Keep on
loving one another as brothers and sisters. 2 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.
