This is the text of the message I prepared for a guest preaching spot at Horsham Uniting Church for Sunday 28th August 2022, the twelfth Sunday in Pentecost.
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14
In a culture of honour, hospitality is the greatest and most counter-cultural virtue. In today’s story from the Gospel Traditions Jesus says to hosts that they should invite those who cannot repay them with an invitation, and he says to guests that it is best to sit at the foot of the table and allow yourselves to be moved higher if that is appropriate. In both cases Jesus calls people to honest reflection upon self, asking whose glory you seek when you visit or host members of the religious community. It’s a great passage to preach from on a communion Sunday.
“The sharing of food is a barometer of social relationships,” says one of the commentators whose work I read in preparation for today. Jesus’ questions are not only about where to sit yourself and seat others at the shared table, they also go to questions of who even gets to share the table and with whom you will eat. Who doesn’t get an invitation to your table at all? To whom will you RSVP “yeah nah and you know what actually, how very dare you for even thinking I’d walk within half a mile of such a scabby soot-hole like your place, let alone eat there”? Remember that in Luke 14:1 we are told that Jesus’ host is a leader of the Pharisees, so the remarks are even more inappropriate than me using the phrase “such a scabby soot-hole” in a sermon. He’s really laying into the whole table of poseurs, and there’s shades of Peter at the house of Cornelius and Peter at the Last Supper here too, not that Peter knows that yet.
Let mutual love continue says the writer of Hebrews 13:1, keep on loving one another as Christians is another way of putting it. This sounds more like the behaviour we’d expect from people who love God and who acknowledge their need for grace. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers we read in Hebrews 13:2, and okay going on to suggest that the sooty scab-face at the door might actually be an angel undercover, but that isn’t really the point. What if the sooty scab-face isn’t an angel, and this isn’t a test, and that one created in the image and likeness of God really needs a meal, and a bath, and some ointment, and a clean bed? As someone who has been both scabby or sooty at times, sometimes both at once, and who spent a short period “sleeping rough homeless”, but who has never been an angel, I’d rather that Christians were just hospitable. After all, that is what Jesus said in Luke 14. Nonetheless, make use of every opportunity to be kind: as I reminded the Serviceton people three weeks ago, if Jesus comes back this arvo to Rapture you you’d rather be caught with the beggar eating at your table than with the beggar shivering outside your gate.
Think of the prisoners we read in Hebrews 13:3; think of those being [persecuted and] tortured. I’ve never been tortured, although I have been alone and in great suffering in hospital. I have been in prison, I worked At HMP The Mount in Bovingdon in Hertfordshire for eighteen months; and even though I always had keys and a radio with me, and I was allowed out at the end of every shift, I didn’t like it much. I mean, it was a great job, but I never want to go to gaol. Given the choice I’d rather be a gaoler than a prisoner, and I have seen first-hand the joy when a letter or a visitor comes for an inmate.
Be content with your partner and your income, trust in The LORD who will never leave you or forsake you says Hebrews 13:4-5; even if you do end up in a Care and Separation Unit (solitary cells), or in ICU, know that God is your comfort, your hope, and your defence. Hold to what you know of The LORD’s own character and what you have heard preached and modelled by the church: Jesus is trustworthy and consistent; he is always a safe place to rely. Therefore says Hebrews 13:15-16 let us continue to worship our wonderful God and continue in the next breath to live out the character of Jesus while we live and breathe. You are allowed to drop the rituals if you are doing so to bring gospel hope and mutual love into the world; in fact if you can bring the story of Jesus to a world that hasn’t heard it, and the practical work of hospitality and compassion to a world that hasn’t had it, then you should leave the rituals well alone and focus on the worship and welfare.
That last sentence might seem a little odd, maybe it’s what you’ve been longing to hear, maybe you are glad that I’m only here this once and you can get back to proper theology when Rev Frank comes back and I go away to Kaniva again. Do not neglect the work of generosity is a better translation of share what you have in Hebrews 13:16, but should we really neglect the work of rituals so as to spend time being generous instead? If one of you has a child, or an ox that has fallen into a well will you not immediately pull it out on a sabbath day asks Jesus in Luke 14:5. The principle here is not that social-justice trumps worship, or that becoming “a real Christian” is about becoming less religious, but that the practice of honour for God should always mirror the character of God. God does not want your eyes shut and your hands aloft in worship when the person within arms reach is dying of cold or hunger or loneliness. Imagine if Jesus had stayed in Heaven glorifying The Father and being worshipped by the Host of Angel Armies while two thieves died anonymously one Friday in Jerusalem, and had never shown up in Bethlehem, let alone Gethsemane. Since it is in the nature and character of God to intervene and to rescue, how can it not be in the role description of disciples and worshippers in spirit and in truth to do the same? It is in our role description, and whilst we should gather as community for worship and fellowship (the first and great commandment) we must not neglect the care of souls and the neighbours they invest (the second commandment which is like the first).
I’m not sure whether it’s irony or serendipity, or even pure coincidence, (it’s probably not coincidence), that the man Jesus heals on the sabbath is experiencing oedema. See, it tells us in The Good News Bible in Luke 14:4 that his legs and arms were swollen; less helpfully in the New Revised Standard Version we are told that he had dropsy. What is wrong with this man? Figuratively speaking, he is too full. He is swollen with an excess of fluid, and somewhat ironically this causes him to be excessively thirsty, at least according to the commentaries I read this week (and several of them say the same). This man is like a living parable for greed; so full of fluid that he looks like an over-inflated wineskin bursting at the seams. He is in pain and he has trouble moving, and he needs a good draining. But what does he crave: a good drink! Of course this man is not actually greedy, he is very sick, and in his sickness and his desperation to be well he is prepared to find out where Jesus is, (even on the sabbath), and upon finding that Jesus is in a leading Pharisee’s house, (even on the sabbath), he goes there. And he is healed, literally and figuratively drained of the excess, and he goes away well. And what is Jesus’ moral of the story for the people around the table? Well there’s two:
One; it’s okay to seek good on the Sabbath. It is good even to ask for the work of healing by yourself doing the work of seeking God in your desperation and hope and trust. Compassion always trumps tradition, kindness overrules doctrine.
Two; (and here’s the good one); don’t be so full of yourself! Sit at the far end of the table. Invite people who shouldn’t even be allowed into your posh dining room, let alone the far end of the table, and seat them in the velvet chairs right next to you and your wife. Let all of your puffed-up be drained out, because it’s actually an illness and you are not well.
From both of today’s stories we hear a very strong push toward not only hospitality but compassion. In Hebrews 13:1 the message is about family love, and in Hebrews 13:2 the message is about love for strangers. The Greek words used are different (philadelphia and philoxenia) but they both mean “love” or “love of” (philia). The message is practical, and it is heart-warming. It is gut-wrenching, and it is potentially dangerous. Jesus could have got himself in trouble with the Pharisees at the table if they did not have hearts ready to receive a revelation of the character of their God, and to suffer-alongside the incarcerated and the excruciating may well cause suffering that is not just compassion and empathy but the same experience and situation. Visit a prison in a manner which the guards don’t like and you may well find yourself staying in that prison. Even without the doomsaying of that idea, think of visiting a sick friend and finding yourself aching and sneezing within a week, we’ve all been there. Jesus commends us to go anyway, to friend and stranger, and to rely on himself who is constant and consistent (the same yesterday, today and forever) in his assured presence, and also his capacity to release and restore and resolve.
Let love be your ritual: if you’re going to light a candle of praise then light it in the company of someone who desperately needs the light and warmth of it too.
Amen
damienwrites 