Open Hearts Open Doors: The Hospitality of God
Dr. Tom Pace
August 20, 2017
Matthew 18:12-14, Revelation 3:20

We’re beginning our series today on hospitality, and for three weeks we’re going to look at that subject. And today we want to look at the foundation, the basis, the motivation for hospitality. Then the next two weeks we’ll look at how we put hospitality into practice, how we practice hospitality. Then for three weeks after that we’re going to really try to put it into place. So September 10, 17 and 24 we really hope you’ll begin to think about ways you can reach out to others, perhaps outside the walls of this church. How you can invite them to be a part of what’s going on here, but more importantly, invite them into relationship with you, and perhaps the Gospel can be poured between your two hearts.
So today we’re going to hear two Scriptures. One is a very familiar parable to many from the Gospel of Matthew. It’s also found in Luke. The other is just a single verse from the Revelation to St. John.
What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost. Matthew 18:12-14 (NRSV)
Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me. Revelation 3:20 (NRSV)
Let’s pray together. O God, open us up. Open our eyes that we might see all things anew through your eyes, open our ears that we might hear your word for each of us and us as a community. Open our hearts that we might feel. Then O God, open our hands that we might serve. Amen.
When I was in seminary my favorite professor was a fellow named Bill Power. Dr. Power was just fun, funny. He’d invite the students over to his house for pancakes and beer, which was kind of a fun mix I thought. He had a little dog named Lucifer, little tiny guy. He would say, “I taught Lucifer how to pray,” and we’d say, “Aw – come on.” He’d hold out a little piece of meet and Lucifer would pant expectantly, and Dr. Power would say, “See, he’s praying?” We’d say, “Now come on, he’s begging. We call that begging.” Then Dr. Power would say, “Ah! Seminarians, tell me the difference between praying and begging?” See? That’s important stuff.
He told the story about going on an archeological dig with his son when his son was about ten years old. They went in afterwards and had a meal with an Arab sheikh there, and it was a huge feast. They had all this weird food that they didn’t want to eat, but you needed to because it was polite and all those sorts of things.
When it was done the man said to them, “We’ve shared a meal in my tent together. You will now always be my brother and your son will always be my son.”
Dr. Power was surprised and thought, “Those are big words, you know.” But what struck him as amazing was that, and still does to this day at least, as he shared the story with us - his son always got $1000 on his birthday from that fellow. He’d said, “He’s really my son.” He took it seriously, this notion idea of hospitality.
Hospitality runs all the way through the Scripture, and it is such a part of the culture of the Middle East but certainly it’s Biblical culture, the culture of Judaism and then of Christianity. Hospitality was so important. It’s not Martha Stewart. It’s not a pretty set table. Hospitality is this sense of reaching out and opening yourself up to others to protect them, to take them in.
There’s no way we have time to go through all the Scripture about hospitality. In the law, in Deuteronomy 10 it says, “You shall love the stranger, for you were once strangers in the land of Egypt.” Leviticus 19 says, “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you. You shall love the alien as yourself for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.”
The Hebrew for “stranger” or “alien” or sometimes “foreigner,” translated all those different ways, is the word ger. It occurs 92 times in the Old Testament alone. That’s how pervasive this idea of welcoming the stranger was. It was just built into what it meant to worship this God, Yahweh, that we worship.
Now in the New Testament… it’s funny I was going to tell you that, you know, we see hospitality is how to throw a great party, and that’s not what it is. But when you read the New Testament that’s exactly what it is. Because over and over again in the New Testament the Kingdom of God is described as a party, as a feast, as a celebration. And Jesus is in the business of finding those, and inviting them in and welcoming them to his party.
When the Prodigal Son returns what does the father do? He throws a party! And he wants to make sure that both sons are there – the Prodigal, the younger son, and the elder son. He goes out to make sure to get that elder son and bring him in, too.
This parable we have today is found in both Luke and in Matthew, and in the Matthew version, the one we read it says, “And the shepherd went out and when he found the sheep he brought him back.” In Luke it says that the shepherd went out “until he found the sheep” and brought him back. It’s as if he was saying, “I’m going to stay at it. I’m going to keep bringing you back, because I have to bring you in. I have to bring you into my fold, bring you into my arms.” That’s what hospitality was about.
In the Greek New Testament the word for hospitality is philoxenia, and it’s usually translated “hospitality.” I love where it comes from. It comes from the word philo which is one of the three words for love. Sometimes some might say there are four Greek words for love. There’s agape which is Christian love, there’s eros which is romantic love and then there’s philo which is family love, love for your brothers and sisters, your children, your parents – philo. So he takes family love and xenia, which is for stranger. Christian hospitality is loving strangers like they’re family, loving strangers like they’re family.
There is a church in Dallas that is really built on small groups, and they say, “We’re not a church with small groups, but we’re a church of small groups.” And their policy is that you can’t join the church except through a small group. You don’t join the church, you join a small group and that makes you part of the church. What you join is the small group. They have two things about their small groups. One is they are always in homes, they’re not allowed to be in the church or somewhere else like a restaurant. They have to meet in homes, because they say that’s where real intimacies develop. He said, “Our bar, our standard for an effective small group, is that everybody in the group can get up and go to the refrigerator and get out what they want without asking.”
I love nitty-gritty kind of things like that. That’s not high falutin. It’s like, “You’re so much family that you don’t to wait for us to come say to you, “Would you like some more to eat?” No, you just get up and go look through the Tupperware containers and see what’s in there. If you’re hungry you get one of them. That’s what it means to be family, to love strangers or “Mi casa es su casa,” “My house is your house.”
Supposedly that’s what Montezuma said to Cortez when he came over, and that’s where it came from. It didn’t work out so well for Montezuma. But nonetheless the idea is that you’re family, and we’re going to love you like family.
I think the starting place has to be an experience of being a stranger. Look, I would love to be able over the next three weeks, to say to you over and over again, “You have to be hospitable. You need to be hospitable. You need to be nicer, you need to welcome people. You need to look for people who don’t know where they’re going. You need to walk them to Sunday school classes. You oughta, you oughta, you oughta…” And I’ll probably do some of that.
But I’m going to tell you that that’s not going to motivate you. That’s not the basis of Christian hospitality. The basis of Christian hospitality is that we, too, have been strangers. Did you hear what the Old Testament said? It said, “Welcome the stranger. For you too were a stranger in the land of Egypt.” That we have been strangers ourselves.
When Moses and Zipporah, who was from Midian, gave birth to their first son, Moses said, “I will call him Gershom.” Now remember what ger means – it means “stranger.” “I will call him Gershom for I have been a stranger in a strange land.” Have you ever felt like a stranger in a strange land? Like you just don’t really fit. Like you’re trying to fit, but you don’t really fit.
Perhaps you know the writing of Madeleine L’Engle. Here’s what she writes: “We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner and suddenly there is a strange sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.” Or there’s the great Albert Schweitzer. “We are all so much together but we are all dying of loneliness.”
Henri Nouwen is one of my favorite authors. He says, “The world is a world of strangers, estranged from their own past, culture and country, from neighbors, friends and family, from their deepest self and from God.”
Do you ever feel lonely like you are a stranger in a strange land? In our current political culture I confess that sometimes I feel like a stranger. And as I talk to folks out there, you do, too. You say, “I keep being told I’ve got to pick a team, I have to choose a side. And I don’t fit anyplace. I don’t fit on either side.” We’ve got these images of what each side is. We get told what each side is supposed to believe, and we think, “I don’t fit in either of those places.” So we sort of feel like “Just leave me alone, will you?”
At the time of Jesus you depended on people for hospitality, but we don’t depend on people for hospitality anymore. It does feel like an extra, because now we can buy hospitality. We even use the term. We say it’s a “hospitality industry.” That’s the hotel-motel industry. How can hospitality be an industry? At the time of Jesus there was no Motel 6 where they kept the light on for you. If you were traveling and you wanted to be safe somebody had to take you in. And most homes had a Kataluma which is the Greek word and it means a guest room. When Mary and Joseph got to Bethlehem and the Scripture says, “There was no room for them in the inn” – that wasn’t an inn. There were no inns. There was no room for them in this guest room. That was their family’s house, and it was full.
We don’t really want that. Here’s my confession. When I go to preach at other places out of town, and usually they’ll call me. They’ll say, “Would you like to stay with members of the church or would you like a hotel room?” Sign me up for a hotel room, please! It doesn’t have to be a nice one, Motel 6 is fine. I’m easy, just as long as it has one of those little coffee pots that makes coffee in the morning. That’s all I need, really all I need. It’s because I like to keep my walls up.
So we find ourselves lonely and isolated being strangers.
Now the Scripture gives us two basic answers for this problem of alienation. You hear how it even uses the word for stranger – alienation. Alien. There are two answers. The first one is the church – that’s us. We are to welcome the stranger and invite them in. We’re going to talk about that for the next two weeks.
But the foundation, the core, of this sense of our welcome for others is that God is a radically hospitable God who welcomes us in, who says, “You will never really be alone. I’ve got you in the palm of my hand. You are welcome. I’m not just going to welcome you; I’m going to pursue you, that’s how radical the hospitality is. I’m going to chase you down and bring you in.”
When we get to my funeral I hope very few of you are here, because I’m going to live to be 130. But when you get to my funeral, we’re going to sing my favorite hymns. We’re going to sing “Marching to Zion,” and “I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry” and “Lord, I’ve Come to the Lakeshore” which a lot of you don’t even know. And we’re going to sing the hymn that we’ll sing at the end of this service today, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.”
The lyric from that last hymn that holds me so fast is “Jesus, sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God.” That’s the essence, the foundation, the core of Christian hospitality that we were strangers and God brought us in, loved us like family.
Peter in his first letter says it this way, “Once you were no people, now you are God’s people.” You’ve been brought in.
My daughter and son-in-law, Callie and Larry, have a little stubby dog named Ralphie. Ugliest thing in the world. I hope he’s not watching on live cast. Stubby little thing. So they have three dogs, two big ones, and sometimes accidentally the gate gets let open, and when that happens the other two dogs – they’re gone! They are out of here!
Well, Ralphie was found by Larry at a gas station, and Larry has a heart like butter. So he picked up this dog and couldn’t bear to leave him there. He put him in the truck and took him back to their house. So when the other dogs run away, Ralphie jumps on the couch. Ralphie’s not allowed on the couch, by the way, but he jumps on the couch anyway. He burrows himself in as if to say, “I’m not leaving, because I’ve been a stranger. I once was nobody’s dog, and now I’m somebody’s dog. I’m not leaving.”
Once you were a stranger. Once we were strangers and God pursued us and chased us down and took us in. And loves us like we’re family. You know the image that the Scripture uses is the image of adoption. It’s like with adopting Ralphie, where we take him in, and it’s like God adopted us. Here’s the way it is in Ephesians, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens.” Isn’t that interesting, the exact words. “You are no longer strangers and aliens but you are citizens with the saints and members of the family of God.” You’ve been adopted into the family.
You know how I know that God loves me like family? Because when I think of my own family, my children, my wife, my parents, when I think about them, I would willingly die for them. Most of you would do the same for your family. I would willingly die for them. And that’s what Jesus did for us, loved us like family, died for us. That is that radical hospitality of God who loves strangers like we’re family.
Now the flip side is this, we are then to offer hospitality to God. If we’re going to experience that hospitality we have to open ourselves up enough to be hospitable to the God who wants to come and live in us. It says in Revelation 3: “Behold I stand at the door and knock, and if anyone hears my voice, they will open the door, and I will come in and eat with them and they with me.” We have to open the door.
There’s a famous painting of this Scripture, and what’s so interesting is Jesus stands at the door knocking, and there’s no doorknob on the outside of the door. The door has to be opened from the inside. We have to be open enough to let Christ in. The Scripture uses the term “to dwell in us and us in him.” You see how the hospitality is reciprocal?
You can call it a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Or if that seems too evangelical to you, or you want a more sophisticated term, you might call it Christian spirituality. Or maybe you call it “the indwelling presence of Christ.” It doesn’t matter what you call it. It has to do with opening your heart and letting the full presence of God come in. And we have to do that.
John Chrysostom was one of the early church fathers and he wrote about 400 A.D. The early church fathers were in that period of the first five centuries after Christ. St. Augustine is the most famous. Chrysostom is the next most famous. He was the archbishop of Constantinople, and he instructs his parishioners this, “Make for yourself a guest chamber in your own house. Set up a bed there. Set up a table there and a candlestick. Have a room to which Christ may come. Say, ‘This is Christ’s cell; this building is set apart for him. Come and live in me.’”
That’s our hospitality to God. These are the foundation of our hospitality of anybody.
Now not only do we open ourselves spiritually to God but we can do it tangibly, too. So Matthew 25 says that when we welcome the stranger and clothe the naked and feed the hungry and give water to the thirsty and visit the prisoner when we do all those things we have done it for him. That’s our hospitality to God and we’re going to talk more about that in the next couple of weeks, how we do that.
So one more time. The theological, the foundation, the basis, the experience of our hospitality to others has to be based on our experience, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me. You and your love, God, reached out to me and drew me in. You loved me like family.”
I began our sermon today with a story of hospitality and I’ll close with one. John David Hopper was the president of the International Baptist Seminary in Europe. He was a Baptist missionary who died a few years ago and was an amazingly incredible man. He spoke eight languages and would travel throughout all the far recesses of Europe speaking and starting Protestant churches. He was in Romania once and he tells the story about how he went into this little village. The pastor there and his wife took him into their home to stay. Again, no Motel 6’s or anything. So he stayed with them and they took him into the one bedroom in their house, which was their bedroom. They told him that that was where he was going to stay, that it was his room. He said, “No, no, this is your room. I’m a guest here. I’ll make a pallet on the floor. Don’t worry about it.”
But they said, “Oh, no, we will have none of that. We’re going to treat you like family.” So they made a warm meal for him, poured hot water into a basin for him to wash himself, and he went into their bedroom. He was very thankful to them. He put on his pajamas and got in bed and closed his eyes and dozed off.
About thirty minutes later he heard the door open and the pastor and his wife came in and one got in on the right side of the bed and the other got in on the other side. He thought, “What?” They weren’t giving him their bed… they’d said, “Like we’re family! This is what we do. We all sleep in here together.” He said he didn’t stay long in that village.
Now I’m not asking you to be that hospitable to others. That’s maybe over the edge. But I will tell you this. On those times when you feel a stranger and you feel like you just don’t really fit anywhere and that no one really understands you, and that you’re not welcome just as you are anyplace, then put yourself in that bed and imagine God the Father climbs in on the right side and God the Son Jesus climbs in on the left. And the Holy Spirit snuggles in there between the two of you. And there you are all together. The holy family as it were. That’s how much God loves you. Loves you like family.
Gracious God, we confess that too often we hold you at arm’s length. Forgive us; we want your divine presence, that assurance that we are loved as your children, adopted into your family. We want that right in our hearts all the time, God. We want to be hospitable to you and for you to dwell in us and us in you. So show us how, God. Break down those walls, prompt us to open the door. That we might be loved like family. In the name of Christ we pray. Amen.