Proper 6A
June 14, 2020

O most faithful and patient God, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

I want to begin by taking stock of the journey we’ve been on as a community of faith since early March, when the COVID-19 pandemic started to become real in the Boston area. We have endured great uncertainty and tremendous loss, concern for the safety of others and for ourselves, a lot of fear, grief, and more than a little shame. I hear see and hear these things in our phone conversations, on your faces via video conferencing, in your emails, and I feel them too. In our worship, we have navigated (with significant technological turbulence) the second half of Lent, Holy Week, Eastertide, the feasts of the Ascension, Pentecost and Trinity Sunday. And now we have entered the long stretch of what the Church calls Ordinary Time. 

But this is no ordinary time. We are eyewitnesses to the ravaging effects of the dual pandemics of a devastating virus and of a deadly white supremacy. We are in the midst of a deep reckoning of a public health crisis that began three months ago in Massachusetts, and a public health crisis that began 401 years ago in Virginia. This is no ordinary time. Have you seen the New York Times non-fiction best seller list? Nine out of the top ten are about race in America. As the Boston Globe article by David Scharfenberg said the other day, “Here come the white people.”[1] The article was observing ways in which this time might be different because of the larger and deeper ways white people are committing to dismantle white supremacy, using methods that have had some success when it comes to promoting LGBT rights and care for immigrants, called “deep canvassing,” in which people are invited to have longer conversations about their feelings and experiences, rather than brief interactions asking people to sign petitions and donate money. Maybe this time will be different. Of course, it’s too soon to know, and so we hope. Hope is an essential identifier for people of faith. Because of hope we continue to educate ourselves and take action; and we cultivate and encourage one another in our expectation and desire for peace with justice. Hope in the midst of an apocalypse is no ordinary posture. This is no ordinary time.

True to form, our scriptures appointed for today are addressing us right now, to comfort and to challenge us, to invite us to reflect and act. Those of you at Emmanuel who are trained to mind the gaps in the lectionary might have noticed that our reading from Genesis calls for the first 15 verses of chapter 18, and then the first seven verses of chapter 21. Grafted together, the story reads like Abraham and Sarah have been told that they would have a son, Sarah laughed a little more loudly than she meant to, and then [snap] it happened. But I have to tell you, a LOT of time passed in those chapters in between. More important than time, though, what happened is the story of the city of Sodom. The same men who visited Abraham and Sarah by the oaks of Mamre, continued on their way to Sodom, a place full of unrighteous people.

Listen, this is important, especially on Pride Weekend, when legal protections for transpeople are being threatened and eliminated (most cruelly on the anniversary of the massacre at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando). The behavior that caused the people of Sodom to be considered unrighteous is described in the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel: inhospitality, adultery, lies, and strengthening the power of evildoers. Furthermore, the inhabitants of Sodom had an excess of food and lived in prosperous ease but did not assist those who were poor and needy.[2] They were haughty and violent to strangers, to foreigners, to aliens. A Jewish midrash in the Zohar says that the sin of Sodom was that the people “possessed all the luxuries of the world, and its inhabitants were unwilling to share them with others.” The Talmud teaches that “Greater than the reception of God is the practice of hospitality.”[3]

What we miss when we take the story of the city of Sodom out of our lesson, is the contrasting emphasis of the stories on kindness and generosity: what happens when kindness and generosity are extended to strangers, and what happens when kindness and generosity are not extended to strangers. In the missing chapters from our reading today, people in Sodom treated with horrendous violence, the same strangers whom Abraham and Sarah had hosted with kindness and generosity. In the Biblical narrative, withholding hospitality is considered an act of violence. According to the Torah, it is a resident’s obligation, a religious duty, to feed and protect strangers and foreigners. Biblical hospitality is not offering refreshments and shelter to family and friends. Biblical hospitality is a commitment to kindness and care for the well-being of strangers, outsiders and aliens, people who are not like you, and even someone who is potentially out to get you – an enemy.

Abraham exemplifies hospitality in the story of his encounter with the three men at the large trees of Mamre. The story goes that Abraham was sitting at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. When he saw three men come near, he jumped up and ran out to beg them to accept his offerings of water to wash, a place to rest, and some food to eat. Abraham ran to meet the men passing near his tent; he ran to tell Sarah to make a lot of bread out of her best flour; he ran to his herd to pick a fatted calf, which his servant prepared in haste. Abraham brought cheese, milk, meat and bread, and waited on the three men under the tree as they ate. It is after this that the men revealed their message from God that Sarah would bear a child, establishing the first of many examples in the Bible of God’s grace being revealed in the process of welcoming strangers, from the tall trees at Mamre to the stranger invited to supper in Emmaus. The Biblical narrative asserts again and again that, in caring for strangers, God’s grace is revealed; and when strangers are treated violently, God’s wrath is sure to follow. 

The bosom of Abraham came to mean a place of comfort and abundance, of extravagant welcome and care. Israel had a deep sense that the Divine is experienced in travelers and strangers, and also that the Divine is the host.[4] By the time the Gospels were written, the realm of God was most often talked about in terms of abundant food and drink, comfort, healing, and rest. Jesus is depicted as feeding crowds of hungry people, and eating with tax collectors and other sinners, being anointed and washing others’ feet, receiving comfort and comforting strangers: hospitality. 

I’m always struck by the Biblical idea that God is both host and guest. I can clearly see the Gospel idea that Jesus is both host and guest in the stories that are told about him in all four of the Gospels. In our Gospel portion from this morning, Jesus chooses twelve of his disciples, who presumably understand their obligation to extend hospitality, because that is an essential part of their cultural identity. Then he makes them apostles, who will have the obligation to receive hospitality. God is both host and guest. Jesus is both host and guest. Jesus’ followers are to be both host and guest.

People often stumble over the description of the twelve – were they disciples or apostles? Well, yes! Disciple means learner or student, or follower of a teacher. Apostle means sent out on a mission or dispatched like an ambassador. Of the many followers that Jesus had, he chose twelve to be sent to clean up and clear out people’s unclean spirits, and to cure every disease and every sickness. Twelve are dispatched to do some deep canvassing! 

 Here’s the way I like to describe the difference between a disciple and an apostle. A disciple breathes in – breathes in wisdom, breathes in knowledge, and is ready to offer hospitality. Prior to summoning the disciples, Jesus had been doing a whole lot of teaching and demonstrating healing and casting out demons. The disciples breathed all of that in, and then Jesus sent them out, empowered to do the same. Apostle means sent out. An apostle breathes out compassion, breathes out right-relationship, breathes out peace, and is open to receiving hospitality. Disciple – breathe in. Apostle – breathe out.[5] The inability to breathe is so powerfully demonstrated in our two public health crises right now. When it comes to breathing in and out, we can’t do one without the other and live. 

Jesus took twelve of his students and sent them out, according to Matthew, because he had compassion for the crowds who were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. He saw there was a huge amount of work to do and he needed help. Notice the way Jesus describes the work. It’s the work of harvesting the plenty that is ripe. The fruits of God’s harvest are freedom from poverty, hunger, oppression, legal jeopardy, violence, and even fear. Jesus wants his followers to understand that the fruits of God’s harvest are so ready that they are practically falling off the low hanging branches of the tree of life. All we need to do is step out into places that are plagued with poverty, hunger, oppression, legal jeopardy, violence, and other unclean spirits, for the fruits of the realm of God, the fruits of freedom from oppression, to start falling into our hands. 

It’s all about the grace of God revealed in giving and receiving hospitality. As Paul wrote to the church in Rome, “The love of God has been poured into your hearts.”  Don’t stop up your heart or build a wall to protect it. Let the love flow in and right back out, so that empty, your heart is ready to be filled again, and when full, it’s ready to empty. It’s like your heartbeat—filling and emptying. God is both host and guest. Jesus is both host and guest. Jesus’ disciples are to be host and apostles are to be guest. Emmanuel Church, we are to be both host and guest as well, because this is no ordinary time.

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