Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri

Morning Worship · July 9, 2006

Fifth Sunday After Pentecost

Prayer of the Day

Gracious and Almighty God, you have created each of us in your own image.  While we celebrate our individuality, we also celebrate our unity.  Remind us today and every day that we are called to join as a community, to serve one another, and to always practice the gift of hospitality.  Through Christ we pray.  Amen.

Scripture

Genesis 18:1-8

The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day.  He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent’s entrance to meet them and bowed down to the ground.

He said, “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant.  Let a little water be brought and wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree.  Let me bring a little bread, so you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on, since you have come to your servant.”

So they said, “Do as you have said.”

Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah and said, “Make ready quickly three measures of choice floor, knead it, and make cakes.”

Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf – tender and good – and gave it to his servant, who hastened to prepare it.  Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared and set it before them.  And he stood by them under the tree while they ate.

Message

Extending Hospitality

Jacob Thorne

I have to tell you that it feels good to be back home.  The youth and I just returned from our mission trip to New Orleans.  It was an amazing and incredible experience.  If you have ever had the opportunity to work with 100 youth from around the country who are dedicated to serving Christ and others, you know what an inspiration it can be.  We have many stories to share about the mission trip, and sometime soon we will set a date when we can share our experiences.  In the meantime, I want to tell you one quick story.

On the second day of the mission trip, my work crew went to the home of Harold and Rose.  Harold and Rose fit my image of a southern couple.  The moment we pulled into their driveway, they greeted us with these warm, southern accents.  They told us how happy they were to see us, and they insisted that before we started to work – and we were really eager to work a full day – we had to sit down, have some coffee, and listen to their story.

When Harold and Rose knew the hurricane was going to hit, Harold decided to stay at their home, despite the mandatory evacuation orders.  Rose went to the safety of their children’s house several hours away.  Harold told us their life’s possessions were in that house, and he couldn’t stand the thought of leaving.  After the storm first hit, Harold really thought he was going to be OK.  He looked outside at his rain gauge, and it indicated 1.75 inches, and he thought, “I’m going to be OK.”  Then he turned on the television, and he heard the weatherman say, “It’s going to be all right, folks.  The worst of the storm has passed.”  Then, right when the weatherman uttered these words, the side door of Harold’s house caved in, and the waters started to flood the home. 

For the first night, Harold stayed in the attic, praying that the water level would go down.  On the second day, he realized he was trapped, and he had to flee.  Eventually he made his way to a warehouse where he spent the week waiting to be rescued.

A month later, when Harold and Rose finally returned to their house, everything they owned was destroyed.  Nothing was left.  They had little flood insurance, and their house insurance only covered the roof.  The insurance adjustor offered them $10,000 for all of their losses.

I have to tell you.  When Harold was telling this story, he is a really large man.  For 40 years he was a New Orleans police officer.  I’m a very short man, so looking up at Harold, I was always a little bit intimidated.  But as he told us his story, tears swelled up in his eyes, and you could literally sense all the trials this man had experienced in the last year.  With tears coming down his cheeks, Harold told us that shortly after the hurricane, one of his friends, a police officer, killed himself after learning his family had drowned in the hurricane while he was called into work.  Then Harold told us that he found his own mother dead in her house.

Finally, Harold told us that two weeks ago he was at the end of his rope.  Both physically and mentally he was exhausted.  He had lost his faith, and he had nothing left.  Then work teams from Group Work Camps…  (Group Work Camps is an organization we use when we do mission trips.)  Two weeks ago work teams from Group Work Camps entered his house and helped him gut his house and start the long process of rebuilding.  With a shaky voice, holding back tears, Harold told us that if we had not shown up, he was just days away from going out to the back deck of his house and killing himself just as his friend did.  But because of our hospitality, because of your hospitality, because of our willingness to serve others, he said he had recovered his faith, found strength, and believed he would survive.

This morning, we also hear a text that deals with hospitality and serving others.  It’s a story that many of us know well.  It’s a common story of Abraham and Sarah being visited by three strangers in the desert.  Before we turn to this story of Abraham and Sarah, I want to share with you a little bit about what takes place with the youth of Broadway Christian Church during these long, normally hot days of summer.

In addition to the mission trip where we hope the lives of our youth are changed and that youth will hear stories such as the stories of Harold and Rose shared with us, do you know that more than 90 of our youth have attended or will attend a summer camp at the Rickman Center in Jefferson City?  Let me repeat that number.  Ninety of our youth attend camp in Jeff City.  This doesn’t include the youth who go to more than one camp.  Many of our youth, as you know, spend most of the summer at Rickman either as a camper or a junior counselor.  For those of you who have been to Rickman, can you really blame them for wanting to spend their whole summer at camp?  Let me tell you some of their good reasons.

Life at camp is pretty grand.  You can spend your time meeting new friends.  You can connect with old friends.  You get to talk about faith.  You get to play cool games.  Sometimes you’ll have to ask your campers about some of the more disgusting games, like drinking “milkshakes” that consist of leftover taco meat from dinner, horseradish sauce, blue cheese, and two cans of sardines.  It’s very tasty.  I always go first.  There’s swimming, and of course, eating good food such as homemade cinnamon rolls on the final morning at camp.  Life at camp couldn’t get much better.

But even with all those incredible events taking place at camp, that first day of camp, for both those new to camp and those returning, is always a little nerve wracking and full of apprehension.  On that first day of camp, nobody knows what to expect.  Everybody, including the counselors, is wondering where they will fit in.

Each evening at camp before the campers and counselors go to sleep at night there are brief cabin devotions.  Commonly the campers will sit on the floor in the middle of the cabin.  They’ll put a flashlight in the middle, and they’ll go over the highs and the lows of the day.  On that first night, more often than not, campers will talk about how stressful those first few hours of camp can be.  Most campers will say that while that first day is stressful it is also one of welcome and open arms.  Camp seems to create, at an extremely rapid pace, a community formed by bonds of faith that are difficult to break. 

In our story, taken today from the book of Genesis, is also a story of apprehension, new beginnings, and bonds of faith.  The writers of Genesis tell us that God, disguised as a stranger, appeared to Abraham as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day.  Abraham said, “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant.  Let a little water be brought and wash your feet, and rest yourself under the tree.”

These lines, said so many thousands of years ago, are still acted out today.  In the Middle East, it is a long-held tradition that when you are greeted by a visitor – friend or stranger – you offer them rest, tea, and water.  It is your duty to make this stranger feel at home. 

At camp, one of the methods of making the campers feel at home is to divide individuals into family groups.  Family groups spend the week together doing devotions, studying the Bible, playing games, and planning worship services.  On the first day of camp this year at C.Y.F., my group was asked to plan the evening worship using the text we are studying this morning. 

Now evening worship at the Rickman Center is a wonderful experience.  The campers usually walk along a gravel path and sing a slow, meditative song as they enter the outdoor worship area.  Often there are candles lit.  On a clear night, with the stars shining overhead, and the whippoorwills singing in the background, there is no better place for worship.

As we were planning the worship service, my group kept returning to the line, “Let a little water be brought and wash your feet.”  We felt this part of the text was really speaking to us, essential to understanding the text.  Eventually, somebody mentioned we should invite people to come from the bench they were sitting on at the worship service, and let us wash their feet.

Now, I can’t say everybody in my family group was thrilled with the idea of washing somebody else’s feet.  After all, worship is done in the evening, the very last activity before bed.  We’d spent the whole day running around getting hot.  So we knew that some feet might be a little sweaty and even a little smelly.  But we really thought that washing others’ feet as a sign of servitude and hospitality would make the text come alive and appear applicable to us today. 

So that evening, after we started our worship service with prayer and a reading of the text, we invited individuals to come forward, take off their shoes, and let us wash and dry their feet.  Not everyone came forward, but for those who did, I think the cool water, combined with acts of servitude, was refreshing in a form of spiritual renewal. 

The next morning, in my family group we discussed how the stories of the text seemed so real when they were acted out.  Several members of my family shared how uncomfortable they had been washing and drying the feet of others, but they also shared how moving beyond the walls of our comfort zone is an act of faith and something we are required to do as Christians.

Interestingly enough, in New Orleans last week, as an act of servitude and hospitality, one youth group from Ohio each night offered foot washings.  In both the camps and the mission trips we just returned from, I have heard from our youth how through such experiences as foot washing and serving others they feel closer to God than they have in a long, long time. 

At the same time, in both the New Orleans mission trip and at camp, I’ve heard that once the week of mission trip and camp was over and we returned to our daily lives and our daily tasks, there is a fear that our strengthened relationships with God would be lost.  I think these fears are no different than anybody else’s.  How do we keep the text of the Bible alive and close instead of distant and archaic?  Once we feel close to God, how do we hang on to that relationship and not let it go?

One method of living out the words of the Bible and keeping that relationship with God vibrant is to return to today’s text and think about the concept of hospitality.  Hospitality is an essential tenant of the Bible.  We’re all familiar with the words of Jesus when he says, “I was hungry, and you gave me food.  I was thirsty, and you gave me drink.  I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.”

In the book of Hebrews, Jesus’ teaching and the references to Abraham’s and Sarah’s visit from God are reiterated in Hebrews 13:2: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without even knowing it.”

The willingness to extend hospitality to strangers, whether it is at the first day of camp, a stranger who meets you on the sidewalk, or someone you serve on a mission trip is fundamental to the Christian life.  But is it simply enough to be kind to strangers that you meet?  Are we required to do nothing more than to offer food or water, or to work hard for only a week at a hurricane-recovery site?  The answer is, “No.”  While actions as these may be hard enough in themselves, true hospitality calls for something much more than simply meeting the needs of strangers.

When Abraham washed the feet of the travelers, he symbolized the complete acceptance of the stranger.  Abraham threw out any preconceived notions he may have had.  I believe in the ancient world and in today’s world as well, it is so easy to view people from one dimension and instantly make judgments.  When describing someone, we might say something such as, “He’s divorced.”  “She’s an alcoholic.”  “He went to prison.”  “She doesn’t go to church.”  “He lost his home in the hurricane.”  We make it seem as if these one-word summaries describe a person in detail and can provide us with everything we need to know.  But what happens when we move beyond these preconceived notions?  What happens if we start to see the other as normative?  How do we truly embrace the other?

As I was preparing for this morning, I was reminded of the words “sympathy” and “interpathy.”  In “sympathy,” the process of feeling with the other is focused on one’s own self-conscious awareness of having experienced a similar event.  I believe this is how we often relate to others.  When someone experiences hardship or tragedy, and we offer hospitality, we listen and offer support.  We may or may not share our own experiences, but we are always aware of how we have felt in similar conditions.

In contrast to sympathy, is the word “interpathy,” which is a word that is coined by a pastoral theologian named David Augsburger.  In “interpathy,” the process of knowing and feeling with requires that one temporarily believes what the other believes, seeing what the other sees, and value what the other values.  Genuine hospitality requires suspending judgment and accepting others in their fullness exactly as they are.

So how are we to achieve this process of seeing others exactly as they are?  I challenge you for the next month to put yourself, at least once a week, into a situation totally different from the one to which you are accustomed.  Perhaps you can do this through your travels this summer.  Often when we are in a foreign land, even if it is just a short car drive or a flight, we feel like the stranger.  Or perhaps you can join a group that you know nothing about, or lose yourself in a book where you are the stranger and the characters are the norm.  Whenever we put ourselves in new situations, it is our natural tendency to feel protective and unsure of where we fit in.  Both consciously and subconsciously we wonder how others relate to us. 

However, I believe that when you repeatedly put yourself in a different situation time and time again, you will notice that our natural tendency to protect ourselves fades away, and we begin to find that we can relate to others.  We may start to ask ourselves such questions as, “Can we make space for difference?  How we hear the voice of God in a language, a sensibility, a culture not of our own, and can we see the presence of God in the face of a stranger?”

Ultimately we believe in a complex world full of ambiguity and uncertainty.  At times it is easy to feel discouraged and feel there is no hope for connecting with others.  But as an individual who works with youth daily and has the opportunity to see random hospitality and openness, I must tell you I am full of hope. 

I am convinced that one of the greatest challenges of the Church is to find ways in which we can truly seek to understand the other.  Once we truly see the other, accepting people for whom they are, not for whom we want them to be, it is possible to know and understand that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ, held in unity by the love and grace and mercy of God.

Through Christ, we all say together… “Amen.”

Benediction

God of our lives, may our hearts be the open doors that welcome your stories from days of old.  May these stories be inspiration for our welcoming hospitality for all who dwell in the here and now.  Amen.