"Two Approaches To Hospitality"
God is crazy about you.
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, January 7, 2007
Text: Luke 2:1-7; 10:25-37
I think it would be accurate to say that the whole story of the birth of Jesus, indeed the whole Gospel narrative, is laced and undergirded with a profound sense of irony. By irony, I don't mean the infinite and absolute negativity that Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard suggested. No, what I mean by irony is that as we read the story, we can see underneath it patterns emerging, difficulties and a darker side, when on the superficial level it appears that everything is full of praise and glory and adulation and joy.
Whether it be Socratic, cosmic or tragic, there is an overwhelming irony to the story of the birth of Jesus, when you read it carefully. As we begin this new year in the church calendar, as we look at the great story of the visit of the wise men at Epiphany, as we look at our New Year's resolutions (most of which I have broken already in seven days!) and the things we decide we are going to do in the new year when we look at all the ideas we have about what the future is going to hold, I want us to look at the irony in the story of Christmas this morning, because there are some profound lessons.
There is a call, I believe, for us to have a much greater sense of fidelity to God, but there is also, within this irony, a great call for us to be more magnanimous, gracious and hospitable with our neighbours. It is the word hospitable and the understanding of hospitality that I think is really ironic in the story of the birth of Jesus and his unfolding ministry. This is because anyone who reads the story of the birth of Jesus is struck by the fact that he came into an inhospitable reception.
This should not surprise anyone who has knowledge of the Old Testament. We should all have an understanding that the Messiah would come into a world that wouldn't necessarily be hospitable. Throughout many of the texts, there is talk of the coming of the Messiah in the line of David, and there is this assumption that when the Messiah comes to earth he will face difficulty, as predicted many years ago by many commentators.
The Book of Micah says the following:
But you Bethlehem Ephrata, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come from me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from ancient times. Therefore, Israel will be abandoned until the time when she who is in labour gives birth and the rest of his brothers return to join the Israelites. He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord and in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God, and they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth, and he will be their peace.
Notice the contrast. Even in the Book of Micah, there is this sense that Israel will be abandoned and that there will be labour pains. In other words, the coming of the Messiah will bring with it a degree of pain and suffering. Now, I think when Luke wrote the story of the birth of Jesus, he had in mind this Messianic concept that the greatness and the glory that would eventually come would first of all have to go through the travails of birth pains. Like anything that it born, anything that is of any value or any worth, there is often pain at its genesis, at its beginning, when a greater glory in life will emerge from it.
So it is for the Christmas story, and nowhere is this more evident in Luke's Gospel than in one line that we say in every single pageant that we hold here on Christmas Eve - if you can hear it above the din of the goats and the camels and the children and certain ministers playing horrible characters: “There was no room for him in the Inn.”
I think it is fair enough to say that you can read far too much into this text. I don't think that the innkeeper in the story of the birth of Jesus was deliberately rejecting the Messiah. I don't think there was an attempt to reason through how the Messiah should be, in a sense, held back. No, that is an over-reading of the text. However, the fact that it is there, the fact that Joseph and Mary actually went into a stable rather than into the inn itself is a singular statement about the nature of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.
The fact that there was no room for him in the inn is not just about an individual circumstance, it is that humanity was already taken up with other things. It had, in a sense, no room for Christ, but by default. Have things really changed that much in the hearts of many people? I don't think so. In fact, I think that we have our lives overcrowded in the same way as that inn was overcrowded, and the inn is symbolic of the way in which we human beings sometimes treat God and treat Christ.
We might have, for example, all our domestic interests. We might have the interests of our family and our home life. In and of themselves they are good, but they can become laced with a powerful despotism if they become all consuming. It is the same in the way we communicate with one another: the need to be constantly in touch can become so overwhelming that there is just no room and no time for God and the important things. We are caught in this frenetic activity of communicating.
A few years ago, before Blackberries and other such devices, when I was in another city, I encountered this with a particular young man in my church, who was very, very technologically savvy. He always had his cell phone attached to his ear, like an umbilical cord. He walked around with it (and they were bigger in those days), and you could really see the thing hanging off his ear. I phoned him one day with some very important news. He said, “Oh, Doc Stirling, I am sorry, I'm busy, I'm on my way somewhere, and you will have to phone me back. Phone me back later. Phone my administrator, she will be able to page me. Page me wherever I am. Thanks very much! Sorry I don't have any time.” And he hung up. So I left a message with his administrative assistant, who was now going to have to page him. The message: Your mother has died.
Sometimes we get so caught up in the world that we don't have time to listen to the really important things. Sometimes we get wrapped up in commercialism. I don't know about you, and maybe I am from another planet, but I really cannot see any need or reason for stores to be open on Christmas Day. I have just got to say it! I am not just being some religious old fogey here, nor am I sticking to some religious precept about my own faith. Honestly: The coffee shop where I go was closed for a few days after Christmas to celebrate Eid, a Muslim holiday. Did I complain about not getting my doughnuts and double-double? No! I didn't! I might have thought it, but I didn't say it! I could have done without it anyway! People of all faiths need a time to rest and reflect on the important things.
Sometimes, society as a whole, not in little bits and pieces, but as an entity, needs some time to stop and be quiet. According to some of the newspaper articles about what happened after Christmas, people were getting restless after 24 hours of not being able to buy things. Now, either they are atrocious planners, or they have a problem!
I think they have a problem. I think there comes a time when society needs to stop and be quiet and reflect on ultimate rather than penultimate things. It is for the good of the soul. Sometimes there is no room in our inn, and sometimes “no room in our inn” is because we are wrapped up in the passions of our pleasures, our arts, our music and our theatre. Again, all wonderful things, all important things, but again, they can become despotic and rule our lives at the expense of the things that really matter.
Here is the irony! The irony is that Jesus of Nazareth came into the world as the Messiah and the Son of God and came to revolutionize the whole way in which we relate to one another. Not only did he come to establish the reign of God and the relationship of God with humanity, he came also to revolutionize the relationship that we have with one another. An ancient poem (and if any of you know who wrote it, let me know), I think it says everything about “no room in the inn:”
Strangely, the wondrous story doth begin
Of that which came to pass on Christmas Day
The new-born babe within a manger lay
Because there was no room inside the inn.
No room for him who came to conquer sin
And bid distress and mourning flee away
So in the stable he was famed to stay
While revelry and riot reigned within.
And still the same old tale is told again
The world is full of greed and game and glee
And has no room for God because of them.
Lord, though my heart be filled with joy and pain
Grant that it ne'er may find no room for Thee
Like that benighted inn at Bethlehem.
How right! How right! Here is the irony: there was no room for Christ in the inn because everything was filled and preoccupied, and yet, it was Christ who out of love came to draw all people into his father's house.
Max Lucado, a popular Christian writer whom I enjoy immensely, tried to describe God's love as follows (and this is really, really good):
There are many reasons God saved you: to bring glory to himself; to appease his justice; to demonstrate his sovereignty. But one of the most beautiful reasons God saved you is because he is fond of you. He likes having you around. He thinks you are the best thing to come down the pike in quite a while. If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If he had a wallet, your photo would be in it. He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning. Whenever you want to talk, he'll listen. He can live anywhere in the universe, yet he chose to live in your heart. And the Christmas gift he sent you in Bethlehem? Face it, friends, he's crazy about you!
Now, that's the Christmas message: he's crazy about you! That's the Christmas message: God loves us! Here is the irony: There is often no room in the inn when he arrives! Contrast that with the hospitable cause that he stood for. The irony is that he had to flee to Egypt with his mother and father, and yet when he came back, throughout his ministry, all he taught was hospitality and welcoming.
Back in November, when I was working on one of my doctoral courses, my professor, John Sumarah, a man who I admire immensely, said, “I would like all of you in the class to do one thing: I would like you to revisit the story of the Good Samaritan.” He continued:
I know, you all know about the priest and the Levite walking by the beaten man on the other side, and then the Good Samaritan came and took him to an inn to be cared for, but I want you to stop and think for a moment about the innkeeper. Whenever I read this story, the Spirit seems to say to me that the innkeeper is God. The wounded, the embattled, the beaten are left to be taken care of. The one who takes care of us is the innkeeper. The Good Samaritan is the one who comes along and who pays the price. Have you ever thought that maybe Jesus is associating himself with the Samaritan and the innkeeper with his father?
The innkeeper takes care of the wounded, the innkeeper bandages up the broken and the needy, and is that not, says John Sumarah, the great image of the Gospel message? Is that not really, in a nutshell, what the Gospel is all about? Later on, Jesus actually talks about hospitality in very similar terms. He says, “If you have someone for dinner, don't invite your family.” (Clearly, he knew my family!) Don't invite your family, don't invite your friends. He says, “Don't invite all the people that might be able to do you some good.” A very, very common practice!
“Rather, invite the stranger,” Jesus says. “Invite the person who is on the outside, and bring him in.” That is how you practise hospitality! That is how you treat the other! That is the nature of what he expects of us. Jesus says that if you do that and if you practise that kind of hospitality, just like the innkeeper and the Good Samaritan, then you never know who you are taking in and what good you can do.
If you look back in the Old Testament, there are so many examples of this on which Jesus could have drawn. Abraham and Sarah, for example, take in strangers, only to find out that really they were taking in angels. Or, the widow of Zerafa, in the midst of famine, gives a portion to Elijah, only to find out that in so doing, she herself was able to eat. In the New Testament, Jesus says, “Whenever you bring the stranger in, you are bringing me in. Whenever you do anything for the least of these, you do it for me.” Hospitality, then, is a manifestation of everything that Jesus came to say and to do.
Sometimes our hospitality is a little calculated. I once saw a cartoon with a wonderful message in only three little blocks. It was about the feeding of the five thousand. In the first picture, a young boy comes up to Peter and Jesus with the basket of the loaves and the fishes. In the next one, Peter and the disciples go out and hand out all the fish and all the bread, which lands everywhere and feeds 5,000 people. In the final panel the little boy has come back again, and Peter taps him on the shoulder and asks, “Do you think I could have a receipt for the fish and the bread for tax purposes?”
Sometimes our hospitality is calculated and clearly thought through, and it misses the point. The real point is that our hospitality should reflect the very nature of the ministry of Jesus. The irony of all ironies is that the One for whom there was no room is the One who came precisely to give us room with God. The One for whom there was no room was precisely the One who came to teach us to find room for the other. The One who was born outside was the One who gave his body and broke it and said, “This is my body broken for you. This is my blood and it is shed for you.” This was the ultimate gift of hospitality, and Christ gave it, as he does this morning, because he's crazy about you! Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.