“Come as you are” in church lingo has come to mean: no tie, no jacket, no problem. It’s jeans casual, shorts in the summer, and not having to go home and change clothes before you head out to the lake. For many would-be church goers, it’s a relief. Like many of you, I learned growing up what “church clothes” were, and to this day, I dread the Sundays that it’s cold enough that pantyhose are a must. Churches, like it or not, have their dress codes. We don’t think of such comments as meaning anything, but in Texas of all places, there was one time that I was told that my earrings were too big for Sunday morning. On my compliant days, I wore smaller ones, but on my rebellious days I wore the biggest earrings I could find out of sheer contempt for the comment. That’s what being 24 will do to you!

Big earrings or not, the dress codes we set up at church give newcomers an impression of who we are. Are we well-dressed in expensive clothes? Are we northern conservative or California crunchy? Are we formal or informal? Do we allow a wide breadth of styles, or is there a Presbyterian uniform? What is it that we’re trying to tell? What is it that we’re trying to cover up?

Individually, a person’s style may be simply a reflection of their personality, but dig a little deeper, and you might find someone trying to hide, or fit in, or boost a sagging self-esteem. We get these messages from our early years – that doesn’t match; comb your hair; dress a little nicer; you’re embarrassing me. We learn that people will judge us, sometimes harshly, by what’s on the outside. Some of us have learned this lesson best at church.

So come as you are, covered please – modesty is still in style. But I want you to leave different. I’m not looking to see what you wear, and neither is Jesus. Jesus reminds us that the lilies don’t worry about what they are going to wear, and they are no more than grass that’s here today and gone tomorrow and Solomon in all his glory was not adorned as these. He says, “Don’t you think your Father in heaven cares at least that much for you?” God cares for us, but certainly doesn’t care so much about whether we wear big earrings or not. The inner voice that sounds like your mother may tell you, “That outfit is atrocious,” but when it comes to church, what you wear is not at all important to Jesus. What matters is that you turn your attention to hearing God’s voice rather than noticing the bad tie on your neighbor or wondering if you really fit in. Come as you are; leave different.

Come as you are; leave different.

What we wear on the outside at least is obvious. What is less obvious is what we bring with us on the inside. It has been said that the church is “not a museum for saints but a hospital for sinners.” However, it’s that saintly side that we all want to show. We want to be liked. We want to be thanked for our contributions, and recognized for our position in the community. We are good people, competent, smart, and darn it, people like us.

But our theological grounding would tell us something different. Whether we come to church out of obligation, or for socialization, or even for intellectual or spiritual stimulation, the dirty truth is that we are all sinners here. This is our hospital. Come to worship to be reminded of your place. We are creatures of a merciful Creator. Where else can we know the whole truth? We can’t at work. Sometimes we can’t at home. It is here in this place that we stand vulnerable and confess our sin before our Maker.

Here, the secrets are just below the surface – depression, loneliness, failure, disgust, anger - we all have our wounds that we’re nursing. We’re not the perfect boss, the dutiful daughter, the benevolent father. We’re inescapably human. We cannot help but come here as the sinners that we are. This is how God knows you and me, and this is the community that God has given us as the hospital where we can find hope and new life.

Remember, God is merciful, and God loves you as you are, but God also loves you enough not to let you stay that way. Come as you are; leave different. God is reaching out to you. God is melting the hearts and opening the minds of the formerly frozen chosen.

Come as you are, but leave different.

When we come as we are, we also bring with us all our impressions and the institutional memories of this particular place. On Sunday mornings, we come here. This is not a restaurant where you get to pick your own choice of the menu. This is not a theatre where you go to be entertained. This is a church, a community of God’s gathered people. Like its people, it is limited by its own strengths and fallibilities. And yet we grow attached to things about this place just like we do to our homes or our favorite possessions. This church becomes “my church,” “our church” when it is really God’s church.

Both Luke and Mark tell the story about the time when Jesus came upon some rich people who were putting their gifts into the treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two copper coins. When this happened he said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them.” But both gospel writers follow up with more about the rich people. The same people who were adding those large gifts to the treasury were bragging about the beauty of the temple, its great stones and all the wonderful gifts that had been dedicated to God there. They didn’t get Jesus’ point about the widow’s offering, so Jesus follows up with a clearer picture. He says, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” Beauty is fleeting. The construction we see as permanent does not hold the permanence of the widow’s two coins in the mind of God. Her gift, because she gave out of her poverty, will be remembered. Gifts given out of abundance come crumbling down when they no longer meet God’s purposes. The widow’s trust in and love for God get preserved in Holy Scripture and written in the book of life.

We come to this place possessive of our favorite things about it. We guard the traditions that mean the most to us. We do love the bricks, the mortar, and the HVAC system. But these things alone do not make us the Church. Our trust in God makes us believers. Our love for one another makes us the Body of Christ. Our giving that resembles most the gift of the poor widow leads us to a new depth of our faith. Come as you are; leave different.

Come as you are; leave different.

As if it weren’t enough that Jesus challenges what we look like on the outside, who we are on the inside, and our deepest most sacred trust in the place we call the Church, the prophet Isaiah reminds us that God has a plan to shake the very foundations of heaven and earth so that the former things shall not be remembered. We come as we are to this planet with no other way of being than living in our human bodies. For Jerusalem to be a joy in what we know about Middle Eastern politics seems ludicrous. We know the cries of weeping and distress and it doesn’t look like they’re stopping anytime soon. Our whole community cried out at the bus accident that happened last week. It’s rare, but we know of the tragic deaths of people way too young to die. The crashing housing market is a sign that building so that other s can inhabit is not so very far from something we know as well. Children are born into calamity both here and around the world, and no one seems to care. God’s voice is painfully silent. The answers are not to be heard. Does Isaiah have a clue?

We would say, “No, Isaiah is mistaken.” The world is as it is. It cannot be moved or changed. The heavens and earth are the same old heavens and earth we know. But Isaiah lends us the courage to imagine something different. This language reminds us that God can work the impossible solutions. Hope is our means out of desperation. It’s foolishness, I know, but we need a little foolishness to begin to say Jerusalem is God’s joy.

Come as you are; leave different.

It’s ironic to me that the Church has become one of those places teased for being so archaic, so dreadfully slow to change, and so caught up in preserving the status quo. Scripture would tell us that life is anything but! Nevertheless, religiosity tends to get the better of us. We forget why we’re here. We fail to challenge each other to grow in God’s love. We tune out God’s message because the onus to change falls on our shoulders. “Before they call I will answer,” God says, “while they are yet speaking I will hear.” I think this means that God is listening, yearning, straining for us to catch just a glimpse of the holy vision. When we get just a nugget of the truth, God will be there pulling for us. Today, we can only bring the resources and thoughts and feelings that make us who we are today. We come as we are, frightened or excited, but perhaps one day God will get a hold of us and we will leave different. Those little changes add up to the new people, the new Church, the new heavens and earth that will make all the difference in the world.

Amen.