Sermon 7/8/07
Vacation Plans - Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
(view lectionary notes for this text)
Last weekend, my friend Sue – my roommate all through college – and her husband Jeremy – who lived across the hall from us freshman year – came to visit. Some of you have met them before when they’ve been in town, and they’ll be here again in a couple of weeks when they are passing through the area. If you’ve had guests in your home before, you know that there is a certain amount of hospitality required when you are entertaining guests, a certain amount of preparation you must do to be ready to receive visitors and welcome them into your home. Even for guests who are family members of very close friends, even for those who know us and are relaxed around us, we tend to get ready when they come to visit and stay in our home. I wanted to get ready for Sue and Jeremy, and I needed to do a bit of cleaning. This, let me tell you, is a bit of challenge with the whole cast/crutches/wheelchair setup. For a small fee (sigh!), I enlisted the help of my brother. He washed the dishes, took out the garbage, straightened the office, vacuumed the cat hair, put fresh linens in the guest bedroom, and my mom, for free, picked up some groceries. I made sure they had good directions to the house, and freed up my schedule and even finished my sermon a little earlier than usual so I could spend the evening with them when they arrived. All of this is hospitality, being welcoming to guests. It is basic courtesy at least, and can be an act of true kindness and warmth at best.
And hospitality – being welcoming – is biblical. The scriptures, particularly the Old Testament writings, stress the importance of being welcoming to the stranger, the foreigner. People were meant to welcome whoever might show up at their door need shelter, whether they were family, friends, or complete strangers. The reasoning was two-fold – the Israelites had themselves been foreigners living in other lands, and they were meant to remember what it was like to need a warm, hospitable welcome. And they also had a sense that in welcoming others, they were possibly welcoming God into their homes, entertaining the divine in disguise. They had to be welcoming, because you never knew when God might show up at your house for a stay.
In our gospel lesson, we read that Jesus is sending out not just the twelve, but at least seventy total, in pairs, to go to the towns and villages where Jesus himself intended on going eventually. And he gives them instruction about how to travel, and gives them a little bit of an idea of what they might expect where they arrive. Some places they will visit will be welcoming and hospitable. Of these places, Jesus says, “. . . if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person . . . remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide . . .” But they will also enter towns that are not welcoming and hospitable. Of them, Jesus says, “whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you.’” To both kinds of places, hospitable or unfriendly, though, they are to announce the critical news: the kingdom of God has come near. Jesus is telling them the truth about what they will find – places that are welcoming and ready to receive strangers, and places that are not ready to hear the news the apostles carry with them.
As a congregation, we can certainly relate to this passage, right? There are congregations that are welcoming to strangers, to visitors, and congregations that are not so welcoming. There are church families that share peace with whoever comes, and there are churches where visitors probably feel like shaking the dust from their shoes when they depart. And which kind of congregation are we? Well, of course, we are a hospitable congregation, right? We’re the friendly church! And I believe, even if we are not perfectly welcoming all the time, that we really are sincere in our efforts in hospitality. We try to think of different ways to be welcoming. We try to embrace people and greet them warmly, and make them feel like this congregation could be their home too. We try to prepare for guests, as you might prepare for visitors to your home. So we are ready to receive these visitors that Jesus sends out to us, right?
But wait a minute. If we are the ones ready to receive visitors, if we are the place ready to offer hospitality, and if we are the kind of place Jesus talks about, ready to share peace with those who come to us, who is it that Jesus is sending out? If we represent the destinations, who today are the ones doing all this visiting from place to place?
I’ve told you about preparing to receive guests. Let me tell you about preparing to travel instead. I’ve mentioned before that I visited Ghana, West Africa, when I was in seminary. The trip was part of my requirements for my degree – a cross-cultural experience – and since it came with course credit, I also had to attend a pre-departure course. A lot of the focus of the course was how to be hospitable – even as the ones who were visiting, who were strangers, who were going into the homes of others. We learned about how you should exchange greetings, what kind of gifts to bring for your host families, how to behave at meals, how not to put out our host families who would undoubtedly be bending over backwards to please us. Even though we were the visitors, we still had to practice hospitality, to let our host families feel at home in their own home, and to communicate that we were at home in their home too.
Turning back to our gospel lesson, Jesus is giving the disciples a sort-of pre-departure course. He’s preparing them for what they’ll encounter. No, he’s not giving them a clear idea of what to expect in terms of what they should pack. In fact, he tells them not to bring a purse and bag and sandals – the comforts that would keep them from needing to rely on the people in the places they will go. But, he prepares them just the same, in different ways. He lets them know that they will be vulnerable and at risk – like lambs in the midst of wolves. And he tells them that they should arrive with a message peace for every house they enter – the first words they bring to those they don’t know are words of peace – “peace to this house.” And if they find those who are interested in sharing that peace, they are to stay in the house, eating and drinking whatever is provided, actions of trust, actions of simple good behavior, and actions that communicate relationship between the homeowners and the guests. And then they are to share the gospel – they are to cure the sick, and announce, “the kingdom of God has come near to you.” Even in places where they are not welcomed and cannot stay, they are to move on to the next place, shaking the dust from their shoes, but not before they announce the good news – “the kingdom of god has come near.” The apostles sent out by Jesus are not the ones inviting people into their homes – they are not the ones receiving guests. But Jesus still teaches them a kind of hospitality, a way of offering the good news about God’s kingdom that encourages trust, relationship, and warmth. The apostles, in a sense, are inviting those they visit to be at home – at home in the kingdom of God that they are announcing.
When we think about being welcoming, we must remember that Jesus never encouraged his disciples to wait around until others came to them to share the message of God’s kingdom and God’s love. He sent them out to be welcoming. They went where the people were who needed to hear the good news, who needed to know that they could experience God’s love and God’s kingdom already, right now. We at St. Paul’s are not just called to be members of this congregation. We are called to be disciples of Jesus Christ. And if we are disciples, that means we can’t just wait for people to show up here to share the good news with them, and to tell them about God’s kingdom, and to let them know about God’s unconditional love. If they’ve made it inside these doors, people have probably already figured out that they are looking for something, seeking out for God. So we can and should welcome those who come here. But disciples must also be ready to be sent out, to share hospitality in a different way.
This requires bravery and boldness and trust in God, as Jesus knew. He was clear with those he sent out that they would feel and be vulnerable. They’d be taking risks. And in fact, Jesus sent them to places where he himself had not even been yet – places where he planned to go. But those were the very places, where Jesus hadn’t yet gone, that most needed to hear about the kingdom of God, the place that most needed to share in this peace of Christ. So it is now. I don’t believe that there is any place that God is not. I believe that God is everywhere and in everyone. But there are places where we don’t expect to find God, and so we don’t go there. There are places and communities and sides of town and particular neighborhoods and places with certain kinds of people who aren’t very much like us, and we get into a habit of thinking that those aren’t very holy places, and they aren’t places where we expect to find God, and they aren’t places we feel safe, and they aren’t places where we want to go.
To these very places, Jesus sends the disciples, because this kingdom news he has is for everyone, and it is especially for those who struggle to feel God’s presence. As disciples, as ones sent out, we are meant to go to the very places where people don’t expect to find God. And we’re meant to bring hospitality with us, to show others that God is already here, already at home where they are, already at home in them, that already, God’s kingdom has drawn so close, very near, right in our midst, wherever home may be.
That’s a hard calling! Jesus knew it. But he saw a time and place and people that was just ripe for the harvest, so ready. “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest.” The time is ripe. We are members of a congregation. But are we disciples? Whatever our answer, know this: the kingdom of God has come near.
Amen.
(1) Debbie Blue, “Blogging Toward Sunday,” http://www.theolog.org/blog/2007/06/blogging-towa-1.html#more
(2) Rev. Dr. Greg Rickel, http://www.episcopalchurch.org/6087_39276_ENG_HTM.htm