The stories we hear this evening are the stories that constitute us as a people. They are stories that tell us who we are, and whose we are. They are stories that trace God’s activity in the live of God’s people. First, we hear the story of the Passover. It is a story that is told time and time again in Jewish households, especially at the seder meal, when the children ask, Why is this night different from all other nights, from all other nights?
The Psalm remembers the story of the Hebrew people wandering in the wilderness. It recounts how God fed the people, when no food was visible.
The story from Corinthians paints a picture of the passover meal shared by Jesus and his friends. This is the meal that re-members us each time we gather together for our feast at this table.
And the story from John describes how the man who was to be King teaches all of us about hospitality.
The central activity of this night together is hospitality. Radical hospitality is at the core of who we are. The gospels are all about radical hospitality. Tonight we are all about radical hospitality. Setting a meal, inviting people to eat, washing up, hospitality. Hospitality in our time has really lost it’s biblical meaning. In the Jewish culture in which our story is told, it was considered a great honor to serve strangers. The people believed they were serving God by serving others. This custom was based on the belief that something of God is in each person.
Jesus was the exemplar of hospitality. Jesus was the host at meals with people that no one else in his culture cared about or would even be seen with, single women, tax collectors. For Jesus hospitality was about breaking boundaries. Hospitality was radical.
In the Roman honor/status system of during Jesus’ time if you were a person of status and means, you would invite particular people to a meal at your home, knowing that you would get a return invitation, You would be honored by their presence, and your status would be preserved.People in our culture often operate on that premise too.
Also in the Roman context meals were all about where you sat at the table. If you were important, you took a seat of honor at the head of the table. But what Jesus taught was all about disrupting the conventional social order. The stories we hear and read about the last and the first are all about disrupting the sort of order that based worth on social prominence, that was the last thing Jesus needed.
Arguably, the greatest modern day practitioner of hospitality was the late Fred Rogers. Now many of you may remember him as Mr. Rogers asking all of us “won’t you be my neighbor?” In an editorial eulogizing Mr. Rogers, a professor of religion surmised, ”The disciplined, courteous, loving attention which he gave to each person, as a marvel of supreme worth, was what made Fred Rogers a source of endless comfort for his young viewers. You are special, he sang to them, and you can never go down the drain.” Everything Fred Rogers did was about hospitality and dignity.
Not unlike the vision of the upper room, a table where Jesus invited the one who would deceive through denial and the one who would betray him unto death. If Jesus can offer hospitality to the likes of them, then anyone in my neighborhood can come to the table too.
Radical hospitality welcomes you here. You are a marvel of supreme worth. I know that is true, because Jesus wouldn’t have died for anything less. Radical hospitality invites all of us to bring our pain, our suffering, our alienation and our isolation to this place, to this table, where we are unconditionally accepted.
In time, in this place of safety, we begin to understand our shortcomings, our failures, our tendency toward sin. We begin to understand that we must shape our lives around the greatest commandment, to love God above all things, and to love the other as well, to offer hospitality ourselves.
Foot washing was a necessity in the lives of the people who populate our biblical stories. Trudging around in desert climates with sandals on your feet, provided an opportunity for some very dirty feet. What begins as practicality turns to hospitality. But Jesus’ concern was holiness, not hygiene. Jesus says to Peter, let me wash your feet. And Peter regarding Jesus as better than a slave, responds no. Jesus says to Peter, ”if I don’t wash you, you can’t be a part of what I am doing.” And Peter responds, with that exuberance that Peter displays, ”Well then, wash all of me, my hands and my head too!” What Jesus is doing here is pointing Peter and all of us the way to radical hospitality.
What makes it radical instead of just ordinary?
No comments:
Post a Comment