The ministry of hospitality –
It was very important in OT times
as the story of Abraham and the 3 visitors indicates
It was very important in the time of Jesus
as seen in Martha working hard at providing hospitality
for Jesus and his entourage
and it has importance now
in how we offer hospitality here at Emmanuel.
Offering hospitality seems to come with some rewards:
for the congregation, we think about how
our lives would be enriched by guests who come and stay.
This would be a little different than in our homes
when we hope that the guests will go back to their own homes
after an appropriate length of time!
At church can we be honest about whether or not
we really want all guests here to stay?
What if that guest is someone different from ourselves?
What if that guest challenges us
and the extent to which we are willing to offer hospitality?
Be careful!
This difficult guest will most likely turn out to be Christ in disguise, a kind of pop quiz regarding our intentions and dedication and devotion.
In the Genesis story today hospitality is rewarded.
The three guests are angels of God,
or indeed the Divine Presence in Triune form,
as the famous Russian icon of the Trinity
at table under the oaks of Mamre.
The reward here is a healing for Sarah
so that she and Abraham will have the long promised son.
But now the hospitality story in the Gospel reading…
This story is odd; it doesn’t fit regarding hospitality
- as per much of what we read in the Gospel of Luke.
There is often an unexpected twist in these stories
from what one would ordinarily expect.
With Jesus something radical often happens,
and this case is no exception.
Martha has invited Jesus to her home,
and along with Jesus comes his disciples,
and if word got out around Bethany - and it most likely did -
then others show up.
Hospitality was the #1 social rule; it was sacrosanct.
In being properly hospitable, one must provide food, of course,
but also the other amenities – to provide for the guests to freshen up,
to wash feet … and hands and face…
I get the feeling that Martha actually would rather have been
just spending time with Jesus.
Quite possibly she was feeling resentful
because Mary was doing just what she wanted to do:
sit at the feet of Jesus and just listen to him, to be near him.
But instead Martha is running around seeing to hospitality needs
for all those guests in her home,
doing what was good and right, and not like her slacker sister,
so Martha was only able to listen to Jesus with one ear in passing,
as she went about carrying out this important duty of hospitality.
So she appealed to the obvious authority that Jesus has
for him to tell her sister to return to her proper place
in this obligation of hospitality, of serving and service.
But in this situation to serve while everyone else is sitting and listening
is to have a divided attention.
You really can’t give your full attention to the listening.
It’s trying to do some task while listening to someone talk to you.
You know, if that someone is your children, they usually call you on it.
They want your undivided attention.
and they aren’t hesitant to tell you so. Mine weren’t!
Jesus responds to Martha by addressing her own divided attention.
“You are anxious about many things,” he says.
And the Greek word for “anxious” means literally to have a divided mind.
Of few things is there a need, or just one, he tells her.
Mary has chosen the good part,
the single focus,
not the divided mind of both serving
and trying to catch bits of the Word Jesus is speaking.
Martha is to learn from Mary about the one thing necessary,
even more necessary, or especially more necessary,
than that culture’s #1 priority.
Too much of the Church’s ministry
of diakonia or service and the ministry of hospitality
is done with a divided mind,
with mixed motives, and without sitting and listening to Jesus.
Service flows from sitting and listening first,
from the relationship with Jesus that results in the realization
and deep knowing of our identity through baptism in Christ.
True serving
can only come out of first realizing on a very deep level
our relationship to Jesus,
and then service and ministry will flow and be unstoppable.
It doesn’t really work the other way around, in the reverse order.
If we want our service, our ministry, and hospitality
to be authentic and effective,
then we need to do what Mary was doing.
There is such a history of human good intentions about serving others
that ends up causing more harm than good,
that is patronizing and demeaning, that is manipulative,
that is done for the benefit of feeling magnanimous
rather than truly looking at what the recipient needs or wants.
We need to do what Mary is doing first.
What is it, then, to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to what he says?
Let me suggest to you that it is exactly that: Sit and listen.
I know something about this.
For me – if I am to be a spiritual leader worth my salt,
I need to do some serious listening.
For too many years I went just on memory,
what I learned in seminary
and what bits and pieces of hearing Jesus I had experienced
throughout the years.
But the time came when my inner spirit finally got through to me
with the truth of my spiritual condition:
Sit down, shut up and listen.
That’s when I started meditating.
You know, I took off 2 years from active ministry
for an extended sabbatical just to sit and listen.
Essentially I did nothing but meditate 6 – 8 hours a day and read the Bible,
There is a lot to this process of sitting and listening,
But here’s the thing –
after I had sat for 15 months straight,
I was sent back out into a new ministry of active service.
But this time with a whole new experience of faith and self-understanding
and context of compassion and integration in the whole being
of what had only been glimpsed at in the head previously.
So now I instruct others in how to sit down and listen, too,
because this is so crucial for doing any sort of ministry.
So what about here at Emmanuel?
Not everyone is going to run off and spend a year meditating in a convent.
But for all there is some form of spiritual practice,
that, when engaged faithfully and over time,
will facilitate sitting down and listening,
so that then your ministry can be transformed in its effectiveness.
Being here on a Sunday morning is good;
it’s a move in the right direction.
But how much time do we actually spend sitting and listening
during the liturgy?
We listen to scripture, you listen to me yammer,
but that can all go by quite quickly
with little or no time to absorb what you heard.
During communion is a good time for sitting and listening,
if we use that time intentionally for that.
You could come early and sit in silent prayer before the service.
You could stay after.
You could come to a meditation class.
What I am saying is that we need more than one hour on Sunday morning.
We need to practice this listening to Jesus daily.
I’m available for individual consultation regarding
figuring out a spiritual practice for sitting and listening,
or for assisting you in a spiritual process you are already doing.
I encourage each person to look intentional
at just what is your spiritual practice.
And follow Mary’s example first and foremost.
Then watch what happens to the ministry, service, and hospitality
that flow from it.
This is where the reward for hospitality is in the Gospel reading –
in getting to sit at Jesus feet,
getting to be with him…
What could be better?
