Sermon - Radical Hospitality: Reaching Out-Welcoming In

Luke 10:25-37

Radical Hospitality: Reaching Out-Welcoming In

James Sledge                                                                                          May 5, 2013

Many of you know I had a previous career as a pilot. In the infancy of that career, I found a weekend job flying skydivers at a parachute center, prompting me to take up the sport myself. Contrary to some stereotypes, skydivers are not oblivious to risk. Most are quite cautious about equipment and who to let on a jump with them. A newcomer would have to prove his or her salt by occupying the simplest and easiest position in the smallest of free-fall formations before being allowed on larger or more difficult ones.

Free-fall formations can sometimes be hard to keep stable, and you don’t want people who don’t know what they’re doing running into them or knocking them askew. Because of this concern for stability, there’s a protocol for how to enter a formation when you arrive at it. Imagine a group of children holding hands in a circle on the playground, and a new child wants to join. In the skydiving version, the new person has to grab the people’s wrists where she wants to join the circle and try to pull their hands apart. Only when the other jumpers feel this tug, will they release their grips and allow that person in. We called it “breaking grips.”

This requirement literally to break into the formation protected it and kept it from flying apart if people had let go of their grips prematurely without insuring that the new arrival could be trusted to help hold the thing together. For those on the free-fall, this is a natural form of group self-preservation. And I’ve seen a similar practice in church congregations.

It’s often more prevalent in very small congregations that function almost like families, but it can occur to lesser degrees in large congregations. When a new person arrives, he may get a real sense of being an outsider, looking into a circle where everyone has a strong grip on the person next to them. Very often, it is a bit like a childhood game of Red Rover even to get noticed, much less to become a full-fledged part of the congregation.

Such behavior is perfectly normal. The new person could cause problems, could destabilize things. Best to keep them at arm’s length for a bit. Quite reasonable. Problem is, Jesus is utterly unconventional, even unreasonable about such things. He is forever crossing boundaries he should not, reaching out to people who are unclean, uncouth, sinners, and even criminals. No struggle to get into the circle here. Jesus reaches out and welcomes them in.

This radical notion of community is on display in the famous parable of the Good Samaritan. Like a lot of biblical texts, it has lost its shock value over years of telling and retelling. There are Good Samaritan hospitals and laws because the term has become a synonym for someone who helps a person in need. But for this parable’s original audience, the words “good” and “Samaritan” would never have been spoken together. Samaritans were despised outsiders of questionable religious and ethnic heritage.

The story Jesus tells is about much more than helping people. It is about exploding the limits humans put on community. The parable responds to a question about the law. The questioner knows well the law’s requirement to love God and love neighbor. But just who is my neighbor? Who gets the love and support that I and the community have to offer?

Jesus answers these questions with what may be his most famous parable. He does not give a direct answer, though. Instead he tells a story about a despised outsider who ignores boundaries of race, nationality, religion, and ethnicity to reach out to another who is hurting, offering help in extravagant abundance. To the question “Who is my neighbor?” Who should we let in? Jesus points to this outsider and says, Be like him. Be a neighbor. Reach out.”

I think it is this sort of radical focus and attention on the other that Robert Schnase is talking about when he writes about Radical Hospitality, the first of his five practices of vital, fruitful congregations. We often think of hospitality as “being friendly,” but he is talking about something much bigger, about seeing every person we encounter as someone who may need us to extend God’s love and care and community to him or her.

Henry Brinton, the pastor at Fairfax Presbyterian, writes of something similar in his book on Christian hospitality. He speaks of it as seeing ourselves as hosts. “Unfortunately,” he writes, “we often go to church with the attitude of a guest, not a host— we are concerned more about ourselves than about those who visit with us. Consider this mind-set: as guests, we are focused primarily on having a good time. We enter the church, and look for our friends… We sit where we want to sit, with little regard to making room for others. We listen to the church’s music, and decide whether we enjoy it or not. As guests, we are basically consumers, concerned about our personal comfort. The experience is all about us.

“How different it is to be a host. In this role, we are focused primarily on serving others. We greet our guests at the door and look to connect them with people they would enjoy… We sit in places that will leave room for others and help them to feel comfortable. We pick church music that our guests would like, even if it is not our favorite. As hosts, we are concerned about the comfort of others. The experience is all about them.”[1]

One of the wonderful ways that FCPC is living into being a host, into radical hospitality, is with our Welcome Table where we offer a free meal and other assistance to people in need. Everything about it is conceived and designed with the other in mind. The experience is all about them rather than us. If you’ve not ever participated in it, you should give it a try some time. You don’t need to be a member here. And not only is this a great ministry, but it is a great piece of Christian formation, a practice that shapes people into what Jesus calls us to be when he tells his parable. “Be a neighbor. Reach out.”

And the more this sort of radical hospitality infuses all that we do at FCPC, then the more the radical, extravagant, life-changing love of God in Christ is embodied by us and shared with everyone we meet and touch, with everyone who steps on this property, We become the living body of Christ, reaching out to let people know, God loves you;  God welcomes you; God embraces you.

Thanks be to God!

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[1] Brinton, Henry G. (2012-06-25). The Welcoming Congregation: Roots and Fruits of Christian Hospitality (Kindle Locations 813-829). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.