Proper 13 C To Be or Not To Be

 

To Be or Not To Be

"Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed;

for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." [i]

 

For six years, I have been watching the Harford County Register of Wills probate a will that involves a dispute among surviving children of an estate. It is excruciatingly slow and tedious work. Jesus is asked to settle a similar dispute among siblings and says, in effect,

 

“I am not a probate judge. What I do is announce the Good News and tell stories. The good news is that God forgives you and loves you. Equally good news is that life is more important than who gets the cup and who gets the saucer. It’s not that greed is right or wrong – greed and the accumulation and consumption of more and more stuff is just not healthy. Not for you. Not for your neighbor. Not for the common good.

 

“Here’s is a story about a man, his abundant crops and his barns – but note well, it is really a story about his self, his soul, and his life. He has a bumper crop and nowhere to put it. I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger barns, he says to himself. He fills them with all his crops and all his goods. Then he says, ‘Self, look what we have done! We have enough stuff for years to come! Let’s eat, drink and be merry!’ He has a party! With himself. He has no friends, no neighbors. He gives no thanks to God for his good fortune.

 

“From off-stage comes the voice of God. ‘Self? You are no Self. You have no Soul. You are a fool! Look at you. All this abundance of stuff and no friends, no neighbors, no one to share it all with. Keeping it all for your supposed ‘self,’ while tonight your life will end. Who will enjoy your barns and barns full of stuff now? All is vanity and a chasing after wind!’” [ii]

 

We are to think of that moment in Genesis 2 when YHWH takes a handful of dust, some of the morning dew, and forms the first creature before anything else. It’s a handful of mud really until YHWH breathes into it. That is the moment it lives. Life begins with that first breath. Each time the first creature breathes in it is the creation of life all-over again. As it breathes out, it participates in creation, giving life to so much of the greening and teeming of life on Earth. It is a dance, the circle of life. A giving back of what has been given. A sharing of abundance with all the rest of life. It is to be this way with all that we are and all that we have. We receive, we give back. Barn-man has forgotten all of this. [iii]

 

Barn-man forgets to breathe out – to share. When you don’t breathe out you die. And you contribute to the dying of the world. The common good suffers. Your neighbor suffers. You suffer.

 

“So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” [iv]

 

For ages some have devoted whole lives to finding out what it means to be “rich toward God.” They create all kinds of acts of devotion, all kinds of rituals, all kinds of dos and don’ts. Forgetting that we are all already “rich toward God.” We are all already created in the image of God. A God who breathes in and breathes out. A life giving, life sustaining God who loves all of creation right down to the tiniest gluon quark! A God who loves each and every one of us.

 

Evelyn Underhill, a woman who has chronicled so much of the mysteries of life itself suggests that we tend to spend much, if not all, of our lives conjugating just three verbs: To Want, to Have, and to Do. “Craving, clutching and fussing, on the material, social, emotional, intellectual – even on the religious - plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, having and doing, is the essence of a spiritual life.” [v]

 

So it is, one day a week at Noonday Prayer we pray:

 

It is when we are still that we know

It is when we listen that we hear

It is when we remember that we see your light, O God.

From your stillness we come

With your sound all life quivers with Being

From you the light of this moment shines

Grant us to remember you at the heart of each moment

Grant us to remember [vi]

 

Remember to breathe in AND to breathe out is life.

 

To Be, or not To Be – that is the question. [vii]

Amen.

 

 

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[i] Luke 12:13-21

[ii] Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14

[iii] Swanson, Richard, Provoking the Gospel of Luke (The Pilgrim Press, Cleveland, OH: 2006) p.174.

[iv] Ibid Luke 12: 13-21

[v] Underhill, Evelyn, The Spiritual Life (Harper & Row, NY: 1936) p.20.

[vi] Newell, John Philip, Praying with the Earth (Wm. R. Eerdmans, Cambridge, UK:2011) p.44.

[vii] Shakespeare, William, Hamlet, Act 3, scene 1

Proper 12 C Your Image of God Creates You

 

Proper 12C Your image of God creates you – Richard Rohr

In Genesis 18:20-32, we see Abraham, father of the three Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, negotiating with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. Their fate is often misunderstood and misrepresented, for the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah a lack of hospitality. The three angelic visitors who announced Abraham and Sarah would have a child are now in Sodom along with Lot and his family. The towns men are not only inhospitable, but make clear they want to submit them all to violence.

 

Abraham intercedes asking if God would still destroy the cities and all their inhabitants if there were 50 righteous people among them. God relents and says, no, if there are 50 righteous, I will not destroy the cities. Then Abraham proceeds to whittle it down to 45, then 40 and all the way down to 10 righteous people. Evidently, in the end there are fewer then 10 righteous and the cities are destroyed for they treat their neighbor. One take away, however, is that we are free to persevere in negotiating with God, and our God is one who listens and even shows a willingness to change God’s mind.

 

Luke chapter 11:1-13 continues the theme of hospitality, how we welcome friends and strangers, that was central to chapter 10 in the parable of A Generous Samaritan. The power of that story is that if a centuries-long enemy of the Jews can treat an enemy as a neighbor, and love that neighbor as one loves oneself, we all should be able to do the same. This, no doubt, is why Jesus teaches us to pray for our enemies and those who persecute us because you never know when, one day, they may rescue you from harm and even death.

 

Chapter 11 opens with Jesus praying in a certain place. That is, lest we miss it, he models what he has been teaching. He has set his face toward Jerusalem and is on the way to a showdown with the civil and religious authorities there. Throughout all four gospels we are told he has enemies. Is it too much to assume that on his way toward certain conflict and even persecution that he would stop along the way and pray for his enemies?

 

When finished he is asked by those who follow him on the way, Will you teach us how to pray? To leverage their request, they remind him that John the Baptizer teaches his disciples how to pray. He says to them, "When you pray, say:

 

Father, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come.

Give us each day our daily bread.

And forgive us our sins,

for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.

And do not bring us to the time of trial."

 

Liturgically, we pattern this prayer after the version in Matthew which is slightly different. But both versions have been so domesticated through years of liturgical performance that we no longer are capable of recognizing just how challenging this prayer was when Jesus taught it. Starting with addressing God as Jesus does, “Father.” This invites us into a kind of intimacy with the Almighty and powerful God of the Exodus, God who arranged to get our people out of exile, and the God who brings Jesus back from being dead as the proverbial door nail, that Jesus, “the Son of God,” has had since his birth.

 

Then, in order, we are to pray for our Father’s Kingdom to replace the kingdoms of this world, whether Rome, the United States, Russia, China, or whatever, whenever. Then for bread that is given daily, like the manna in the wilderness. Not a refrigerator, a chest freezer, and a pantry full of food, but daily bread – placing our survival in the hands of this Father whose name we are to hallow on a day-to-day basis. Then we are to ask for forgiveness, conditional on we ourselves first forgiving all who are in debt to us – in any way. We are to just stop and think about this petition before actually praying it. Have I forgiven all who are indebted to me before I ask God my Father to forgive me my sins? Note the equivalence of sins with indebtedness.

 

Finally, we pray to be spared “the time of trial.” If you are following Jesus to Jerusalem; if you advocate for God’s kingdom to replace any and all other kingdoms; if you are willing to abandon an economy based on acquisition, consumption and greed; if you are ready to forgive all who are indebted to you; you are most likely on your way to a time of great trial, for you are officially swimming against the dominant currents of your society.

 

This is followed by a parable about hospitality in a story about – yes – bread. You have been visited by a friend in the middle of the night. Your responsibility is to feed him upon arrival, but alas, you have no bread. You go to your neighbor, knock on his door and ask for three loaves of bread. Your neighbor says, Go away. My door is locked. My kids are in bed. Come back tomorrow. Yet, although he will not get up to help you, his friend – ie love his neighbor as himself -  yet for his neighbor’s shamelessness in asking in the middle of the night, and the shame he will incur from other neighbors if he does not help you, he gets up and gives you three loaves of bread. A moral of the story is, persevere in your prayers to your Father, and your Father will provide you with what you need – which is not necessarily what you want!

 

We can negotiate with God on behalf of others. We are taught to pray for the dismantling of the kingdoms of this world. Which, by the way, does not mean installing a White, Chrisitan, Theocracy, but rather a world of justice and peace for all people that respects the dignity of every human being: male, female and LGBTQ; Jew, Christian, Muslim, Taoist, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic; black, white, brown, yellow, immigrant, indigenous, colonizer and colonized. All people. And we are to be generous as we respond to the needs of our neighbor, which is what loving our neighbor really means. All are neighbors to us and Jesus.

 

There is just one little detail, however, that continues to peak my curiosity: how is it that the neighbor has three spare loaves of bread in the middle of the night? Presumably, he has fed his family all day long. He is to live on bread given daily. And yet, he has all this bread. And his neighbor is entertaining a visitor in the middle of the night – a visitor – just how much bread does one need to offer a midnight snack to one midnight visitor? Think about it.

 

Finally, if your child asks for a fish or an egg, says Jesus, you would never give your child a snake or a scorpion instead. In the end, we are told: Ask, and you shall receive; Seek and ye shall find; Knock and the door will be opened to you. What we are to receive, find, and lurking behind Door Number 3, is something thousands of times better than all that you could ever give your children: The Holy Spirit, which is a personal experience of your Father God. An experience of your Father’s love for you. Here and now you can enjoy this relationship with God that Jesus has had, and experience all the characteristics of God’s kingdom. It is in light of this knowledge that we should come before God in prayer.[i] This prayer we call The Lord’s Prayer and the stories that follow are Jesus’s image of God. Does it look like ours?

Amen.

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[i] Byrne,SJ ,Brendan, The Hospitality of God (The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN) p.107.

Proper 11 C Sit, Listen and Live

 

Sit, Listen and Live

And the Lord said, “"Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things…”

How often do we feel like Martha? Worried and distracted. Either by all that’s going on around us. Or, the relentless To-Do Lists and Duties we tell ourselves we need to accomplish. To what end?

 

Jesus and his crowd of followers from Galilee, traveling with him to Jerusalem, are visiting the home of Martha and her sister Mary.[i] Storyteller Luke tells us elsewhere that there are as many as 120 people – Ten for each disciple? Ten for each of the twelve tribes of Israel? It was “tradition,” a fancy word for “expectation,” for the women of the household to see to all the details of hospitality for visitors – see that their feet are washed, prepare meals, serve and clear the dishes, etc. Like Sarah who prepares cakes for the three visitors who arrive unannounced where she and Abraham are camped near the Oaks of Mamre.[ii] Martha knows the traditions of her people well. Martha is busy in the kitchen.

 

Mary, on the other hand, sits at the feet of Jesus listening to every word he says. Perhaps we find it curious that instead of taking Mary aside and asking for her help, Martha goes right to Jesus and orders him to tell Mary to get up and help her. Elsewhere, in Storyteller John’s account, when their brother Lazarus is ill, the sisters call for Jesus. He intentionally delays going. When he gets there Lazarus has been dead and in the tomb for four days. Before he even gets to their home, it is Martha who marches out to the edge of town and lets him have it. “If you had come when we called for you our brother would not have died!”[iii] That’s just how Martha is. No holds barred. Speaks her mind. Even to Jesus.

 

This time Jesus says, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things. there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."

 

We tend to hear this as a put down. While you are worried about how to wash and feed all of us, Mary sits still to listen to what I am saying. That’s a good thing. It’s easy to miss what happens in that moment, despite the fact that it happens wherever Jesus goes. Jesus becomes the host, just as he does in the Holy Eucharist. Come over and sit with Mary, he says. Let me host you today. It’s an invitation: Let me take care of all these people. My Father has sent me to take care of everyone. Sit and listen. Stop doing doing doing. Step away from your traditional and assigned roles. Turn your back on all that lies behind you and all around you, and just sit. Just listen. I want you to feel what it is like to have someone take care of you. What it is like to sit and live in my Father’s world, my Father’s home. I am here to inaugurate my Father’s kingdom, my Father’s reign. Sit and listen to me.

 

The story ends here. We are not told what Martha does next. Does she sit down and listen? Does she go back to the kitchen? Does she grab Mary and drag her into the kitchen? Could it be that this story I about us? Are we Martha? When we are worried and distracted, will we sit still and listen to Jesus? Are we ready to let Jesus be our host?

 

I remember years ago reading an address by the philosopher Martin Heidegger celebrating a centennial year in his hometown. It was evening, and he opens his remarks saying that evening time is the time for reflection and recollection. As we look out over the rooftops of our homes today, he continues, there are now antennas sprouting up on top of each household. Today it would be satellite dishes or fiber-optic cables. Heidegger goes on to say that with our televisions, and now computers and internet and smart-phones, we spend hours every day letting strangers into our homes – such that we are no longer at home in our homes. And so many of these strangers come with worries and distractions which rapidly become our worries and distractions.

 

Jesus invites us to come home again – to the household of God’s mercy, God’s forgiveness, God’s love. Several hundred years later, Augustine of Hippo would write in his Confessions: Our hearts were made for thee, O Lord, and are restless until we find our home in thee!

 

The invitation in this story is to sit and listen to Jesus, and discover where our home really is – far away from all the worries, distractions and technologies that plague us. Can we sit still long enough to hear Jesus calling us o’er the tumult of the world’s tempestuous sea?

 

Edith Sodergran (1892-1923) is one person who did. Growing up in Finland when it was part of Imperial Russia. With the advent of the Russian Revolution, Finland fell into Civil War as well. Out of a series of personal tragedies, Sodergran emerged as a poet and a major voice in Scandinavian letters. Despite not receiving recognition in her lifetime for her modernist approach, she never lost confidence in the importance of her work, writing, “My self-confidence depends on the fact that I have discovered my dimensions. It does not become me to make myself less than I am.” Sounds like Martha!

 

One of her poems, Homecoming, expresses the kind of discovery Mary makes and Martha is invited to make herself: one can walk away from the duties, worries and distractions that occupy us, and we can sit with God in Christ wherever we are.

 

My childhood’s trees stand rejoicing around me: O human!

and the grass bids me welcome from foreign lands.

I lean my head on the grass: now home at last.

Now I shall turn my back on all that lies behind me:

my only comrades shall be the forest and the shore and the lake.

 

Now I shall drink wisdom from the spruce’s sap-filled crowns,

now I shall drink truth from the withered trunks of the birches,

now I shall drink power from the smallest and tenderest grasses:

a mighty protector mercifully reaches me his hand. [iv]

 

Home at last. A mighty protector mercifully reaches out to us. We are invited to sit and listen with Mary. I choose to imagine that Martha turns her back on the traditional role she has been assigned, and sits with Mary as well. Listening to Jesus. Letting Jesus host us in his Father’s world. The source of wisdom, truth, power, mercy and love invites us to leave our worries and distractions behind us – to rest, to breathe, to live. To hear the trees of our childhood rejoicing all around us: O human! Come sit, and listen, and live! Amen.

 

 

 

 

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[i] Luke 10:38-42

[ii] Genesis 18:1-10a

[iii] John 11:21

[iv].Hirshfield, Jane, ed.Women in Praise of the Sacred (Harper Perennial, New York:1995) p.230.

Proper 10C And Who Is My Neighbor

 

The Primacy of Love: And Who Is My Neighbor?

May the love of life fill our hearts

May the love of earth bring joy to heaven

May the love of self, deepen our souls

May the love of neighbor heal our world

As nations, as peoples, as families this day

May the love of life heal our world

-John Philip Newell[i]

 

Let’s stop calling this story in Luke 10:25-37 The Parable of the Good Samaritan. It’s long past time to admit this is a backhanded compliment at best, and implies that Samaritans in general are not so good. Just as calling someone a “good Muslim” can imply all other Muslims are terrorists. Lest we forget that it was Heinrich Himmler addressing, a group of SS officers, who said that every German knows a “good Jew,” and that even one would be too many as it might create sympathy for them. There are still Samaritans to whom “good Samaritan” can sound offensive. And it misleads the rest of us from understanding just how odd “good Samaritan” would sound to Jesus’s audience, including the equally offensive lawyer. For centuries the Jews and Samaritans had both insisted they were the rightful heirs of Abraham, they knew the meaning of Torah, they knew how to worship, and both insisted on where God was to be worshipped: the Samaritans in the north, the Jews in the south. These are the kinds of enemies Jesus has been teaching his followers to love and to pray for.

 

This lawyer is an expert in Torah, the first five books of the Bible, the basis of Israel’s covenant relationship with her God. This lawyer, who thinks he knows Torah so well that he can dare to “test” Jesus, wants to know what he needs “to do” to inherit eternal life. That is, what box can I check to earn eternal life. But suddenly, he finds himself being tested. “You’re the expert in the law of Moses, how do you read it?” Love God and love your neighbor, replies the lawyer. That’s right. Just do it, and you will live, says Jesus. Note, what Jesus makes clear is that the law is not about eternal life – it’s about life here and now. Eternal life is given by God and God alone. You cannot earn it – it is pure mercy and grace. It’s all about loving our neighbor no matter what, no matter who. As Madeleine L’Engle reminded us last week, Love is not a feeling, it is what we do. Do something helpful for our neighbors, whether or not you like them. The lawyer ought to know this.

 

Our lawyer then reveals what he does not know: wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" As in his opening question it’s still all about him. And underneath this question, of course, is the question: how few of my neighbors must can I get away with?

 

Jesus answers with a story and a question. A story we all know too well, and throughout the years the Church has domesticated it almost beyond recognition. On the road from Jerusalem down to Jericho, a man is attacked by robbers and left half-dead on the side of the road. A priest and then a Levite see the man and keep on going. Much is often made of the fact that both of them serve at the Jerusalem Temple and may be concerned about remaining “ritually pure.” This is odd, since on one hand it appears that they are leaving their duties in the Temple with plenty of time to recover their “purity,” if that is even a problem; on the other hand, it is often used to make the rules of Torah, and by implication the Jews and Judaism, look bad.

 

Sidebar: Amy Jill Levine, in her book Short Stories by Jesus, allows that perhaps the best explanation for their not stopping to help was given by Martin Luther King, Jr: “I’m going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It’s possible these men were afraid…And so the first question that the priest and the Levite asked was, ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?”…But then the Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” King went on, “If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?” King then went to Memphis, and it was there he was assassinated. We are reminded that there are bandits on the road.[ii]

 

The story then focuses on the Samaritan. The robbers, the priest and the Levite all leave the man in the ditch half-dead. The Samaritan returns him to life. Again, AJ Levine reminds us of two important lessons. First, the Samaritan is not a “social victim. He had money, freedom to travel, the ability to find lodging, and leverage with the innkeeper. The parable in its original setting, is not about the type of prejudice that creates people on the margins; it is about hatred between groups who have similar resources. Second, a benevolent reading of the Samaritan’s final actions understands him as providing not one-time aid, but long-term care. Thus, the sense of loving neighbor means continual action, not something to check-off the to-do list. The Samaritan’s offering the innkeeper what amounts to a blank check, fits within Jesus’s overall concern for generosity. Moreover, his trusting the innkeeper to care for the wounded man echoes the trust the wounded man had to have had in him. By trusting the innkeeper, he provides confirmatory evidence that we make our neighbors; that trust is essential for life.”[iii]

 

Jesus gives the lawyer one last chance asking, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" The one who showed mercy, he replies. “Go and do likewise,” says Jesus – a command directed by Luke toward us all.  The Samaritan embodies one of the primary attributes of what God does – God’s love is grounded in forgiveness and mercy and love. To love God and love neighbor does not require worshipping in a particular location in a particular way, or even following a particular book: Torah, the Christian Bible, the Quran, the Book of Mormon – for love does not exist in the abstract, but rather love needs to be enacted in what we do for one another. As the hymn Jesu, Jesus proclaims, “All are neighbors to us and you!”

 

It is difficult to imagine a more relevant story for the world in which we live. The importance of asking, “What will happen to him or to her?” rather than, “What will happen to me or to us?” makes all the difference. The necessity of providing long-term care and long-term solutions to ages old enmities could not be more important. Can we become those people who care for our enemies who are also our neighbors? Can we imagine that they might do the same for us? Any concern for humanity’s future tells us we must. As Rabbi Hillel famously sums it up: If I am not for myself, who is for me? If I am for myself alone, who am I? And if not now, when?

 

Let’s call this something like, The Parable of the Generous Neighbor. And pray that that is who we may one day become – as individuals, as a nation, and as the world. Amen.

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[i] Newell, John Philip, Praying with the Earth (Canterbury Press, London: 2011) p.52.

[ii] Levine, Amy Jill, Short Stories by Jesus (Harper One, NY, NY: 2014) p.102.

[iii] Ibid p112.

Proper 9C The Violence of Love

 

The Violence of Love

“The Violence we preach is not

            the violence of the sword,

            the violence of hatred.

 It is the violence of love,

            of brotherhood,

 the violence that wills to beat weapons

            into sickles for work.” 

– Archbishop Oscar Romero, November 27, 1977

 These words from the martyred Bishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero, “The Violence of Love,” are meant to shock us into waking up! How will love and brotherhood beat weapons into sickles for work? Isaiah, some 2600 years before the Archbishop imagined a world in which we will “beat swords into ploughshares, and spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore.”[i] It’s a vision of a world that becomes God’s kingdom, or, God’s dream – “a friendly world of friendly folk beneath a friendly sky.”[ii] It’s a dream of Shalom, Peace – justice and peace for all people, where everyone respects the dignity of every human being – beings created in the image of God.

 

Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem. Jesus shares this dream of God’s. He sends 70 of his followers to the towns he plans to visit to announce that we can all live in the world of God’s dream here, and now.[iii] As has always been the case, a lot of folks are just not friendly – living out of visions of fear and scarcity. Jesus instructs his advance teams to offer God’s Shalom wherever they go. If others accept the news, God’s Shalom will remain with them. If not, eat whatever they offer you, and when you leave remind them that nevertheless, the dream of God’s Shalom is at hand. It is near. Just reach out and you can touch it, feel it, see it.

 

Some verses have been left out. For those who reject the news, Jesus says, it will be better for Sodom than it will be for them. The Sodomites who would not open their homes in a spirit of hospitality and shalom for all, which had been the custom of our people all the way back to when the ancestors were nomads, wanderers, sojourners in foreign lands. You were once strangers in an inhospitable Egypt, unwelcome except to be worked to the bone. The Sodomites are described by a first century historian as, “overweeningly proud of their numbers and the extent of their wealth, insolent to men and to God, not remembering they had received from God, they hated foreigners…so God resolved to chastise them.”[iv] The Talmud describes them this way: “Since bread comes forth from our earth, and it has gold dust, why should we suffer wayfarers, who come to us only to deplete our wealth? Come, let us abolish the practice of traveling in our land.”[v] As the prophet Ezekiel succinctly summarizes their guilt: “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” [vi]

 

We are to welcome wayfarers and sojourners in the land, of course, because it is not our land, it is God’s, and God’s dream is one of sharing with others as they have need. This is the very heart of the command to love God and love neighbor. Because we were once poor and needy and God offered us a helping hand. Madeliene L’Engle, in The Wind in the Door, writes, “This is what love is: Love is not a feeling, it is what you do. To which God would add, “for others.” Love is what you do for others.

 

Evidently the advance teams are hospitable to the people they meet, because they return joyfully proclaiming, "Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!" Jesus at first is pleased to hear the news of their success, but then must remind them that much like his own authority, their success points beyond them to God as the source of all they were able to do, all authority, and indeed life itself.[vii] The real source for their success is God working through them.

 

The lesson in Luke Chapter 10: welcome strangers, welcome sojourners in the land, as Abraham had entertained strangers, as our people has welcomed and met the needs of any and all who travel through our land – all that is, except the Sodomites, who paid the price for lacking hospitality with fire and brimstone. Hospitality is at the heart of the Dream of God!

 

This begs the question: when it comes to hospitality and love for strangers, who is the Host? It is God in Christ Jesus. We are sent out as his representatives. His ambassadors. The advance teams carrying out God’s dream of a friendly world of friendly folk beneath a friendly sky. Sure, the work is hard – Archbishop Romero was assassinated for proclaiming God’s love - and our work never seems to end. But when we forget our appointed work as those who welcome strangers, the results are tragic, as they were just this past week at our southern border: 53 wayfarers left to die in an abandoned and locked truck in San Antonio, Texas.

 

The Apostle Paul writes to the church in Galatia, “So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest-time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.”[viii]

 

We must never forget, we are here by the grace of the God of mercy, forgiveness and steadfast love. God is the Host, now and always. We work on God’s behalf, not that of the kingdoms of this world. We are not guardians of God’s table, but servants at his table. We are not gatekeepers, but rather those who fling wide the gates to one and all. We are those people who have promised to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourself.

 

All of this is what Archbishop Oscar Romero means by “The Violence of Love” – A love that welcomes all others to share in the Dream of God. A love of justice and peace for all people. A love that offers hospitality to others – all others -to share all that we have and all that we are: God’s people, sojourners in God’s world who seek to sustain the vision of God’s Dream such that all that we say and all that we do proclaims that the promise of God’s Shalom is near, at hand, here in this place, now and forever and ever. Amen.

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[i] Isaiah 2:4

[ii] Howard Thurman, quoted in Verna Dozier’s, The Dream of God (Cowley Publications, Cambridge,MA:1991) p.31.

[iii] Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

[iv] Josephus, Antiquities 1:194-95

[v] Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin 109a

[vi] Ezekiel 16:49

[vii] Ring, Sharon, Luke (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY: 1995) p.154

[viii] Galatians 6:9-10