Pentecost 17: A Welcoming Spirit is Grounded in Humility

Wisdom of Solomon 1:16-2:1, 12-22

Psalm 54 

James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a

Mark 9:30-37

Last week, in our thinking about welcoming and hospitality, we ended by reflecting on words from what scholars believe to be an early Christian hymn, and which St Paul included in his letter to the Philippians: “[Christ Jesus] though he was in the form of God…emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself.” (cf. Philippians 2:6-8)  Paul prefaces these words with a particular call to his sisters and brothers at Philippi: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.  Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.  Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 2:3-5)  Paul is calling them to humility, and a particular kind of humility which resolves itself in a charitable and kindly view of others.  In his words Paul almost seems to echo this morning’s Gospel in which Jesus once again predicts his death – his humbling of himself, and in which he too commends humility among his immediate followers: “Whoever wants to be first must be last and servant of all.” (Mark 9:35b)  He then made his point graphically, by placing among them a child – perhaps the lowest in the social pecking order of the ancient near-east; “children were akin to ‘non-persons’ ”, one biblical commentator has observed.  Jesus places this “non-person” in the midst his disciples and instructs them in hospitality, in effect that they were to humble themselves by playing host and offering hospitality to the most humble among them.

Now, we’ve all been told at some point that humility is a virtue.  However, in the ancient world – the world of Jesus and in which Christianity was born – this was hardly the case.  Both its Greek and Latin equivalents meant something like “crushed” or “debased”, and it was associated with failure and shame.  One might be humble before the gods or before emperors, but after all they held the power of life and death.  Equally, you gained honor yourself when in turn others humbled themselves before you.  But to show humility toward a social equal or worse, an inferior, was not only a bit ridiculous, but it smacked of immorality.  The writer John Dickson presents the situation in this way: “humility before an equal or lesser was morally suspect.  It upset the assumed equation: merit demanded honour, thus honour was proof of merit.  Avoiding honour implied diminishment of merit.  It was shameful.”  It was Christianity that would eventually shift this paradigm, because what the Church discerned in the person of Jesus, and eventually proclaimed, was a life of absolute humility.  The eternal and divine Word, emptied himself in order that human beings could be welcomed into a renewed relationship with God, and that welcoming found its most focused expression in Christ’s offering up of himself in service and ultimately in being subjected to the lowest place, and the most shameful end the Roman world could envisage: death on a cross.  And so for Christians, the message rings out loud and clear  there is no shame, there is nothing shameful in humbling one’s self even for the least of God’s creatures.  Christ’s humility is ultimately an act of hospitality through which all are welcomed into the divine life, as the Prayer Book itself highlights: “Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace.” (BCP, p. 101)  Yes, Christ’s humility is ultimately an act of hospitality by which we are all invited to live into our own divine inheritance, but also by which we are called to recognize that divine inheritance in others and honor it.

If the ancient world understood honor, merit and shame, as the mechanisms through which one’s identity was established and through which the strict distinctions of society were maintained and reinforced, it should hardly be surprising that Christianity commended humility as a way of undermining that entire system.  And isn’t that really what Jesus is trying to say when he speaks in the language of humility?  He is saying that there is in him inaugurated a new system, a new way of living, which he himself modeled and which he called the kingdom of God.  And that, for those who have pledged themselves to this new way, the old categories of merit, greatness, importance have ceased to have any meaning; in fact they’ve been inverted – “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” (Mark 9:35b)  Moreover, this new way of being, this new way of living out the dynamics of human relationship and interaction is profoundly bound up in the dynamics of welcome and hospitality:  “Whoever welcomes such a child in my name welcomes me.” (Mark 9:37a)  The humility which Christ teaches and to which we are called, is not humiliation – there is a difference; neither is it groveling self-abasement.  It is instead a realistic and joyful appreciation of who we are as individuals loved and redeemed by God, in all our brokeness and in all our glory.  Our dignity is not compromised by serving others or by welcoming those whom society may label as non-persons.  In fact, it is by doing so that we model in the world what Jesus himself lived and modeled: “Welcome one another”, Paul writes to the Romans, “just as Christ has welcomed you.” (Romans 15:7)  Christian humility liberates from the social games of position or prestige, it liberates us from worrying if we are losing face, if our honor is at stake by associating with certain groups of people or by performing certain duties, because our honor – our prestige, if you will – is not based on the conventional social values and norms of power or authority, on questions about who is the greatest (cf. Mark 10:34) or most important.  The practice of Christian humility liberates us from all these social games, as we recognize our dignity – and that of others – not as part of a socially imposed system of relative worth or merit, but as human beings made in the image of likeness of God, and absolutely nothing can compromise that.  It is, as St Peter writes, “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading”. (1 Peter 1:4)

A welcoming spirit is grounded in humility, a humility like Christ’s, which is not afraid to go beyond the borders of the conventional or prescribed in order to serve and include.  It is not afraid of losing face or conventional honors.  It knows no sense of humiliation in placing itself at the disposal of others because in doing so we are welcoming and serving the divine in them, as well as the divine purposes of God’s kingdom, and what – what indeed – could be greater, could bring us more real honor – than that?

Pentecost 16: A Welcoming Spirit Demands Sacrifice

Isaiah 50:4-9a

Psalm 116:1-8

James 3:1-12

Mark 8:27-38

We are never far from the cross.  Even as Jesus enters into a very intimate conversation about his identity, as he invites his closest followers to contemplate who he really might be, the conversation leads to his speaking about his rejection and suffering, it leads to the cross.  At the Last Supper in the Gospel of John, Jesus makes a striking statement of welcome and intimicay to his disciples: “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” (John 15:15).  But again, he speaks these words within the context of suffering and sacrifice.  The verse before this is certainly well-known to many: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13)  Even as Jesus welcomes those around him into a new depth of relationship, he reminds them that relationship is costly, sacrificial even.  The prophet Isaiah recognizes also that while God has given to him “the tongue of a teacher, that [he] may know how to sustain the weary with a word” (in effect, offer words of hospitable refreshment to those ground down by life); that even this has brought with it overt sacrifice, even persecution, which he describes graphically – both the abuse received and the patience with which it is borne: “I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard;
I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.” (Isaiah 50:6)

So, we are thinking this month about welcoming and hospitality, and this week we come to what is assuredly an association we do not immediately make – the connection between hospitality and sacrifice, and in come cases suffering, and in others even persecution.   We can sometimes forget the risky nature of hospitality.  After all, is this not the reason – in the end – that Jesus came to the cross, his radical hospitality? He took the risk to welcome not only the stranger, but the despised, the marginalized, those whom contemporary society and religion had branded as unacceptable or dangerous both to public health and public morals – lepers, women with hemorrhages, prostitutes, gentiles.  “Why does he eat with tax-collectors and sinners?”, the Pharisees asked his disciples. (cf. Mark 2:15)  Jesus’ brand of hospitality was more than tea and sympathy, going well beyond what we normally think of as hospitality, and as such it had social and political implications.  It struck at the heart of the established order, and so it was dangerous, and it brought him ultimately to the cross. 

Still, Christians down the centuries have modeled this sort of radical and risky welcoming spirit.  I am thinking here of those in our own country who welcomed into their homes – at great personal risk – African-Americans fleeing from slavery and making their way beyond our borders in to freedom.  People like Thomas Garrett who worked on the Underground Railroad for nearly 40 years.  He was once arrested, tried and fined $5,400 – a great sum of money for the time – but upon paying the fine, he continued his activities.  I am also thinking of the many Righteous Gentiles who offered hospitality to Jews during the Third Reich, hiding them and providing for them, the whole time knowing the horrific consequences awaiting them should this hospitality be discovered.  Indeed, many who were caught shared the fate of those they tried to rescue.  Take for example, the Drs Kurt and Ella Lingens, physicians who lived in Vienna at the end of the 1930s, and who made their home a refuge for their Jewish friends, helping many of them to escape out of Nazi-controlled areas.  They were caught and arrested.  Kurt was sent to fight at the Russian front and was there critically wounded, and Ella was sent to Auschwitz where was put to work as a doctor of the camp inmates.  There she continued her radical and dangerous hospitality, managing to save a number of Jews from death in the gas chambers.  She miraculously survived Auschwitz as well as the death march to Dachau, and was liberated at the war’s end.  Stories like these abound, and in many cases the reason given for people’s decisions to welcome was something like this, “I was only doing my duty and putting into practice the Gospel”.

When it comes to hospitality, we need to move beyond the idea of mere nice-ness, and perhaps rediscover and engage with a truly radical form of hospitality which is at the heart of the Gospel.  Jesus didn’t welcome people on the social and religious margins to be nice, but rather as a sign of God’s reign, of God’s compassionate care.   This kind of hospitality is one that in its welcoming spirit stands up to injustice, gives a voice to the cry of the poor, and is not ashamed to stand alongside Christ by standing alongside and embracing the despised, the rejected, the persecuted and victimized, whatever the personal cost to us may.  And there will be a cost.  This kind of hospitality will demand of us sacrifice and in extreme situations may carry with it some pretty serious consequences.  It will mean denying ourselves and – what may appear to be – our best interests.  It can mean denying ourselves safety and a quiet life.  It will mean sometimes giving up our reputation among “respectable” people.  But it is the sort of hospitality Jesus lived in calling to him all who were the most vulnerable in society: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)  And it is the kind of hospitality he calls us to live out when he warns, “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.  For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” (Mark 8:35-36)  Practicing this radical kind of hospitality means doing so with our whole being, holding back nothing.

No, whenever we live out the Gospel’s call to radical hospitality, we are never far from the cross, the costly living out of sacrificial justice-making and inclusion.  And if none of our hospitable acts or endeavors cost us anything, anything of ourselves, anything of our hearts, anything perhaps even of our well-being, then we are missing something at the heart of Christian hospitality.  Because at the heart of the Christian life is the Christ who as Paul’s writes “though he was in the form of God…emptied himself,
   [and] taking the form of a slave, he humbled himself” in order that he could be for all people the great host, welcoming everyone into his Father’s kingdom.

Pentecost 15: A Welcoming Spirit Allows us to Change

Isaiah 35:4-7a

Psalm 146

James 2:10-17

Mark 7:24-37

When thinking of hospitality, we think usually of welcoming into our homes, into our circle, those who we already know, or at least those known by those whom we know.  However, the biblical image of hospitality is markedly different.  Looking especially at the Hebrew Scriptures, hospitality was an utter necessity in a nomadic culture, as well as in areas without any heavy concentration of villages, towns or cities.  As such, it was one’s honor and duty to make his or her tent, his or her household, open to the wayfarer and traveler, and most usually this would be someone unknown, it would be a stranger; and the relationship between host and guest was considered  absolutely sacrosanct.  Witness the disturbing, but revealing episode in the book of Genesis when Lot would rather throw to the angry mob his daughters than betray to them his guests – angels posing at men. (cf. Genesis 19)  But this is only one example of the host/guest dynamic in Scriptures.  Perhaps the most well known – not least on account of the famous Rublev icon, The Hospitality of Abraham – appears also in Genesis and features also some sort of divine messengers appearing as men.  Abraham’s words as he meets them highlights the honor in being a host, indeed an honor conferred by guests themselves:  “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant.” (Genesis 18:3)  Immediately Abraham commands food and other comforts for them, including cakes, veal, curds and milk, then stands by while they eat and rest. (cf. Genesis 18:6-8)   Fleeing from Egypt, into the land of Midian, Moses finds hospitality among the tents and the household Jethro.  Here the main protagonist is the guest, but the dynamic is the same.  Moses, the stranger is invited to break bread, to stay with Jethro and his people, and is even offered Zipporah, Jethro’s daughter, in marriage – yes, in a patriarchal culture that’s part of hospitality too – and by marriage is transformed from guest into kin, made welcome into full inclusion, as it were.  The New Testament too commends in various ways this relationship of guest and host: “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” (Matthew 25:34b-35)  In the Gospel of Luke, the Emmaus narrative places Jesus himself – unrecognized by his disciples, therefore a stranger – in the role of guest.  “Stay with us,” they say to him, “because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” (Luke 24:29)  Among the epistles, the author of the letter to the Hebrews writes: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” (Hebrews 13:2)  All these instances in the Scriptures reveal the common cultural understanding of the guest as primarily the stranger, and that by welcoming the stranger we somehow welcome the divine purposes, we welcome a transformation, we welcome a new path.

Today’s gospel is all about the encounter with the stranger, and about Jesus’ particular kind of hospitality which offers refreshment, restoration and wholeness;  and yet it takes some convincing for Jesus to see the stranger as guest, to reach out in hospitality to the stranger.  The woman who approaches Jesus is a foreigner, “a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin” (Mark 7:26a), the writer of Mark tells us; and when she asks Jesus for the healing of her daughter, in a sense when she requests the time-honored and socially expected hospitality: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs” (Mark 7:27) – now, “dog” was a common and derogatory term among Jews for referring to Gentiles, outsiders.  In turn, she comes back with a clearly logical, but also shaming response.  While aware, that the host should offer his or her guests the best the household has to offer, like Abraham who brings out some of the choicest foods, she says to Jesus, in effect, well at least you could be hospitable enough to give me the crumbs. (cf. Mark 7:28)  Here something changes in Jesus’ thinking, and he says to her “for saying this, you may go – the demon has left your daughter.” (Mark 7:29)  In Matthew he first commends her faith – “Woman, great is your faith!” (Matthew 15:28) – before sending her home to find her daughter sound and well.  In welcoming the stranger, Jesus’s own vision is enlarged as to what his mission is about – perhaps it is not only to the children of Israel – and to signify this he goes beyond the domain of his own people, beyond the familiar.  The next section in Mark takes him into the Decapolis, a region full of strangers, a group of cities which were centers – not of Jewish – but of Greek and Roman culture.  There Jesus makes God’s welcome and hospitality available to all, even opening the ears of a deaf man with a speech impediment which allowed him to hear more effectively and more eloquently proclaim the good news of the hospitable and welcoming God.  Jesus allows himself to be changed by the encounter with the stranger to such an extent that it opens up a whole new dimension to his ministry.  In the stranger he was able to hear the promptings of his Father to go beyond the familiar, and to live out the radical kind of hospitality which was already an integral part the Jewish tradition, even if not well-practiced.

In thinking about welcome and hospitality, the Judeao-Christian tradition not only holds in high regard the host/guest relationship, but has a special place for the stranger, indeed consistently seems to point to the possibility that it is in the encounter with stranger that the divine is revealed, both divine glory and the divine plan.  We can ignore the stranger and the stranger’s message but we very well may do so at the risk of ignoring God.  Sarah laughed when the strangers predicted she would bear a son even in her old age.  The disciples on the road to Emmaus did not recognize the risen Christ in the stranger walking with them.  Jesus himself did not initially see in the plea of Syrophoenician woman the invitation to go beyond his upbringing.  But in each case, it is the stranger who is vindicated, offering to the hosts a wider vision, perhaps even a new direction. When we genuinely place ourselves in the posture of host, every stranger who comes into our lives, who comes through our doors here at the Church of the Saviour, brings with him or her this possibility, the possibility of transforming us, the possibility of widening our vision.  But it requires of us that we take seriously the posture of host, that we rediscover its meaning in our tradition, that we are willing like Abraham to offer the best to the stranger who comes our way, making ourselves present – really present – to them and to their needs, allowing ourselves to be surprised by the possibilities they offer.  And the ironic thing about it all – and the scriptures bear witness over and again – it is the host that in the end is more blessed; because as we reach out in welcome to the stranger we are further caught up into the mystery of the God’s plans, of God’s own life, who himself – as the psalm says – “loves the righteous [and] cares for the stranger.” (Psalm 146:8)

Pentecost 13: "What is Truth?"

Joshua 24.1-2a, 14-18

Psalm 34.15-22

Ephesians 6.10-20

John 6.56-59

In the Gospel of John, Pontius Pilate asks one of the most profound questions in all of the Scriptures, a question that resounds and echoes starkly through the centuries. It the perennial and eternal question of the philosopher: “What is truth?” (John 18.38).  These words were well placed by the writer of the Gospel of John on the lips of the pagan Roman governor.  The question of truth and the quest of philosophy were a great concern among the ancients.  Classical religion was a civic affair, but it did not provide ultimate answers in the way we normally think of religion.  If that was your quest, then you turned to some of the various schools of philosophy which existed throughout the ancient world.  A contributing factor to the growth of Christianity was that it offered religion and philosophy, a spirituality which offered a way of truth and not simply a system for appeasing the gods.  So it is in this context we must understand this question of Pilate.  In one sense, the entire scene is representative of a larger reality: Pilate is the pagan world challenging Christianity about this very question of truth. 

In our modern context Pilate’s question is particularly relevant, because we live in a world which to a large extent has discovered the relativity of truth.  Our global perspective has allowed us to view so much of what we have customarily held as truth to be conditioned by culture and society, by particular view-points and even by ignorance.  The ultimate truth which classical philosophy looked for has become even more distant; and the fact is that the wider your vision, perspective and experience the farther away it gets.  It is easy to arrive at “truth” the more parochial your are, the less experience of the world you have, the fewer people you encounter, and the fewer really challenging experiences you live through. 

Is there then anything to be said for truth, at all?  More specifically, what claim can Christianity make upon the truth, if any?  Well, it seems to me that Christianity today can offer the same synthesis between religion and philosophy which it did in the ancient world: religion which tries to make sense of the human relationship to the divine, and philosophy which asks the questions of truth and the meaning of the good life.  Christianity can engage well with question of truth in our present situation, because it has always placed truth within the context of right action – orthopraxis.  For Jesus the claim to truth was always to be judged by what it produced “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.  You will know them by their fruits.  Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles?  In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.  A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.” (Matthew 7.15-18)  For Jesus the truth sets us free (cf. John 8.31), it brings life (cf. John 14.6), it conveys grace (cf. John 1.15).  Paul writing to the Ephesians puts truth the within the context of righteousness, peace, faith, wholeness.  The writer of the first letter of John writes, “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth…” (1John 3.18-19).  In the New Testament tradition truth is bound up in orthopraxis.

In a complex, cross-cultural, multi-faith world this is good news indeed.  I do not have to brow-beat my fellow human beings with my version of the truth, much less do I have to convince them to believe  it, or walk around with an air of religious superiority to justify it.  In the words of the prophet Micah, what I have to do is “but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with…God.” (Micah 6.8)  Such an orthopraxis of truth makes appropriate space not only for the extent to which truth is relative, but also for the extent to which truth, from our limited vantage point, is provisional.  God is ultimately unknowable, and even that which we can know about God is always interpreted by and filtered through the various perspectives of culture, society and experience.  In this regard truth is a bit like God.  The more we find out about the world, and the more we go outside ourselves and encounter others, the more convinced we become of the relativity of truth.  Equally, the more we delve into the depths of God my means of prayer, meditation and human encounters, the less we can say with certainty about God, much less speak for God.  Like I said before, the more narrow and shallow our experience the more willing we are to claim a monopoly on truth or absolute knowledge of God.  And – not too surprisingly – the less willing we are to accept the diversity of human nature and experience, the more willing we are to condemn the beliefs of others.

I am not sure what truth is, but I am sure of this:  that I come to know it better and grow into it more fully, not in my claiming to posses it exclusively, but in living with compassion, kindness, tolerance, humility, joy, thanksgiving; and in allowing those to transform me and the world.  I accept that my truth may not be your truth, but kindness is kindness; compassion is compassion, forbearance is forbearance and “by this we will know that we are from the truth.” (1 John 3.19)  I have said this before, and I am sure that undoubtedly I shall say it again, but I am very concerned about the obsession of some Christians with orthodoxy at the expense of orthopraxis.  When that happens we become narrow-minded, self-righteousness, nasty, mean-spirited.  What kind of religion, what kind of truth, disfigures human beings so terribly? 

“What is truth?”  It is elusive, and from our limited perspective always incomplete.  Yet we can grow into truth, not in pursuing certainty by narrowing our vision, but by opening ourselves up  in trust and kindness  We can grow into truth, not by chasing it or convincing others to live our way, but by listening to others and allowing them to transform us into more understanding people.  We can grow into truth by accepting others in non-judgemental compassion.  We can grow into truth simply by doing acts of kindness and growing in forbearance.