Sermon 2019.03.10
Radical Hospitality
(Romans 10:8-15; sermon 2 of 5 in Lent series “Bearing Fruit”)

1. Bearing fruit.  Before I begin today, I have good news. We will be giving away free pedicures after the sermon today! Stay tuned for details…
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Now, let’s get serious. This is the first Sunday of Lent. Traditionally this is a season of repentance and preparation for Easter. Often it begins with John the Baptist’s call to “Bear fruit worthy of repentance!” (Matthew 3:8). 

Both individual and churches are called to repent and bear fruit. So this season, we’re going to take John the Baptist seriously and talk about an important book by Bishop Robert Schnase: Five Practices for Fruitful Congregations. 

Some of you may remember the original version, published waaayyy back in 2007. This book had a serious impact on churches back in the day. But a lot has changed since 2007. We didn’t even have iPhones back then! Most millenials were still in high school or college.

And so Bishop Schnase has completely revised and updated the book, and it is more relevant than ever. Five Practices is well worth reading if you care about the church’s future. Our staff has studied it, and our Church Council is going to begin reading it together. You can order a copy online, or buy it in the office for $15. 

The five practices that Schnase recommends to churches are…

	Radical Hospitality
	Passionate Worship
	Intentional Faith Development 
	Risk-taking Mission & Service
	Extravagant Generosity

We’re going to take one each Sunday during Lent, beginning today with radical hospitality.

2. Hospital…ity.  Let’s start with a fun fact: hospitality and hospital share the same Latin root word, hospitalis, meaning “for a guest.” Think about that for a minute. The doors of the hospital are open to anyone who is sick. Rich or poor, any race or gender or age, the hospital will take excellent care of you and do their very best to heal you. 

Now let’s think about the church. It has been said that the church is not a club for the saints, but a hospital for sinners. None of us here are perfect. We are all sin-sick at some level. And yet the doors of the church are always open to us. The doors of the church are open to all who seek the cure of faith in Christ: rich or poor, any race or gender or age. 

Welcome to the hospital! All are welcome. How can we take the best care of those guests who walk through our open doors? Friends, we’ve got work to do. 

3. Come and see.  Traditionally, churches have focused on hospitality of attraction. We’ve emphasized “Come and see.” Our focus has been on being the best church possible, so that when people walk through our doors they like what they see and they stick around. 

This has a lot of dimensions, and we all have a part to play. Is our building attractive and well-maintained? Do we have great coffee and cookies? Can people find the restrooms, the nurseries, and the WiFi code? Is worship relevant and compelling?

Most of all, are our people friendly and open? This is not just the job of the welcome team and the ushers, but of every one of us. We all need to be ready to greet others with a friendly smile and genuine interest – not just our own circle of friends, but those who are unfamiliar to us. “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers,” says Hebrew 13:2, “for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”

Loving God and neighbor means making genuine relationships and connections – going beyond “Hi! How are ya?” to asking about family and work and what folks do for fun… and then saying, “Let me introduce you to Jim over here; you two have a lot in common.”

4. Go and do.  But hospitality of attraction is not enough today. We can have the nicest church in the world and most of our community will never walk through the door. Bishop Schnase now emphasizes that we must pair hospitality of attraction with a hospitality of invitation. “Come and see” is not enough; we must also “go and do.”

Think about how uncomfortable it is to walk into a new place: a new school, a new job, a new store. Where is everything? Will anyone help me? Are the people here nice? That’s the hurdle facing folks who might come to our church. 

So we need to take the initiative and go put ourselves in their environment. We need to engage people where they are instead of expecting them to come to us. We need to be the stranger and face the discomfort of the new in order to make those connections. 

This was part of the DNA of early Methodists. Instead of making factory and farm workers come into the stuffy Church of England, John Wesley went and preached in the factories and fields and town squares. Frontier circuit riders went from house to house.

Can we carry our Christian hospitality out the door and into daily life? Can we show love to all the strangers we meet? We are eager to tell others where we get our hair done, or what mechanic fixes our cars, or where we like to eat. Can we be comfortable telling folks where we get our spiritual batteries recharged? 

5. Making it radical.  Whether it’s “come and see” or “go and do,” we agree that hospitality is important. But what makes hospitality radical? What takes it to the next level?

Schnase writes, “Churches characterized by radical hospitality are not just friendly and courteous, passively receiving guests warmly. Instead, they exhibit a restlessness, an unsettling awareness of those who stand in need of grace. They are genuinely curious about and interested in forming relationships with people outside the faith community. They are eager to carry Christ’s initiating love with them into their daily lives.” (p. 31)

Restlessness. Curiosity. Eagerness. “Jesus radically challenges the disciples’ expectations by overstepping boundaries to invite people toward him.” (p. 20)  Jesus goes to the people, all the people, and not just the “right” people.

Paul writes in Romans, “There is no distinction between Jews and Greek, the same Lord is Lord of all” (10:12). Or as we put it on our church website under “who is welcome”…

We welcome all, and we mean ALL! Jesus admonishes us to love God and our neighbor, and warns us not to judge. Therefore, Onalaska UMC welcomes all the same people that God welcomes…

God welcomes little children and old folks.
God welcomes healthy people and sick people.
God welcomes happy people and sad people.
God welcomes rich people and poor people.
God welcomes male and female, straight and otherwise.
God welcomes people of all races and cultures.
God welcomes people of all nations and people with no nation.
God welcomes Republicans and Democrats and independents.
God welcomes the faithful and the doubtful.
God welcomes saints and sinners.

Living together and loving each other, warts and all, isn’t always easy. But it is a beautiful living community that reflects the full breadth of God’s amazing creation.

God loves everybody, and so do we. We don’t just love passively. We love actively. Friends, that is radical.

6. Making it personal.  We’ve been talking about our church, but what about us personally? What do we need to repent of in the area of radical hospitality?

I would submit that for most of us, there is no urgency. We let our discomfort with meeting strangers overwhelm our urgent mission to bear the good news. And so we don’t strike up a conversation with the clerk at the register, or the waitress, or the person in the waiting room, or our neighbor down the street.

Fruit worthy of repentance means bearing the fruit of love for neighbors, of kindness to strangers, of forgiveness for enemies, of generosity toward those in need. Because we’re all sinners, and we’re all welcome here in God’s hospital. 

Now, about that free pedicure… 

Paul writes, “‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’” (10:12-15)

Friends, we are might all be sinners. But in God’s eyes, we are beautiful sinners. Now put those beautiful feet to work, and go bear the Good News of God’s hospitality to the world.

- Amen