Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Hospitality – Rev. Brent Gundlah
First Reading (Galatians 6:1-16/NRSVUE)
Gospel Reading (Luke 10:1-11,16-20/NRSVUE)
When I was a kid, we generally went over to my grandparents’s house for major feasts — Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter and the like. I can still see every detail of their dining room in my mind’s eye — everything in its place and everyone in theirs; I mean, we didn’t exactly have assigned seating, though we pretty much did — you know, like here at church. I mean, if you happened to sit somewhere other than where you typically did, it’s unlikely that anyone would say anything, but you’d feel weird and people would look at you funny, so you just didn’t.
The table was an elongated oval and, if it had been a horse racing track, I always sat at the end of the straightaway before the clubhouse turn with my grandfather on my right. The mashed potatoes and the corn were always placed directly in front of me and the applesauce was just off to my left which was great because I enjoyed them all immensely. But immediately to my right between my grandfather and me (on the infield grass just inside the rail if we were at Churchill Downs watching the ponies), was a small bowl of something I had no interest in at all: diced boiled turnips.
If I can, as I said earlier, still see that dining room in my mind’s eye, then I can still smell those horrible things in my mind’s nose — their distinctive scent was something like a combination of musty basement and low tide. But my grandmother lovingly made those turnips on every single holiday for my grandfather’s benefit (he was, in fact, the only one who’d willingly eat them). She’d peel them and cut them into little cubes before throwing them into a pot of water on the stove to cook; they were uniformly colored a pale yellow and perfectly shaped; in fact, they were so meticulous sliced that we could have grabbed a couple of the leftovers, colored some dots on them with a magic marker, and played craps with them before dessert.
I was successful at pretending those turnips didn’t exist for a few years, but one Christmas Day, when I was about five, Pop elbowed me with his left arm to get my attention as he reached out to pass me that bowl full of awfulness with his right; I remember him saying with great enthusiasm, “Here, try some of these. They’re really good and they’ll put hair on your chest.”
Now, I don’t think that last part was true (I also have no idea why he thought I’d want to be the only kid in first grade with a hairy chest), and while I understand that “good” is a highly subjective term, I’m pretty sure he was full of it about the first part too. But I quickly realized that Pop wouldn’t be taking no for an answer, so I reluctantly grabbed ahold of the spoon, scooped out maybe four of those cubes and set them on my plate.
I put it off for as long as I could but, after having worked my way though seven helpings of mashed potatoes in an attempt to bide my time, I couldn’t avoid it any longer; there they were — four lonely little turnip dice, just sitting on my plate all alone. “C’mon, eat up!” said my grandfather in his big, booming voice. Sadly, it was clear that I’d come to the end of the road.
Words are insufficient to express how badly I didn’t want to eat those things, but I loved my grandmother, who had taken the time to make them; I loved my grandfather, who had invited me to share them; and I didn’t want to embarrass my entire family (and myself) by not graciously accepting what I’d been offered, so down the hatch they went.
I didn’t even bother to chew them, for that would have only prolonged the agony; I swallowed each one whole with the help of a chocolate milk chaser. I felt kinda like a competitor in the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest at Coney Island (which, fun fact, just took place on Friday).
Indeed, I’d managed to learn and develop my speed-eating technique that day, which was great because it would serve me well at family gatherings for years to come. I learned something else that day too: hospitality can sometimes be a difficult thing to receive.
It’s pretty clear that Jesus understands this too. In today’s story — unique to Luke’s Gospel — he sends seventy disciples, two by two, into the world to share the good news because even he couldn’t be everywhere at once.
As Jesus moves closer to Jerusalem and, ultimately, to the cross, the scope of his mission gets wider, as his time here on earth grows shorter. For a while now, Jesus has been the only one doing the preaching and teaching, but that’s not really tenable any more. So in the previous chapter of Luke, Jesus sends out the twelve apostles to do this work, and today he decides to scale up the operation by sending seventy of his disciples — and this particular number (like so many others in the Bible) is meaningful.
At a basic level, the good news is really starting to make an impact and so Jesus needs a lot more folks to help share it, but there’s more to it than that. Jesus knew his scriptures inside and out, and he quotes them constantly; the reference here is to Genesis 10, which lists of all the nations of the world at that time, which, you guessed it, totaled seventy.
What we’re supposed to take away from this is that God’s grace is available to everybody, everywhere. And it’s no accident that we’re looking at this text in the middle of Pentecost, which is the season that focuses on the growth of the early church.
“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few,” Jesus tells the seventy as he sends them out to share the gospel. And it’s no wonder that the laborers are so few because what he’s asking them to do ain’t easy.
Jesus acknowledges that the disciples are heading into an inhospitable world; “I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves,” he says to them. And that sure sounds nice, doesn’t it? While I always admire Jesus’s honesty, his recruiting pitches generally aren’t all that great.
As if this whole wolves and lambs dynamic weren’t bad enough, Jesus also tells his disciples to travel light on their upcoming mission trip – and by that I mean very light: they’re to “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals.” And while this might make it easier for them to get around, it also renders them completely reliant on the hospitality of strangers — and this is a difficult position for anyone to be in.
When they enter a house and say, as Jesus tells them to say, “Peace be to this house,” there are really only two possible outcomes: rejection or acceptance. If Jesus’s messengers are turned away in one place, they are to wipe the dust of that town from their feet and move along to the next; God will take care of the rest.
In the verses that today’s Lectionary reading skips over, Jesus talks about the woes that will befall any place that rejects his messengers: “I tell you… it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town,” he declares. And this isn’t great. Like I said earlier, Jesus really knows his scriptures, so go have a look at Genesis 19 if you’re curious about how things worked out for Sodom. The people of Sodom were engaged in some pretty shady stuff but, in God’s eyes, their most egregious offense was their failure to extend hospitality to God’s undercover agents who, as it turns out, happened to be a couple of angels.
But what if the messengers are accepted where they go? Well, this might actually be more difficult for them. If they are rejected, they can simply walk away, but if a household shares in the peace that the disciples extend, Jesus tells them, not once but twice, to “Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you…”
In Jewish culture, what you ate and with whom you ate it were really important things, and so this is a provocative command on Jesus’s part. These disciples were ordered to go out into the world with only the gospel to give, and told to accept whatever they were given without worrying about what it was or who gave it to them.
They were entirely reliant upon the hospitality of others for survival; they were completely vulnerable — and vulnerable can be an uncomfortable thing to be. But that’s exactly what Jesus wants them to be; and that’s exactly what Jesus wants us to be too.
Hospitality is kind of funny thing: it is relatively easy to extend, but not always easy to accept. Being confronted with true hospitality forces us to come to terms with just how dependent we really are; it means engaging with people on their terms; it means looking at thing through their eyes; it means being in real relationship with others.
Just to clarify: I don’t mean hospitality in the sense of inviting a friend over for dinner. That situation assumes a preexisting relationship; and more often than not, the person you have over and cook for will reciprocate at some point. Its a nice thing to do and all, but it doesn’t really involve a whole lot of risk on anyone’s part (unless, of course, they happen to be making diced boiled turnips for dinner).
What I mean is hospitality in a context like church. Generally, we focus on having people over to this house, to our house. Don’t get me wrong — this is wonderful; indeed, God calls upon us to extend hospitality to others. But most of the things we do require people to come to us, or to avail themselves of what we have to offer them. But hospitality, for God, is meant to be a two-way street; so what and when and where are we actually open to letting people share what they have and who they are with us?
I mean, we generously give money and food to people in need — and this is great — but how often do we have a meal or a conversation with them where they are? I have no doubt that we’d welcome an unhoused person here in our sanctuary on Sunday morning, but would we actually go and sit down and talk with them and eat with them on their street corner on Saturday night? And if not, then why not?
Jesus doesn’t tell his disciples to invite people over, he calls them to go out into the world and meet people where they are. And he orders his disciples to take nothing with them on their journey because he wants them to understand not only what it means to love their neighbor but also what it means to allow themselves to be loved by their neighbor — whomever or wherever that neighbor might be. So, what might that look like for us, in this church, today?
As people called to do God’s work in the world in this day and age we need to meet others in their vulnerability and, at the same time, accept and embrace our own. Because while we definitely have much love to offer, there is also much love out there for us to receive — but we actually need to be willing to receive it.
You see, what ultimately unites all God’s people is our dependence on one another, and our complete and radical dependence upon God. We need each other. And understanding that is what true discipleship is all about.