(Sermon by Leonel Abaroa Boloña at Church of the Ascension, Hamilton, Ontario, on Sunday, August 28, 2016. Texts: Jeremiah 2.4-13; Psalm 81; Hebrews 13.1-8, 15-16; Luke 14.1, 7-14)
Have you ever come close to overdosing on caffeine? Not even for the sake of the Gospel? I will get to that story in a moment.
This morning I want to reflect with you about hospitality, both as it is addressed in our readings for today, and its place in our life as the Church even here in this place.
‘Hospitality’ has, of course, a rather immediate ring to it. Regardless of our religious persuasion, most of us would agree, I believe, that it is a good thing to be hospitable to others, that if necessary it is a good thing to open our homes, our hearts, our churches, and even our country, to others in need of, well, hospitality.
I remember a couple of years I spent serving three small communities in the province of Matanzas, a province just east of Havana, Cuba. These were the nineties, a very harsh time for the Cuban economy, special period and all. There was very little to be had.
So when you visited a home, instead of the cake, juice, or cookies and coffee you could have expected five years before, you were offered ‘just’ coffee.
And to make up for the perceived lacking in this offering, folks would offer you a half-full glass of good, thick, Cuban coffee.
Drinking that much coffee, of course, made for a good long visit, because there is no way you can gulp down that much expresso in less than thirty minutes or so.
Yes, half an hour, because once you were finished with that one visit, of course, you went to the next house down the road, where you were welcomed and brought in and made comfortable and promptly offered… another half full glass of good, thick, Cuba coffee.
Yes, hospitality is often exuberant, and so it should, because, again, regardless of one’s religious persuasion or lack thereof, hospitality essentially seeks to convey our humanity and offers our own place, our own comfort and well-being, to those who wander.
Hospitality has also been a persistent concern of the Christian church, everywhere and at all times, both because of the biblical witness, and the basics of the faith.
There are many passages in the Bible concerning hospitality.
From Abraham, who welcomed what turned out to be three angels of God, to the Deuteronomy, where the sojourner is listed together with the widow, the orphan and the poor, as those to be taken care of by Israel.
In the New Testament, the mission and ministry of Jesus is presented as addressed, first, to those without a home. Tax collectors, poor and unlettered fishermen, demoniacs, Samaritans and women of censured behavior alike.
They were all visited by Jesus, they were somehow made hospitable to that visitation, and at the same time, they found in Jesus an hospitable place and a welcoming friend and savior, and they were changed forever through that experience. Some of these are our apostles and earliest saints of the faith whose depiction we admire, for example, in these windows, and whose examples we endeavor to follow.
The New Testament texts concerning hospitality teach us, in different ways, about the social importance and even sacramental nature of our practice of hospitality, as in the case of our Epistle for today, and capitalize on our immediate understanding of ‘hospitality’ as means for leading us into even greater truths, as in the case of the Gospel for today.
At first reading, one might think that in this passage from Luke, Jesus is just offering good, common-sense advice.
This is, don’t bring yourself too high up, because gravity may catch up with your lack of humility. And that is by itself a very fine teaching.
But as soon as we hit the second half of this lesson, where Jesus addresses the ‘guest-list’ which every God-fearing person should have, we can see how Jesus has been using a double meaning.
Throughout his ministry, Jesus repeatedly conflates his preaching of the here-and-now with that of the end times, and more specifically so with the preaching of the reign of God.
And in this passage, Jesus is asking his listeners, and asking us all to embrace that which the reign of God will look like, even in the way in which they and we ourselves imagine and endeavor to live out our relationships: compassion.
Compassion, which is not the patronizing pity for others, but the deliberate, hopeful embrace of the other. An embrace which shows both concern for the here and now, and the confident pursuing of that perfect justice and commonwealth of the reign of God. A compassionate embrace which witnesses to our concern for both the here and now, and eternity.
The Epistle lesson for today picks up just were we left Hebrews last week, with the writer quoting from Deuteronomy, “Our God is a consuming fire”.
Today, the writer moves onto sharing some very basic instructions for Christians in our life of community. And I want to suggest that all these instructions somehow relate to our being hospitable to one another.
Hospitality is, no doubt, one of those almost sacramental habits we can all embrace. In welcoming the stranger, in hosting the needy, in embracing those who need us, we are conveying far more than just the satisfaction of a particular need.
We could say that hospitality, and particularly so religiously-inspired hospitality, Christian hospitality, yes, has a lot to do with good manners and so forth, but far more with a regular reflection upon and practice of that vocation to which we are called after the example of God in Christ.
Christ, who makes Himself our home, who draws us in and welcomes us all to His presence, be it in the sacraments, in the wider Creation, in our neighbor, and particularly so, in that neighbor who would otherwise not be accounted for as a child of God.
We believe, and fundamentally so, that in the mystery and experience of the Incarnation, God has made our humanity a hospitable place for the divine presence to inhabit. As Christians, we believe that God made himself home in our humanity, in Jesus the Christ, for the sake of our own salvation, through the work of the Holy Spirit, because of the divine, relentless love for the world.
In that same vein, we believe that Jesus the Christ, throughout His earthly ministry, followed suit and made himself home in the concrete reality of his time and place, but particularly so in that concrete reality of those around him who were otherwise not accounted for. We believe that the Church is in the world for the purpose of witnessing to the salvation of God in Jesus, and to serve others in His Name.
At this church of the Ascension, we witness to that love of God in a variety of ways. We do this as we gather for worship, or visit the sick and home-bound, feed the hungry and host the needy, on behalf of the whole congregation, the church, and Christ himself. So many of you are, one way or another, vitally engaged in this and that ministry, on behalf of the whole congregation, the church, and the Lord himself.
In both our witness and our service, it is Christ who makes a home for the sake of those to whom we witness and serve.
In the same way you and I approach the bread and the cup as the sacramental body and blood of Christ, we are called to discern Christ in those to whom we witness and serve. And especially so for those who are, in fact, in need of a home.
We offer, yes, coffee, in reasonable amounts, but more importantly, we can offer the life of a community that we have been ourselves welcomed into, a space we have been entrusted, a parish legacy we have received, for the sake and benefit of others who might come here to be met by Christ, to be served, and to serve.
Not neglecting to do good, but sharing what we have.
Our community has experienced with different forms of ministries of hospitality. Many have flourished, others not so much. But I want to suggest that these ministries are as vital part of our being a church as these very worship services.
So I want to leave you and us all with that question to think about. If Jesus meets His Church in those who are seeking a home, be it an actual home, brick and plaster, or a spiritual home, friends and nourishment -let us be open to be question of where is Jesus to be found next, where is Jesus to be met, so we may welcome him, her, them?
Amen.
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