Hospitality

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Today I’m giving a sermon with a mission. I’m aiming to convince you to embrace an ancient spiritual practice. Some of you, I know, are actually already regular practitioners, refining the art of this spiritual practice over many years. Some of you have dabbled. I’m talking about a practice that Christians have turned to for centuries. It goes right back to the earliest days of the church – you see it mentioned in the book of Acts. But that draws on even more ancient traditions and spiritual wisdom, hundreds and even thousands of years older. This practice even occurs in the book of genesis. It’s born immense spiritual fruit in the lives of those who have made it their habit, because it connects them with the very heart and character of God.

Any ideas what I’m talking about? Christian mediation? Special prayer? Singing psalms?

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I’m talking about the ancient spiritual art of having someone over for lunch.

Ok, not just lunch. It could be dinner, or brunch, or a cup of tea and a chat, or something else. Or perhaps on the much bigger scale – and I’ll talk about welcoming refugees. Anything that draws people in and makes them feel at home.

I’m talking about hospitality.

I want to convince you of the profound spiritual significance of having someone over to lunch because of the reality that God is our good host.

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And as usual, there are three points today:

God is our good host - So don’t keep your leftovers.

God is our good host - You are his guest.

God is our good host - So practice the ministry of the BBQ chicken.

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And once again, I feel I’m an unlikely person for this sermon. There’s a reason why if you come to our house, Phil will probably cook and I’ll be on drinks. And to be totally honest, in some ways my mediocre cooking has been my push back on a mould for Christian women, especially ministers wives that I’ve never felt really fits me, that makes out that hospitality is women’s business. That would have the men do the teaching and planning and leading, and the women serve tea and wash up.

I don’t want you to think that because I’m a woman preaching the hospitality sermon in this series that it has anything to do with being a good woman because this a message for the blokes too.

Because I’m convinced, that showing hospitality something grounded in the very character of God and re-enacts the gospel of Jesus on the micro-scale of our homes and communities.

Far from being a nice to have, icing on the cake as it were – hosting others is at the heart of the gospel. We Christians are called to be hospitable. For us, hospitality can be worship.

It doesn’t get more profound or significant than that.

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God is our good host, so don’t keep your leftovers

So my first point – God is our good host, so don’t keep your leftovers

When I finished year 12 I went to Denmark for a year as a Rotary exchange student. The idea of rotary exchange is you go and live with local families and complete a year of high school as an opportunity to really get to experience another culture.

Now the Danes are foodies. One thing I learned about Danish culture is not to serve myself a large helping of food, but to have just enough. Why? Because there’s always more to come. At a Danish table, you’re expected to have seconds, perhaps thirds, and there’s probably another course of food to come. So unless you want to gain quite a lot of weight (and I did), don’t serve yourself any more than you think you need, because it’s guaranteed your host will keep looking after you!

And this is the principle we see in our Leviticus reading. God is the good host who will keep providing, so we don’t need to serve ourselves too much.

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When you’re bringing in the grapes or the wheat or whatever it is from your field, don’t go and harvest right to the edges of your field. If you drop some of your produce, leave it on the ground. Don’t take everything. Leave some behind. God is the good host who will continue to provide. So you can afford for your leftovers to be an opportunity to be hospitable to others.

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And then there’s the other command that, on the face of it, seems a bit strange. When you’re offering a sacrifice of thanksgiving, you can’t save any leftovers to eat on the third day. What’s that about?

Well part of the old testament sacrificial system involved having a feast – that is eating the animal that was sacrificed to God. Now killing an animal is going to produce quite a bit of meat, and I kind of love that God asked people to thank him by having a party and celebrating his abundance together. So what’s the issue with keeping the meat to eat until day 3? Well, if there’s still leftovers on the third day, you obviously didn’t invite enough people to your thanksgiving celebration. You should be including so many people that there are no leftovers.

Don’t keep your leftovers, don’t hoard them up for yourself, but see them as an opportunity for God’s generosity to you to flow over onto others.

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I was listening to Radio National the other day and Astra Taylor was speaking about her book ‘The Age of Insecurity: Coming together as Things Fall Apart’. She argues that today we feel more insecure than ever. But part of this is ‘manufactured insecurity’ – advertising and corporations work hard to make us less and less secure, financially and emotionally, so we’ll work harder and buy more stuff. I think she has a point.

But what struck me as I listened is how much her analysis of our twenty-first century predicament resonates with the story we see in the Bible. You can read the whole Bible as a story of God’s generous abundance, but, no matter how much God provides and how clearly he says he loves us, we humans still feel the need to take what is not ours, to grasp and hold onto what we don’t need or isn’t ours to keep. It started with taking the fruit in a garden full of fruit, believing the terrible lie that there might not be enough – that God hasn’t provided enough – so I need to take matters into my own hands.

But this world of manufactured scarcity and insecurity, God says, ‘don’t keep your leftovers because I will provide’

Now Elly McDonald’s family I know have vineyards, but as far as I know none of the rest of us are growing crops. And none of us are sacrificing animals as thanks to God. So what do we do with this teaching?

Do you have ‘leftovers’ do you have anything spare that perhaps could instead be used to bless others?

Spare food in the pantry that might go to St John’s care. A spare room that could house someone? A spare car? Spare time? Spare cash?

God calls us to resist the temptation to grasp, take and hold on tight to whatever we can get and instead to leave what we don’t need so that it can be used by others. Because we know he’s the good host and there will be enough for us.

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One way this teaching about hospitality has traditionally been applied by Christians is by providing for refugees. Phil and I have been fortunate enough to be part of two churches that had ministries to refugees. One was Yass where, a few decades ago, the churches of the region came together to provide practical assistance to Vietnamese refugees, and the Vietnamese community has not forgotten their hospitality. Another was Belrose in Sydney’s northern beaches that was pivotal in setting up the Northern Beaches Refugee Action Group.

The refugee action group was amazing. People with a diverse license and some spare time helped refugees clock up the practice hours to get a license. People provided furniture, linen, clothing. But the big one was accommodation. Sydney rent is quite something. The churches pitched in to subsidise refugees’ rent so that it was even possible for refugees to live in their community. And our friend Michael realised that his kids had moved out now so he could convert his two-story house into a one storey house with a self-contained flat underneath. His spare rooms, became short-term free accommodation for refugee families while they found jobs and permanent homes.

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Michael knew that God is the good host. So he didn’t keep his leftovers – in this case it was the downstairs to his house. In your case it might be something else. What do you have spare that could instead become hospitality to others?

God is the good host – you are his guest.

Now secondly. God is the good host – you are his guest.

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Speaking of refugees and Denmark, you might have seen the film or read the book ‘Babette’s feast’. It’s set in Jylland – not far from the town where I lived – but in the nineteenth century. Babette is a French refugee and is taken in by pious Lutheran sisters. The sisters live an austere lifestyle because this is what they believe God demands. They are polite to Babette, but not warm. Babette works for them as their cook until one day she discovers she won the lottery in France.

Now some people think God’s provision to us – his hospitality – is like the Lutheran sisters. He provides, but only just enough, lest we become self-indulgent. You’re not meant to enjoy life, you’re meant to get through it and be grateful for what you get.

When Babette wins the lottery she returns to the little Danish town and insists on hosting a feast for the whole community. The pious group make a pact together that they’ll eat the food, but with poker faces, not acknowledging any enjoyment or offering any compliments. They do not believe in self-indulgence and this meal is a threat to their religiosity. So Babette serves up the genuine turtle soup, the finest wine available, the caviar, the quail, the truffle. Eventually, they can’t help but express delight.

Friends, the good news is that Jesus’ hospitality to us is not like the harsh scarcity of the pious sisters, it’s the abundance of Babette’s feast.

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Look through the life of Jesus, and you’ll see story after story connecting Jesus with enjoying a good meal. We start with the miracle of the water into the best wine they’ve ever had at a wedding. Then he’s feeding a crowd of 5,000. Then he’s telling a woman he’s living water, and saying he’s the bread of life. There’s the miraculous catch of fish – so many fish that their nets broke. Then all those parables about banquets and wedding feasts, of hosting a party when the prodigal son came home. This is not a coincidence. By all this food business Jesus is telling us something about himself – he is the good host offering us abundance for us to enjoy.

And of course the most significant meal in scripture is the last supper itself where Jesus offers bread and wine, telling his disciples, eat and dink, this is my body and blood.

At the end of Babette’s feast the sisters presume Babette will return to Paris now that she is rich. Babette says she will not be going anywhere. That feast that she served cost her entire lottery winnings, she had nothing left to give.

Friends, Jesus is the host who gave everything. There was nothing left to give. Although we have fallen for the lie of scarcity, the lie that God has not provided enough and that we need to take and hoard what we can get, Jesus has borne the cost of all that – and proven that there is nothing God will hold back from us.

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It’s not a coincidence that when Jesus asked us to remember him, he gave us a meal to share together. When we taste the bread and the wine, we feel in our bodies the truth of God’s radical hospitality. Jesus invites us to come and be filled at his table. That is, not simply to drink some wine and eat some bread – but to accept his death as our death, the death of our old hoarding and grasping selves, and to live a new life marked by hospitality.

At the core of the gospel is the truth that we are God’s guests, God has given us everything in Jesus.

Not only does the gospel teach us that God is the host who gives us everything, it also tells us that in God’s hospitality, we’re no longer strangers, we’re honoured guests at his table.

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Back to Denmark again. Now the Danes are lovely people, but they’re not especially well known for hospitality to strangers. Danes like most of all to have quality time with their close family and friends. That’s hygge if you’ve heard the term. Sometimes people who move to Denmark for work say they find it hard to get to know Danes. Not if you’re a rotary exchange student. I had the honour of being included, being given a seat at the table where other foreigners might not. I didn’t even speak the language, but there I was for the family birthdays, the Christmas celebration, the mid summer parties. I became part of the family.

And that is what a good host does, makes you feel at home, one of them. And of course, friends, that is just what God has done in Christ. We who were once far from God, strangers to him and his people – actually the Bible says we were God’s enemies - have been brought onto the family table of God’s wedding feast. We share in the one holy Spirit as sisters and brothers. This is God’s cosmic hospitality.

And so this profound truth that in Jesus God is the host who has given everything to make us part of the family shapes our hospitality. When we give others a generous welcome, we are re-enacting on a micro scale the most profound truths of the Christian faith.

That is why Christian hospitality is more than a meal or a cup of tea – it can actually be worship.

God is a good host – so practice the ministry of the BBQ chicken

So now to the last point

God is a good host – so practice the ministry of the BBQ chicken

We visited a friend’s church a couple of years back and just casually over morning tea afterwards he asked, do you have any lunch plans? Do you want to come over. Sure, why not?

So on the way home he picked up a BBQ chicken, a salad and some rolls and we continued our conversation over lunch.

What became apparent was that, this wasn’t anything unusual for him. Actually it turns out that pretty much every Sunday, he’ll ask whoever he meets after church, often a mix of people, some old friends and some new. Got lunch plans? Want to come over? He picks up the BBQ chicken, salad and rolls and off they go. For him, the ministry of the BBQ chicken is as much a part of Sunday worship as the church service itself.

The ministry of the BBQ chicken also reminds us that ministry is not just a matter for the people up the front at church, and worship isn’t just singing songs. Here at Christ Church the people that serve as our welcomers at the church door are ministers too – their ministry of welcoming into our community flows out of God’s welcome to us. It’s worship. And those who serve our morning tea and especially those who do the humble but necessary job of the washing up – are doing vital ministry. They are reflecting the abundance and self-giving hospitality of Jesus and helping us create a community centred around him.

Now on the BBQ chicken, of course it doesn’t have to be chicken. After all some of us are vegetarian. It could be a cup of tea and some biscuits, or fresh bread and soup. And it doesn’t have to be after church, or even lunch or with church people. It doesn’t even have to be food. It might be an invitation to join you for a walk around the lake. Or even a thoughtful card. My point is. Hospitality doesn’t have to be flashy. Actually sometimes the simpler the better – by removing the stress associated with trying to be master chef or pretending we live in a grand designs house, sometimes it’s actually easier to get to what’s important – welcoming others into our lives and communities.

Now the Spirit may be calling you to even bigger acts of hospitality than BBQ chickens. Hey, you might feel called to help us establish our own ministry to refugees and new migrants in our community, showing them the radical hospitality of Jesus. That’s great. But I also want to affirm hospitality on the micro scale in your family, community and in our church. Because the little act of sharing some chicken also a micro modelling of Jesus’ radical welcome in the gospel itself.

For some of us, we’re not in a place right now where we can offer hospitality. I’m not talking about if you don’t think you can cook or your house isn’t nice enough. I mean if your emotional tank is empty. Perhaps you did welcome someone and open up to them and they tore you to shreds. I’ve been there. Perhaps you’re grieving. Perhaps your mental health or your physical health makes it impossible. Perhaps your emotional resources are spread so thin right now you are doing your best just to survive.

If that’s you. Go back to the truth that you are God’s honoured guest. God is the good host who loves to look after you. You don’t need to do anything more than receive God’s abundance. Meditate on that. And for the rest of us, who are not in that place right now – let’s look out for those in our community who need to receive hospitality and care and pray that they might experience God’s hospitality through us.

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I started off today seeking to convince you to embrace a spiritual practice. Of course for many of you this isn’t new at all – it’s a way of life. But there are so many people in our communities and lives are feeling the pressure of scarcity, insecurity, isolation. They feel like they’re in a world where they have to fight for themselves just to get by. Friends we have such good news. Jesus offers us what we profoundly need – abundance and belonging. He has shown such hospitality to us, let’s let it flow on to our church family, our neighbours, our community, in the name of Jesus.