A Good Church Welcomes and Supports

The story is told of a boy named Stephen, at the time about 10 years old who loved, everything that had to do with navigation.

“He had sketched of the now-defunct A Line of the Boston metro. He had dozens of books on geography, the history of trains, and large-scale maps of the whole state of Massachusetts. His mother, an Italian-born legal scholar, told me that Stephen is the family’s human GPS, reliably charting their daily paths through the city he’s memorized.”

The problem came in when those lines weren’t easily drawn. What is clear on a map is not always the same when walking through an area. He loved navigation because he feared walking through anywhere he didn’t recognize. He was terrified of open spaced.

Stephen has autism spectrum disorder, something that causes him to process the world differently from others. He was a brilliant thinker but had a hard time navigating these open spaces.

He wanted the world bounded and contained, finding lines and edges reassuring. When things weren’t contained, he was paralyzed in fear, he couldn’t leave the house.

So his parents a friend began to think through how to help Stephen take his love for navigation into dealing with his paralyzing fear of open spaces.

They developed the Explorers club. They would walk through the neighborhoods of Boston where they lived with pink or orange construction tape. They would spool out these lines of tape through open areas. And then they would invite stephen to walk across these open areas. And over time, week in and week out, using the safer boundaries of the tape, This small group going first to lay out a path, “Stephen learned to inch his way across swaths of cityscape.”

This is hospitality. This is welcoming and supporting. This is showing mercy. Helping people to go where they would or can’t otherwise go themselves. It is inviting them in and further.

Haven’t you ever wanted to be invited in and further?

We live in one of the most relationally fractured cultures in history. We are angry and we are aliented from one another. Someone has got to end that cycle. Christ has called the church to love God so much that we can’t help but show mercy.

If you have ever been welcomed in or hoped to be, hang onto what Christ tells us this morning.

It is found in the book of Luke and it comes out of a question that is asked of Him.

Luke 10:25–29 ESV

And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

It’s a simple asked and answered kind of deal. The man asks Jesus about eternal life. Good question. But then, after answering correctly, he asks further.

He knows he has to love his neighbor. So he asks, who exactly is my neighbor.

Keep in mind what he is actually asking in this question. He is not looking around for who he has to love or who he can love. The man asks the question because what he really wants to know is how much do I have to do before I’m done? Which means, who don’t I have to love?

He’s asking if there is someone that he can skip over and have it still count as loving your neighbor.

So Jesus tells him a scandalous story about someone who helps a neighbor.

Scandalous because of the characters involved.

Luke 10:30–35 ESV

Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’

Two people pass him by. Jesus is showing some of the religous hypocrisy of the day. The priest doesn’t want to be made unclean, as did the levite. So for what they believed to be righteous religious reasons, they pass by the man so as not to intermingle.

Up until this point the people would have been expecting this. It was a common story structure. Just like when you hear, a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar…., you know what to expect, so when you see the priest and levite, the people listening were expecting to hear the normal passerby, an israelite, to walk by and to be the good actor in this.

But it is not an israelite. It a samaritan.

This is a shocking turn in the story.

Samaritans were the cultural enemy. Israelites and Samaritans did not get along. So when Jesus makes the samaritan the hero of the story, it would have been unbelievable.

But He does. The Samaritan does the following things, in this order

He sees him

He has compassion on him

He went to him

He bound up his wounds

He set him on his own animal.

He brought him to an inn who could better care for him

He paid for his health

He planned on coming back

In the light of this story let’s look at three ways the samaritan shows hospitality to this man.

He shows willingness

He acts in proximity

He plans for recovery

He shows Willingness.Hospitality is to be willing to show mercy

Luke 10:33 ESV

But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.

Hospitality doesn’t require resources as much as it requires willingness. Hospitality is an ethic that allows us to practice theology daily. Christian hospitality localizes and provides real estate for the promises of God. It gives them appropriate dimensions.

We give people room because God commanded us to show mercy to our neighbor.

When we receive people, we are encountering Christ.

This is a reflection of Matthew 25 where Jesus tells people who have welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, visited the sick and those in prison, whatever you did for the least of these you did for me.

When we act in mercy we encounter Christ.

Our culture defines power, influence and authority about that which you can do yourselves. It is increasing strength between whatever in group you want to be a part of and a distinct outgroup, that which you of course are thankful to not be a part of.

Biblical Hospitality shoves all that aside. It doesn’t look out for the gain of power in the self, it doesn’t look for a wall built around an in group to keep out the out group.

Willingness in hospitality doesn’t look for what people agree with or disagree with. It just willingly acts.

Look at what doesn’t happen in our story today.

If we were to read through our modern lens and our modern sensibility. We would read it like this.

A samaritan came to where he was and when he saw him, he walked over and bent down to where the man could hear him. He then proceeded to tell him

“didn’t you know that this road was dangerous?”

“It was pretty much assumed you would get hurt?”

“Did you even think to bring any kind of protection or even a first aid kit?”

He would lecture until the man bled out.

We are trying to lecture a culture into right belief. But they are bleeding out.

Biblical hospitality is willing because it ignores that and invites the outsider in. It invites the marginalized to be a part of the group.

When you make a meal for another person, you are willing to be hospitable.

When you work with kids you are willing to be hospitable.

When you serve at food and friend you are willing to be hospitable.

When you visit those who are sick and infirmed you are willing to be hospitable.

When you foster kids, you are willing to be hospitable.

But willingness needs another piece. There needs to be a proximity.

You need to get close.

Proximity. Hospitality is to get close

Hospitality can only happen in proximity. It means that in order to show people what Christ looks like it will take getting close.

It will take being in another’s life.

Christians use hospitality to break social boundaries, to transcend social differences.

All of this happens with proximity.

People have to see what the kingdom of God looks like. It will not happen from a distance, yelling down into the side of the road.

It will take getting near.

And the Christian is the One commanded to go first.

We want the world to get it right, to act right, to legislate right, to speak right. We want them to love what we love and hate what we hate.

But we often stand far away and grumble why they don’t think the way we do.

But the world isn’t commanded to come close and show the love of Christ. The church is.

Imagine if Jesus, fully in relationship with the Trinity, stayed up in glory and complained about how we just couldn’t get it right.

See the response the culture needs to make is repentance in Christ. But it won’t happen if the church is distant and grumpy.

In a lot of ways, the church is distant and grumpy.

We need to be willing and come close.

Christ has gotten close to you lying there half dead in the gutter. And I’m not just talking about salvation. I’m talking about your yesterday. He still comes close because in the end hospitality is about recovery

Recovery. Hospitality is to care for the whole person

Luke 10:34–35 ESV

He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’

To be hospitable as a church is to be whole hospitable.

When you act with hospitality, you take the whole person.

When we are called to love our neighbor and to show mercy, we are called to the whole person.

when we say yes to our neighbor in hospitality we are saying

Yes to thier suffering

Yes to thier spiritual needs

Being hospitable means we take on the whole person. Just like Christ took on all of us, warts and all.

When we act likewise, like in this story that Jesus tells, and we show willingness and proximity, we are trusting God for another person. We make room for them.

Now think a moment about what happens in this recovery mode. As the samaritan is getting him help.

He bends down and has to deal with his wounds. He binds his wounds, using up his own stock of fabric. There isn’t a first aid kit.

Then he pours on both oil and wine. For antiseptic reasons and for pain relief. But it’s his supply that he is freely giving.

I would imagine as he is bending down he gets a little dirty. And as he is cleaning up the wounds, he may get some blood on him.

And then he puts him on his own animal. Whatever kind of clean the animal was he no longer is. Now his transportation is ruined.

And then he gets to the inn and offers his own money to allow him to get well.

So the man who show mercy is no longer clean, no longer has full resources, has to run his horse through a horse wash, and is out some cash. He is spent,

But yet this is the very version of humanity that Jesus is showing us. And He is looking at the church as if to say, “you first.”

But we don’t want to get dirty, we don’t want to ruin clothes.

We don’t want to waste our time or our money.

Neither did the pharisee. Neither did the priest.

We don’t want to waste our ideas of our own holiness, or squander our ideas of our own personal righteousness. We look and say because we are holy we can’t mingle with that group of people over there who aren’t.

If you’re own understanding of righteousness isn’t soiled from time to time, then you may likely be more like the priest or pharisee.

The goal in Christianity is not to stay clean but to help others become it.

Because Christian hospitality, making room for others,

The Reality of willingness, proximity, recovery

shows people what God’s promises look like.

What the goodness of God looks like.

It creates something tangible for people to point to and see what kind of God created the world.

Hospitality is the foothold of the reality of God in the world.

Luke 10:36–37 ESV

Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”

‌The purpose of hospitality is that it localizes the truths of God.

When we show hospitality, when we let people into our lives. When we help enter into another’s life because they need it.

When we show mercy,

we are localizing the truths of God.

We are called to act like the good samaritan. But there is only One who has lived up to it.

Christ is the One who’s hospitable to us.

Christ is the true Good Samaritan.

We are called to it. He lives up to it.

Who is lying by the roadside that you need to get near to today?

If that is you, Christ is the better Good Samaritan and He wants to draw near You