God’s Hospitality
Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, Year A, Pentecost V, Matthew 10:40-42
Jesus says, Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.
Such a short, seemingly simple statement. Welcoming others is a good thing, it tells us. And we pride ourselves on our hospitality, right? Down here in the south, we call it “southern hospitality,” and that is a thing.
But I’ve never gone anywhere that didn’t claim to be hospitable. Well, possible exception: New York City!
Most every town, village, city across the country posts signs on its outskirts saying “welcome.” If you arrive by plane, the flight attendants will inevitably say “welcome to… (fill in the blank)” the moment you land. You walk into the airport and head to baggage claim and there’s a huge sign over the escalator: “Welcome to… (fill in the blank).”
I just got back from a trip to Jamestown, NY. It involved three flights, the last one being a small, single-engine turboprop that seated 11 passengers and two pilots. When we landed, the captain leaned around the back of his seat and said, “Welcome to Bradford, PA.”
We have an entire industry—global—called “the hospitality industry.” It’s all about welcoming people. So when Jesus tells us welcoming is a good thing, we might well be tempted to say, “Hey, yes, Jesus, we got this! We know what you’re talking about and we’re doing it.”
But, of course, all these human endeavors—from “southern hospitality” to flight attendants saying welcome in the name of a city they don’t even live in—are not really about the kind of welcoming Jesus is talking about here. All these human endeavors are better thought of as ways of being polite while NOT welcoming people in the way Jesus is talking about.
So… how can we talk about the deeper, more profound way of welcoming that Jesus is actually talking about? That’s the challenge. And it’s a challenge because most of us have not had the kind of human experience that might teach us about that kind of welcome.
Here’s the difference: Acting in the name of, for example, southern hospitality, we can meet and greet and perhaps share food and drink with strangers, visitors to our community, whomever, maybe even provide a bed for the night, do all those polite things we do—and walk away from the interaction with our lives unchanged, or relatively unchanged. We might have lovely memories of our time spent with folks we might never see again, but… our lives remain fundamentally unchanged.
That’s NOT what Jesus is talking about! That’s nice, polite, a good thing to do.., but not what Jesus is talking about.
Jesus is talking about the kind of welcoming that changes lives. Jesus is talking about God’s hospitality, and God’s hospitality is total. It’s an “all in” kind of hospitality. It’s an “abide with me and I with you” kind of hospitality.
I love that word “abide.” It conveys so much more than “visit” or even “live with.” It implies “hang in with you no matter what.”
God’s hospitality literally saves lives, both the life of the welcomer and the life of the one being welcomed. If you’ve ever had to flee from war or violence or starvation to another country seeking refuge, or if you have been the one to extend hospitality to such a person, you understand this kind of welcome.
But God’s hospitality also takes risks. You never know exactly whom you might be welcoming. Remember Hebrews 13:2: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” So.., the ones you welcome might be angels. But they also might be jerks. The might accept your hospitality and not be grateful, might even resent it.
Author Margaret Guenther, At Home in the World: A Rule of Life for the Rest of Us tells about riding NY subway and wondering about fellow passengers, “who are the angels?” Surely there are some in this motley crew. Recalling Jacob sleeping in wilderness, she would look up the grimy, smelly, urine-stained stairs to the street and wonder, which of these people ascending and descending are the angels?
We always have the option of shaking the dust off our shoes, but not the option of not offering hospitality. Not those of us who claim to follow Jesus.
God did not give us the power to discern the worthiness of whom we welcome. That’s God’s job. Because if we could, we would offer hospitality according to our own biases and prejudices. And that’s not God’s hospitality.
God’s hospitality is open. It takes risks. Again and again.
Jesus says when we welcome another we are welcoming him. If we take him at his word, how can that NOT transform our relationships with others?
Maybe if a do a better job of channeling God’s hospitality in the world and remembering that I am encountering Jesus in every other person, then perhaps rather than curse and fling the finger at the guy or gal who cuts me off in traffic, I will just make space for him or her.
“Making space” is another way of thinking about God’s hospitality. Making space for others, in all their strangeness and knobbiness, all their unacceptable beliefs and opinions, their orneryness and unlovableness.
As agents of God’s hospitality, we offer hospitality and what others do with it is, as my mother would say, none of our beeswax. As followers of Jesus, we offer a cup of cold water. To everyone. What they do with it is between them and God.
In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN.
