josephholubsermons
May 9, 2010
Easter 6
1 Peter 4:7-11
John 15:1-11
Hospitality
In the epistle from 1 Peter this morning we hear this exhortation,
“Be
hospitable
to one
another without complaining.”
How would you define hospitality?
The popular definition of hospitality is a friendly
disposition, or a friendly attitude,
or creating a friendly atmosphere in community.
Churches are often judged and evaluated by visitors based on, what
we could call, a “friendliness factor.”
Church dynamics experts have studied and discovered that
“the friendliness factor”
is one of the most important things someone uses to evaluate their
initial experience of a congregation.
Initially, everything else (pastor, program, philosophy, theology) is
secondary to the “friendliness factor.”
A visitor or stranger will come back to evaluate the
other
things only if they had a welcoming and friendly experience.
But hospitality is not synonymous with friendliness.
Hospitality (φιλοξενία)
goes far beyond friendliness.
Hospitality goes to a place when friendliness doesn’t go!
Amy Oden, professor of Christian History at Wesley Seminary in D.C.
discusses in her book, “God’s Welcome: Hospitality for a Gospel-Hungry
World”, that as the title suggests, hospitality is nothing short
of a community or
anindividual embodying
God’s welcome of grace;
hospitality is a community or an individual persoanifying
God’s embrace.
Biblical hospitality, she says, goes far beyond friendliness to the
very heart of God and to the heart of
Jesus’ life and message.
Jesus embraced outcasts and those marginalized and demonized by religion and
power. Jesus crossed forbidden
boundaries that separated and isolated whole groups of people.
A definition of “hospitality” that I heard over 35 years ago, that has stuck
with me like super glue, was given by one of my seminary professors.
He said, “Hospitality, in
the biblical sense, means making room for another; creating space
for another.” The
professor then asked us if we could think of any person in our lives who
modeled hospitality in that sense; anyone who mentored others by
making room and creating space for others.
That was easy for me!
The first person who mentored me in hospitality was my
mother.
I grew up in a tightly knit Swedish neighborhood.
Our family was not exclusively Swedish – we were a hybrid concoction
- but we had ample enough Swedish heritage through my mother’s side
(grandmother was 100% Swedish) of the
family that we were accepted as such.
Another thing was that the neighborhood was not only Swedish,
but also exclusively Protestant – mostly Lutheran.
In the early to mid 1950’s the Swedish exclusivity of our neighborhood was
fractured, at least by the standards of those days, when an Italian
family moved in across the street.
We may laugh at that for nowadays that would be a non-issue, but back then it was a
big deal, especially to
the “silent stewing Swedes”,
as I called them, of our neighborhood.
Not only was this family Italian, but they were Catholic; not only
were they Italian and Catholic, but they apparently had more money than the
rest of the neighbors; not only were they Italian, Catholic and affluent,
but every Fall of the year (and this was the straw that broke the camel’s
back) they bought a brand new,
shiny Cadillac! The
silent stewing Swedes of Robert Avenue didn’t like it and were envious
of the fact they could afford to purchase
a new Cadillac every year
when all of them were driving older Chevys and Fords.
The silent stewing Swedes, who were friendly enough towards
this family on the surface, would
quietly stew over their back yard fences and on their porches.
I was but a child of 7 or 8
years, but I heard it, and I remember it, and it made an
impression.
But I remember something else that made an impression that
trumped the neighborhood’s
narrowness and prejudice. I
remember my mother boldly
stepping across all the invisible forbidden barriers, boundaries
and lines that prejudice and exclusivity had drawn in order to befriend the
family that lived across the street.
I remember my mother
marching across the street with baked goods and casseroles,
tangible symbols of acceptance and hospitality, to share with that family.
My mother became best friends with the family, and particularly the
wife and mother. Mom went
beyond friendly to hospitality.
She created space
and made room for
that family in her heart. And
over time her life and example helped crack open, if even a little, the
hearts and minds of many of the silent stewing Swedes of Robert Avenue.
She trumped the facade of polite, reserved friendliness with
authentic hospitality.
The last time I was there was when my mom died – about five years ago.
The day of her funeral I walked the neighborhood and
immersed myself in some reminiscing.
As I walked the street, I encountered people and families living in
those houses today of various ethnicities, races, cultures, and I presume,
perhaps even religions. And I
had to wonder if my mom, in her own small way, had pioneered the earliest
beginnings of mutual respect within diversity a couple generations before.
Hospitality, in the paradigm of Jesus, is about making room and
creating space.
Friendliness doesn’t require that.
I can put on and contrive a very friendly face (facade), but
withhold the person I am at the center of my being; a part of me that
may be anxious, resentful, and prejudiced.
But true and radical hospitality calls upon me to make room
and create space for the other, and to do that I need to
“clean out” some of the
negative feelings and false notions that may have been embedded in me up
until now. Friendliness offers my
face – hospitality offers my
heart and connects with
the heart of the other.
By example, Mom planted a seed in the fertile soil of my early life.
In ways I am scarcely aware, we evidently planted a similar seed in
our son’s life - whose circle of friends over the years has included wide
variety of person of various races, ethnicities, cultures and religions.
Some years ago I received a pamphlet entitled “Surviving
in Today’s World.”
I received it in the mail at church, which suggests to me that
the group responsible for it must have thought this would
appeal to people
affiliated with churches. It
was self-described as a “practical
guide of things to teach children about surviving in America.”
The pamphlet said that the most important function of
parenting was to instill
within our children a “disposition
of being” that embedded within them an
attitude of suspicion
towards others. The
assumption was that other persons are either adversaries, enemies or
predators. The pamphlet
instructed parents to train their children in such a way so that suspicion
of others becomes second
nature to them- their default setting.
The pamphlet had some drawn illustrations, and I remember that one
of the illustrations was that of a child being approached by someone who was
sketched to look distinctly
middle eastern and Muslim.
As I read it I thought about how suspicion is always based on fear; fear
always breeds bias, misinformation, and false assumptions - that can lead to
exclusion, oppression, hatred and even violence.
It also occurred to me that such a paradigm of living may or may
not increase one’s chances of survival, but for sure, in the process,
one would forfeit their most profound and beautiful humanity.
In a similar verse, in the letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament,
chapter 13, it says, “Do not
neglect to show hospitality
to strangers, for by so doing some have entertained angels without knowing
it.” That was the
writer’s way of telling his faith community that hospitality was nothing
short of divine activity!
The practice of hospitality is deeply rooted in the Old Testament biblical
tradition as well. We read in
Leviticus 19, known as the holiness code, a section devoted as to how Israel
was to live in response to God’s gracious initiatives towards them.
They were instructed to treat
“aliens” and strangers in a
way that might surprise many.
It reads, “When an alien resides
within your land, you shall not oppress the alien.
The alien shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love
the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.”
In our culture a directive like that strikes very close to current issues
and deep-seeded emotions - especially
as it relates to contemporary immigration issues – that have been galvanized
the past couple of weeks with Arizona at the center of the issue.
The idea of extending this kind of biblical hospitality to “illegal
aliens” and “undocumented workers” is rejected and scorned by
many – even those who name themselves after Jesus.
I mentioned a few moments ago the pamphlet I received some years ago that
encouraged parents to instill a
“disposition of being” in
our children that embedded an attitude of suspicion towards
others. Of course,
we all know that we live in a world that can be a dangerous place.
I certainly recognize and affirm the need to teach our young people
discernment and caution –
but to embed within them a fundamental suspicion of others, especially those
who are different in some
way: racially, ethnically, culturally, religiously only serves to deepen
polarization, to entrench people behind real or imagined boundaries, to
propagate fear and misinformation
that leads to bias, and further creates a world that is characterized by
walls, window bars and concealed weapons.
It is my conviction that as a person who names himself after Jesus
and follows in the
“way” he invites and
leads, I am called, not
to
a disposition of
suspicion, but
rather to a
“disposition of radical
hospitality.” For
example, Matthew’s faith community in the New Testament obviously grappled
profoundly with this issue in their context, for it is Matthew’s Jesus who
declares a disposition of radical hospitality when he says,
“I
was hungry and you gave me food; thirsty and you gave me
drink; a stranger and you welcomed me;
naked and you clothed
me; sick and you took care of me; in prison and you visited
me.”
For me,
that is a call to radical hospitality; for at least a part of what that
means to me is that the bread
in my cupboard is not merely mine, but also belongs to hungry
persons of this planet; the extra
coats and clothes hanging
in my closet and the shoes
gathering dust on my closet floor are not merely mine but also belong
to the persons whose clothes and shoes are full of holes or have no shoes at all;
the
money I put it the bank is
not merely mine but also belongs to the poor;
the leisure time I have is not merely my own for self-focused
purposes but perhaps belongs to those who need someone to advocate for
social justice to correct root causes of oppression and poverty, or to serve
them as if they were Jesus himself.
In our gospel today we have a
rich metaphor of Jesus as the
“vine” and we, his
followers, the
“branches.”
To be connected to Jesus as the branches are to the vine is to
bear the fruit of hospitality characterized in the life Jesus.
It is to climb inside of his life and allow him to climb inside of
ours so that the life we live is
his! The good news is
that in that connection we
become whole – which is the fullest meaning of the word
“salvation” –
to become whole in love.
In that connection to Jesus, who embodied the Heart of hospitality,
we become fully and most beautifully human.
A long time ago my mother trumped exclusivity and stupid prejudice
with a hospitality that resembled the hospitality of Jesus.
It made a positive impression upon me and steered my life in a new
direction and opened up new possibilities for living.
A long time ago and as recent as this moment Jesus comes along
and trumps the forces and voices all around us who would neutralize the
radical hospitality of God; forces and voices that would even and especially
use religion to legitimize hate and prejudice to dehumanize and oppress
others.
Did you notice that the word “hospital” makes up a major part of the word
“hospitality?” Hospitals are
all about healing. Living with
Jesus’ Heart of hospitality is an energy that can live in each and everyone
of us, and in our community of faith, that can help heal a wounded and broken world.
Amen.