Proper 8 A
Transcribed from a
sermon given by
The Rev. Valerie Ann
Hart
At St. Barnabas
Episcopal Church
On June 26, 2011
In the Gospel reading today Jesus
talks about hospitality. He says that even small acts of hospitality, like giving
someone a cup of cold water can make a great deal of difference.
I had a chance to see that at work
this past weekend at my son’s wedding. I didn’t know the family very well. I
had met them a few times, but I didn’t know the whole family. At the wedding I
had a chance to really get to know my new daughter-in-law’s family, the family
of which my son is now a part. One of the things that told me a lot about this
family was how they treated a stranger. There was a man at the wedding who had
never met anyone else at the wedding. He had been invited to the wedding, but
he came in having never met anyone there. You see, my daughter-in-law was
adopted, and her birth dad had given permission for her to find him. When she
became an adult she had looked him up and contacted him over email. They had
communicated a little bit on Facebook and email, but it never worked for them
to meet in person. So she invited him to her wedding.
Now you can try and imagine what
it would be like to be a man meeting your biological daughter for the first
time at her wedding. Walking into a wedding where you don’t know anyone at all
takes a lot of courage. What really impressed me was that he was made one
hundred percent welcome. Everyone from her family, the whole wedding, treated
him like family. He was sitting at the same table that I was. He was family. People
spoke to him and made him feel comfortable and welcome. To me that said a huge
amount about Sarah’s family, about her parents, about their love for one
another, about there love for Sarah, about their love for people. I knew that if
this man was so welcome at a wedding that my son was certainly going to be
welcomed into that family. A little bit of hospitality that made all the
difference.
Of course it can work the other
way as well. I was reading ideas for the sermon today and I read a story of a pastor
who spoke about a man in his town that he knew well - very well respected
business man - a good man. A man who lived a good and generous life, but he never
came to church. This pastor would keep inviting him to come to church and he
would say, nope, not coming. So finally the pastor asked him why and the man
was ready to tell him. He said that when he was eleven years old his family had
decided that it would be good for he and his brothers and sisters if they had
some religious training. So they took him to Sunday school. He got to Sunday School
and he loved it. He loved hearing the great stories of the Bible. He loved the
music. He loved coloring. He loved the whole thing of Sunday school and he was
all ready to come back. But at the end of the Sunday School class, the Sunday School
teacher pulled him aside and said to him, in a very nice way I suppose, “You
know son when we come to church we always dress in our best. I don’t want to
see you coming back to church dressed the way you are today.” He looked down at
his handed down overalls with holes in them which were his best clothes, and he
never came back to church dressed that way. He never came back to church until
he was dressed in a brand new suit and laid out in a box for his funeral. I am
sure that that Sunday School teacher meant well, but it wasn’t being hospitable.
It wasn’t being welcoming. It wasn’t seeing the need of the child. Little acts
of hospitality can make a huge difference, even giving a cup of cold water.
It is interesting when you read
the Gospels that Jesus doesn’t give many “Thou Shalt Not’s”. Oh, occasionally
he does, but usually he is telling us what he wants us to do. To love one
another, as he loves us. To be hospitable to one another. To feed the poor. To
give a cup of water to the thirsty. He doesn’t dwell on rules and regulations,
but on compassion and love.
If we look at the reading from
Romans find that Paul teaches that we are free from the Law through grace. That
things have changed. That with the resurrection of Christ everything has
changed. We are no longer slaves to a bunch of rules. We are not ruled by the “Thou
Shalt Not’s.”
But Paul had a dilemma because
there were some people who when he told them they were free from the Law said “Okay
good, I can do whatever I want.” They were doing things that weren’t good for
them or weren’t good for the people around them, or that weren’t respectful of
their own bodies. And Paul responded, “No, no, no, you don’t quite get it. We
are free from arbitrary laws but we are slaves to Christ and therefore we want
to serve Christ.”
There are places in Paul’s letters
what that look like a set of rules, especially in the letters to the
Corinthians. It appears that the Corinthians didn’t quite understand the
concept of freedom, so Paul had to delineate some “Thou Shalt Not’s”.
But what is most important about
what Paul says is that we are a new creation. He uses that same language in
some other places. We are a new creation in Christ. Everything changed with the
resurrection. Our relationship with God, our relationship with one another, has
all changed.
Just as everything changed with
Abraham. Abraham at the beginning of this story feels like he needs to
sacrifice his son to God, because that is what you did then. You made
sacrifices to the god. You sacrificed that which was most valuable to you, and
often it was your own child, because you wanted to appease God. You wanted to
appease the anger of God. It was as if human beings could do something to take
care of God and then God would owe you something. But things changed with
Abraham. Abraham was willing to offer his son. He loved God that much. But God
said that is not what it is about. “I will provide the sacrifice.” God doesn’t
need anything from human beings, God has everything that God needs. God wants
relationship with human beings. With Abraham the relationship with God became
one of friendship rather than one of duty and fear.
Then God provided the sacrifice in
Christ to take another step in the relationship with humanity. It was a new
creation, a new way of being with God. God has handled it all and we can live
in grace. This is the new creation.
Every day we say the Lord’s
Prayer. “Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” And then we say,
“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Right there,
central in that prayer, is the coming of God’s reign. The coming of a time when
God will really rule the earth. When the earth, all of the creation will be as
God intends for it to be, for God will be in charge. Where God’s will is how
people respond. The resurrection of Christ opened a window to that new world. That
is the new creation, where this earth will become what God intended. Where
human beings will treat one another the way human beings are supposed to, with
love, and compassion.
We are called to be part of the
transformation. We are called to bring in that new kingdom.
If you look at history it is
pretty amazing that a small band of followers of Jesus in less than three
hundred years, expanded to cover the entire Roman Empire and to become a force
to be reckoned with, even though they were illegal and persecuted. It spread
like crazy.
What was it? What was it that made
the church grow so much then? It had to do with how the Christians lived their
lives. They lived their lives bringing in the new creation. They lived their
lives to be the new kingdom. They treated each other with compassion and love.
They brought in and welcomed everyone. There was hospitality for everyone, male,
female, free, slave, rich, poor, gentile, Jew - anywhere, any language.
When you were part of the
community, this was a community that fed one another. It was not like the rest
of the Roman Empire, where when plague came people were left to fend for themselves
because they didn’t want to catch the plague. Christians took care of one
another, nursed one another back to health. When people were hungry they fed
one another. When someone was alone they were invited into community. Everyone
shared what they had. They experienced a little taste of what the kingdom of
God looks like, a place here people love one another as Christ loves us. By the
way they lived communities they taught people what love looked like. They
didn’t have and army. They didn’t have much money. Most of the early Christians
were poor. But they had something more powerful. When you look at the history
of the Christian church as it went into different areas, the mission that were
often most successful where ones where it was a doctor who brought healing, or
they brought food, or they in some other way were being hospitable and caring
people.
We are called, each and every one
of us, to help to bring on the kingdom of God. When we pray that Lords’ Prayer
it is our responsibility to do what we can to make this world what God intended
- to let the reign of God come through us. That shows up in those small acts of
hospitality - those times of charity and love. When we feed people, when we
welcome people, when we comfort people, when we give them even a cup of cold
water.
