giving of what is most important to us so that others may be sustained in their faith journeys; and, second, that hospitality means accepting people as they are, trusting that they are as much a child of God as I am.

My own personal experience of that kind of hospitality beyond my wildest imaginings happened to me during the summer of 2001, when I had the opportunity of a lifetime to visit Africa. Some of you know that my most recent ministry, before I came to serve you here at First Congregational Church, was as an interim staffmember with the Ohio Conference of the United Church of Christ. The Association of UCC churches that I was serving there has a partnership relationship with a small Christian teacher training college in rural Kenya. And during my tenure in Ohio, I was privileged to accompany a youth delegation from our southwest Ohio churches on a visit to our partners in Africa. It was an amazing experience. I could regale you with story after story of our adventures, but what's relevant here, and what really actually stood out for me at the time, was the experience of hospitality.

The Rubate Teacher's College is an institution of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, which relates to the United Church of Christ through our UCC Wider Church Ministries, the international mission arm of our denomination. The college was intentionally located in a rural area ­ this is a deliberate strategy, for several reasons. One, it makes it possible for tiny, poorly equipped and staffed rural schools to have the benefit of the college's students as interns and student teachers. And it makes it possible for very poor rural people to attend the college, without having to sustain the costs of travel and room and board in a more expensive city like Nairobi. And finally, and perhaps most interestingly, the presence of such an institution attracts services that can help to develop the entire region ­ like roads, electricity, plumbing. Right during the week of our group's visit, we watched post holes being dug for the power poles to which the first electrical wires in that place were soon to be attached, going from the nearest town to the college. And small rural farmers were getting connected to those lines ­ electricity for the first time in their lives! So there's an economic and social benefit to the whole neighborhood by bringing higher education out of the city and into an undeveloped area.

And "underdeveloped" it is! Our Ohio teenagers spent a week living in the dormitory with their Rubate College counterparts, and learned a different way of life than any of them are expecting when they go off to college ­ taking cold showers, (because there is no hot running water); washing their clothing in buckets (using their wrists as scrub boards); having little privacy, because each student has only a bunk bed, a small box for storage and a hook on the wall, in a long group dormitory; respecting the students' need to get their studying done before the college's small electrical generator goes off at 10:00 p.m., and that's the end of the electric light.

Because of the rural location, where most residents rarely travel much further than walking distance from home, and few foreigners ever come ­ well, we as a group of a dozen white Americans were a remarkable phenomenon and a spectacular attraction. In a setting with no radio, TV, computers or video games, little transportation other than feet, where music means your own voices accompanied by drums, guitars or homemade instruments ­ well, you can imagine, we were the best show in town for a whole week!

But it isn't just that we stood out as a crowd of First World white people (although we certainly did), but it is, indeed, the cultural norm of hospitality that made our presence such a focus of attention. I'm almost ready to swear that these people are congenially hospitable! Giving a guest your best, offering the guest whatever you have, extending the guest every conceivable courtesy ­ it's not a burden, it's not an appearance to be kept up, it's the way these people live their lives. And this is a society which has a much more "communal" understanding of itself than we do. A guest is not the guest of one person, or of one family. A guest is the community's visitor. In fact, if you come to a village at a family's invitation, and the family doesn't invite the whole village to come and greet you, the village will be annoyed! "What's wrong, why are they hiding the guest. Is there something wrong? Are they ashamed of us!" In this culture, everyone must be welcomed and greeted, and taken into the community.

So not only did this small, financially strapped rural college extend its food, premises, and enormous amounts of time to make us welcome and make our experience beneficial. Night after night, teams from local schools and churches, women's groups, dancers and poetry reciters, youth groups, came to entertain us, often walking considerable distances. One evening, a church youth group from a nearby village came and entertained us with dances, songs and games. And at the close of their presentation, they presented our group with a tied-up batch of sticks of sugar cane, a bag of fresh vegetables, and a live chicken. Our teenagers weren't quite sure what to do with these gifts ­ but together we came to realize what was happening: our hosts were doing as they would do with any visitor. They were giving us what was important to them ­ food, the stuff of life. They were giving us something very valuable, of which they did not have much excess. But they were demonstrating, in their cultural way, that we were important, and deserving of whatever sustenance they could offer.

A number of encounters like this one in Kenya were hard, sometimes really painful. People with such a small store of material things, with such meager livelihoods, were sharing, literally, of their own substance so that we could be welcomed and cared for. It was a humbling experience. Our First World American lives ­ not only the color of out skin and the accent with which we spoke English, but the style of our clothing, our manners, our sense of what is a "normal" standard of living, our unconscious cultural assumptions ­ were almost as different from those of our hosts as east is from west. But we were brought into the community as sisters and brothers, accepted and treated as family. It was radical hospitality. It obliged us to see ourselves in a new light. It was life-changing. It was not unlike... an encounter with Jesus.

It was not unlike the encounter with Jesus that Zacchaeus had, as Jesus was traveling through Jericho, on the way to Jerusalem.

[Jesus] entered Jericho and was passing through it. A Man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.: So [Zacchaeus] hurried down and was happy to welcome Jesus.

All who saw it began to grumble and said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner." Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, Look half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much." Then Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham..."

Jesus looked up into that sycamore tree ­ no one records why he happened to look up at just that particular moment, but he did ­ and up there, he saw... an unpopular person. A person who did all right, who took care of his family; but whose success was resented by the good establishment types who lived all around him. And he said, "You, Zacchaeus, I'm going to be with you."

This was very shocking to the good establishment types. And maybe not just to the good establishment types! It says: all who saw it began to grumble and said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner." Maybe the poor, who were kind of liking the way Jesus seemed to give them the idea that they were the blessed, were offended by Jesus taking to this rich guy, who lived by extorting others. Maybe even the disciples were thinking, "You know, he's going too far. It's one thing to heal on the Sabbath, but to go off and make friends with this guy...???" "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.... All who saw it began to grumble...

We don't know exactly what happened between Zacchaeus and Jesus. We don't know what they talked about. We don't know if Zacchaeus entertained Jesus well. All the story tells us, is that Zacchaeus' life changed. Zacchaeus gave up what was his, to help those who had little or nothing. Zacchaeus returned what was, essentially, his means of living to those from whom he'd gotten the money. (When you think about it, how did Zacchaeus keep on feeding his family? We don't know. We only know that he encountered Jesus, and his life changed. We only know that Jesus choose this unpopular man as his host, and this unpopular man somehow received much more than he gave.

As Christians, as a part of the United Church of Christ family, we inherit a religious legacy of welcoming not only the respectable, but also the unpopular. We are the heirs of a Gospel that is not a book of rules, or a series of criteria for judging respectability, but a way of discovering God, and God's will, in new ways and circumstances and times and places in history.

Can someone, perhaps someone who has become discouraged, bored, or offended by a church experience, walk through the doors of First Congregational Church and encounter the kind of extravagant acceptance that Jesus gave to Zacchaeus? Can the unpopular, the persons who have been excluded in other houses of worship know, not only by the welcome we give them at the door, but by how we treat each other with respect and support, that they have found a home that will accept them, whoever or whatever they may be?

Well, to begin with, how will they know? How will they know that this is a church of open invitation, and they are welcome? How did Zacchaeus know? Because Jesus said so. Jesus verbally put on his barbecue apron and said, "Zacchaeus, there's a party, and it's your party. Step on up and have a burger with me!" Zacchaeus needed to be invited.

What will be our barbecue aprons, our invitation? How will people know, because, trust me, not everyone knows that they are welcome. Our Old Testament text for this morning tells us that God asked the prophet to cut the vision so deeply and visibly into stone tablets, so that it could be read by someone running by. Do we need a sign outside on the walls of First Congregational Church, big enough to be read by someone driving by on Orchard Ridge road, that says "Yes! God is still speaking to us, we're still learning, our lives are still changing ­ come and meet Jesus together with us"?