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The Hospitality of Christ
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| 9/2/2007 |
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Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Hebrews 13:1f
Jesus said also to the one who had invited him, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." Luke 14:12f
August has now passed, and we had, as usual our Wednesday evening Eucharists at 6 PM, followed by a BBQ potluck. Over the years, it has always been a nice time of worship and fellowship, and even some good volleyball out in the park. Over the years, we’ve had between 20 and 30 folks.
But this past month, something different occurred. On the first Wednesday, I was away on vacation, but I happened to call the office on Thursday. “Did you hear about what happened last night?” Cecilia said. “No,” I replied. “Wait until you hear it.”
As she told me, as usual, about 20 parishioners showed up. The BBQ was going, and Jeff Miller was cooking burgers and dogs, and the small table used as an altar had the good silver chalices and bread upon it. Then, a few minutes before six, many more people began to arrive.
Soon, there were 60 people at the Eucharist. There was enough bread and wine, but for the BBQ, we had only planned food for 30. You know what happened. Like biblical clockwork, there was enough food, and many had seconds.
“Who were the people?” I asked. “Where did they come from?”
Cecilia’s answer over the phone brought to life the meaning of the biblical readings for this day. She said, “They were our guests.”
In the Letter to the Hebrews read this morning, the writer instructs the Christian community: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers,” she writes, “for by doing that you entertain angels without knowing it.”
Whether we use the word “guests” or “angels,” the point to make is that if Cecilia had used the words, “the homeless” (as I may have done), I would’ve been prejudiced about who they were; I would’ve gone into my “we work among the homeless” mode.
Instead, what Cecilia described didn’t sound like an impromptu outreach dinner for the homeless, but a parish event that many visitors were welcomed into. People broke the bread and shared the cup together, and then sat down and had a meal together. It wasn’t one group, our parishioners, ministering to another group, the homeless. We were one body in Christ, sharing in the one Bread.
It was a simple reflexive event of the hospitality that so animated the first Christian communities, and remains in our DNA today, waiting to be activated.
Look up the word “hospital” in the Oxford English Dictionary, and you see that its most ancient meaning has nothing to do with medical treatment, and fighting with the HMO to get a test paid for. Rather, a hospital is an inn, or a “house for the reception and entertainment for pilgrims, travelers and strangers.” When the Good Samaritan puts the injured man on his donkey, he takes him to an inn, but really a hospital, a place where he will be received unconditionally, and his needs met.
It is sad today how little the word “hospital” has to do with “hospitality.” Hospitality is the action of welcoming the stranger unconditionally, as an angel, or, as the great monk Benedict directed as the rule for his monasteries, hospitality is the act of welcoming the stranger as Christ himself.
In the gospel reading, Jesus instructs the Pharisee that has invited him to dinner, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."
It is curious, if not confusing advice. He is instructing you and me how to understand our own place at the table of God’s abundant banquet of love and forgiveness, and how to invite others into it.
Like the Pharisee, our tendency might be to think that we, being members of a this church, our the hosts in this church, and that we welcome others, even strangers, we welcome them to sit at our table. God is the host, and we are the guests, and as guests, we make room for all the others who may come.
God has given us our very lives, and blessed us with reason, memory and skill, and loves us as a parent does, and forgives us, and redeems us. We can never repay God for the gift of our live, and for the gift of one day of sitting at the welcome table of love, mercy and forgiveness with the saints. Jesus instructs the Pharisee to invite to his banquet those who cannot repay him so that we all may be reminded that we cannot repay God for being part of God’s banquet of life and love.
Jesus tells the Pharisee to invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind to tell us that before God we are all poor, crippled, lame, and blind before God, but God welcomes us all to the banquet table.
As we have been radically welcomed by God, we are, as Christ did, to radically welcome any stranger, not as the host, but as a fellow guest. In doing so, we practice radical hospitality, as the Letter to the Hebrews instructs.
In most churches, including this one, you hear the word “Outreach” frequently, usually describing the church programs that send members out to do good works that address social concerns. This is good, and we want this. Here, our members participate and support programs for homeless children, and serve meals at the shelter, and travel to New Orleans, just to name very few. And so many of our members participate in outreach programs through other ministries in our midst, both sacred and secular.
Yet, “outreach,” is a disappearing term in churches, and that’s because we are slowly realizing that “outreach” is keeping potential angels “out of reach.” A church outreach program most often means going out, or sending money out, to the people who will not come in. Too often, outreach keeps people out rather than brings people in.
We were blessed this past August. By the fourth Wednesday night, we had some 70 guests. We were one parish sharing the Eucharist, eating burgers, and playing volleyball together. I announced that night it was the last Wednesday evening until next August. I invited them all for Sunday mornings, but, as you can see, those guests are not with us.
You and I might conclude its because we have no BBQ, but I don’t think that’s it. On Sunday morning, with our formality, our pews, our clothes, our music, our preaching, and the like, we have not the same capacity to welcome. We welcome people on our terms of worship and acceptability. Could we change ourselves so much that our welcome on Sunday morning could be as radically hospitable as the one we offered on Wednesdays in August?
When we practice radical hospitality with the discipline of enacting that we are not the hosts of the heavenly banquet, but God, it brings great change to those practicing the hospitality.
I know. On Sunday mornings when I walk to church, I am usually late and in a hurry. As I come down Third Street, I see all the guys who’ve been out all night on the benches. While I usually stop to talk to them during the week, on Sundays, I keep my head down. This morning, one of them called out, “Father,” as I walked by, but I didn’t look up and just gave a quick wave.
He jumped up and trotted after me, calling, “Father, just one thing,” and I felt my impatience rise, thinking it was about money. I finally turned, with irritation in my eyes, and before me was a young man, with long dreadlocks, torn clothes, and the small, vibrating eyes that suggest drugs play a part in his life.
“How are your beautiful daughters?” he asked me. Taken aback, I said, “Fine, they’re with their mother, in Utah, for the memorial service for my wife’s father.”
“I am so sorry,” he said. “Please tell her. And please tell your one daughter how much it meant to me that she gave me communion that night. It’s a blessing I have still.”
I thought he was a beggar, but he was a speaking to me as a brother in the faith. I felt convicted by my own condescension. It was sin, pure and simple.
“Can you come this morning?” I asked. “When?” he asked, but I could see it was too late. “At 9 or 11,” I said. “Hope to,” he said, and he turned around.
May God help me realize that he and I are both beggars seeking God’s bread of love and forgiveness. May God help me realize that we are both lame, seeking God’s welcome table. May God help me realize that we are both blind and poor, but rich in God’s welcome. May God help me realize that God welcomes me perfectly, whereas my welcome of the man on the street is flawed and condescending. May God keep me alive with the hope that both he and I will one day sit at the Welcome Table with the saints.
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