Sunday, May 18, 2014

Angels in Philadelphia ~ Hebrews 13:1-2

Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.




1.      The church is to be philadelphia!



For the writer of Hebrews, hospitality or welcome are not strategies or gimmicks but, it’s identity. Vs. 1 is only three words which basically state, “continue philadelphia [or brotherly love].” So friendship and warmth are to have roots in the communities very life, not simply for the sake of guests or recruits. So before we go thinking about visitors or strangers, we might want to consider what we are inviting them to. And let’s be honest many of us already strangers in this place. It wasn’t too long ago that I heard of someone greeting someone they didn’t know by saying, “Oh hi, you must be new here.” And the person responded, good naturally, “No, I’ve been attending here for 5 years!” We will never be able to entertain angels, until we learn to do more than simply tolerate one another. So how can we be philadelphia first? How do we become brothers and sisters of one another?



At the very least, it starts with names – brothers and sisters know each other’s names. Cool. That’s simple enough. Names are the doorways to relationships. They are the beginning of what it takes to know and be known by others. I want to encourage you to wear a name tag, to reach out to people you don’t know – and don’t assume that someone is a visitor but simply say, “Hi, my name is                            . What’s your name?” And then introduce them to others. Too easy? A silly comment from the pulpit? Well, I just recently spoke with a woman, who bless her heart, still attends this church, who spoke of her first day here in which no one ever introduced himself to her or asked her name. Names are not silly, and a simple greeting will do more than you can ever imagine.



It starts with names because we believe that God knows each of our names and cares for each one of us personally. So it’s not primarily a nice thing but a gospel thing (e.g. Romans 15:7). Welcome and hospitality fit snugly into what I would say is the central theme of the Bible – the unmerited generosity of God. Unless we understand this we will never have philadelphia. The early flag words for grace are “banquet” and “food”. It starts with the meal offered by Abraham and Sarah to the three angelic visitors (Genesis 18:1-8), it continues with abundance of manna and quails and water from rocks for the Israelites trudging through the desert (Exodus 16-17). It becomes an entire ritual system of eating sacred and symbolic foods, like Passover meals, and communal sacrifices (Leviticus 8:31). And it finds its zenith in the ministry of Jesus who loved to share open tables with the rich and poor, the good and bad, the saint and sinner, “all people” (Isaiah 25:6-8). Chaotic meals are the most common audiovisual aid for Jesus’ message. They have all the elements of community: equality, joy, nurturance, delight, generous host and an open invitation to everyone (Matthew 22:10; Luke 14:21). More than simply symbolic, however, by eating with others Jesus’ very presence changes them, and he even invites himself over to be their guests! At the meal with the notorious sinner Zacchaeus (that Jesus invited himself to) he will declare, “salvation has come to this house . . .” Opening our homes, sharing our lives, passing our stuff to one another around a shared table is Jesus’ way of philadelphia.



I can think of no better way to illustrate what I am saying then by sharing with you the short story Babette’s feast by Isak Dinesen. Dinesen sets the story in a little village on the west coast of Norway – in a tiny world of laws and pettiness and religious rigor of a pious Lutheran group where two elderly spinster daughters of a deceased Lutheran minister live a Spartan life dutifully, yet joylessly, caring for the poor and disadvantaged. Quickly tell the story. A general who is visiting his aunt, a member of the congregation, is invited to attend. He has seen the larger world. He has been hurt, experienced success and failure, and is the only one who truly seems to realize the feast that is set before them. Dinesen describes him as one who had obtained everything that he had striven for in life at this point. He was a moral person, a good person, loyal to the king, his wife and his friends. But, she writes, “there were moments when it seemed to him that the world was not a moral, but a mystic, concern.” I think Dinesen is trying to describe religion that, without grace, becomes competitive, a win-lose script, a task to be won, rather than joyously received. Friends – many of us need to struggle with the fact that we resent this banquet that so easily thwarts our moral vision. But to understand the work of God, mystically, however is to find in the feast the reality that we are transformed not out of a sheer effort of will or moral standards but by the overwhelming gladness and delight of God who loves us beyond measure. It means to understand grace we need to dine with each other. To realize that the world is mystical rather than moral is to understand that our lives find their true meaning not in independence but interconnection, not in winning but sharing, not from competition but compassion and not by rules but stories.



That’s why we are looking for party throwers, or if that’s too confusing “small group facilitators.” As long as we remain inside of a win-lose script, Christianity will continue to appeal to low-level and self-interested morality and never rise to the mystical banquet that Jesus really offered us. It will be duty instead of delight. Friends, let’s not envision ourselves to be the moral police – let’s eat.



2.      To entertain angels is to realize that angels never show up empty handed.



Now, angels are interesting characters and I don’t want to get to esoteric about them. Their very nature is strange but a few comments are worth mentioning. The most common term for them means “messenger, or envoy” which could refer to either a human or angelic creatures who bear a message from God. More often, the people who encounter them don’t know and can’t tell the difference (Mark 16:5, Luke 24:4; Acts 12:15). And while some might wish to worry about the exact nature of angels, what both share without dispute is that they always bear gifts from God. Think about it – Abraham and Sarah, Gideon, Elijah and the widow, Jesus – all of these encounter guests or become guests who bless others.



To see strangers as covert angels is to understand that the great banquet of the kingdom, that Jesus spoke about, is more potluck than fancy dinner party. Biblical hospitality will always blur any distinction between host and guest. In the story of Abraham and the angels (or is it God?) even the divine is not above being hosted, having feet washed, and a meal prepared. In the Biblical stories of hospitality – the guests always have something to offer, gifts to share. This means that hosting the stranger is not first and foremost about duty but a heavenly surprise. Can you risk trying that out? And who knows – maybe God wants to use you as one of his angels – one of his gift bearers. Can you place yourself in someone else’s debt?



3.      To be a community that entertains angels we have to become comfortable with not knowing.



It’s interesting to realize that on the front end - one may never know they were angels – why might that matter? There is no pattern to consider, nothing to look for, you can’t pick ahead of time – male or female, adult or child, wings, no wings, quiet, rude, rowdy, imprisoned, blind, lame - will we ever know? Henri Nouwen argues that truly gracious hospitality demands an articulate not knowing, a learned ignorance. An open invitation to the strangers is very difficult to accept for people whose whole attitude is toward mastering and controlling the world. We all want to know things and be educated so that we can be in control of the situation and make things work according to our need. We want to plan the party, pick the right people, and steer the conversation. True knowledge is not to master others but to serve them. To hospitably “not know,” to truly welcome the secret angels among us, is to allow the guest to speak on her own, to listen to the voice of God in the words of others, in the life experiences of men and women from other places. To entertain angels is to realize that we never know where God might strike, who God might use.



Our mission is not to convert bad people into good people but to create gracious space where we as the body of Christ continue to dine with enemies who become friends, strangers who turn into brothers and sisters, were people are known and loved - that’s the ground for any other change. In German the word for hospitality is Gastfreundschaft which means “friendship for the guest.



So the best hospitality, the most proper posture, is not to confront others with prefab answers but to ask questions because you understand that there is much you don’t know.  One of the original meanings of “entertain” was to hold something lightly, ponder it carefully, give consideration.



And this brings me back to one more story. The story of Parzival. A story that is one of endless hospitality where characters who don’t know each other fight only to discover that they are related, that they are kin. Tell the story of the Fisher King and Wild Mountain – failed hospitality and healing because he failed to ask the question, “What are you going through?”



The stranger, the angel, brother and sister find true hospitality – that which heals and saves - when they aren’t simply served but when they are asked. When we recognize that it is “we” who are so often unaware.



No comments: