Monday, September 15, 2008
Are You Hospitable?
Mark Daniels reprinted one of his sermons a while back on the value of hospitality
Can a mega-church be hospitable? Can any large scale institution? The answer is, "NO." And yet, we see these things grow. Small hardware stores where the proprietor knows you well enough to hand you what you are looking for when you walk in the door are dying - being pushed out by the Lowes and Home Depots of the world where it take ten minutes to find and another 20 minutes to check out with a simple 12-oz framing hammer. Why does our society accept such things?
Because it allows us our freedom. In churches we can come and go without accountability. In her later years, but before she reached the complete disability she now suffers from, my mother refused dinner invitations because she could not bear the return invitation obligation implicit in acceptance. Being hospitable places an obligation on both those giving it and those receiving it. Institutions like Home Depot and the mega-church spring up because they avoid that obligation and people therefore feel "freer" to pursue their own personal agendas.
Yet in Christ we are called to be His instruments of change in the lives of those around us. In hospitality He has given us a powerful and non-confrontational tool for that calling.
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Years later, by then a longtime member of the congregation I’d been called to start, told me that as she prepared the glass of ice water for me, she remembered words of Jesus that are our Gospel lesson for this morning: “Whoever...gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple--truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”When I read that, I could not help but think of my friend Russ Smith's dive into "geek culture" - best described as a libertarian meritocracy. As our society moves more and more towards individualism and more and more towards a near isolationism of the individual - the call to hospitality becomes the preeminent message of our day, and one unlikely to be heard.
That woman believed that by welcoming me in Jesus’ Name, she was welcoming Jesus Himself. As His words in today’s Gospel lesson indicate, Jesus agrees with her.
Hospitality--for all people--is at the core of our lives as followers of Jesus Christ. It begins with God’s welcome of us. We know that we’re like the prodigal son in Jesus’ famous story. We’ve tried to make our way in the world and even when we’ve achieved success, we’ve experienced an emptiness that can only be filled by the God we know in Jesus. Like the father in that same story, God has welcomed us back.
This theme of hospitality is then, Jesus says, to be replicated in our own lives as we welcome others. The New Testament book of Hebrews, tells us, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” (Hebrews 13:2)
Can a mega-church be hospitable? Can any large scale institution? The answer is, "NO." And yet, we see these things grow. Small hardware stores where the proprietor knows you well enough to hand you what you are looking for when you walk in the door are dying - being pushed out by the Lowes and Home Depots of the world where it take ten minutes to find and another 20 minutes to check out with a simple 12-oz framing hammer. Why does our society accept such things?
Because it allows us our freedom. In churches we can come and go without accountability. In her later years, but before she reached the complete disability she now suffers from, my mother refused dinner invitations because she could not bear the return invitation obligation implicit in acceptance. Being hospitable places an obligation on both those giving it and those receiving it. Institutions like Home Depot and the mega-church spring up because they avoid that obligation and people therefore feel "freer" to pursue their own personal agendas.
Yet in Christ we are called to be His instruments of change in the lives of those around us. In hospitality He has given us a powerful and non-confrontational tool for that calling.
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