Week 1: Radical Hospitality
"Jesus' Guests"
Our focus this morning is Radical Hospitality—the way we actively invite, welcome, and care for those who are strangers. In Old Testament culture, it was expected that people who show hospitality to strangers, for life in the desert required such. But Jesus went a step further that the customs of his people, casting a wide and radical invitation to, and welcome at, his table. Are we ready and able to extend Christ's invitation? Are we ready and willing to welcome Jesus' Guests?
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”Jesus’ Guests” (Five Practices of Faithful Congregations, Week 1: Radical Hospitality)
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A teenage boy entered the sanctuary of a church. It was the church to which his parents and kid brother belonged. In fact, they were there every time the doors opened! They were there too much. As he slumped down in the chair that was as far away from the altar as possible and pulled his ball cap low on his forehead, he dropped his head into his hands and settled in for a nap. He didn’t know why he was there. He could sleep more comfortably in his bed. He didn’t want to be there. Church was a drag—a religious institution focused on its own survival and uninterested in people like him.
Just as he was moving into pre-sleep, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up into the face of a woman he did not know. Great, he thought, I must be in her personal chair. She can have it! I’m going home.
But she didn’t ask him to move. She simply placed a bag of butterscotch in his hand and said, “I’m so glad you’re here this morning. I bought this for you because I heard that you really like butterscotch. I do, too! There aren’t many of us around.”
He didn’t open that bag of butterscotch for a long time. In fact, he hung it on the wall of his bedroom right beside his heavy metal posters, his guitar, and his poems of emptiness and longing. A reminder of grace. A sign of Radical Hospitality.
Years later, just out of his teens, that same young man entered a different church. He was feeling pretty good about being there. He wasn’t there for the sermon or music. In fact, if he had timed it just right, he would miss most of that. He was there because someone he loved asked him to come for a special day. He had awakened early that morning, showered, put on his jeans and a T-shirt, and pulled back his long hair, anchoring it with a ball cap.
As he stood in the narthex, waiting for the service to end so that he could greet his loved one, he heard someone speak to him.
“Young man.”
He turned and extended his hand in greeting. He was surprised when his hand was ignored.
He was speechless when the person continued. “Young man, you either need to take off your hat or leave the building.”
The truth of our own humanity is that each of us has the capacity to be the butterscotch lady or the hat man. We have within us the ability to be radically hospitable to those for whom church—Christianity—is a foreign and strange land, even when their values or thoughts about church are different from our own. We also have within us the ability to withhold hospitality in order to protect what we falsely imagine to be “our own”—our own church, our own class, our own space, our own truth.
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Hospitality is a very old practice. The Old Testament is very clear that God expects us to practice radical hospitality. Throughout the Old Testament, we find the admonition to take care of the alien, watch out for the foreigners, stop and take care of the sojourner. There is a classic example of this in Genesis 18, when the great patriarch Abraham offers hospitality to three guests. He offers the best of his food, inviting these three strangers to stop and rest for a while – later to discover that he was, indeed, welcoming the angels of God!
Given the harsh condition of the Near East desert, hospitality toward persons who were vulnerable was quite necessary for their safety and well being as sojourners, for they were basically at the mercy of the people of the land where they were visiting or had settled. Unfortunately, the codes of hospitality were not always practiced, causing disastrous results for the wayfarer.
Jesus was part of that culture. He understood this cultural practice and importance of hospitality. And Jesus encountered less than hospitable behavior more than once during his ministry. For example, in the home of Simon the Pharisee, Simon neglected to greet Jesus and provide water to wash his feet (Luke 7:36-47). This was a violation of the most basic customs of the hospitality of the day. Simon’s behavior likely revealed more than rudeness; it probably demonstrated some hostility toward Jesus, which would not have gone unnoticed by Simon’s other guests.
By contrast, Jesus regularly practiced Radical Hospitality throughout his ministry. While Jesus could have claimed some kind of special status as God’s Son, he neither sought such unique privilege nor treated some in a more preferred way than others. As our Scripture from Luke 15 reminds us, Jesus did not shun the homes of the less desirable of society. He intentionally associated with people whom the status quo ignored. Jesus showed hospitality for all, which was a reflection of the centrality of his mission: that he had come to die for all.
As we reflect on hospitality this morning, let’s take a moment to consider some of the teachings Jesus shares with us about radical hospitality.
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Jesus teaches about such hospitality in difference places, as well. For example, we read in Matthew 18:5: “And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me.” When the children were wenting to gather around Jesus and the disciples were shooing them away, Jesus welcomed the children. In Jesus’ day, children were not regarded with the same respect that we might show them today. They were often considered a nuisance to the adult world. But Jesus welcomed them warmly.
In Matthew 22:9, Jesus concludes a parable about a great banquet that God was hosting with the words: “Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.” There is no discrimination about who is to be invited, all people are invited, all are welcome to come.
Our opening Scriputre this morning, from Luke 15, shows us this inclusive hospitality that Jesus offered to others. Jesus was gathered around a table with a collection of those considered so undesirable that “the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
Did you catch that? Jesus didn’t just teach about hospitality, Jesus welcomed sinners and ate with them.
The sign of God’s compassion is that Jesus chose to be in relationship with us all. The sign that Jesus chose to be in relationship with all people, saints and sinners alike, is that he eats with them. He eats at the home of Simon the Pharisee, and at the home of Zaccheus the tax collector. He gathers around the table with those who would follow him, and he even gathers around the table with those who would reject him. Jesus invites both, welcomes both, and reaches out to both through table fellowship.
Indeed, one continuing sign of Christ’s relationship with us is a meal: the sacrament of communion that we celebrate this morning. A sacrament as defined in the early church is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. How do we know that we are in a relationship? We come to this meal and eat together, and we experience grace. Grace might be defined simply as something we do not deserve, something we have not earned, something we can never repay. Grace is something amazing that Jesus freely offers to us. Jesus invites and welcomes us. That’s radical hospitality.
In Matthew 25:35, in the midst of his parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus teaches: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.”
Jesus life and teachings demonstrated radical hospitality. When he taught his followers to offer radical hospitality, to go the extra distance and offer more than what was expected - to take care of those who are hungry, those who are sick, those who are naked, those who need to be cared for because they cannot care for themselves - he added, in verse 40, “Because if you do it to the least of these, who are my brothers and sisters, you do it to me” (Matthew 25:40).
Years later, the Apostle Paul framed our practice of hospitality around our receipt of God’s grace. In Romans 15:7, Paul writes: “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.”
The early church grasped hospitality. Those early Christians knew what it meant to take care of one another because they were being persecuted by those who wanted to destroy them and this new movement called Christianity. Even in the third and fourth century, church leaders were preaching on the importance of hospitality. In one of his sermons, Saint Augustine said, “Acknowledge the duty of hospitality, thereby some have attained unto God.”
The Benedictine order understood hospitality this way, saying in their own creed, “Let all guests who arrive be received like Christ.” That is the spirit in which Jesus is speaking to us in the passage in Matthew. Take care of the stranger, because the one who is visiting may be an angel in disguise. Look upon them as people you welcome, just as you welcomed me.
I am excited that churches all across the country are rediscovering the practice of Radical Hospitality. If we were really living out hospitality the way Jesus asked us to, we wouldn’t need the word radical because we would be doing what Jesus asked us to do. There wouldn’t be anything radical about it if we all were living as Jesus commanded us to live. But we need the word radical to remind us to get out of an old mindset taught by our culture about what hospitality really means; we need the word radical to remind us to get back to Jesus’ standard of hospitality: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25:35). As the apostle Paul says in his letter to the Romans, “Welcome one another…just as Christ has welcomed you” (15:7). You see, Christ welcomed you and me into his Kingdom. What we need is a sense of being overwhelmed with thankfulness. Then, out of that thankfulness arises this sense that we have no other choice than to offer the same welcome to others. Because of what God has done for us through Jesus, we are compelled to be the hands and feet of God.
Radical Hospitality after the example of Jesus calls us to be radically invitational, radically welcoming, and radically inclusive in every area of spiritual life. Radical Hospitality calls us to support others as they explore the possibility of a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
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Churches that practice hospitality are welcoming on Sunday morning—not just in reference to those persons they know, but especially to those who are visiting, to those who are strangers. The experts in-the-know say that 70 to 80 percent of persons visiting a church for the first time will make up their minds in the first fifteen minutes whether or not they will return next week. Even before they have heard the choir or the sermon, they have already decided whether or not to attend again next week or to try another church.
So what does it mean for our congregation to welcome the stranger in the same way that Christ welcomes us? What does it mean for us to anchor our acts of hospitality in our response to God’s gracious activity in our lives and in the world?
It means, I believe, that we need to be radically invitational in every part of church life. There are so many amazing and life-giving things going on in our church. How will those who are strangers experience those things unless someone invites them—to Sunday school, a small group dinner, a women’s Bible study, youth group, worship, a prayer group, or some other activity or event?
You are here this morning because someone at some time invited you to experience some aspect of church life. Praise God! Give thanks for the courage and hospitality of that person, and pray for God to guide you into extending an authentic invitation to someone else.
We’ve seen examples of this radical invitation, welcome, and inclusion here at Song of Life.
• One woman visited our church for the first time earlier this year, at a difficult time in her life, praying just that someone would reach out and speak to her… She later told me not only was she warmly greeted, but someone intentionally sat with her and talked with her.
• Another young couple visited recently and emailed me the Monday after their first visit (on a Sunday I wasn’t around) just to tell me how warm and welcoming the congregation had been to them.
• A couple friends from Atlanta, who had visited many churches there and hadn’t felt welcome, visited here one week and shared how welcomed they felt
I’ve heard stories such as these over and over, of people coming and experiencing the warm and radical welcome of Christ. Unfortunately, I’ve heard other stories, too. Stories of people who didn’t feel they were welcomed.
• One woman, on her first visit, left in tears by the end of worship. She felt as though no one had reached out to her or greeted her.
• I’ve heard from some of our own members who, after having been gone for some time for any variety of reasons, felt as though they were outsiders, no longer welcome or connected when they returned…
I appreciate Bishop Schnase’s comment that there are times when a church’s greatest strength can be an obstacle to radical hospitality. The very things we celebrate—friendship, intimacy, and love for one another—sometimes can get in the way. Some times, those who are new, who are visiting, might feel as though they are not quite as important or welcome as others. Radical hospitality calls us to look beyond our friends and to see people as God sees them, to help them feel the welcome that they are longing to experience as they enter a church.
We may generally do well, but there is always room for improvenent.
Wonderful music and great preaching will not overcome a lack of hospitality, a lack of friendliness and warmth. What often happens in the church on Sunday morning is not that the church folk are in and of themselves unfriendly. What happens is that too many people in the church think that hospitality is someone else’s job, to be taken care of by the people with titles such as the ushers or the greeters or the pastor. And that is what people expect—that certain people will welcome them because that is their job. It is when those who are not “obligated” turn around and shake hands and offer words of greeting that people know they are in a hospitable place. I realize that such behavior will take some people out of their comfort zones, but that is why it is called Radical Hospitality; and it is necessary for the church to practice such hospitality if it wants to be a vital place that attracts people. Schnase writes, “People are searching for churches that make them feel welcomed and loved, needed and accepted” (p. 31).
Radical Hospitality also means that we do not get to decide who will receive our welcome. The last verse of the song “If We Are the Body” reminds us that Jesus paid far too high a price on the cross for us to pick and choose who is allowed to come. Today, we are the body of Christ. It is our call, as the Body of Christ, as those who have been welcomed by Jesus himself, to invite, welcome, and include others. May it be so.
Prayer
Gracious Jesus, you invited us to know your forgiveness and grace, you welcomed us in love, and you included us into your family. As you have so invited, welcomed, and included us, help us to invite, welcome, and include others. As you offered hospitality to strangers, help us to be hospitable to those persons we do not know. As you associated with all persons in need, help us to be willing to reach out our hands to all persons, remembering that you love them, and so should we love them; remembering that you died for them, and so should we live for them—for your honor and glory. Amen.
References
This week’s sermon combines passages from the following messages included with the congregational event kit for The Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations:
• “Opening The Circle,” by Melissa Bailey-Kirk, United Methodist Church of Green Trails, Chesterfield, Missouri
• “Radical Hospitality Imitates Christ” by Allan Bevere, First United Methodist Church of Cambridge, Ohio
• “Welcome to the Kingdom” by Gary Bullock, New Covenant United Methodist Church of The Villages, Florida
• “Let Every Soul Be Jesus’ Guest” by Ken Carter, Providence United Methodist Church of Charlotte, North Carolina
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(Read by Max McLean. Provided by The Listener's Audio Bible.)
