6 April 2008

Dear Readers (if indeed you are out there),

With this sermon begins a series based on chapters from the book "Christianity for the Rest of Us" by Diana Butler Bass. Because we are discussing the topics along with a sermon, my sermons are much shorter. Hope you enjoy.

Gerry

Hospitality
Romans 12:9-21

When I was younger, which of course is any time so far but the present but I’m talking much younger at the moment, I remember seeing signs in the front windows of houses in one of the communities near where I lived in Pennsylvania. This was one of the “city” communities; not the more rural one like mine was. The signs said “SAFE HOUSE.” I initially didn’t know what this meant but it was explained to me that these were homes that kids as they walked to or from school could go to if they felt threatened in any way. (As a more rural community, most of the students in my school district were bussed, so there really wasn’t a need for such a program. Plus, we liked to think, we didn’t have problems such as this like those city areas had.)

The memory of these “SAFE HOUSE” signs came back to me as I thought about today’s chapter on hospitality from our book, “Christianity for the Rest of Us” by Diana Butler Bass, as we embark on this study of her 10 signposts for renewal. For the next several months, we’ll be taking a closer look at each signpost in some depth; thinking about them in terms of our life here at Chalice. How do we measure up in regards to them; how we could do better on them; when we can pat ourselves on the back; what they mean to us as we seek to transform ourselves into a vital and viable community of the people of God.
SAFE HOUSE does suggest some sort of hospitality. It says, “come here when you are threatened or abused or frightened, and we will take care of you.” Safety is definitely a part of hospitality, but clearly, it involves more.

Early Christians practiced hospitality; as did Jesus, when he knelt to wash the disciples feet. Hospitality implies care of the other; seeing to the other’s needs; providing not just safety, but comfort and warmth. As Butler Bass points out, it is more than a church program. It is an essential Christian spiritual discipline and an end unto itself. We’re missing the point of hospitality if we are doing it to gain new members. And it’s not really hospitality when we only provide it for those who are like us, those who fit our own mold. The hospitality that we provide should be modeled after God’s radically inclusive welcome, the same welcome that is extended to each of us.

I liked the verse from Romans that we just heard. In it, Paul is writing to the wildly diverse congregation in Rome and is really giving instructions about how to live; how to respond to this wild idea of God’s grace. And I like the phrase that was in the midst of it all in verse 13 about hospitality: “be inventive in hospitality.” The NRSV, the version I usually read up here, just says “extend hospitality to strangers,” which is all fine and good. But I like to think that the version I read from, The Message, really gets to the heart of what Paul was on about. “Be inventive in hospitality.” Don’t just practice everyday, ho-hum, run-of-the mill hospitality! Anyone can do that. Be inventive. Extend yourself when you extend hospitality. Reach out, yes, to the stranger to be sure, but reach out to that stranger who is so unlike you and so foreign to everything you know.

When you can extend hospitality…real inventive, from-the-heart hospitality…to that person

--to the goth teenager,
--to the mentally ill homeless person,
--to the bisexual, sado-masochistic Republican (or Democrat, depending on your point of view)

—then indeed you are following the call that God issues to us to practice hospitality.