The Rev. Kathi Johnson
Lectionary 22, Year C – 28 August 2016
Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Grand Prairie, Texas
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Last Thursday morning, I was headed here during the 8 o’clock hour, which means: active school zones. I got to my third active school zone of the morning, and, dutifully, I slowed to 20 mph. The school was on my left, and the front of the school was busy with kids being dropped off. A car pulled out into the median, and then pulled into the lane behind me. Dutifully, I was going 20 mph. This mom, who presumably had just dropped off her child at the school, decided I was going too slowly. She rushed around me, and sped up ahead of me, then having to stop at the same red light that was a short distance down the road.
Here’s what I would say to that mom if I had the chance:
I don’t have any children at your child’s school. Slowing down for the school zone doesn’t benefit me (other than keeping me from getting a ticket). I slow down for the safety of your child and the other children at the school. I slow down because it benefits society as a whole.
I share this story because today, we have not one, but two lessons that are about hospitality. Slowing down in a school zone may not seem to connect with hospitality, but it does connect with the intention behind Christian hospitality: that we love others not to see what we can gain, but because we are called to be loving people.
Looking at our gospel story for today, Jesus is at a dinner party and sees the self righteous ones trying to elevate themselves socially. He calls them out on that behavior: he says, “…all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Last year, following the shooting at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, Steve and I attended a march through the streets of Fort Worth, which ended with a prayer service at the Historic Allen Chapel AME Church. When we got to the doors of the church, the members were there to welcome us warmly.
We got into the sanctuary, and it was a mildly controlled chaos. People were milling around, looking for friends and looking for places to sit. So many visitors made all of that a challenge. Steve and I found a place in a pew toward the back.
We’d no sooner gotten settled in when a lovely woman from the church bustled up to me, looking at my collar, telling me, “Oh no, Pastor, we have a place down in front for all the pastors to sit!” There was no way I could tell her no – so, off I went, down to the front, with head nods of respect greeting me the whole way. I had been trying to be deferential to this congregation because I was a visitor. I found myself surrounded by their love and their respect. I saw this type of mutual love shown again and again that evening.
This idea of “mutual love” comes from the last part of the book of Hebrews, and is in our New Testament reading for today. Hebrews is considered to be a sermon that was delivered in letter form. By chapter 13, the author is wrapping things up. What we are reading is the author’s final thoughts to his audience.
The author gives all these instructions but begins with a few specific words of how to love one another: “Let mutual love continue,” he writes. “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” Love isn’t only to be saved for those we know and love already. Christian love is supposed to extend to strangers – to those whom we don’t know, to those with whom we don’t have a relationship already.
Three years ago, when I preached on this same text, I said this: “Hospitality…has consequences we can’t always see right away. It’s a risk…to be hospitable. The author of Hebrews knows that just as well as anyone else – but, he says, out of mutual love, be hospitable, anyway.”
Loving anyone is a risk. Loving the stranger feels like a bigger risk because of our fear of the unknown. But when I think back on all the times that I’ve been the stranger, and I’ve been the one for whom love has been shown, it’s quite humbling.
I’ve eaten beets in a Russian youth hostel.
I’ve had tea served by an old Czech woman in her kitchen on a cold day.
I’ve eaten handmade tacos on a patio in northern Mexico in August.
I’ve had Turkish coffee served to me by a Palestinian farmer.
In every case, these are people who showed me and others hospitality to the extreme – not because they had everything to offer – they didn’t – but because of mutual love. In every case, mutual love was in their very DNA – they couldn’t not offer hospitality to the stranger.
That’s the kind of mutual love that the Biblical writers envision and the kind of mutual love that God envisions, too. It’s mutual love that is so deeply embedded in us as the people of God that we can’t help but love other people – not because we stand to gain from it, but because it’s who we are called to be as the people of God.
But here’s the real key to hospitality: Christian hospitality is more than just being open and welcoming here at Our Redeemer, or in our own homes, or as a nation. Mutual love asks us to be hospitable toward others even in our thinking about them. How we think about others surely impacts how we treat others – and whether we love them with the very love of God.
It isn’t always easy. Jesus tells his host at that dinner party: next time, invite those who can’t pay you back meal for meal – in other words: show love to the very ones whom society has disregarded as useless. The blessing comes when we live out these words of Martin Luther: “…in all of one’s works a person should…be shaped by and contemplate this thought alone: to serve and benefit others in everything that may be done, having nothing else in view except the need and advantage of the neighbor.”
Mutual love is counter-cultural. We live in a culture that is driven by individual success and winning – and these often come at the expense of other people. Mutual love changes our view – taking our vision off of ourselves and putting our view squarely on those who are in need. Mutual love drives us to pray for our neighbor and to serve our neighbor. Mutual love changes us, so that God can use us to love the world.
I end today with the same words used by the author of Hebrews to end his sermon: “…may the God of peace…make you complete in everything good so that you may do his will, working among us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.”
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