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Sermon: The Fifth Sunday in Lent (C) - 9th March 2010
St Alban's Anglican Church Epping 7 & 8am
Readings: Acts 16:9-15, Psalm 67, Revelation 21:10-14, 21-22 John 14:23-29
Easter is an invitation to hospitality. The woman Lydia in Macedonia where Paul came to preach “opened her heart to listen eagerly”; she was in a moment of readiness, disposed to listen as “a worshiper of God” and as she listened, she responded by inviting Paul to stay “in my home”. She practiced hospitality, opened her home in welcome. Perhaps the practice of hospitality is the ultimate outcome of the Easter season, when there is no fear of others, but readiness to host, for as it says in Romans 12, “extend hospitality to strangers”.
Lydia’s welcome shows that the gospel news is that God makes God’s home in our midst. God’s readiness to take up residence in our environment contradicts all the fearful aggressiveness of the world. The risen Christ came and said “peace”. Where he comes, there is peace. The news of Easter is that the enlivened Christ invites us away from the deathliness of the world, not to withdraw, but to listen and host and welcome, and so to reverse the vicious cycles that keep wounding nations, communities, and persons.
God’s power for life is at work in the world. The world continues to be the venue where the gift of life is given. God makes no distinctions, who authorizes hospitality, who opens prisons, who breathes the world new, who assures good order in the world. We are to live in the world boldly, freely, in peace, at home, practicing hospitality.
The church needs to recover the practice of hospitality, not only because it meets the needs of the poor but also for the church's own sake. Hospitality is shown as important in many places in the Bible. As God has welcomed us, God's people are to make room for the stranger, not only in the community of faith but also in their own personal households. This is the biblical meaning of hospitality, making room for the stranger, especially those in most acute need. Such care must not be reduced to mere social entertaining but biblical hospitality reaches out to the abject and lowly and expects nothing in return. Hospitality is not optional, nor should it be understood as a rare spiritual gift. Psalm 23 tells us that God prepares a tale for us overflowing with the good things of life.
Hospitality shatters social boundaries, especially those boundaries enforced by table fellowship. When we eat with the lowly and welcome strangers and "sinners" to our table, we topple social expectations and bear witness to the kind of love God has for all his creatures. Jesus scandalized his critics in his practice of table fellowship. This is precisely the radical nature of Christian hospitality, which characterized the early church, helped spread the Gospel and healed the dramatic social barriers that initially confronted the church.
The connection between hospitality and Jesus is indeed rich and mysterious. In New Testament perspective, Jesus is simultaneously guest, host, and meal. He is guest whenever we welcome and care for the stranger and the broken as we are told in Matthew, whenever we offer hospitality we do it as if it is for the Lord. He is host, for example, when he hosts the Last Supper, during which "we . . . celebrate the reconciliation and relationship available to us because of Jesus’ sacrifice and through his hospitality" and when he will host the Great Supper in the Kingdom. He himself, as our paschal sacrifice, is the meal we eat, not only in Communion but also in ongoing Christian experience as we feed on his life to nourish our own.
In Hebrews we are told, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have entertained angels without knowing”. In 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, amongst other things, a bishop should be hospitable. In 1 Peter 4, we are instructed to be hospitable to one another without complaining. And, then of course, the wonderful story in Acts 2, of the two disciples who offered hospitality to a stranger on the road to Emmaus, and as a result, Jesus was made known in the hospitality of breaking bread.
Interestingly, the decline of hospitality as a widely shared tradition is in part traceable to the specialization of hospitality. Hospitals, hostels, hospices, and even hotels, all these undertakings derived from hospitality, were all were developed by Christians as they responded with increasing specialization to various forms of human need. Yet, the specialization of care weakened hospitality as an aspect of everyday Christian practice. Today most Christians do not welcome refugees or the homeless into their homes; if we are concerned at all about such people, we most often send money to help fund specialized efforts undertaken by someone else.
Hospitality is a practice that is good for the Christian soul. We lose something of the distinctive nature of Christian discipleship when we delegate the work entirely to specialists.
If we wish the Church to prosper, and others benefit from faith in the Lord Jesus, then we must renew our efforts at being hospitable. As we have been accepted by an hospitable God, we too must offer hospitality to others. Hospitality starts with you and me in small ways. We do not and cannot take on the world at once. We can let God’s light of warmth and acceptance shine through us into our own little corner of the world. Some ways in which ways in which we maybe hospitable are; being a part of the Dinners for 8 programme, or joining the Pastoral Care Committee, or offering to drive someone to church who has difficulty getting here on their own, or maybe speaking to someone today that you have not done so previously or to whom you find it difficulty to relate. Next week is Harvest Festival. That is a wonderful opportunity to show hospitality to those less fortunate than you.
Remember, last week heard Jesus’ words,
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should have love for one another”.
Such is the will of our God that we can do nothing else.”
The words of person called Max Beebohm are apposite,
“When hospitality becomes an art it loses its very soul”.
May we never turn hospitality into an art.
This sermon produced using material from ©2000-2008 by The Christian Ethics Today Foundation
www.ChristianEthicsToday.com/Issue/033/Making%20Room%20-%20Recovering%20Hospitality%20as%20a%20Christian%20Tradition%20_033_21_.htm and www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=resources.sermon_prep_subscription