George is away on vacation during August. In his absence, Suzanne Sykes has sent a series of 4 sermons prepared on the theme of Paradise. The third one is below.
July 27, 2008
Kanata United Church
Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost
Exodus 16:9-15
Read the passage: The Message or The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
Psalm 23
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1 Peter 4:8-11
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The Rev. Suzanne Sykes
In our exploration of Paradise over the past two weeks we have looked at how God’s creation of this world was seen by our forebears in the faith as paradise. The creation stories in Genesis describe the beauty and abundance of God’s world as a garden - the garden of Eden - our original paradise home. And Isaiah has a vision of paradise as a peaceable kingdom where all creatures live in abundance and harmony together. That vision of harmony leads us to the concept of friendship - harmony among strangers. In the ancient world it was hard to meet people outside of family, clan and work. In that world Christians become friends. They extend the idea of friendship to everyone - regardless of class, status, gender or honour. As friends of Christ they are friends to the world.
The means to treating all as friends is hospitality. Our passages this morning are about hospitality.
Hospitality was crucial in the world of the bible. In a desert environment - hot days, cold nights, where food and water are scarce, hospitality literally meant the difference between life and death. Even today among the Bedouin, offering hospitality to travellers is a requirement of tribal life. Our texts this morning illustrate the place and importance of hospitality in our faith.
The story of the Exodus is a story about God’s hospitality to God’s people. Lost, tired, and hungry, the children of Israel are starting to lose hope in a promised land. God feeds them with quail and manna. God offers them hospitality in the desert. An act that more than restores their bodies - it restores their spirits.
Jesus feeds the poor and hungry seekers who come to the wilderness to hear him and his message of good news with a few loaves and fishes. He re-enacts Gods gracious hospitality with generous abundance of his own.
Meeting people where they are and satisfying their physical needs is a mark of the faith. Feeding the multitude with bread is a visual symbol that's not lost on the onlookers. Bread rations were regular features of the Roman occupation and were designed to pacify and placate the mobs. But Jesus’ gift of bread to the crowd reminds everyone that it is by God’s gracious goodness we are fed and cared for. It is through God’s hospitality that we have life.
The letter of Peter tells us that hospitality was an ancient gift and practise of the church. In fact the church stood out from other organizations and groups because of its practise of hospitality. He instructs his congregation to be hospitable to one another without complaining. They are to act generously toward one another. Since whatever they have is though God’s grace, they are to act as stewards not owners of it.
Peter makes several interesting connections in this passage which help to illuminate the nature of hospitality. He connects love for one another with behaving generously toward one another. Hospitality is not based on liking one another. It is based in love - in sharing and demonstrating the love of Christ and the generosity of God toward one another.
Peter goes on to connect speaking with love and hospitality. Christians are to speak to one another and to all people as if they are speaking for God. That is a tall order. It connects generous actions with generous speech. Just as God loves and cares for the world and all its creatures, so are we Christians charged with the same task. It is a mark of Christians that they practice the generous abundance and peace of God’s paradise and that they do so in the name of God.
Hospitality which characterized the original paradise in the garden of Eden is also what characterized the early church. Hospitality is what made the early church distinct. It was through caring for one another, and caring for the poor, the widowed, the orphaned, the sick - all the outsiders of the community - that the church stood out. Christians were known for their hospitality to strangers. It was through hospitality that they made friendship real. It was hospitality that made the early church into a little taste of God’s paradise.
In her book, “Christianity for the Rest of Us,” Diana Butler Bass examines the ten Christian practises that characterize mainline churches that are flourishing. The first on her list is hospitality. She describes contemporary life as nomadic. Old patterns of established families and villages have broken down - most of us now live in communities of strangers. It is a privilege in our contemporary world to know our neighbours by name; to know something about them.
Henri Nouwen describes contemporary society as,
a world of strangers, estranged from their own past, culture and country, from
their neighbours friends and family, from their deepest self and their God.
In such a world, hospitality is just as crucial to the wellbeing of others as it was in the first century.
Hospitality is more than welcome programs designed to get more people into church. It is more than a Christianized version of the Welcome Wagon. Nouwen says that real hospitality opens the possibility of free space where strangers become friends.
Think of the ways you host one another and your community.
Offering a space and leaders and servers for camp Awesome is a mark of genuine hospitality. I like it that Naomi stands at the front door and greets people at the end of worship - that is unique in my church experience. And lemonade is always welcome on a hot Sunday. Lemonade and conversation. You have welcomed me in these weeks that I am with you. And I know you will welcome Angela and show her the grace of hospitality. You are a congregation that has the gift of hospitality. It is a strength and spiritual gift that you give back to God and the world.
When we open our doors to others, when we welcome them, when we take the time to find out the needs of people in our neighbourhoods and then take the trouble to meet those needs, we offer real hospitality.
Real hospitality greets the other in the name of God. Real hospitality opens itself and takes a risk that the encounter will change us both. That is the free space that Nouwen speaks of - the space of God, the space of paradise where all of us are transformed.
Amen
c. 2008, Suzanne E. Sykes
