Proper 11C July 18, 2004 - 8:00 and 10:30 a.m. Gen. 18:1-15; Luke 10:38-42 The Rev. J. Brian Ponder Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi In the Name of God who Creates, Redeems and Sanctifies. First off, I'd like to offer my sincere thanks to so many of you who have made the last few weeks in Starkville so pleasant for me. You have certainly made me feel welcome and you have been quite generous in spirit. Thank you. It is, perhaps then, for this very reason, that I find it quite odd and even a little ironic that me - the new guy - I'm the one who's supposed to offer you a few words on hospitality based on our readings! God certainly does work in mysterious ways! Today's lessons are, indeed, about hospitality. They're about visitation and encounter. They're about the way we interact with one another and respond. They're about true welcome. And they're about perspective-in particular-they're about putting things into perspective. When I was a senior in high school, I was asked to be "head gopher" for one of our diocesan Happening weekends - a job which is completely detail-oriented. It's one of the "in-charge" roles at the retreat. Many of you may be familiar with our diocesan renewal programs including and similar to Cursillo. This was a job of coordination and minutia. It carried with it a responsibility to make sure that things ran on time and were in order. Needs and wants had to be met to the best of our abilities, supplies had to be delivered to small groups. You get the picture. And I was the one "in charge" of seeing that all of this happened-or that's what I thought, at least. As "head gopher" I had prepared and prepared for this particular weekend for about six months. Days and weeks and months were dedicated to making sure that things were "perfect" … that things would go off without a hitch … that things would be seamless. Well they were-they were all of these things, but the weekend came and went - and I had been so focused on the small things that I missed the larger picture. It was only earlier this year that I found out that one of my fellow seminarians from this diocese-and now a very dear friend to me through our studies together-had actually been a participant in that weekend. She was one of so many people that I didn't meet that weekend, because I was so focused on the details. In fact, other than staff members, I can't recall meeting anyone new that weekend. My priorities were blurred. One might say that they were a little askew. What had needed to be done WAS done - but for all the wrong reasons. I remember another time at Camp Bratton-Green when a group of staff people had stayed after the closing of a session and a group of current and past members of the permanent staff had gathered for a reunion and time for fun and fellowship. There was no set activity planned, but people found themselves fishing and boating on the lake, playing disc golf and swimming and just having a good time. There had been some rather loose coordination surrounding "food" detail, and it had been decided that everyone was responsible for supplying his or her meat of choice for the grill. Sides were being provided through the small activity fee that we had all chipped in. Well the afternoon was drawing to a close, evening was setting in and the grill was being fired up. One person in particular-who had concerned himself with starting the grill-announced that he loved to cook out … that he didn't mind watching the grill. Well, this translated to many in the group as … "I'll do all the cooking." Years later, this is still a sore subject for my friend who ended up cooking for about 30 people - unintended! Needless to say, he was quite frustrated! Our lessons concerning Abraham and Sarah and Mary and Martha are as relevant to us now as they would have been millennia ago. Abraham gives us an example of abundant hospitality - what we today might call radical hospitality. He is thrown into action as soon as the three guests appear before his tent. He energizes his household to receive their guests, and while only promising a smidgen of generosity, in all truth, he produces an abundance of hospitality. Abraham concerns himself with the details, but sees to it that the preparations are shared in by the members of his household. He details his plans for hospitality and then not only makes good on them, he makes better on them. Maybe in Abraham we see one of the earliest expressions of invitation to shared responsibility, or ministry. Most surely we recognize through Abraham that we, too, must always be prepared to welcome and be in fellowship. It is no small thing that Abraham communes with the Lord. Martha, in a different way, busied herself with the preparations that Jesus' visit warranted. All the while, Mary sits and visits with Jesus. It's not hard to imagine that the root of Martha's frustration probably rests in her unpreparedness for his visit in the first place. She simply wasn't "set up" to receive guests-especially a guest as important as Jesus! A good portion of her time was most surely consumed over why Mary wasn't helping her. She kind of blew up in her encounter with Jesus when she couldn't take it anymore. But more importantly than this-why wasn't Martha ready for the visit? Martha never asked Mary for help or to share in the work. Martha failed to recognize the hospitality Mary was showing Jesus by being with him, by listening and waiting intently at his feet. Our church has flung out the banner over the years with this message: "The Episcopal Church Welcomes You!" But do we really? Hospitality from the get-go involves welcome and encounter with "the other" which can often times make us apprehensive or wary to enter into true fellowship. Otherness flusters us. So, how is it that we are ready for "the other" here at Resurrection? Today? For tomorrow? For the weeks, months and years ahead? How are we ready to receive the stranger in our midst? Radical hospitality desires of us a call to engagement with the other, not simply welcoming, but striving towards understanding the other. It involves continuing in our dialog and interaction and exchange with one another, even resting in the tension of those awkward moments because we are experiencing something or someone different. Radical hospitality is about invitation and embrace. God and Jesus have the upper hand (so to speak) in the stories we've heard today. We can see their authority exerted simply by how our cast of characters are thrust into busyness by their arrival. There is an implicit authority loaded within in the concept of invitation, as well, because it is a sense of "differentiation" that warrants invitation. If I am truly a member, or if I am truly family, I don't need "invitation." I am already invited. Hospitality involves putting each other at ease in the midst of differentiation-differentiation which can be awkward or which can make us wary of why we might even need to be in relationship with one another, and especially when we are in disagreement-even disagreements like our larger Church faces today. Radical hospitality involves fellowship and communion. It involves much less just who's already at the table as it does who's not there-who has truly not been welcome there, or who doesn't feel welcome, or whose differences are much more easily dismissed than engaged. Hospitality involves making sure there is room at the table for all at any given moment in time. And just when we think everyone's at the table, we must always find room for more. And this sometimes involves discomfort, because it requires of us our being stretched a little bit-outside of our norms-even if we are in the midst of what is normative for and to us. We are not called into comfort, nor are we called into comfortable places. Jesus calls us again and again and again into discomfort. If you think about it, Jesus so often offered his lasting peace to his disciples in the midst of discomfort! We too are called into uncomfortable situations, that we may be comforted by the continued work of God in Christ in this world. Hospitality implies a readiness to engage with the unknown, or the new, or the changed or transformed-not just what makes us complacent or situated. We are called to be a people of hospitality. And it's not only about coming to the table but more importantly to THIS TABLE knowing just who and whose we are - often times more different than we are similar, more broken than we are whole, and, yes, sometimes more uncomfortable than anything else. Hospitality involves spreading a message that our table is not even ours at all-that it is God's table and that it is indeed open for business and unhindered by busyness. Abraham knew this, he communed with God. Martha came to know it as did I-just a little later and in different situations. My camp friend new it too, and I hope others have come to know it and understand his frustration. Our ministry of hospitality is a shared one. Hospitality involves all of us-even those who are new among us for we can only know ourselves more fully in relation to each other and the Other. Hospitality requires of us radical inclusion into the midst of our community, ever seeking of us ways to be God's hands and heart and feet in this world that is so much in need of the good news of Christ. May we ever be open to one another and the Other. In Christ's name.