"AMEN! LET'S EAT!"

Martin Luther described the Holy Bible as the "cradle of Christ"...in other words: The Manger.
Not only at the Christmas stable, but all year-round,
God's people are fed at this Holy Cradle.
We are nourished at this Holy Table.
We are watered at this Holy Font.

This blog is a virtual gathering space where sermons from Bethlehem Lutheran Church (ELCA) and conversation around those weekly Scripture texts may be shared.

We use the Revised Common Lectionary so you can see what readings will be coming up, and know that we are joining with Christians around the globe "eating" the same texts each Sunday.

Sunday, June 28, 2020

June 28 -- ELCAirB&B Hospitality (After Pentecost 4A)



Whoever welcomes you, welcomes Jesus.

I’ve had this dream since the pre- and for a post-COVID world...of setting up a system of Lutherans around the country, who would be on a list of open homes for fellow traveling ELCA Lutherans.  The connection would be through the churches.  Part of a congregations’ annual report to the national church offices would be reporting the number of open B&B households in that congregation.  We could call it Lutheran-Couch-Surfers-of-America, or something.  The Friendly Lutheran Hostel Network or ELCAirB&B?

Wouldn’t that be wonderful if anywhere you traveled, you had a great place to stay?  Not great because of the free wi-fi or continental breakfast, but great because you would always be housed by friends, even if they were strangers at first.

I actually believe this already exists (just unofficially), because I’ve tried it a number of times, and it’s amazing!  I’ve called up a number of churches over the years in the towns and cities I’m traveling through, and I just ask.  I usually start small and ask if I can stay in the church building.  I’ll explain my connection to the larger church, talk about my travel plans, and that I’m just looking for a place to stay, wondering if I could just put a sleeping bag in their youth room, or even crash on a pew.  I’ve done this solo, and we done this as a little family-of-4.

And in the course of that request and new connection, I’d get to meet the pastor, about 2 or 3 other members, see another Lutheran church, their bulletin boards and offices and landscapes and sanctuary — I’ve done this in Louisville, Kentucky, Atlanta, GA, Amarillo, TX.  One time we called a church in El Paso, TX, and that time, the pastor just invited us over to her house for the night.  Single woman in her 50’s, just opened the door for us and even gave us dinner (and breakfast)…and even put out some toys on the living room floor that she brought home from the church nursery.  Yet another time, the pastor simply put us in touch with an amazing family, (who is still on our Christmas card list) in Durango, Colorado.  Micah and Katie were little at the time, and this family had 2 sweet high school-aged daughters who were so excited to host little kids, they made up little Mickey and Minnie mouse beds in the basement and even had a box of legos and crayons on each of their pillows!  The Holiday Inn had nothing on our Lutheran Hospitality Network!  And of course our hosts always just laugh in our faces if (or when) we ask if we could give them a little money for their trouble...they laugh because it sounds as silly as relatives asking if they can pay you to stay at your house overnight.

Jesus says today in the Gospel: “Whoever welcomes you, welcomes me.”  So put yourself in a position to be welcomed, right!  That way people can meet Jesus.
Do you think our hosts met Jesus through our showing up, road weary, cranky kids, flustered passers through?

We have a text before us that is about hospitality.

It turns out that my idea of a safe-homes-network is not new at all:  It’s a very tame version actually of the type of hospitality that is always offered throughout the Middle East, both in ancient Jesus days and even today!  It’s deeply imbedded in Middle Eastern culture to open your door and offer food, drink, and lodging to total strangers.  I’m talking about offering hospitality just among Lutherans, like a little club.  But has anyone ever been exposed to Middle Eastern hospitality?  It extends way beyond religious, ethnic, national and cultural boundaries!

I had a colleague once, who’s passionate about Palestine and taking people to the Holy Land.  He’s traveled by himself all over the Middle East, and on one of his first trips there, I remember he told us this story about how his lodging plans fell through at the very last minute...I mean the day before his flight over.

So a friend of a friend gave him an email, and he contacted a total stranger a day before he was set to arrive from the United States, and asked if could stay just for a night or two while he figured out what he was going to do.  Can you imagine?

And this family, lets him — a total stranger — ~25 years old, big, white guy with a bushy blond beard and a thick upper-Midwestern build to go with his accent, into their home and demanded that he be their guest for his entire stay in the Holy Land, about 2 months!  The town where they lived was a little town called Bethlehem.  No joke.  And he later but very quickly learned that this wasn’t just some crazy, nice family:  this kind of welcome toward strangers is cultural.  He felt all special and lucky at first—“I really struck gold here”—until he realized that anyone would be treated this way.  He was sure that if we were traveling unarmed and vulnerable, we would all be afforded the same kind of treatment, regardless of our religion or anything else, if we just asked.

There’s a certain vulnerability in just asking though.

There’s a blog online that I like to look at around Epiphany in January, when we reflect on the Journey of the magi — the three wise men, as they’re popularly conceived.   And this blog is about these three modern-day-Americans who literally traveled the ancient Fertile Crescent by camelback about 10 years ago — from Bagdad to Bethlehem.  They started in September and got there at Christmas time.  Their pictures are astounding, but it’s the really same story about hospitality as my friend who studied in Bethlehem.

Here’s a quote from one of the travelers:  “It is almost absurd, sitting in these peoples' homes and sharing lunch with them, being offered a bed for the night, and their brotherhood. This is Iraq, and if they are the enemy, who needs friends?”

“Whoever welcomes you, welcomes me.  Whoever offers just a cup of cold water…”

Sisters and brothers, friends in Christ, we have such wonderful opportunities before us all the time — even now — to both give and receive hospitality, even as simple as giving/receiving a cup of cold water.  That might look a little different in a COVID-world, so we now have to think about what the COVID-world’s equivalent is, but the opportunity to “offer a cup of cold water, a bed for the night, some shade” is there as much as it ever was.  Jesus invites us again today to be on both sides, to expose ourselves to both sides, of hospitality.  Discipleship is not one-sided — have you noticed that?  We’re always saying Jesus sends the disciples out to be welcomers...here again he sends them/us to be  welcomed.  When was the last time you were welcomed by a stranger?

I counted this morning: if you come into Bethlehem Lutheran here in Fairfax, right now, and are looking around you will see the word “WELCOME” at least six times (in six different places) before you even step into this sanctuary.  That’s wonderful!  And hopefully on a Sunday morning, a visitor will hear that word many more times from us.  (printed 6+ times in worship folder too)

But we also need to allow ourselves to be welcomed.

Ministry is really all about welcome, isn’t it?  Both sides of welcome, though.  Being a follower of Jesus is really about hospitality—both sides of hospitality.  We are called both to welcome and to be welcomed.  (It’s always a blessed exercise in humility to pick up the phone and ask for a bed for the night, for a cup of cold water; it’s tough to expose ourselves to hospitality.)

But when hospitality happens, Christ is there.  That’s what’s at the heart:  Christ is moving in and with and around and between both welcomer and welcomed; Christ was working in and with and around and between both that wonderful church family in Durango and me and my family, as we crashed for the night; Christ is alive in and with and around and between both the Palestinians of Bethlehem and my friend; Christ was breathing, in and with and around and between both the modern-day-3-American-wise men and every one of their hosts across the Middle East desert.

And Christ is there every time you show up — on either side — of even the smallest act of hospitality: a cup of cold water, a welcoming post, kind note in the comments column, an offer (or an acceptance) of a gift or a bite to eat or a spare bed, or a coat, or a respectful nod.

And I am thinking at the moment, Bethlehem family, that we need to work on being welcomed way more than we do on welcoming others.  I think it’s tougher for lots of us to be received, than to be in the “driver’s seat” receiving others — you know what I mean?  It’s way harder, on one hand, to ask “Would you host/welcome me?” than it is to say, “Of course I will.”  But on the other hand, this is good news, because accepting the kindness of strangers, simply opening your hands and receiving hospitality, is actually way less work on our part.  All you have to do is show up, ask.  We need to work on doing less work.  Can I maybe get an Amen?

“What can we do?” is the question we keep wrestling with in our White Fragility conversations.  I know I wrote it myself, “White people, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”  What can we do?  Maybe some of what we can do is “expose ourselves to being welcomed”?  There’s a real vulnerability in that.  Receive hospitality, when it comes our way, even ask for it: “Would you welcome me?”  What would that look like?  “Would you host me?”

It’s a deeply biblical and theological question too, friends:  
“Would you welcome me?  Would you host me?” — to open ourselves to welcome, to accept the love and grace of another.  This is deeply Christian.

Work on doing less work, hard workers.  And instead — just receive the very grace and hospitality, the very welcome of God.

Faith itself is a work-less gift, it cannot be earned or acquired, it can only be received, symbolized in the splashing of the baptismal water.  All you can do is accept the welcome that God has for you.  Nothing you can do to earn it.

Friends, when there is welcome, when there is grace, there is God.  AMEN.

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