A Hospitable Community
A Tangible Display Community • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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As we continue in our sermon series called a Tangible Display Community we will look at one of four ministry priorities that we felt the Lord calling us towards when we went through a Ministry Planning process as a congregation, now more than a decade ago.
And this priority focusses on the Biblical call towards practicing hospitality. The call towards extending hospitality is threaded all through the stories of the Bible. And in my sermon this morning we will be noticing a number of them. But the one that I want to read for us is is one of the first stories that hightlights the significance of extending hosptiality to the stranger.
1 The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. 2 Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground. 3 He said, “If I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, do not pass your servant by. 4 Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree. 5 Let me get you something to eat, so you can be refreshed and then go on your way—now that you have come to your servant.” “Very well,” they answered, “do as you say.” 6 So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah. “Quick,” he said, “get three seahs of the finest flour and knead it and bake some bread.” 7 Then he ran to the herd and selected a choice, tender calf and gave it to a servant, who hurried to prepare it. 8 He then brought some curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared, and set these before them. While they ate, he stood near them under a tree.
1 Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. 2 Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.
8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. 10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.
Here’s how we’ve captured this particular ministry priority:
As a tangible display of God’s renewing power, we extend His hospitality by:
Involving ourselves in the lives and needs of one another and our neighbours.
Inviting our neighbours to follow Christ with us.
Warmly embracing one another and our neighbours.
connect to love for neighbour
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I’m guessing all of us can think of experiences of hospitality that we found particularly meaningful.....perhaps it was in extending hospitality, or in receiving it....I’m sure all of us can think of instances when we felt very thankful and blessed.
[For me? Visiting Bethlehem in 1999, met a Palestinian Christian just outside a jewlery store....he invited us to his house to meet his wife and infant son....we corresponded with them each Christmas for about a decade… Middle Eastern hospitality]
Def’n of hospitality from Plantinga
Hospitality is all about making room for others and then helping them to flourish in the room you have made.
Examples: You welcome them to a meal and feed them.You welcome them into your home and house them. You welcome them into your life and embrace them. A symbol of hospitality is open arms.
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As we look at our text in Gen 18 one of the first things we need to be aware of is that Abraham is unaware of the fact that the LORD has appeared to him..... what Abraham sees are three men standing nearby....and he quickly greets them and welcomes them to stay.
Now, though we didn’t read it, story includes promise of a son, and also Abraham bargaining with two of the strangers about holding back judgement against Sodom and Gomorrah....
But the focus for us this morning, in the first part of the story is ..... . God shows up as a stranger… and this becomes quite important, especially as we go through other parts of the Biblical story....Abraham, as he shows hospitality and care, he’s actually expressing that love and that care to God...
Now keep that in mind...
This is important for us to keep in mind, because God actually will have a lot to say to his people about the priority of welcoming the stranger....
First, let’s notice another OT text that speaks about the importance for God’s people to welcome the stranger.....In Leviticus we see it is to be a first priority virtue for God’s family....
Quote from Lev. about need to welcome stranger....
33 “ ‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. 34 The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.
Hebrew were “ger”..... foreigner, stranger, alien, refugee, asylum seeker.....
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That command to love the foreigner gets woven through many, many stories in the OT, particularly in the prophets...
9 “This is what the Lord Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. 10 Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.’
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Let’s visit some texts in the NT....
How often doesn’t God, in the person of Jesus Christ show up as a stranger or as a guest in the home of around the table of another....
Let’s consider some of the stories in Luke’s writings....
God chose to show up in human history, completely dependent upon the open-heartedness of a young woman. Shows up in Mary’s womb…dependent on her willingness to receive him and care for him..... God, as it were, conditions his entrance into human history on the willingness of a young woman to welcome him into herself....in her case quite literally....and allow him to flourish in the space she creates for him....mention our newborns in our home....how much “space” they demand....
How about another story in Luke’s Gospel....the story of Jesus sending the 72 in Luke 10.....
Jesus instructs the seventy to depend on the hospitality of the townspeople they encounter. For instance, he prohibits them from carrying their own provisions. Instead, the blessing and peace of God will rest upon those hosts who extend hospitality to Jesus’ servants (10:4-6). He forbids the disciples, after they enter the home of a gracious host, from moving about from house to house.
“Whoever listens to you listens to me,” Jesus concludes, “and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me” (10:16). The townspeople’s response to these strangers, Jesus’ disciples, will function as their response to Jesus himself.
(“Entertaining Angels: Hospitality in Luke and Acts” Andrew Arterbury)
…so significant is this extending and receiving of hospitality....
And lastly in Luke there is the Emmaus road story in ch. 24.... day of resurrection, Cleopas and another disciple of Jesus were unaware that Jesus had risen from the dead. Remarkably Jesus appears to them as a stranger..... what did they do....they welcomed him, urged him to stay with them. And then as they sat around a table and shared food, their eyes were opened and they realized the stranger was Jesus himself.
Peter and the Roman centurion story… Acts 10
[tell story..... Peter receiving strangers....God had primed the pump so to speak....maybe God is priming our pump this morning.....but I digress....Peter goes to the home of Cornelius the Centurion....he’s a guest.... Spirit is upon Gentiles!!.....not only is Gen. 12 coming to pass, so is words of the prophets..... words like the nations have seen a great light from Isaiah....and all of this happens in the context of people extending and receiving hospitality.]
“Almost certainly Luke is inviting his readers to conclude that if they extend hospitality to strangers like these two disciples did on the road to Emmaus, they too might “entertain angels without knowing it” and experience the resurrected Jesus in the process.” (Andrew Arterbury)
Hospitality becomes the vehicle through which the evangelization and incorporation of the Gentiles into the life of the Christian community are first realized.5 In addition, the custom of hospitality functions as the prism through which Jewish Christians are able to see Gentile converts in a new way—no longer as “profane or unclean,” but rather as covenant partners in the community of Christians. Hence, Luke creates a direct link between the custom of hospitality, which bridges the gap between people of different regions and cultures in antiquity, and the integration of the Gentiles into the life of the Church. (Andrew Arterbury)
By entering into an alliance or covenant with those from cultures that are foreign to them, Jesus’ disciples are forced both to give and to receive benefits from those God has called them to love.
Then Matthew 25...... care for the stranger...
It never fails to surprise me that in the most vivid portrait of final judgment in all the gospels, namely in the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25, Jesus’ interest centers where we aren’t looking. It never fails to surprise me what Jesus Christ points to first. What’s the standard for dividing people? How do you tell whether somebody is fit for heaven?
You look for hospitality. “I was hungry, and you gave me food; I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink; I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” (Plantinga)
Quotes from writers in the early church:
They love one another, and from widows they do not turn away their esteem; and they deliver the orphan from him who treats him harshly. And he, who has, gives to him who has not, without boasting. And when they see a stranger, they take him into their homes and rejoice over him as a very brother; for they do not call them brethren after the flesh, but brethren after the spirit and in God. (Aristedes 2nd century)
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The comments of a pagan emperor from the fourth century suggest how widely recognized Christian practices of hospitality had become. In an effort to reestablish Hellenic religion in the Roman Empire in 362, Julian instructed the high priest of the Hellenic faith to imitate the Christian concern for strangers and poor people. Referring to Christianity as atheism, he asked, “Why do we not observe that it is their benevolence to strangers, their care for the graves of the dead and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done most to increase atheism?” He instructed the priest that hostels in every city should be established for strangers and ordered a distribution of food for the poor, strangers, and beggars. He wrote: “For it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galileans [Christians] support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us. Teach those of the Hellenic faith to contribute to public service of this sort.”
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God’s love for us.....hospitality of creation.....hospitality of redemption....
End with this story....
The Australian Christian author and speaker John Dickson came to Christ through the faithful witness of an ordinary, middle-aged mother named Glenda. In Australia, the public schools used to offer a Scripture class taught by a volunteer from the local church, and Glenda became his teacher. Eventually, Glenda invited the whole class to her house on Friday afternoons for lunch and honest conversation about Jesus. Dickson writes:
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So we went back the next Friday and the next Friday and the next Friday. Slowly but surely, the "Jesus stuff" became as important as the food, so we came with more and more friends. Some of these 15-year-olds were the worst sinners in the school.... But Glenda just opened her heart every Friday afternoon and treated us all like we were family.
There was one night when my friend Daniel was rather intoxicated, and we knew we couldn't take him to his house. His dad was an army man and would be livid. But we didn't want to leave him on the street, so we all said, "Let's take him to Glenda's house. She'll have him. She'll clean him up." So it was near midnight, and we knocked on her door. It turned out she was finishing up some kind of posh dinner party with lots of guests, but she didn't bat an eye. She welcomed us in, showed us straight past her guests into the back of the house. She went and got some spare clothes and said, "Throw him in the shower, clean him up, and just put him to bed. We'll sort it out in the morning." So we did.
The next morning we went back to Glenda's house around 10:00 to pick up Daniel. He was sitting at the kitchen table, and Glenda was making him bacon and eggs, and they were having a good old chat.
We took Daniel to Glenda's house because she had left a real impression on us that Christians actually like sinners. We had no doubt that she hated our drinking habits. She was a teetotaler, and talked openly about avoiding alcohol. But even in that situation, her first instinct was not to condemn us but to love us more, and it was extraordinary.
After about six months of Scripture classes, Friday afternoon events, and the incident with Daniel, we found ourselves thinking that Jesus was real, that he is inescapable, that he is powerful. So about six or eight months into it, about five of us became Christians—we really surrendered to Christ's lordship and accepted his mercy.
Years later, I was starting my own ministry and trying to explore new modes of reaching people. So my first thought was, I'll go to Glenda and ask her what her secret was. Since several of us had become Christians through her influence, I figured she must have had some strategy. I went to her fully expecting her to tell me about some program she implemented or some particular way she had of sharing the gospel. Without batting an eye, she said, "Prayer." I was really disappointed, but she continued, "That year a bunch of us who taught Scripture decided to make it a year of prayer—just to plead the Lord of the harvest to do something special. And we did. By the end of the year, there you all were, confessing Jesus." For an activist like me, that was a poignant lesson: in the end, the harvest is God's. It's not mine—it's not my creativity, it's not my skill—it's God's. We just have to bring our ministry to God and cry out to him to give us success.
(preachingtoday.com)