Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.
Our lessons today are very direct about what one should do in terms of not assuming that they deserve to have the best place at the table. However, our lessons today go far beyond social etiquette. Our lesson from Hebrews in particular has much to teach us about what it really means to practice hospitality. I want to start with some images:
A little boy sits at breakfast at school. The servers know that he likes chocolate milk and so they make sure his tray goes out with chocolate milk every morning. He is small for his size, and he is relatively non verbal due to having special needs. His teachers are busy with other students, and so they don’t see the older, bigger kids steal the child’s chocolate milk. They also forget that he cannot open it himself. But someone does see; the school custodian sees. He sees the other kids steal from his tray, and he sees that he needs help. On that morning, he gives the thieves a strong talking to and gets the little boy his milk back. Every morning after that, he sits across from the child helping him open things on his tray and making sure no one takes his food.
A famous rock and roll star is deeply concerned about food insecurity in his city. He opens up a restaurant where anyone can come to eat. The food is good, well made, and nutritious. People who can pay do so, and if they can, they pay extra for someone else. Those who cannot afford to pay get to eat the same meals as everyone else. If they are able, they help in the restaurant as servers and dishwashers, and are taught to cook if they wish. The musician, whose name is Jon Bon Jovi, is often seen with members of his family cooking, serving and bussing at the restaurant.
A Fransican priest from Poland, is imprisoned at Auschwitz. Some other prisoners are about to be starved to death in an effort to deter others from trying to escape. One of the chosen to be starved to death begs for mercy because he has a wife and child. The priest, whose name is Maximilian Kolbe, volunteers to take the other man’s place. While the group was housed together and starved, Kolbe prayed with and for the men. When he and three others didn’t die quickly enough, they were killed by lethal injection.
Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.
These three examples should be for us, examples of faith at work. The kind of hospitality that followers of Jesus are called to, is not just the hospitality of entertaining friends or acquaintances. The mutual love that we are to show one another is the love between siblings. If we believe that every person is made in the image and likeness of God, and that every person is loved and valued by God, then our sibling love, (the Greek word used here is Philadelphia) has to be the kind of love that is willing to love in ways that are difficult; and, our “sibling love” should not discriminate because all people are created in the image and likeness of God and all people are loved by God.
Beloved, humans are in serious trouble, and it’s not just some vague notion of “out there”. Everywhere we look, God’s children are suffering. Children are bullying other children in some serious ways. Just the week the school board for Kilgore ISD met to discuss the severe beating of one of its students by another student. Of course we have all heard about the church school shooting this week in Minnesota, where two children are dead and many more are injured, not to mention the psychological trauma every one present will suffer. What are we missing that these shootings continue to happen? Guns certainly are part of the problem, but I fear, not the whole problem. Each one of us needs to examine ourselves and ask ourselves what we are doing to foster love in our communities? How are we supporting our children and teaching them to be good people who aren’t imprisoned by the values of our society, values of an empire that seeks to destroy those whom it deems unworthy?
No one is unworthy of God’s love, and that means no one is unworthy of ours. There are no people who are illegal in God’s kingdom; everyone is loved, everyone is fed, everyone is safe. But everyone may not be Christian… and there are those in positions of power who would like us to believe that this is a Christian nation – and then only a certain kind of Christian nation. A Christian Nation that doesn’t look much at all like the saviour Christians follow. Our king and saviour while on earth was poor, tortured, and murdered. That doesn’t sound like a success story to me; but it does sound like God’s story. It is also our story, beloved, where we see the face of Jesus in our children, in the poor, in the imprisoned and the tortured. We are literally killing each other in body, mind, and spirit.
We worship a God of love, whose story doesn’t look like much of a success. One of my seminary professors used to say that the story had to be true because no one in their right mind would make it up. It’s absolutely ridiculous by the world’s standards. But you and I are called to different standards. We are called to love each other into the kingdom. For the love of God and for all that is Holy and good, Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.
Beloved, Love as if your life depends on it, because someone’s life does.
