Unreasonable Hospitality

Matthew 25:34-46

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’  “Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’  “And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’ 

As we get to know each other better over the course of time here, what you’re going to learn about me is that I’m a person who loves food. And not just eating it, although that is also true. But if there’s any hobby I spend most of my time on, it’s reading cookbooks, books about the culture surrounding food, and then trying new things in the kitchen. 

When it comes down to it, I really have two great loves when it comes to food. Bread and barbeque. I also really like homemade Italian food. I’m a sucker for a dark red tomato sauce and especially pizza, which really fits into the bread thing for me, but the two things I love the most are bread and barbeque. 

I’ve had a long fascination with bread, but it turned into somewhat of an obsession on Christmas about six years ago when Michelle got me the book called “Flour, water, salt, yeast” by a guy named Ken Forkish, who lives in Oregon and operates his own bakery. He details a process he learned from Lionel Poilane, who was a French baker and entrepreneur, and whose signature item was a 2-kilogram loaf of bread mixed and shaped entirely by hand. 

Unlike any cookbook I’ve ever read, I tore into this thing. There was something about the way Forkish wrote about the history of bread and grain that I really gelled with. On Christmas day in 2018, I made my first sourdough starter and it’s still in my fridge. I learned the process detailed in the cookbook and now we get to enjoy fresh bread on a pretty regular basis.

A few years before this, I had done some research on the importance of bread in the bible. And as you might know, there are some important stories in the bible revolving around bread and grain. I mean, Jesus even refers to himself at the “Bread of life” in John 6. 

Thinking about these stories while also mixing this bread together by hand…I don’t know. It seems weird saying it here in front of people, but it just felt like a special connection to the Lord. Because of the stories of how he’s provided for his people in times of despair by using grain and bread. It’s therapeutic, too. You can really work out some stress by making bread…

But here’s the thing about bread. Not only until you bake it, do you really experience the transformational nature of putting three simple ingredients together. 

That fresh-baked bread smell is heavenly. Especially when it’s a recipe that takes a long time to come together like a sourdough. Those smells come from that long fermentation process and it produces a taste you can’t get by doing quick breads. In my opinion, nothing else beats a fresh loaf of homemade sourdough. 

And that’s the thing that connects us to the food, and ultimately, the experience. We know what Thanksgiving smells like. We walk into rooms where delicious food is being prepared and I guarantee we all say some version of the exact same thing, “Man that smells good.”

There’s something about the smell that’s created. This is also true when we cook meat. It just does something to us. 

This is all part of the experience of going to a barbeque joint. I used to work at a place part-time in Cincinnati called Just Q’in. It’s a little bbq joint in the community of Walnut Hills. I was lucky enough to be the pitmaster in place of the owner once a week on Monday’s. The thing I loved the most was the smell. We used cherry and maple wood to smoke the meat at the restaurant and, let me tell you, there is something so magical about combining those two particular woods to smoke meat. 

And of course, not only did this smell permeate the entire restaurant, but the whole neighborhood. 

Of all the senses, I think smell is the one that evokes the strongest memories for me. And I truly believe this to be a gift from God and I think it connects us to Him in some unique ways. 

Just think of the ways God expresses his pleasure when it comes to burnt offerings. We often read that the animal sacrifice is a “pleasing aroma to the Lord.” It's the same thing in Exodus when God is giving Moses instructions for building the temple. Part of those instructions include a recipe for anointing oil and the incense to be burned at an altar. 

One thing is clear from all this: sweet-smelling smells calm us down, connect us to a moment in time, and prepare us for worship.

Now, I’m willing to bet one of two things happened when I was scrolling through the pictures of my food on the screen. 

Number one: your mouth started watering and you are thinking about hitting up Werner’s after church for lunch

Number two: as I was talking about the smells, you were able to correlate the smell you know with the picture that was on the screen

Like I said…this is a gift. And as we learned last week, gifts we receive from God are also meant to be given away. And what I’d like to do today is explore how we can do that

First things first. What is hospitality? 

The definition of this word has changed quite a bit from the days of Jesus. Today, I think most of us think of hotels, AirBNB’s, vacations, and the service we might receive at a restaurant when we think about hospitality. A lot of universities have hospitality majors that focus on the dining and vacation industry.

In the past I’ve been somewhat fascinated by the service aspect of this world and over the summer I read a book called “Unreasonable Hospitality.” It’s a book by a guy named Will Guidara and it explores the impact of providing an over-the-top customer service experience. Guidara is the co-owner of a restaurant in New York City called Eleven Madison Park, which is considered by some to be one of the best restaurants in the world. I guess it really depends on what you like, to be honest. But the book goes into great detail about how the restaurant puts a high focus on the customer experience – emphasizing the importance of creating an extraordinary, deeply personal experience for guests. And here’s the key argument. Guidara would say that true hospitality—whether in restaurants or any industry—is about making people feel seen, valued, and special.

And as I was reading through this book I couldn’t help but think, “Man, that sounds a lot like Jesus…”

(Change this) Now look, obviously fine dining establishments cater to a different part of the population than we find Jesus participating in. I mean Jesus is world famous for recruiting some ragamuffin’s to travel around with him preaching his message to those who are often living a marginalized life, or pushed to the side by society. 

And what that really does is make me wonder who those people might be amongst us today. Who needs to feel seen, valued, and special. 

I think Jesus clues us into this in the Sermon on the Mount in something called the Beatitudes. He says these things, “God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, God blesses those who mourn, God blesses those who are humble, God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, God blesses those who are merciful, God blesses those whose hearts are pure, God blesses those who work for peace, God blesses those who are persecuted for doing right.

And yes, I don’t think it’s a stretch at all to say that every one of us, at one point in our lives either in the past, present, or in the future, will or have fit into one of these categories. But the question we, as followers of Jesus, we really need to ask on the other side of our own reconciliation with our Creator, is “Who’s next?” 

We all have someone in our lives we know needs to hear the good news of the gospel message. If you know someone, you’re probably thinking about them right now. And that’s great! God is listening. Take a quick second and lift that person up in prayer!

If you don’t know someone, here’s an easy way to help you think through who Jesus might be calling you to.

It doesn’t happen very often, but occasionally, when you have more than one child, someone will think to ask you who the favorite one is. Now, almost all of us who are parents would say “I don’t have a favorite, I love all of my kids equally” and the kids always have their own opinions about who the favorite is. And it’s funny how quickly it comes out of their mouths sometimes and you just know they’ve sat around thinking about it before. But, for me, when I get asked this question, I say something I heard one of my mentors say to me a long time ago, “My favorite is the one who is hurting the most.” 

And that’s true. Routinely, that’s the kid that needs the most parental attention. That doesn’t change when we think about who needs to experience the hospitality of Christ. The hungry, the thirsty, the outcasts, the sick, those in prison. These examples are not only literal, but figurative. People are out there looking for purpose and we have a unique opportunity to give them the truth. Which is that God loves them so much he sent his son as a sacrifice to atone for the sins of all mankind. Making a way for us back to the father, to be able to experience all of His glory, both on earth and in heaven. 

Branden Story

For the last five years, I’ve been working as a finish carpenter, amongst my many other job responsibilities, for a small home remodeling company. Sometime in the last year, I was in a conversation with a co-worker and good friend of mine, who was kind of venting about an argument that blew up with one of our younger co-workers. He was expressing to me how concerning he thought it was that people in the generation behind us, and we would probably consider ourselves Millennials, but really how people are just throwing their trust behind a wide array of deceivers. 

And all of this is happening exclusively in online communities. There are people out there who are working really hard to stoke fear into the minds of others and then use those platforms to lead people down a path of negativity and hyper aggression towards others. This is when for whatever reason, the Christians among them decide the best way to get their message out there to people is to start participating in the culture wars. We start to hear about who can be in and who’s going to be out. And we start to narrow our pool of friends to be only people we agree with in totality. And I say we because I was there at one point. I just get so frustrated with this stuff, man, because we were made to be so much more than this. I don’t know if it’s as widespread as some would have you believe, but it is out there. This is not like an isolated thing. Here’s the deal, this friend of mine isn’t even a Christian. He would describe himself as a lapsed Christian, a person who has become disenfranchised with the way the church has responded to people in need.   

All of this to make this point: People are out there are looking for a place to belong and more and more they are not finding what they’re looking for in the church. 

Here’s some good news: This is the kind of thing that fuels me because if you’ve ever been greeted at the doorstep of despair by someone choosing love over hate, compassion over indifference, faith over fear…then you know what it’s like to be thirsty and given a drink. To be a stranger who is offered hospitality. To be Hungry and given something to eat. Jesus is asking us to feed his people. And we know once you’ve eaten at the Lord’s table, there’s nothing that tastes better. 

Now I started this whole thing talking about food smells and how I think that’s a gift that should be given away. And now to circle back to that, I’d like to offer up a few challenges

Here’s the first one: I’ve spent the last four weeks up here talking about some stuff I hope is starting to merge together for us. If we are to be radically generous people shaped by prayer, then the only reasonable conclusion is to practice an unreasonable hospitality by inviting people into our homes and caring for them in a way that shows them they are seen, valued, and special. 

Are you a bbq guy? Is there one thing you can cook really well and you want to share that thing with others. 

Aside from Jesus teaching us to feed his people, here’s the thing that I think makes this special. Something that separates us from the animals in God’s creation is our ability to cook our food. There are other species that might have to do some sort of preparation in order to eat food, but no other living thing cooks food the way we do.

Colossians 3:12-17 Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony. And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful.

Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives. Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives. Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts. And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.