Fifth Sunday After Pentecost
Rev. Brent Gundlah
Many years ago, shortly after Valerie and I moved to New York, we were invited to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving dinner. This would be the first time she’d be spending a major holiday with my family, which was stressful because a situation like that always has the potential to be awkward and uncomfortable (especially when my family is involved).
The invitation led Valerie to pose a thoughtful question — one, quite frankly, that I probably wouldn’t have thought to ask at that point in my life: “What can we bring?” After some discussion, it was agreed that we (and by that I really mean “she”) would supply the cranberry sauce. And, in retrospect, that’s when things began to go awry.
After doing some research, Valerie settled on a recipe from a cookbook by Martha Stewart. She went to store to secure the requisite ingredients and spent the entire Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving boiling and cooking all of these things. The result was truly spectacular — so much so, in fact, that she’s made it every single year since.
We walked through my parents’ front door on that cold November day, big white Tupperware bowl full of homemade cranberry sauce in-hand, set it on the dining room table, and removed the lid so that everyone could revel in this multi- sensory delight. And then it happened.
A certain member of family went out to the kitchen and returned with a can of something in one hand and an empty bowl in the other. They set the latter on the table, held the former over the latter and turned it upside down. As gravity did its thing, a glistening red cylinder descended, accompanied by a strange slurping sound.
When it landed it shook like the proverbial “bowl full of jelly” that is Santa’s belly in that Night Before Christmas poem, which made complete sense because it was, in fact, a bowl full of jelly — or, more specifically, a bowl full of cranberry sauce from a can… the perfectly formed, homogenous, industrial, unnatural variety that one typically finds at the grocery store.
“We always have this kind, so I bought some,” was all they said as they turned and headed back to the kitchen to fetch something else, while the rest of us simply looked on in disbelief and discomfort, not quite knowing what to do or say next.
In the blink of an eye, that cold November day suddenly got a whole lot colder. And the aftershocks from that sickening splat when gelatinous blob first met bowl reverberated in my family for a long, long time.
At some basic level, the issue of hospitality was on the table that day (along with rival factions of cranberry sauce). And it was definitely on Jesus’s mind when he said what he said to his disciples in today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel. If there’s any doubt that this is what Jesus is talking about here, then the fact that he uses the word “welcome” six times in the span of two sentences should clear that right up.
Hospitality has always been a big priority as far as God’s concerned, as evidenced by the fact that the issue comes up time and time again in the both Testaments. Since way back in Hebrew Bible times, guests and hosts have been expected to abide by a mutual code of honor and respect.
For all their sins, and there were many of them, it was ultimately the violation of these expectations that landed the folks of Sodom and Gomorrah in hot water with God — as you may recall, they didn’t exactly roll out the welcome mat for those undercover angels God sent to stay at Lot’s house.
Given the Israelites’ long and well-documented history as wanders who often found themselves living as unwelcome aliens in foreign lands (and even in their own Promised Land) — as people who could have benefitted greatly from the kindness of strangers — this concern with hospitality makes complete sense both practically and theologically.
This concern continues into the New Testament, where Jesus (picking up on a theme first introduced by the prophet Isaiah) uses the image of a banquet to describe what God’s kin-dom is like. In the gospels, Jesus acts as both host (remember the feeding of the five thousand?) and guest (even going so far as to share a table at Levi’s house with tax collectors and sinners). I wonder, though, whether Levi had two different kinds of cranberry sauce on his table that day.
A couple of weeks ago, we looked at the passage from Matthew’s Gospel in which Jesus commissions his apostles to go forth and share the good news. He orders them, “Take no gold, silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff; for laborers deserve their food.” By doing this, Jesus makes the apostles radically dependent upon others; he renders them vulnerable to others. Because Jesus understood (better than anyone ever, perhaps) that vulnerability is a necessary precondition for real relationship — with each other, and with God. And he backed up that understanding by actually living his own life that way.
As good guests, the apostles are called upon to put their own tastes and likes aside and accept what is offered to them with grace and with gratitude. They are called upon to open their hearts and their minds and allow themselves to be changed, to some extent, by the hospitality they are shown by their hosts, by entering into relationship with their hosts.
This week’s reading from Matthew kind of flips the script, reminding us that the host has responsibilities in all of this too. “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me,” is what Jesus says here.
As I mentioned earlier, the New Testament carries forth the Hebrew Bible’s concern with hospitality but here, Jesus turns it up a notch. He says, in no uncertain terms, that when we extend hospitality to someone, we are also extending hospitality to him, and when we extend hospitality to him, we are also extending hospitality to God. Keep that in mind the next time you’re hemming and hawing about having people over for dinner (“Ugh, I don’t want to have to vacuum and clean and go shopping and cook.”). You might want to rethink that strategy.
But hospitality (in the biblical sense) really is a two-way street in every respect. And so, if a guest is expected to accept what’s offered to them with grace and with gratitude, then a host is too. If a guest is called upon to open their heart and their mind to the possibility of being changed by their host’s hospitality, to be in relationship with their host, then that host is called upon to do the same.
In retrospect, someone probably should have just left that other cranberry sauce on the grocery store shelf that Thanksgiving. I mean sure, that red stuff in a can had become a family tradition of sorts, but take a chance, try something new, live a little. And cultivating relationships for our sake is way more important that sustaining traditions for their own sake. Besides, Val’s homemade cranberry sauce is simply a whole lot better (and I’m not just saying that); anyone who’s ever had it could tell you it’s true.
Thankfully, though, that’s all water under the bridge at this point (well, mostly, I think). These days, though, I’m frankly more concerned about what all this means in the life of the church.
For as long as I’ve been here, and well before that, worship here at HUCC has begun with a call and response version of this declaration: “Whoever and wherever you are on life’s journey, we welcome you here.” It’s become such an accepted part of our tradition of gathering here, though, that I wonder how often we really stop to consider its implications.
Do we mean that it’s okay for anyone to come into this sanctuary on Sunday morning and do the things we do the way we’ve always done them?
Or do we “welcome” people in the way that Jesus meant:
Do we actively encourage them to bring their authentic, whole selves here, to share their ideas and practices, their tastes and likes freely with us.
Do we empower them to challenge us to do things differently?
Are we actually open to considering new ways of being in community with one another?
Are we willing evolve in relationship, together?
Do we truly welcome them here? Do they really feel welcome here?
I invite you to give these questions some thought.
Before you answer, though, remember what Jesus said: “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”
No pressure.