August 5, 2007 - Namaste

The following is a text copy of a sermon preached Aug 5 and is published here with blog response opportunities provided. -jwa

Pentecost 10
August 5, 2007
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
W. Gregory Pope

NAMASTE
(Radical Hospitality: Becoming an Inviting And Connecting Community)
Luke 10:25-37

Today I begin with you a series of holy conversations beginning with five sermons centered in five practices I believe are essential for every vibrant, growing, and faithful congregation. They are: Radical Hospitality. Meaningful Worship. Intentional Spiritual Formation. Risk-Taking Mission and Service. Extravagant Generosity.

The conversations begin with my sermon and continue through your writing on the back of your bulletin insert. You may also enter the blog on our website. We will also be talking together on Wednesday evenings this fall around these practices. I invite you to prayer and deep reflection on how God is calling us to practice these things as we begin a new century of ministry.

Today our theme is the practice of Radical Hospitality, extending the gracious invitation and welcome of Christ so that all who walk through these doors and all whom we encounter throughout the week may experience a sense of connection and belonging to God’s people and to the God who welcomes us all.

Jesus and a lawyer were walking down the road. The lawyer says to Jesus, “Teacher, what must I do to enter God’s way of life?” Jesus asked him what he found in the law. And the man gives the right answer: “To love God with all that you are, and to love your neighbor as yourself.

Being a lawyer, he’s a man of the fine print. So he asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” We ask that question too. Are our neighbors only those in Crescent Hill, or does it include Clifton and St. Matthews, or all of Louisville? Do we have to extend our love across the river into Indiana, or across the ocean into other lands? And are my neighbors limited to moderate, progressive Baptists? Those who like my kind of worship? Those who see the world as I do? Those of my culture and nationality? Those who speak my language?

The man asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” And Jesus responds by telling a story about a stranger lying in the ditch beat up and left for dead. The Baptist preacher and the liturgical musician pass by the man in need.

Then someone comes along who embodies the neighbor. One version says he was a Samaritan. Another version says he was a member of Al-queda. And yet another said he was a member of the Burmese government. Whatever the version, the one who stopped to help, the one who acted like a neighbor, was the enemy of the hearers of the story. And the neighborly act to which Jesus calls us is to love the unknown stranger lying in the ditch in need of our help.

This story defines for us the radical nature of Christian hospitality. Scripture tells us that if we say we love God but do not love others who are in need, we are liars. And those others we are called to love include strangers and enemies.

Extending hospitality to the stranger and the enemy on the roads we travel is not an easy task. There are obstacles.

There is the obstacle of fear, fear that chokes out love. We have become a fearful people, haven’t we, suspicious of strangers and outsiders. And hospitality is scary. But it’s worth the risk. Because unless we find a way to open ourselves to others and practice courageous hospitality, our world will grow even more isolated and frightening and hostile.

There is the obstacle of prejudice, which is often rooted in fear. In fact, when we are confronted with the need to respond with radical hospitality we are often confronted with prejudices we did not know we had. And so hospitality becomes an act of spiritual formation for us, where we learn to love the stranger as Christ loves the stranger - without prejudice.

There is the obstacle of narcissism. We don’t want to inconvenience ourselves. And hospitality in the way of Jesus will inconvenience you. It will inconvenience the church that thinks only of itself and its preservation of the way it has always been. It has been said that “the biggest obstacle to Hospitality is not the state of the world. It is the state of our hearts. It is the comfort we crave so badly that we will do almost anything for it.”1 Hospitality rearranges our way of living.

Hospitality costs. It may be the simple cost of giving up the last brownie during the coffee time or giving up your seat or waking up early to drive a van or listening to the story of another or opening your wallet to meet needs.

The Good Samaritan took the needy stranger to a place where he could get help and then he paid the tab. Hospitality costs. It requires us to risk entering the pain of others. If we do we will be changed. You cannot engage human pain and remain unchanged. But that is the beauty of it. It will cost you everything and you will gain everything.2 In taking on the pain of others we act in the transformation of human lives.

Hospitality costs because hospitality serves. Jesus said he came not to be served but to serve others. So we are here not to be served but to put the needs of the guest and stranger before your own. To invite the guest and stranger to a place of connection and acceptance and home.

Christian hospitality is an invitation to home. We live in a world of profound homelessness. There are those literally without a place to live. And those whose homelessness runs even deeper. Frank Woggon sometimes wears a t-shirt that says, “Not all who wander are lost.” And while that is true, it is also true that many are deeply lost, wandering around in the world as if it were a wasteland, void of meaning and connection. They are homeless.

In the face of such homelessness, the church must recover a more radical sense of home. The home of every human being is the heart of God. But the church is the physical manifestation of God’s home, the place from which we extend hospitality.

Hospitality’s invitation has an outward focus, a reaching out to those not yet known, a genuine love that motivates us to be open and adaptable, with a willingness to change in order to accommodate the needs of the stranger-guest.

A congregation of radical hospitality focuses its creativity and energy on those outside the congregation with as much passion as they attend to those within the congregation. Hospitality extends beyond the walls of the church to live with what one has called an “invitational posture,”3 a willingness and desire to go out of our way, even at the risk of awkwardness and inconvenience, to invite and welcome people into the life and ministry of the church.

To adopt an invitational posture changes everything the church does. It is about seeking a culture of hospitality that extends into all ministries of the church. With every ministry, we consider how to reach the stranger and guest as well as those who are not yet present. We do it with passion and with joy because we know our invitation is the invitation of Christ. Hospitality invites.

Hospitality seeks to make connections and build relationships. “There is a big loneliness at the center of every person”4 that is meant to lead us to God and to others. We all need to know that we are not alone. We yearn for a hand that will reach out for ours. We both want and fear connecting with others. But deep down, we all want to know that when we face life’s difficulties we are surrounded by a community of grace, people who care for us. A congregation of radical hospitality seeks to make sure those connections happen and that opportunities for meaningful relationships are available.

Hospitality makes connections and builds relationships by listening and giving attention. Hospitality doesn’t require you to pour out your soul and share your deepest secrets with every stranger you meet. It’s not about making everyone your best friend. It’s about responding to the everyday, simple needs of others. Being a person of hospitality involves getting out of myself for long enough periods that I can really listen to other people, and give attention to what they might need at this moment. Listening will break your heart, but it will also give you a heart. Every encounter of hospitality toward others affects you and affects the other. It fills the very deep need of the human heart to be heard.5

In addition to listening and paying attention to people’s lives, the greatest need hospitality seeks to meet is the human need of acceptance, the need to know and be known by others.

The Rule of Benedict that guides Benedictine monasteries does not require a visitor to understand and conform to belief systems or cultural norms. Instead all persons are received as they are and invited into a place where acceptance and compassion seek to generate the desire for God. Benedict’s way is the way of Christ, who welcomed without distinction. Hospitality says to every guest and stranger: “I welcome you to this place to share our life.”6

To provide a place of hospitality is to offer an acceptance of another who doesn’t have to prove anything, but just lets themselves be loved.

What we want most is acceptance. You probably can’t fully understand me, and I might not understand you, but we can accept each other. We tend to confuse acceptance with tolerance or even approval. But acceptance is about receiving, rather than judging. Acceptance is not about condoning; it is about embracing.

But why we do we extend such radical hospitality - inviting, connecting, serving, accepting?

We extend hospitality as the natural overflow of God’s love for us. Scripture says, “Welcome one another, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” Connecting us to Israel, God’s people since ancient days, we are told, “For you were strangers in the land of Egypt and God led you home.” Hospitality springs from the place within us where God’s love for us dwells and our hearts overflow to share what we have received.

But most importantly, we extend hospitality because we believe that Christ resides within each person and that every person is sacred.

I’ve given hospitality the “radical” adjective. Radical means “getting to the root.” The root reason for hospitality is the belief that the living God resides in each person.

The writer of Hebrews says, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have entertained angels without knowing it.” (Hebrews 13:2)

The Rule of Benedict states that all guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, who said: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me. . . and just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:35, 40).

If we really believed this it would radically change our behavior toward strangers. If you want to know what a church thinks of Jesus watch how they treat strangers and guests.

The gospel calls us to treat every person we meet, as if they are Christ. “The message to the stranger is clear: Come right in and disturb our lives. You are the Christ for us today.”7

There is only one word on our marque out front this week. It is the word “Namaste.” It comes from the Eastern religious traditions. To say to another, “Namaste” is to say, “The part of the living God that lives and breathes in me bows down in reverence before the part of the living God that lives and breathes in you.”

Paul said the secret of the ages is this, it is Christ in you. And in me, and in everyone we meet. Everyone who comes to us is bearing the Christ. If Christ is in us, and if Christ is present in the others that we meet, then there are no moments in which Christ is not present. There may just be moments when we do not recognize him.

Christ is the elderly person next door, the one who fell on her steps in the dark and needs a meal every evening for the next month and has no family to prepare it for her. Christ is the student who cannot find a friend. Christ is there in the joy of the young couple down the street who are out every afternoon with their newborn in a stroller, just hoping that you will stop them and share in their joy. We do not have to go far to find Jesus. What we have to do is adopt a posture that allows us to see him.

Robert Benson remembers his father saying that when we get to heaven and see Jesus, our first thought is not going to be that we have never seen him before. Instead, we will grin and say, “It’s you, it’s you. I have seen you everywhere.” All of which changes the nature of every human contact, great or small, whether we are being the Christ or receiving the Christ, or somewhere in between.8

Hospitality is not about warm, fuzzy, social graces but about mutual reverence. Every man, woman, and child bears to us the presence of God. Benedict tells us to offer an open heart, a stance of availability, and to look for God lurking in every single person who comes through the door.

Have you ever noticed in the gospels how, at every turn, the disciples and Pharisees seem ready to draw boundaries and distinctions that would keep people at a distance. In every instance, Jesus radically challenges those prejudices by overstepping the boundaries to invite people in. Hospitality allows us to see people as Jesus sees them and to see Jesus in the people God brings before us.

Hospitality refuses to toss anyone aside. You can’t ignore people when you realize that God is looking out their eyes at you.9 Jesus said, “If you ignore them, you ignore me.” So Benedict says we must receive every person as if we are receiving Christ himself.

Several years ago there was a popular song by Joan Osborne titled “One of Us.” It asked, “What if God was one of us, just a stranger on the bus, trying to make his way home?” That is what Jesus said, that God is one of us, that God comes to us in the stranger, that we are all of us strangers on the bus of this world trying to make our way home.

Hospitality treats people respectfully, as if they are sacred, because they are. Hospitality is a call to revere the sacred in every person ever born. We reverence people not because they are pleasant or convenient, but because God is present in them.10

My hearts overflows with thanksgiving and praise for you as a congregation, and the ways in which you have opened your hearts and lives to the Karen refugees, especially the van drivers, nursery workers, Sunday School teachers, and all who have worked so closely with the Karen.

Can you imagine spending years of your life in refugee camps running for your life and for the safety of your children? They are strangers in America searching for a group of God’s people who will make a home for them. And I am grateful to you for the ways in which you have welcomed them as crazy and as confusing as it has been some times. We have been Christ to them, and they have been Christ to us. They have reminded us why we are in the first place.

There are still things yet for us to do to make all people welcome here. And I believe, with God’s help, we are up to the task. We are discovering that hospitality is an adventure that takes you where you never dreamed of going. It is more than something you do, it is something you enter, it is something you become. It is a way of being in the world. In genuine Hospitality we work to make our entire existence a welcoming table (as Christ does at the Table set before us). It’s about shaping a life that says “Welcome!” Hospitality, says one writer, is “the stance of the heart that is abandoned to Love.”11

As we draw near to the Table, I want to ask you to do something. I know we all have our pet-peaves about worship that in an act of hospitality we allow because it may be meaningful to others. I know that for some of you, the passing of the peace is something you would rather pass on. But when done with meaning and intentionality, it can be a beautiful act of hospitality.

Saint Benedict writes: “Never give a hollow greeting of peace, or turn away when someone needs your love.” At the monastery everyone is a guest, not just the visitor at the door, but the monks themselves. God is the host, but God also becomes the guest we receive in others. In the monastic image of the world, we are all guests, we are all travelers, we are all a little lost, and we are all looking for home.

As we move toward the table where Christ in great hospitality invites and welcomes us all, I invite you this morning to pass the peace in a different way. I only want you to get up if there is no one beside you or in front of you or behind you. If possible, remain in your seat and greet one another with the word “namaste,” meaning, “The part of the living God that lives and breathes in me bows down in reverence before the part of the living God that lives and breathes in you.” When you say the word “namaste,” allow your heart to bow in reverence at the God within each of you. And may that prepare us for the welcome of Christ at the table. Namaste.
_____________

1. Daniel Homan and Lonni Pratt, Radical Hospitality, Paraclete Press, 2002, 16
2. Ibid., 197
3. Robert Schnase, Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, Abingdon, 2007, 14
4. Homan and Pratt, 10
5. Ibid., 185-186, 213-216
6. Elizabeth Canham, Heart Whispers: Benedictine Wisdom For Today, Upper Room, 1999, 49
7. Joan Chittister, The Rule of Benedict: Insights For the Ages, Crossroad, 1992, 141
8. Robert Benson, A Good Life: Benedict’s Guide to Everyday Joy, Paraclete, 2004, 53-55
9. Homan and Pratt, 10
10. Ibid., 73, 139-140
11. Ibid., 203

jwa- Inserted in the Sunday bulletin were three questions Greg asked regarding hospitality at CHBC:

1. In what ways have you experienced hospitality at CHBC?
2. What do you believe are obstacles to hospitality at CHBC?
3. What suggestions would you make in order to increase hospitality at CHBC?