Welcome Home: Everybody Knows Your Name - June 4, 2023

Everybody Knows Your Name

Cheers is one of the most popular TV series of all time. The show won numerous awards and ran for 11 seasons. By the time it was over, many of us knew the characters inside and out, including their backstories. For those characters, the bar set in Boston was home away from home. In fact, we all wondered if many of those we got to know spent more of their time at the bar than they did at home. That bar was a place where love and friendship flourished, bonds were formed, secrets were shared. The bar was where the characters came to laugh and cry and fight and socialize and just hang out. Even we cared about the characters on that show. The last show is still one of the most watched shows of all time because the show showed us what we want out of community. Humanity was on display. One of the most fascinating aspects of the show was how it treated fleeting characters… those who were only there for one episode. There were no strangers at Cheers. Even the strangers were treated as if they were part of the home. Cheers was the place where “Everybody Knows Your Name”.

What about the church?

Cheers and other shows like it resonate with us. We all wanted that to be what our homes are like. Totally welcoming. Safe zones. Places where love and forgiveness reign. A place where everything is familiar, there are no strangers, and everyone knows your name. The place where we can simply “be”. For many of us that is what home really is for us. Maybe some of us have not experienced that as much. But what about the church? Has the church been “home” for you? Is the church a safe place? Does the word “church” give you all the same warm feelings as a place like Cheers where you can just be yourself and everybody knows your name?

More than 40% of our neighbors here used to go to church but they are not in church anymore.

They have been burned by church. They’ve been hurt and wounded by church leaders and church people. This past football season we highlighted the “He Gets Us” commercials that were running during the playoffs and the Super Bowl. Those commercials were based on research that indicates that most people have a good opinion of Jesus. But most people also have a bad opinion of church.

86% of US adults have a favorable view of Jesus.

11% of US adults have a favorable view of the Christian church.

While the reasons for the unfavorable views of church are many and varied, one common theme among them is a lack of hospitality. This goes beyond simply making sure everyone has coffee and donuts. This is about church as a safe place. Church where those who are broken feel at home. Church where you can be yourself. And not just here. Church out there. Church where everyone knows your name.

Over the next few weeks we are going to be considering the subject of hospitality in the Bible. We will look at hospitality from a variety of different angles.

Hospitality is providing a space where people are moved from hostility to hospitality, from enemy to friend.

One thing we are going to find is that Jesus has placed us in community to bring peace to each other and peace to the world. Like everything else in life, hospitality for us is to be found here. Right here. In this gathering.

The God of Hospitality

But all hospitality can be traced to the very beginning of the human story. In the Creation story we read moments ago, we find God making a home for his creatures. In Genesis 1, the entire Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, are busy creating a world in which humanity would have a home. There are three ways we find the Trinity creating hospitality for the creature in these opening chapters.

Hospitality starts with the Trinity in the provision of a home.

This home was safe. This home was welcoming and hospitable, designed for humanity’s enjoyment of their Creator and the Creator’s enjoyment and love for the creature. This home, this Garden in which God placed Adam and Eve, was full of beauty. Everything was good. The entire planet was designed to be one big home where there are no enemies and there is no hostility. Everyone belongs. The Triune God is the perfect host, providing hospitality all of the time.

Second,

Hospitality starts with the Trinity in the provision of a family.

The text tells us that God made man in His image, “he created them male and female”. This male and female were to multiply and fill the earth with image-bearers, all living in this grand home that God had created for this one big family.

And third,

Hospitality starts with the Trinity in the provision of a name.

The opening chapters of Genesis tell us that God is the one who gave Adam his name. And implied in humanity bearing the image of God is that humanity would bear the name of their Creator, stamped with God’s name. God’s hospitality for his creatures involves giving them His identity and his value in His image through His name. As the home becomes filled with God’s image-bearers, the home is filled with God’s name and identity being seen in those who are His people. A home. A family. A name. All part of the Trinity’s hospitality.

Hostility replaces hospitality

Of course, Adam and Eve ruined it. Hostility entered the picture. In fact, that word is used in the very first Gospel promise of the Bible. God promises that the offspring of Eve would someday crush the head of the serpent, but not before there is hostility between the serpent and humanity. Sin entered the picture. The hospitality of the Creator for humanity was no longer present.

That’s the world we find ourselves in. We see hostility everywhere. We have Ring. We have cameras. We have door locks. We have all sorts of protections that we set up. Fear of strangers who will do us harm. But in setting up those protections, we have become accustomed to thinking that strangers are a threat. Simply using the word stranger speaks to some sort of hostile danger. Security guards, law enforcement, military. A few weeks ago our phones and computer screens were filled with the news of a 16-year-old in Missouri who was shot when he went to the wrong house to pick up his siblings. We fear strangers. In our world, we presume that strangers are a danger until they prove otherwise.

And it doesn’t even have to be people we don’t know. One of the most popular TV shows in the last 20 years was canceled because the two costars hated each other. Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic were quite the romantic couple on the show Castle, but Katic couldn’t stand Fillion so much she quit the show and the show was canceled. How do we ever move from hostility to hospitality in this kind of world?

Hospitality restored

It is into this world that God became man, and God was on a mission to restore hospitality. Jesus came to save his people from their sins. In forgiving sins, Paul tells us that Jesus got rid of the hostility. Hostility between the Creator and His creatures, and hostility between human beings.

In Jesus’ last conversation with his best friends on a mountain, Jesus takes the disciples back to creation. You know that thing that Adam and Eve ruined? Remember how the entire world was supposed to be home to a family bearing God’s image and bearing God’s name? That’s now your mission.

Go.. make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

It’s all there.

Hospitality is restored in the provision of a home: all nations.

The entire earth is again going to be home to God’s image-bearers. All nations everywhere will be home to those bearing Christ’s image. Home will be wherever the Word is preached and the Sacraments provided.

Hospitality is restored in the provision of a family: disciples.

Image-bearers. The new children of God. These disciples that are being made are the new family that God is creating to fill his new home.

And,

Hospitality is restored in the provision of a name: The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.

We talk so often about this being a baptismal formula. That the Trinity is involved in baptism and bears witness to the new birth of baptism. But Jesus is saying much more than that here. Disciples are made by baptizing in the name of. This Baptism itself is stamping the new disciples with the name of the Trinity. God’s image-bearers who are filling the earth are given His name… filling the earth with God’s name.

You see, God’s hospitality involves giving us a new identity. No longer is our identity self-made, and bound up with the hostility of this world. Our identity is given to us. We bear His name and in bearing His name we expand His kingdom and his home over the entire globe wherever we go.

Church is a small snippet of this grand home that God is building over the expanse of the globe. This is where the Trinity provides hospitality for God’s people. The gospel is itself creating space where we are no longer strangers, but family. Those who’ve been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit become His welcoming agents for those who are strangers looking for a home. A home where everybody knows your name.

Let’s Pray.

The Table

This Table is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit providing hospitality for us. In this meal. In this Table, we are given forgiveness and life. This is a family meal where we are reminded that we are His children. And this is where our identity is again restored. We have His name stamped on us. We are his. This Table declares it to be so.