Deut. 10:12-22; Luke 10:38-42
“Our village had 30
donkeys,” reports Menachem Goldberg, “and we’ve equipped the first five with
wireless routers that are attached to the donkey’s body. You take some pictures, you want to change
your picture on Facebook – you can do it.”
There are many
convenient places today that have wireless routers allowing you to directly
access the internet. They are usually
called “hot spots.” I rely on these hot
spots when visiting favorite coffee shops as well as when I’m in our Community
House. But I never imagined there
would be an “animal hotspot” in the Holy Land!
The donkey has been used as a working animal for thousands of years …
now it can help bridge that past with immediate moments in the present. In my
mind, what most makes this hoof-beat
hospitality noteworthy is that it’s a modern day way of facilitating storytelling
while people are on pilgrimage to sacred places.
Stories about hospitality
in the Holy Land abound in the Bible. They provide instruction for the faithful
hospitality we are called to live into.
They teach us how to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind and
soul, and how to love our neighbors as we ourselves want to be loved. They connect us to faithful people from the
past, and inspire us in the present to share our stories of receiving and
offering holy hospitality. Sharing them
is a way of joyfully inspiring one another and future generations.
Our Christian faith
community is a child of Judaism. As
such, we know that welcoming others, offering secure shelter, and sharing faith
stories all fold together as a single moral imperative throughout the Old
Testament. We hear Moses preaching this
very strongly through the Book of Deuteronomy.
He reminds us that the Hebrews lived as enslaved aliens in Egypt and
then as exiles in the wilderness. He
reminds us that they were mightily dependent on God’s hospitality for daily
sustenance and for any and all hope for the future. God faithfully offered it, and, in turn,
called on them to live out the holy example set before them. One Christian writer sums it all up well by
saying that “God’s people will be a people whose just hospitality flows from
gratitude for God’s past care and from their own painful memories of refugee
life.”[i]
Being of faithful
family relation, the moral imperative of hospitality continued on with the
earliest generations of Christians.
And in those days, hospitality wasn’t just a polite option, something
nice to do when possible. It was very necessary
for individual survival and for the growth of the Church.
The early Church
wasn’t really any sort of secure institution … it was more of a persecuted
minority movement meeting in people’s homes.
One high-ranking counselor to the Roman emperors justified actions
against Christians by defining our faith as a “new and malicious
superstition.” Essentially, Christians
were defined as bringers of evil on par with magicians and witches out to prey
on ignorant people. Awful persecution was built on that platform
and grotesquely reinforced when Emperor Nero completely threw the blame on
Christians when ten of the fourteen wards of the Roman Empire were destroyed by
fire in 64.
So when we think of
our holy call to offer hospitality, and the blessed freedom we have to do it,
we need to deeply reflect on all this … on its heartbeat in our early faith
history. And we should also read, listen
for and share the many more powerful examples that can be lifted up from more
recent centuries and decades.
Central to it all is,
of course, Jesus. His example is the example. And it
is common to read in the Gospels how when He shared hospitality, telling
transformations usually happened. Most
often, the guests become hosts and the hosts became guests. Our story today about Mary and Martha offers
us a good example.
Mary and Martha were
sisters and close friends of Jesus. Their
brother was Lazarus, who is a whole other story of holy hospitality to tell. In
this story from Luke 10, Jesus arrived one day at their home for a visit. They, of course, welcomed this beloved, special
guest. It was undoubtedly a joy to
host him. But they went about this hosting in two
different ways.
Martha, we are told,
was busy with many tasks. Given the
culture of the day, we can assume she was carrying out the traditional hospitable
duties of getting a meal and perhaps a guest room prepared. She
was serving. Mary, on the other hand,
we are told was sitting. Not lazing about, but sitting at the feet of Jesus and
listening intently to his words. Sounds
like a simple act, right? But in the
culture of the day, sitting and listening to a rabbi was only something men
were allowed to do. Her doing so was culturally
disreputable and she risked shame being brought upon her house. Mary took this radical risk for a very good
reason. She boldly did so to receive the
Word of God.
Jesus, the guest, became
her host. He did so because he did not
force her to stop sitting and listening.
There isn’t even the slightest hint of that. It was of utmost importance to our Lord that
she was welcomed to receive His holy words.
Luke telling us of this is a way of voicing Jesus’ protest against “the rules
and boundaries set by the culture in which he lived.”
From underneath the
weight of her to-do’s, Martha protested.
She had faithfully set out to serve Jesus, but could not understand why
her sister just sat around so inhospitably.
But Jesus, the guest, also became a host to Martha. He
did so by way of a light reprimand. Not
a scolding or shaming one, just a firm reminder not to get so distracted that
she failed to rest and receive the one thing she most needed in her life and
home – the Word of God.
As a composite, Mary
and Martha represent one model disciple.[ii] They represent intentionally listening to
and actively serving the Word of God in Jesus Christ. This is the heartbeat of hospitality. It is the rhythm of righteous living.
When and where and how
often do you intentionally put busyness and distractions aside in order to
really listen to Jesus? Have you had
times of hosting Jesus – by way of listening to His Word and going out to serve
Him – when you felt suddenly like His guest?
I know that for me, there
have been many times when this has happened through conversations with our
guests from the Interfaith Hospitality Network. When sitting and attentively listening, there
will be something said that feels like deep holy truth. Often times, it will be something that
resonates with my own personal experiences, something that inspires me to feel
like we aren’t really strangers and aren’t just host and guest. And I’ve often heard affirmations of God’s
gracious, abiding love alive in the midst of tough times before I’ve had a
chance to even think it.
In one of the essays
in an excellent book titled Practicing Our Faith, I read that “when it
is most fully realized, hospitality not only welcomes strangers; it also
recognizes their holiness. It sees in
the stranger a person dear to and made in the image of God, someone bearing
distinctive gifts that only he or she can bring.” Just
imagine how transformed for the better our lives and our world would be if we
actually recognized holiness every time we came in contact with one another,
with family members, with coworkers, with classmates, with store clerks, and,
really, with everyone we interact with every single day.
The same essay also
recognizes that while we know that we should offer hospitality, we are also
often afraid to … which is why it’s so important to offer it together through
community structures. The author writes,
“In the face of overwhelming human need for shelter and care, and in the face
of our own fear of strangers, we need to develop ways of supporting one another
in the practice of hospitality.”[iii]
I thank God for all
the ways FPC does this so well through our many mission efforts. We are
faithful at being and helping bring about hotspots for holy hospitality! It’s
rooted in our intently listening to and actively serving God’s Word. No matter how busy and distracted we
get. I hope we’ll all realize again and
again that our giving and our hosting can inspire us to receive and be the
guest of the “Lord and lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not
partial.” And let’s even thank God that
even if the need for hospitality isn’t exactly life threatening, such as when
riding on the back of donkey in the Holy Land and wanting to upload a photo to
Facebook, communities will come up with ways to offer it and to share the
Greatest Story Ever Told. Amen.
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