Maybe you’ve heard the humorous story about the pastor who was having difficulty with his assigned parking space on the church parking lot. People parked in his spot whenever they pleased, even though there was a sign that clearly said, “This space reserved.” He thought the meaning of the sign needed to be clearer, so a new one read, “Reserved for Pastor Only.” Still people ignored it and parked in his space whenever they felt like it. “Maybe the sign should be more forceful,” he thought. So he devised a more intimidating one, which announced, “Thou shalt not park here.” That sign didn’t make any difference either. Finally, he hit upon the words that worked; in fact, nobody ever took his parking place again. The sign read, “The one who parks here preaches the sermon on Sunday morning!”
I tell you this story because most of you would probably blanch at the prospect of such a ministry: preaching the sermon on a Sunday morning. You would probably feel uncomfortable about doing that because of a lack of experience and training. “That’s only for professionals, for someone like John Reeves who has gone through special training and has lots of experience. That’s not for me!”
No? What about leading the young people to faith in God? What about working in the ministry of summer camps or Vacation Bible School? What about becoming a missionary so as to serve God in a completely different part of the world? What about joining the Choir?
All of these things, you see, are ministries. They aren’t a capital-letter MINISTRY, but they are all part of the way God’s kingdom works in practical terms.
We know there are many variety of ministries in which we can be involved. Which one do you think might be yours? How do you choose one?
Well friends, all of these ministries are best practiced when we use the spiritual gifts we received when we came to a mature understanding of God’s call on our lives – when we received the spiritual gifts God wanted us to have and use. Saint Paul once made a list of these gifts when he talked about church people being involved in such things as preaching, teaching, administering, caretaking, praying, or even arbitrating.
The Gospel reading today sets before us a vision of a common ministry that all of us can be a part of. It’s the ministry of hospitality.
So let’s look at what this means in practical terms.
Let’s begin by remembering that a Christian does not set oneself above other people. When we are together as the people of God, a Christian ought to give place to one another. We ought to be hospitable. The reading from Proverbs says, “Do not exalt yourself … do not claim a place….” In the Second Reading, the writer to the Hebrews encourages us, “Keep on loving each other as brothers. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.”
Finally, today’s Gospel reading brings us the parable about the wedding guests. Jesus warns us that if you immediately claim a place of honor at such a gathering, you had better be prepared to experience some embarrassment when a more honored guest is ushered to your seat, and you are forced to take one of the undesirable spaces at the back of the hall. Then Jesus concludes by saying that if you want to be truly hospitable when you give a luncheon or dinner, you ought not invite your same old friends all the time but rather people who could never repay you, like the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.
When I was a younger man just entering my teen years, I was deeply involved with the Boy Scouts. In those (prehistoric) days, you entered the organization as a Wolf Cub at the age of 8 and discovered the stories of Mowgli and his animal friends that Robert Service wrote about in the The Jungle Book.
But today’s message is not about Mowgli – it’s about some of the other things that came from being a Wolf Cub in a modern, Western, more civilized way <G>. One of those other things, you see, was to be prepared, and to do a good turn for someone every day. We were taught at an early age to be hospitable – to help someone, in some way, every day.
As the years moved on, I discovered that first lesson in hospitality matured. Not long after, it almost became a game where I tried to do something for a person who had no possibility of ever repaying – and wound up in my adult years where doing some one a good turn only counted if they never discovered who did it. <G>
So as we read Luke, we see that Jesus is beginning to build a case here for the truth that there are no throwaways when it comes to human beings. Everybody is worthy of your attention and greeting. There is no one who doesn’t deserve your hospitality and mine. In fact, Jesus suggests that you are taking a real chance when you slight certain people; you see, they might just turn out to be angels you did not know about!
On the surface, this is a story about good social manners at a wedding. But its deeper purpose is to remind you and me in the family of God about our calling to be genuinely hospitable to one another. In the background looms the even brighter message about
God’s hospitality to each and every one of us (sinners that we are!), that God showed us in the life and ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So, what is this ministry of hospitality in a modern sense? What does it look like?
To help us, let’s look more closely at this word “hospitality.” Before we look at its literal meaning, we need to point out that there is a difference between hospitality and entertaining. A psychologist put it this way: Hospitality must not be confused with entertaining … Entertaining says, “Come to my house; admire my possessions; see the beautiful way the table is laid. Enjoy the scrumptious food that has taken me all week to prepare. See how perfectly neat and tidy and clean my house is. Come and listen to my views and thoughts.”
Entertaining is hard, stressful, because through it we perpetuate the myth that we are perfect. We put up a facade saying that we manage our lives perfectly; that our children are perfectly disciplined and obedient and that pretty much everything is firmly under control. It’s like putting on your youngest, best-tanned, smartest look so people will know what’s what.
Hospitality is totally different. Hospitality does not seek to portray a “perfect” image; people can love us in our weakness, relax with us, and enjoy our company. Hospitality is Comfort Food, where entertainment looks good but remains shallow.
An even deeper meaning of the word “hospitality” emerges when we realize that this word comes from the same source as two similar sounding words, “hospice” and “hospital.” The word “hospice” means “shelter” and the word “hospital” means “a place of healing.” In this light, we can examine some of our own words and actions toward other people. Do my words and actions provide a shelter for other persons when they are around me? Or, do my words and deeds promote a sense of healing for other people when they are around me? How hospitable am I, really?
For a moment, let us push the word “hospice” to its limits. We are aware that today the word “hospice” usually refers to a special kind of care or place meant for people who are dying. People with terminal illnesses receive hospice care.
In the church we need to remember, as we deal with one another — with fellow church members, with visitors and new faces from the community — that there may be some who are dying! They are dying on the inside; for whatever reason, life is currently treating them harshly and they feel broken. Some are dying just to know someone; they have few, if any, friends. Some are dying to feel connected; they don’t feel like they belong to the human race anymore. Some are dying to be affirmed; they are weary from feeling that they amount to nothing. Some are dying to be touched, even if only by eye
contact, or by some word of acknowledgment from another human being. All these people need hospice car. They need a place of shelter, no matter how fleeting, where they can catch another breath of air to sustain them, lest they die.
They need the hospitality of the church.
There was a minister who had a favorite slogan that he often repeated in his sermons. He said, “The church is not like a country club; it’s more like a hospital.” That’s what Jesus was saying here when he gave us the direction, “… do not invite your friends … or your rich neighbors … invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind….” You and I are not in the church to impress one another or to win power struggles; we are here to minister to one another in our weaknesses. We are here to be hospitable.
Now nobody can specifically tell you what your ministry of hospitality should consist of; we should never over-define such a highly personal ministry. But I think we can all agree that this is what Luke is saying – that we each of us should take a moment to define that ministry for ourselves.
Too hard, you say? Maybe someone else will do it, you think?
To encourage us about this, let’s look at the ministry of Jesus. In a way, we could call Christ’s ministry to you and me a ministry of hospitality. For that is exactly what he showed us.
In his letter to the Romans, Paul said it this way, “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Think of it, “yet sinners….” God did not withhold hospitality from us until we straightened ourselves out. He met us where we were, how we were and when we were living our lives as sinners, Christ was hospitable toward us by going to the cross and dying for us, in our place. Noticing our sin, Christ did not refuse to acknowledge us. He did not stop talking to us. He did not withhold information from us about God’s love. No, in Christ, God made eye contact with us. The Word became flesh. The face of God now faced us. Looking into that face we felt sheltered and healed. Looking at his cross we know we are healed — cleansed and forgiven in the blood of Jesus Christ. The cross enables us to follow the divine model of hospitality.
Again the apostle Paul encourages us toward such Christ-like hospitality when he writes to the Philippians, “Let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus … who humbled himself and took on the form of a servant and … became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” In this great passage, Paul reminds us how Jesus fulfilled the lesson of the parable we are considering in this Gospel reading. Christ, who is the first, became the last, so that we, the last, might be first, having all our sins washed away by his obedience at the cross.
So now, empowered by the cross of Christ, we each have our own ministry of hospitality. This ministry is more than showing good manners in public. It is a redemptive ministry, like Christ’s, by which we can bring a sense of healing and genuine acceptance to those around us.
And we should get specific about our own ministry of hospitality. Perhaps, for instance, you have the gift of gab — the ability to talk at ease with just about anyone. You could be an effective greeter to the strangers who come for the first time – just to find out what’s going on. You could be that little spark of light to some of the older ones too – the ones to whom no one else seems to speak or give notice.
What about food? Folks, I really do not have anything to say to you, the people of this church about the hospitable ministry of food! All you have to do is see what happens to the community once a month when Union church cooks! Talk about hospitality! <G>
Of course, it’s not about the food. Nor is it about the lovely conversations and the establishment and deepening of our relationships. There’s something deeper going on when we exercise the gift of hospitality – and it’s where people come to know that God loves them and cares for them, too.
In the end, Christian hospitality having begun with a hello or a plate of food finally needs to involve some word of witness to God’s love in Christ. This is another way of saying that Christian hospitality ultimately involves evangelism: speaking God’s good word of love to another human soul. And it raises the work of God’s people beyond simple belonging to a club to meet God’s purpose for the world.
What could be more hospitable than that? What could possibly be more hospitable than speaking a healing word to a broken soul – to remind someone of the love of God in the cross of Jesus Christ?
With this singular message on the lips of its members, the church does indeed rise above mere country club status and reveals itself as the glorious household of faith. As the old hymn puts it, “If you cannot speak like angels, if you cannot preach like Paul, you can show the love of Jesus in what you do for all.”
God bless your ministry — the ministry of hospitality! “
Rev. Greg Dickson