Who’s Coming to Dinner?

Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Luke 14:1, 7-14

Sunday, September 2, 2007
by Dr. Charles Parker

 

I.  Introduction

 

            Many of you are familiar with a line wonderful of heavy wooden children’s toys called “Community Playthings.”  We have a number of them in our Sunday School Rooms.  You may not know that they are made by a religious community called the Bruderhof that has three intentional communities that are villages where people live together, have their dinners as a community, and work together in the workshops that produce these toys.

 

            Many years ago, I had the opportunity to spend a week with the community, living with one of the families and working in the workshop.  Every morning and every afternoon, the whole workshop would all take a break for tea together.  I had been visiting with one of the community elders during morning tea and returned to the workshop just as “tea break” was ending; but when I arrived, they all sat back down to join me in a cup of tea.  Engrained as I am in that good Protestant work ethic, I waved them off and said, “You all have had tea; we can work.”  And one of the men replied, “Yes, but we haven’t had tea with you.”

 

            And in that moment, I had this wonderful epiphany of what hospitality looks like.  On some level, it was a tiny simply thing: an acknowledgement that fellowship was the priory for them.  But what a profound gift to me – a stranger – to be welcomed as part of their family.

 

II. Biblical Hospitality

 

            Last week, we began exploring this idea of hospitality, when we looked at Jesus inviting into the heart of the community, the disabled woman who had been at its margins for 18 years.   Our lectionary texts from Hebrews and Luke this morning pick up this theme in a very explicit way.

 

            The term “hospitality” has a very different connotation today than it did when these books were written.  Today it tends to refer to being polite and welcoming to guests.  In the ancient near East, hospitality was a sacred obligation governed by very strict rules.  In ancient Greece, Zeus – the king of the gods – was the protector of the laws of hospitality.  And if you read any Greek mythology, you will remember stories of Zeus disguised as a wanderer, rewarding those who upheld the sacred duties of hospitality and punishing those who failed to do so. 

 

            This same idea is at the heart of our passage from the Hebrews today, the last reading from Hebrews in this cycle of the lectionary.  In it, the writer of Hebrews reminds us that our mutual love is at the heart of who we are as the Christian community; but that we need to be careful not to prescribe the scope of our love too narrowly:

 

Let mutual love continue. 2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.

 

            Hospitality is at the heart of Scriptural ethics.  The children of Abraham were wanderers from their beginning.  Israel’s most formative years were their sojourn in Egypt and their 40 years of wandering in the desert.  So over and over again, throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, the Israelites are reminded to care for the sojourners in their land because, as Scripture says, “you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.”  And when you’re wandering in the desert, your opportunities for food and water are few and far between.  If you happen upon an oasis, getting water was literally a matter of life and death.  So if you happened to be the one who had pitched his tent at the oasis, you had an absolutely sacred obligation to extend hospitality to the stranger.

 

            And just as Abraham unknowingly welcomed God, who came disguised as a wanderer to his tent at the oaks of Mamre; the writer of Hebrews reminds us that when we extend our love to strangers we may be entertaining angels.  Do you see what that does to the mindset that we bring to our hospitality?  If we really think that this stranger at our door could be a messenger from God, hospitality stops being an obligation and starts being an opportunity for blessing.  If we might be welcoming angels in through our doors, we’re going to have a sense of joyful expectation every time we greet a stranger.  And that attitude, that mindset, opens up room for God’s Spirit to move regardless of who the stranger is.

 

            Jesus picks up this theme in today’s conversation with the Pharisees about table fellowship.  In the passage, Jesus observes the people at the dinner jockeying for the good spots at the table, and he gives them what sounds like some good advice on how to avoid social embarrassment: don’t take the prestigious seats, because you may get downgraded in front of everyone, and that’s going to be embarrassing.  That’s good advice.  But here’s the key to the passage: Luke calls this a “parable,” which means it’s not just good social advice; it’s about the Kingdom of God.  It’s Kingdom advice.  [I’ll tell you a little secret: whenever Luke tells a story about people eating together, it’s almost always really about the Kingdom of God.  That’s because one of the central images of the Kingdom of God is of God’s children gathered for a great celebratory meal.  Biblical scholars call this the “messianic banquet.”] 

 

            So when Luke tells us that this is a parable, he is saying that Jesus is warning us that our place in the Kingdom may not be quite as we imagine it and that some other folks – the poor and the marginalized – may be the ones at the seats of honor.  So that when we are planning a feast, we might want to expand our vision a bit and not simply invite the people that we expect to bless us – our family and friends – but people that we don’t expect to get blessings from: the poor and the marginalized and the strangers.  It’s when we start to broaden our perspective that we start to open ourselves to some pretty amazing opportunities that the Spirit brings to us. 

 

III. Inviting the Stranger

 

            Most of you know that I spent a number of years as the Director of Bread for the City.  Bread was founded on the corner of 14th and N Streets, at a point in our city’s history when that Logan Circle neighborhood was not quite as trendy as it is now.  The row house where we spent our first 15 years was owned by Luther Place Church.  Luther Place was a congregation that had been struggling in the 1960’s as the neighborhood changed and the predominantly white congregants moved out to the suburbs.  The 1968 riots pretty much put a nail in the coffin of the church, and it was keeping its doors open by renting out the buildings behind the church. 

 

            Then a powerful pastor by the name of John Steinbruck challenged the congregation with a vision of what it would look like to offer this Biblical model of hospitality to the neighborhood around them.  And they took on for themselves the mission of creating what they called an “urban oasis,” where hungry and weary wanderers could find a place of rest and replenishment.  And they used this block of buildings behind the church – that had been a primary source of income for the church -- as a seedbed for ministries that would reach out into the neighborhood.  Over the years, an amazing number of ministries were give birth to on that block: including Bread for the City, Zacchaeus Soup Kitchen, Zacchaeus Free Clinic, the Community for Creative Non-Violence, D.C. Hotline, Debra’s Place, the Lutheran Volunteer Corps, and eventually a whole network of women’s shelters called N Street Village.

 

            And, of course, as the church became a transforming presence in the neighborhood – an urban oasis -- the other miracle that happened was that this tiny dying congregation got a new lease on life.  People from across the metro area started coming to the church, and it’s now a vital, thriving faith community.  When we become a blessing to strangers, we find that we are blessed as well.  Henry Nouwen writes that “the Biblical stories help us to realize not just that hospitality is an important virtue, but even more that in the context of hospitality guest and host can reveal their most precious gifts and bring new life to each other.” 

 

            How do we start to welcome the strangers?  I want to suggest that we have to start by creating a “culture of hospitality” in our personal lives and here in our church.  As I have spent time with you in small groups this summer, I have heard story after story about the meals that the church used to sponsor after the 11:15 service and the wonderful way in which that built community here.  I have heard you talk about the UMW preparing wonderful coffee hours where people lingered and talked. 

 

            We’re not doing those things any more, and I wonder why.  It’s hard for us to reach out in hospitality to the strangers that come to us, if we’re not practicing that among ourselves.  I’d like to see us bring a little intentionality to the process of creating a culture of hospitality, in which we don’t just gather to get things done, but simply to celebrate our fellowship.  I want us to be in prayer about this and see if any of you feel a call to work on this issue for us.

 

            And as we learn to do that ourselves, we can also explore how to do that with people we don’t know as well.  We have opportunities to do that all around us.  Mark Shaffer, the UM Chaplain across the street at AU would like to have a group from our church bring a home-cooked meal over for the students some Sunday night that we would share with the students after their Sunday evening worship.  And please pay attention: he wants us to share a meal – to be in fellowship – with the students.  There’s a difference between taking food to someone and sharing a meal with them.  I’ve taken a meal down the road to the folks at St. Luke’s shelter before, and the expectation is that when people bring a meal that they stay and share it with the residents.  We need to do that here; sharing a meal is at the heart of all hospitality.

           

            And I’d like to see us start looking at what it means for our church to be hospitable to our broader community.  Luther Place housed Bread for the City on the block for 15 years without a dime of rent every changing hands.  It was part of their ministry.  Foundry UMC doesn’t charge outside groups for using their space, they simply build those costs into their budget and ask for a free-will offering.  We have perhaps the most beautiful church in our Conference, and when ministries around our city, or around our UM connection are looking for a place to meet, I want them to think of us as a place of hospitality, a place that will welcome them as partners in ministry.  When our neighbors want a quiet place to pray on September 11th this year or any other day that they may feel in need of some prayer, I want them to think about Metropolitan as the place they can go to spend some time with God.

 

IV. Conclusion

 

            Some of you know that my house has a bit of a revolving door, so that we often have family or other folks staying for short or long periods with us.  And my daughter regularly asks, “Who’s coming to dinner tonight?”  And in her question, there is always a note of hope and anticipation that something unexpected is just around the corner.  That note of anticipation is at the heart of our Biblical witness: the sense that whenever a stranger comes through our doors, it just might be an angel.  And when we bring that expectation, we can be certain that something miraculous will happen.  Amen.