7 Pentecost Proper 9 July 3 2016

7 Pentecost Proper 9 July 3 2016 Audio

Recently, the readings from Luke have been about the unfailing love and abundant grace that God has for us. We have heard how that love and grace calls us into relationship with God, and how that transforms us. We have heard that God does not call us away or out of the world, but instead calls us to do our work, to be in relationship, to go about our business in a way that is new, in a way that reveals God’s unfailing love and grace to the world. This work that God calls us to is also called discipleship. This is our call, this is our work. And the gospel of Luke is all about being a disciple.

To be a disciple or to do the work that God calls us to, is to be on a journey of active faith formation, and to be a disciple is to be part of God's dream of love and healing in this world. That is what Luke means when he writes about God coming near. This is called the kingdom of God. And according to Luke, the kingdom of God is about reordering human interaction, we see that when Jesus brings to the center those people on the margins. And the kingdom of God is about loving one another as God has loved us.  A sign of this love, a sign of God's dream in our interactions, is offering peace to all people we encounter.

In this gospel passage from Luke, we learn that God's call, God's love, God's kingdom, includes everyone. And we learn that discipleship, God's love, God's kingdom is about radical hospitality.

In the New Revised Standard Version translation we just read, we heard that Jesus appointed seventy disciples and sent them out in pairs. However, many New Testament scholars are convinced the earliest transcripts read 72. And the reason this is important, is that seventy-two is a significant number. At the time Luke’s story was told, the number of the world’s nations is seventy-two. Seventy-two is also reckoned in an apocryphal book, called Enoch, as the number of princes and the number of languages in the world. And according to legend, seventy-two elders were commissioned to translate the law from Hebrew to Greek, a project undertaken in order to win renown throughout the whole world for the Jews and their God.

So, seventy-two really means everyone, everyone is sent out, but never sent out alone. So now it is not just the original Jewish disciples of Jesus that spread the Good News of God in Jesus Christ. It is gentiles as well, and it is all of us; every one of us is a disciple and we are all called to spread the Good News.

Last Wednesday the church celebrated the feast day of St. Peter and St. Paul. A gift that St. Peter and St. Paul give to us in the 21st century is the gift of disagreement. At the very beginnings of the church, these two important church leaders could not agree on who’s in and who’s out. The argument about circumcision which is referred to in the Galatians passage, was a huge argument in the 1st century. Basically, the question was, do disciples of Jesus have to be circumcised as a Jew before they can be baptized? This question was really about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, and what it means to be Jew. It is a question that caused communities to stop talking to each other; it caused communities to split apart and even stop eating together. The answer to the question however, was always, Love one another as God has loved you. And, a sign of that love was to settle your differences before you come to the table to eat. St. Peter and St. Paul taught us to agree to disagree, because we are all part of one family. The way St. Peter and St. Paul taught us to agree to disagree is to practice radical hospitality.

And that is what this passage before us today is about. All of us are called to radical hospitality; all of us are called to offer God's love and hospitality to everyone we meet.

This example of hospitality shows us both sides, how to offer hospitality, and how to receive hospitality.

Jesus sends the seventy-two out to do the work of preaching and teaching, and harvesting the fruits of that labor. Jesus sends them with instructions. Those instructions are about how to receive hospitality. First say “peace to this house” and then stay there and eat and drink, cure the sick and preach the Good News. If they do not welcome you, if they do not offer hospitality, leave in protest, and know that the kingdom of God has come near. We need to remember what Luke means when he writes about Jesus ushering in the kingdom of God. It is the reordering of human interactions. Jesus brings those who are on the margins to the center, those who are first will be last, those who are out will be in.

What does the discipleship of radical hospitality look like for us? As disciples, as followers of Jesus, we are called to welcome the stranger. We are called to offer rest, to wash their feet, and a place at the table. When we offer this radical hospitality, we act as disciples and the kingdom of God is near. We, as disciples, are called to offer hospitality to everyone, people we agree with, people we disagree with, people that look like us, people who look different than us, people that we grew up with, people who are strangers.

As disciples we are also called to go out into the world, walking along side one another, and say to all we meet, Peace to you, peace to your house, peace to your people. We are to take the gospel seriously, be transformed by it and offer it’s message of hospitality to all we meet, to all whose paths we cross, and to all who come alongside us as we journey together. In this age of rampant individualism and consumerism, offering hospitality and walking alongside one another, including and especially those who are different from us, is a radical and difficult call. This encounter requires attentive listening and willingness to enter into another’s world and be transformed by this world. This encounter requires dependence, and for folks who value independence above much else, this is a radical and difficult call. Dependence on God, and one another, the Body of Christ. There are few things more satisfying and life giving, it turns out, than sharing with others, giving of our abundance, receiving in our need, all the while being knit more closely together as the Body of Christ, very different witness to people in this world who would exclude, divide, and keep out.

Peace to this house, peace to your house, peace to the stranger’s house.