Hospitality Must Be Stronger Than Fear - Jon Tyson

good evening I'm gonna read tonight's teaching text hi all right tonight's teaching text is Hebrews 13:1 32 keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters do not forget to show to show hospitality to strangers for by doing so some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it this is the word of the Lord well good evening I hope you're doing well we are coming towards the end of our series this must be stronger than that and at this point of the series I hope some things are in your life that are stronger than those other things I hope something in your life has been it has anything been touched in your life so far in this series well it appears there's a disproportionate amount of pressure on this sermon to do something in you then father help us in Jesus name tonight we're gonna talk about hospitality being stronger than fear and this is important we have had that's what I'm talking about one person is filled with the Holy Spirit in this room praise God one's enough one's enough this this past week thank you this past week we had the elections so it's been a really unifying week in American politics across this nation one of the things that's most disturbing to me about this has been just the vehemence and the intensity of the language and how much people are investing into politics and it just seems like we've just lost our ability to function the way the founding fathers intended I mean their assumption was that there'd be representative government and then that'd be folks who got voted in and folks who didn't and you'd sort of work that out and it seems like we just lost our ability for that the middle is gone it's gone there's no there's no space for nuance there's no space for thoughtfulness there's no space for agreeing with some things and rejecting others everything feels like a totalitarian regime of agreement or hatred we are in a culture of exclusion we are in an us-versus-them reality Jan vaibhava who's a leader of my youth social perception and evaluation lab has done research and using the word partisanship as a signifier or a trigger to understand how this impacts our understanding of other people and politics is one of those things that we categorize people within our hearts as in and then out and as we categorize categorize others as Outsiders we consciously remove empathy and give fewer emotional resources to those that we have dismissed which means the things that the way that civility is built the way that friendship is built is by extending compassion and empathy but by drawing a line between us and them are actually reducing the very things needed to produce the kind of world that we actually 8 to live in and I'm talking this primarily tonight about guarding your heart as a follower of Jesus in the midst of this cultural confusion so this is not a talk on politics this night this is a talk about Christians spirits and carrying a different spirit in the middle of the insane cultural that we find ourselves in because if we find ourselves being sucked up into this where our primary attention and allegiances manifests through this we're gonna compromise our faith and live out of the spirit of the age if we do this what we'll end up doing to people that we disagree that we see this in the larger world is turning people into the other us and them them the other the ones that we reject the ones that we don't agree with the ones that we are separating ourselves from and you all know who they are don't you you and you know who they are there's a category in your mind where it's like oh gosh it's them it's us and then then but what happens is that never stays in neutral us has to power up over them we moralize our opinions we imbue our our vision of life with such authority that we feel like we have to power over them because we're threatened by them we resist them and we end up demonizing them Mercer lost Miroslav Volf theologian says this that we live in a culture with a persistent practice of exclusion a persistent practice of exclusion and there's four ways we do with other people once we've dismissed them we eliminate them we assimilate them we dominate them or we demonize them and isn't it true that you see all of these approaches in our world today not as much in America though there's there's skirmishes and accounts of this but if we see someone who's to other we just try and eliminate them certain countries of the world right now they are literally doing this with with categories of drug dealers they're just eliminating them removing them from society murdering them but more often we tend to assimilate which means that we require outsiders to look like us to be like us to think like us in order to have value in any given in-group whether that's on the left or on the right and when we do that we feel like we have to dominate them if we can't dominate them we demonize them so we can ostracize them further and this is very very complicated how many of you looking forward to going for going home as Thanksgiving talking about politics talking about the country right now hey how's everything going actually how are you that's not let's not do this let's just talk about light trivialities let's move towards Christmas and let's just put up a trend and the lights and all of that because no one really wants to get into anything it's too loaded it's too intense racial divides generational divides political divides the other well the reason that this ends up being so challenging for us is because this is where there's so much compromise in our faith in this and people who have even just like a fragment of the Scriptures go aren't you Christians supposed to be different isn't there a way you're supposed to be different than that so I want to put forth the case that hospitality has to be stronger than this cultural fear for followers of Jesus Christ and what I want to do tonight is I want to give you a lens of hospitality if I can I want to get you to develop an instinct of hospitality see your first thought is not a political thought your first thought is not a moral thought your first thought is a Jesus thought that it's that's the spirit that you approach all of these things out of the spirit of Jesus in our fragmented society so I want to give you this lens of hospitality through which you begin to filter out and make sense of other things Christine Paul says this even among Christians many of the current discussions about poverty and welfare inclusion and diversity scarcity and distribution are conducted without the benefit of any coherent theological framework often the result is that our stands on complex social and public policy concerns are little affected by our deepest Christian values and commitments hospitality as a framework provides a bridge which connects our theology with daily life and practice and I see this all the time you see Christians who have such bad theology they're patching together little snippets of scripture out of context without a coherent framework and then moralizing particular visions you get other Christians who are just starting with American governmental policy without any sort of reference point or understanding of primarily viewing yourself as a follower of Jesus Christ and we don't have a coherent theological lens to understand the larger ways that we follow Jesus in our world today so I want to try and give you that lens tonight I want to talk about what hospitality is why it matters and how to practice it so let's jump in what is hospitality well the Greek construction of the word Hospitality fillos it's a beautiful world it's a compound word of two specific words the first one is filler where we get the term friendship it's one of the four loves and the other word is the word xenos literally means foreigner so Hospitality is a love of foreigners now I don't mean that in a political sense but I don't not mean it in a political sense it is a love of the foreigner it's a love of the stranger it's a love of the outsider it's a love of the one who is not like us and this is a command so if most of us when we think about hospitality it's in two categories category number one or that was great hospitality man and by that I mean we women luxury we mean aesthetics we mean an excellent experience that's not what's talked about here and on the other side when we think of hospitality we think of those like annoying people with endless social energy who always want to have other people around and we're like I'm just not like that man I'm an introvert my job sucks me dry my home is a place of safety retreat and Netflix series is this is what I do this is my zone right here but this is not about lavish parties and this is not about personalities this is about a biblical command to love others if we know what xenophobia is which is a fear of strangers the biblical command is a love of them a love of the stranger this is what hospitality is Joshua a double WGP wrote just such an outstanding book on hospitals code saved by faith in hospitality and it sounds like Karis it's not he's a wonderful New Testament scholar but I was reading this book last week and I was reading it before bed I'm lying in bed every time it I just said it Christie oh gosh I am NOT a follower of Jesus Christ I mean I just I am i suck at following Jesus she's like what are you talking back to my book ten minutes later I was like I know nothing about the ways of the Lord Jesus Christ in the world I mean I know nothing my life is unrecognizable as a disciple of the Jesus I'm not just like what are you reading I was like it's a book of hospitality he says this hospitality this is Joshua's definition of this hospitality is the act or process whereby the identity of the stranger is transformed into that of guests while hospitality often uses the basic necessities of life such as the protection of one's home the offer of food drink and conversation and clothing the primary impulse of hospitality is to create a safe and welcoming place where a stranger can be converted into a friend the practice of hospitality to strangers who frequently hope to create relationships and friendships between those who were previously either alienated or enmity or simply unknown to one another so biblical hospitality is creating an environment of welcome whether there's the conversion of a person's identity from a stranger to a friend from an outsider to an insider so that they can belong so it's about an environment we create that addresses the false identities we've assigned to people that's what hospitality is it's turning the other into another like the 50-something one anothers in the New Testament where we accept responsibility for one another it is humanizing the representative group through individual contact you ever had that happen you've got an opinion about like them and then you meet one of them and someone moves from a statistic to a story that ever happened to you I used to work on 38th Street now officers run 38th Street and people people ask me all the time by the way like what have you been pranked for for so long this just happened that you just like God has answered my prayers undeniable well you know I pray for something for 10 years I contended I believe and I prayed and God actually answered it after 10 years really an extraordinarily - prayer I almost got exactly what I asked for but I didn't contend just enough so I fell just a little bit short but it's within the bull's eye and so after 10 years of praying in Fast and they brought chick-fil-a to New York City and it was it was one block from 37th Street and I worked on 38 who knows if I just filled the bowl a little more it could have landed with a little more accuracy but anyway anyway when I would get taxis from around the city or whatever because it was awkward to come across 38th Street I would often just say hello just dropped me and dropped me on our six Avenue or whatever just dropped me on the way up there and was often in front of chick-fil-a in the Providence of God it would just sort of work out well so I remember one time so this actually happened to me on a couple of different occasions but I remember pulling up and I just started to have a beautiful conversation with the taxi driver and I can be a little Chatty Cathy when I get into a taxi I always just say hey look man how's it going look we got I've got a 20 minute window here with you let me just drop two questions on you best taxi ride you've ever had most terrific taxi ride you've ever had go and some of the stories I mean you're looking for you're looking for the next episode of white alva amazing so I'm having a conversation with one of the other drivers and I said to him hey hey yeah if you have had chick-fil-a because I know no I see the lines all the time I've never had it I was like how much time do you have right now I said if I if I keep the media meter running can you give me the honor of introducing you do the chicken sandwich can I just like bring this in so he's like like we had a super kid he's like that would be wonderful so I go in I buy him chick-fil-a I sit back in his car and we have chick-fil-a together and he just starts telling me about his story tell me about your story and he uh he worked in the medical field he was a doctor when he moved here as an immigrant fleeing persecution he couldn't get his credentials matched he had to go back and redo a bunch of tests and get education in the process of trying to hash all of that stuff out he had a family and he was just trying to grind it out and provide and this is a guy who to me was just an immigrant to New York who was driving me from point A to point B he was nobody and then by creating a welcoming environment his identity shifted from an immigrant taxi driver to a fellow father a fellow man trying to provide a fellow immigrant who had moved to this country hoping for a better life we have this amazing time together and I thought there's so much possibility around just creating a welcoming environment and deconstructing the social categories and put people in and connecting deeply this is what hospitality is it's moving from statistics to stories representative groups to individuals who matter to God this is what find out this is what hospitality does hospitality is the love of the foreigner the love of the stranger it's turning the other into in another from Statistics the stories and it can happen every day this is a biblical command so second thing why is hospitality central to our faith well one reason because your salvation is an act of God's hospitality the gospel is the hospitality of God that's how God's treat us in the Old Testament see one of the things that we can often forget in our reading of the Old Testament is how kind God was in the Old Testament we were the stranger and God welcomed us and look at how Christine Paul puts this strangers in the strict sense of those who are disconnected from basic relationships the give persons a secure place in the world the most vulnerable strangers and this is what the experience of the stranger is that detached from family community church work and polity this condition is most clearly seen in the state of homeless people and of refugees their severed from these relationships of security and so they're vulnerable in almost every way possible and God in His hospitality creates an environment of welcome and converts them from strangers to sons and daughters and heirs and all of his resources flow into their flourishing that's what God has done for us you see this in Eden and Eden God creates a beautiful environment invites us in what is the Exodus our redemption story the central narrative of the Old Testament is about God bringing people out of slavery into a welcoming environment a relationship with him what is the promised land it's their inheritance it's a relationship of covenant relationship of security with this community and protection and work and polity and a sense of belonging this is the holster of the Old Testament and so the Jewish nation is ordered to live out of the hospitality of God and to demonstrate it to others because that's what was done for them by God this was a part of their mission in the world so this shows up ala vide kiss 19 Exodus 22 Exodus 23 the Israelites are commanded to treat foreign as well because they themselves were foreigners in Egypt and I had this revelation this week is praying through the Psalms much of our thinking can I start some question by the way how many of you actually raised Jewish like you like I was raised Jewish okay so that's a zero people here okay statistically that's a little lower than the dynamics of New York City perhaps but there's no Jewish people here see the revelation I had this past week is that most of us read the Bible like we're the Jewish people who get upgraded to Jesus that's not who we are in the biblical narrative you know who you are you're the Philistine you're the Baal worshipping Canaanite you're not you weren't raised Jewish you don't have right to the Covenant promises of God in Ephesians 2 Paul says that you were without God without hope in the world strangers to the covenants of promise you were way worse off than you knew your history is way further from God than you can comprehend and so even in our reading we superimpose intimacy with God and welcome with God but we're a long way off and that's what makes the Ministry of Jesus so extraordinary the distance he went the boundaries he fulfilled to bring us close to God so then hospitality if we see this as a theme in the Old Testament becomes an explicit theme in the New Testament in the Ministry of Christ so Joshua jiff again says this God's hospitality is extended to his lost broken needy and often stigmatized people this divine hospitality comes to us in the person of Jesus the divine host who extends God's hospitality to sinners outcasts and strangers and thereby draws them and us into friendship with God God's embrace of humanity into friendship with his is the ultimate form of welcoming the stranger so I just want to give you an example of this through Luke's Gospel if you see that the the story that's told it in the Gospel of Luke all the way through it's just a story of God creating an environment of welcome to change the identity of Outsiders into insiders that's the story the Gospel of Luke so let's start in Luke 4 remember Luke 4 we talked about this a couple of weeks ago in celebration but what was Jesus manifesto from the book of Isaiah the Spirit of the Lord's on me because he's anointed me to do a bunch of great stuff that's right that's the right answer he's anointed to release the captives burn out the brokenhearted to open the eyes of the blind he has a ministry of radical welcome and then you see this through the rest of the Gospel of Luke Luke five Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners actually Lee we're talking about their dinner with Matthew and what does Jesus do the Pharisees say why is your teacher eating with sinners and what's Jesus response I haven't come to call the righteous I come for sinners it's not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick that's why I'm here this is what my mission is bringing healing the social disease of exclusion so you might intimacy in through my welcome Luke chapter 10 parable of the Good Samaritan you know that one it's done well through time one of the classics the Good Samaritans a story where a Jewish leader comes up to Jesus and says who is my neighbor and any time you ask Jesus a question and he answers with a story you're in trouble you're in you're about to be rebuked through narrative and so Jesus starts up his whole thing on the Good Samaritan you know the story a man's going on a journey and he gets he's on the Jericho Road which is a very thin strip of road if you've ever been there or seen it then he gets beaten up by robbers and he's he's basically like unrecognizable on the road and you know the people who walk past you know the right people walk past and do the wrong thing and then this Samaritan who is the the equivalent of like a Taliban pedophile I mean the most out outside hated cultural enemy you can think of comes by and sees a person in front of him and what does he do picks him up put someone his donkey brings me to an end cares for him and provides for him and then Jesus at the end of it says who was the better neighbor and he's like well the Samaritans go and do likewise it's a story of hospitality see the other people were like oh we're not quite sure who he is he could he could affect me he could infect me but the other man just sees a human being in front of him this amount just sees a person no clothes can't speak no detection of an accent is he in or out I don't know if he's one of me or them he's as a person in need therefore I'm gonna help him go and do likewise then Jesus turns the corner Luke 15 he's just getting warmed up with the stories now the Pharisees again come and see Jesus and what do they say says many tax collectors and Pharisees often came to hear Jesus teach this made the Pharisees very angry and the quest they're asking why does your teacher show hospitality to tax collectors and sinners and Jesus again says well this time I've got three stories for you Story number one this is a story about a sheep and leaving in 99 to find the one the next story is about a woman who loses a coin and then Jesus closes it out with the prodigal son and what's he saying my job is to celebrate when the outsider becomes an insider and then he goes on in Luke chapter 19 continuing along now he's talking about Zacchaeus remember Zacchaeus the wee little man you know the story Zacchaeus is but he's a chief tax collector so this is a person that has basically represents systemic ungodliness and oppression and he's in Jericho Jericho was the Hamptons of Jerusalem it's where all the wealthy had elite summer homes that's it if you ever studied the history of what Jericho was like extraordinary place of privilege and here you've got a chief tax collector and what does Jesus say to him I'm coming to your house today so he creates an environment of hospitality and walk actually forces it on him meant to force my hospitality on your life and then he renames his identity what does he say this - is it chard of Abraham gives him a new identity of belonging the people of God then you've got Luke 22 which is the Last Supper again which is Jesus creating an environment of welcome these disciples to understand the kingdom and then Luke 22 opens where over the course of a meal through hospitality in the breaking of bread they have the revelation he's resurrected he's back from the dead do are you picking up sort of like a theme in Luke's Gospel at all here just so this is like not like one thing Jesus does occasionally that this is the framework of Jesus ministry Jesus is bringing relationships of security family community divine connection work and polity so Gipp concludes his summary on Jesus ministry by saying this the entire ministry of jesus is appropriately captured in the phrase divine hospitality to the stranger in this sinner so let me ask you a question if you were to sum up your life with a phrase with the summary of your life be divine hospitality to the stranger in the sinner because I'm laying in bed saying to my wife I know nothing like this occasionally I have this Jesus moment but I'm not living the Jesus life this was Jesus hard see I think the credibility of our faith rests on the quality of our hospitality in this particular moment because the world's just aching for a place of inclusion and belonging Henri Nouwen says this our society seems to be increasingly full of fearful defensive aggressive people anxiously clinging to their property and inclined to look at their surrounding world with suspicion always expecting an enemy to suddenly appear intrude and do harm but still that's our vocation to convert the enemy into a guest and to create the free and fearless space where Brotherhood and sisterhood can be formed and fully experienced a free and fearless place I I talk a lot in my home about the concept of an emotional field you know what that is like when someone steps into your presence like what vibes is another term I guess or the feels I don't know what you call about when you get near to someone what are you picking up on I always want to have like a warm emotional field where people step into my presence and they receive energy and they receive warmth and they receive strength and they receive encouragement I wanted to come out go on I'm glad to minutes with John was good I want people to feel that this is what Jesus was like everywhere he went except if you're a Pharisee everybody loved being around Jesus the credibility of our faith depends on the quality of our hospitality that's the moment we live in so I think in many ways I often think you know I've got a son who's 18 I've got a daughter who's about to turn 16 I mean we're heading into the years where I mean I got my Christi was 20 I mean we were kids when we got married we weren't kids technically or almost kids you were a teenager when we got engaged Lord Jesus so it just felt right didn't it 20 years this year but my point being my appointment there's a chance in the next 10 years I'm gonna be a grandfather like like a statistically very strong chance and I often do ask myself when my kids with my grandkids grow up and they look at this moment what are they gonna ask about my faith because isn't is it that what we're saying now about 60 years ago where were you on the civil rights issue back then where were you on that moment and why what we said about World War two the German Christians the German Church in that moment like what what about that thing what are they gonna say about this thing right now I think about that you see in World War two it would have looked completely like unrealistic and like not thoughtful and too extreme to actually like bring the Jews into your home and offer them legitimate hospitality if you were German look man I don't make the laws and this is about the banality of evil right here so I don't know man life just happening you know of course I love them but you know it's not my problem I'm not Jewish I guess they should take care of all of these excuses 60 years lady look back and you're like maybe the only people who really understood Christian discipleship were the ones who opened their homes well they really took Jesus teaching seriously where they did what God commanded and the Good Samaritan and he laid this out what are they gonna say about us so hospitality is creating environments and welcome to convert the identity of a stranger into a friend this is the story the Old Testaments destroy at the New Testament when the church is at its absolute best this is its practice how do we get good at it in New York sorry we have to first have to figure out how to do it inside the church then we have to figure out how to do it outside the church this brings us back to our teaching text in Hebrews chapter 13 verse 1 keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters keep on loving one another as brothers sisters now look I'm gonna tell you something that you might not know but if you don't know this you're gonna find this out Christians are needy and sucky have you found that out yet in New York then media and suckier than many other places maybe San Francisco's the other place where they're more needy and more sucky had some bad experiences there but in general in New York's been pretty traumatic as a pastor but let me tell you why let me tell you why and I'm being completely serious while you're laughing at my pastor relax a big serious here's why all week long in New York you have to perform don't you you go to your job you got to perform you can't go to your boss and say hey look I just had a breakup and I'm really sad so my words gonna suffer for four months well I go through this you're just like you've got to get you're gonna get your stuff together and you've got it you've got to keep it up and you're always aware of who's on your left and on who's on your right and you're giving your meeting demands and you're keeping up and you this you're always having to just position yourself and honestly doing that a lot gets really exhausting doesn't it you finally get you get to church and you're like oh and those 70 hours are for oppressive toxic life just leaked out into your 20 minute conversation with your small group all of that stuff doesn't have release valves and so you get we get around other Christians and we're just like emotionally vomiting on one another and collapsing all of our temptation that we built up for three weeks because we've been on a trip is poured into other this so are you am I making this up I'm not this is how I experience other people in other churches when I guess preach they're not you don't bring that here we're special but you see what I'm see the point I'm trying to make 1 Peter 4 says this off above all love each other deeply because love covers a multitude of sins now offer hospitality to one another without grumbling this out there's so much grumbling and murmuring that happens in the church murmuring leads to the wilderness murmuring leads to Baroness you will not murmur your way into the presence of God so whenever Christians get around one another and they start murmuring against each other the next step is the wilderness or the judgment so we don't want to murmur against one another because it commands us not to augusten had a sign above the table of his on his wall that said this he who speaks evil of an absent man or woman is not welcome at this table and I can imagine people like ah I'm gonna hang out with st. Augusta he's not a saint you ever trust me he really is definitely on track you know I'm gonna hang out with Augusta fantastic how was dinner oh not not what I thought what happened well I started gossiping it's like get out look at that sign right there get out and dinner was cut short oh really I think he really takes this seriously if you murmur or speak evil against someone else you're not welcome this table for Christmas this year I'm giving out these signs as a gift to you all right George let's put it above your table frame if you do that if you create a beautiful print and put it above your table and frame that I will feature you on my Instagram story for whatever that's worth probably not much but Christy and I haven't worked so hard we feel this in sick sometimes this office is like oh my gosh you invited them over on Thursday Marie episode 4 and I'll hug me finish this season this week that was like trying to get through five to seven that might you know it's like I'm tired we've just resolved in our hearts that we won't speak ill of people behind their back so I I like I trust me we'll say to you front sometimes people can't handle it but I'm telling you it is way better you will always know where you stand we will not murmur behind your backs you are know where you stand they'll never be ambiguity I think it's important that we have relational integrity like that with one another we have to show hospitality to one another so we have to make room this is what Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 7 make room in your hearts for us and that's why it's so hard because it can be emotionally exhausting in New York trying to put up all those walls and follow Jesus with integrity and resist temptation and not make your job your I'll I'm not make your singleness and getting a date your I'll and not making your children your Island and not wishing when you're married that you were single and had more margin or margin becomes your right or like everything just gets pushed and bent out of shape and so it's hard to have room to love Paul's like please make room in your hearts for me we have to learn to offer hospitality one another without grumbling and then we have to learn to make to do hospitality in the world as an outward approach look at verse 2 he be sitting this too do not forget to show hospitality to strangers for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing in I love this as my personal bucket list on my spiritual bucket list is entertaining an angel I want to get to heaven a good light I knew it was an angel I knew you were an angel I could just sense it thank you don't you have Angelica hospitality on your bucket list I know you do something's happening in this passage in the Greek that is hard to explain because it's very technical but there's basically a whole wordplay in this verse and the idea of the wordplay is this don't miss out on showing hospitality to angels because you never know the gift they're gonna bring you that's not actually what it says in there but that's the meaning behind it because the whole reference point is to Abraham it's a lot what happened with Abraham you remember the story of Abraham he shows hospitality what happens three people show up they're like you know what it's gonna be very soon your promise is gonna be fulfilled what if he was like oh who are you get out he would have shut the promise the revelation of the promise out of his life what about lot remember a lot he's in Sodom and Gomorrah tough place to live and in Sodom and Gomorrah the people come in and he shows them hospitality and then all the men of the town rush in and say we want to have sex with you guest he's like well that's inappropriate because I'm obviously having dinner with my guests I'm that would be unholy of me and what do the messengers say to him the whole town's about David get out what dangers do what's their job description what a Rangers do their messengers and he's saying you have no idea what God may bring into your life through welcoming the other end God may be bringing deliverance he might breathe salvation he might bring breakthrough through a random person in your life and if you shut him out you may shutting out your destiny in your future I learned this lesson once I had a person who just kept trying to reach out to me just trying to get me on social media and I was just like look I'm Way better on stage than I am in person trust me my interpersonal czar not as good as my public's so just listen to a podcast of where this again again and again sir eventually I did one of these like terrible possible things like look I got 10 minutes or whatever and he goes off thank you so much for taking my time we just sold our business and we wanted to support your church financially and just gave me a five-figure check just sitting there oh oh what a lesson don't don't shut the stranger up because you may shout out your future you may shout out blessing you never know what can break into your life that's what's happening in the word play in verse 2 here so we have to show hospitality in the world so who do we show hospitality to in the world well we have to show it to the lost we have to show hospitality to the lost this is the Ministry of Jesus welcoming in the outsider welcoming you in welcoming me in giving us a new identity that's biblical hospitality Rosaria Butterfield wrote a very very beautiful book called the gospel comes with a house key I love that and she tells her story she was formerly a professor a lesbian professor of postmodern Studies at Syracuse University and in 1997 Promise Keepers you know Promise Keepers is so it was like a big men's movement and promise P Promise Keepers came to town and she wrote a protest piece against it and she just couldn't stand Christian's I might give you a little bit of her book this is her understanding of what happens so she said as she's posting protesting this backward and misogynistic gender politic movement that was a quote threat against democracy I wrote an article about this and got a lot of hate mail she said but call me a masochist I came to the conclusion that I should read it there was a local pastor named Ken Smith who wrote an article in response to hers that was so kind she said this was the kindest piece of hate mail I'd ever received and what he basically did was like invite her over to dinner to hear more of a story and meet her he was trying to take it out of like a representative group into a story and so she is a lesbian post-postmodern philosopher she hates Christians and then she finds herself sitting in the driveway of a Presbyterian pastor's house and so I'm picking up on what she writes when Ken and his wife Floy invited me to dinner I said yes my motives were very clear this would be good for my research I considered Ken Smith my potential unpaid research assistant but the task at hand was daunting and that's why I sat on my truck so long at the front of his house not quite ready to knock on the front door of this house and walk across its threshold somehow I would have to emerge from this meal understanding the oppressive logic that elevated a dead book above the desires of good people and I would have to do so without having an emotional breakdown to be hated for who you are carries insidious violence and I've been on the receiving end of that before with Christians dealing with Christians was toxic work like deep-sea diving you would stay down there only for so long before the long-term consequences took hold I wanted to learn why Christians hated me but maintain my integrity in my point of view the prospect of having this meal with a Christian pastor made me sick to my stomach I breathed hard and hoisted myself out of my truck nursing a tender hamstring for my morning run i rated through the unusually thick july humidity to the front door and i'm knocked the thresh out of their life was like none other the threshold to their life brought me to the foot of the cross nothing about that night unfolded according to my confidence script nothing happened the way I expected not that night nor the years after she says this nothing prepared me for this openness in this truth and what they did was their credit in an environment of welcome for her so she felt that Christians basically destroyed the environment we're in you know and just like destroyed animals and so they served a vegetarian food and put fans on instead of air conditioning they're just very very thoughtful anticipating her needs and who she was and as a result it just deconstructed all of her barriers had brought her into an encounter with Jesus and she ends up becoming one of his followers there's a beautiful story I think in many ways this is why Alpha is so powerful and it's so effective because people in that city just like they're emotionally overwhelmed at work they're spiritually confused too and they just actually ask is there actually a same place in this city I can ask legitimate questions I have about faith without being powered up over or without being dismissed where my objections are taken seriously and then you show up and it's really great people with wonderful hospitality giving you real food and letting you say whatever you want and loving you and they're just kind of like what is this liminal space it's like people don't know how to process this but over the course of time their deconstruction is deconstructed by the love of Jesus this is a beautiful vision so Allan Herschell writes this if every Christian family in the world simply offered good conversational hospitality around a table once a week to neighbors we would eat our way into the kingdom of God I love that vision see look not everybody can preach not everybody can lead worship but everybody is gonna wait three or four including pastries and coffee and then second breakfast and all of that stuff multiple meals a day and everybody can create a welcoming environment have a beautiful emotional field where others who are outsiders can be brought in and this identity shift can happen second person is not just a loss but it's the outsider in our society there's a passage in Matthew 25 it's another one of Jesus famous ones and it's a passage of great surprise it's actually called the judge the sheep and the goats and it's a judgment of nations which should make us pause a lot more than we do it but anyway Matthew 25 tells the story that many of us hear about and it's about one group of people who stand before Jesus on the day of judgment and Jesus says to them I was thirsty and he didn't give me anything to drink I was naked you didn't clothe me I was in prison you didn't visit me I was hungry you didn't give me food away from me and they're like when did we see you like we never see if we saw you we would have done that and Jesus says whatever you did the least of these brothers of mine you've done it to me and then another group shows up and that group shows up and Jesus says congratulations you're gonna make it into eternal like a way to go and they're like sort of what for and he says well I was hungry and you fed me I was naked and you clothed me I was in prison you visited me and they're like when they're both surprised when did we see you and this is all yeah cause if you did it to the least of these you did it to me the great surprise and this is what Philip lenzi says we have to learn to detect God's presence in the world because our filters are off he says it's God has taken on a disguise I most likely unlikely disguise of the stranger the poor the hungry the prisoner the sick the ragged ones of the earth I remember Dallas Willard saying that if you were to do it like if you were to convert ancient sociology into modern culture Jesus spent a lot of times with the kinds of people who just hang out at places like the Port Authority those who are making no contribution to society those have no social value and Jesus just seemed to really enjoy their company I've spent a lot of time with the Port Authority catching buses in now enough and find myself frustrated because I'm in a line there's a line for bad coffee and Here I am with people asking me if I have any change and I'm like why don't you change man this is bad coffee I just said that to Jesus but he's in a disguise amongst us when Lord went so we have to learn to see people like this I don't want to stand before Jesus on that day and be surprised that I missed him in the world learning to detect his presence and then lastly learning to welcome the other have you heard of the people's supper any of you ever been to a people supper here in New York folks I am not doing really well in terms of resonance with my illustrations tonight but that's okay the people suffer is a group of people who orchestrate meals between diverse groups of people to major in major cities across the country the group's mission is to repair the breach now interpersonal relationships across political ideological and identity differences leading to more civil discourse they do it through the most nourishing way we know they do this over supper just like downloaded their discussion guide last night it's excellent it's like a small group leaders guys like don't talk too much don't moralize your opinion give space for others to talk wonderful the whole time I just thinking why didn't it Church come up with this they're running our plays they're running our plays this our playbook here this from the Old Testament this is from Jesus and someone sees the genius of Christian mission and says this will work in the world and it's like why is the church so slow to catch on we are called to care about the outsider and to make them into insiders so I close with the question it's simply this what could the city look like if we were continually creating environments of welcome and shifting the identity of the other into that of our friends what if we carried radical hospitality radical redefinition and radical love wherever we went see this is the thing that we forget you're the outsider you're the Canaanite you're the Rahab you're not the disciple but you've been made into a disciple by the scandalous welcome of Jesus the cross the Ministry of Jesus is one giant welcoming environment where your identity of sinner is transformed into that of Saint your identity of child of wrath has turned into child of God for the Ministry of Jesus and the cross of Jesus Christ and we're called to carry that love as a paradigm and a practice to other people who around us what could this city look like if we were continually creating environments of welcome and shifting the identity the identity of the other into that of our friends I close with our Azaria Butterfield squad she says this radically ordinary hospitality those who live it see strangers as neighbors and neighbors as family of God they recoil at reducing a person to a category or a label they see God's image reflected in the eyes of every human being on earth they know they are meth like meth addicts and sex trade workers they take their own sins seriously including the sin of selfishness and pride they take God's holiness and goodness seriously they use the Bible as a lifeline with no exceptions those who live out radically ordinary hospitality see their homes not as theirs at all but as God's gift to use for the furtherance of his kingdom they open doors they seek out and a privilege they know that the gospel comes from their house key you serve a hospitable God what's God like I think ratably hospitable well what's it like to be a follower of Jesus why do you bother with Jesus oh because I was his enemy and he made me into his son or daughter he threw a party for me when I came home from my sin he welcomed me in made me an heir gave me an eternal inheritance I've just never met anybody with such a strong emotional field of kindness who welcomed me home and I guess I followed Jesus because he's the most welcoming man I've ever met and he likes me oh well that's different than I thought I don't think people understand it that's what our God is like do you need God's hospitality have you received his welcome have you personally what do you think God thinks about you when you come to him it seems like their prayers let me guess you need help or is he just like hang on I saved a good bottle of stuff for this it just wants to enter into relationship with us no matter how far off track the church gets you know what Jesus is doing he's like can I come in I'd like to come in can we have fellowship I'm gonna force my hospitality on you hello hello it's Jesus Christ the Lord of the church here the head of the church hello excuse me please let me in I'd like to have fellowship with you behold I stand at the door and knock are you holding him in your have you opened the door your heart to him have you received the hospitality of God he's a hospitable God when he sees your coming he runs to you likes you welcomes you wants to bring you in as some of you are here tonight you've been very very heard you've been judged by Christians you've been judged by the church have been judged by Pharisees and you think it's Jesus it's not Jesus will defend you against the church defend you against Pharisees he's he can handle the scandal of being associated with you but he doesn't know what I've done it of course he does that's why he died to take it away and he specializes in redeeming lives and covering a multitude of sins he specializes in loving without grumbling and you can have that tonight a few and do you want that you can enjoy that you can enjoy a fellowship with Jesus so why don't I just want to pray for you before we respond in worship who is Jesus friend of sinners who is Jesus drunkard glutton friend of prostitutes who is Jesus man of sorrows acquainted with grief who is Jesus not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters who is Jesus our great high priest who lives to make intercession for who is Jesus is the older brother that came into the house to welcome you home who is Jesus is the older brother that left the house and went and found you and dragged to you huh who is Jesus is the one knocking at the door and says it doesn't matter what you've done if you open up I'll come in and we can resume our fellowship who is Jesus is the Son of God who likes you he wants to know you so father I just pray in the name of Jesus that you would just release in this room the scandalous offer of your hospitality father if anybody is here and they just have had that ferrah sake or spirit I just pray just welcome them in you did this for the older brother you said come on in coming into the party here you are outside the party pleading for the older brother to come in thank you that even Pharisees are welcomed to your table Lord for those who were just overwhelmed with their guilt their shame and they're just at a distance because they can't really believe that Jesus would take them in Jesus thank you that you're not embarrassed by a scandal you don't care what people think of your love you just meet us where we are well though we we say these words we've never known a love like this well some of us are here with deep wounds because our parents have been embarrassed of us but you're never embarrassed every weird thing about us you think it's quirky and you like it thank you Lord some people have just been wounded by your body and that they're hesitant they're here on the edge of their seat tonight just wondering if it's worth trying again Holy Spirit I just pray fill them with a love of Jesus right now Jesus we're here just to ask tonight that you will just pour out your liquid love into your people well may we just be saturated with the hospitality of God in our spirit well may you just use us everywhere we go just to leak welcome and belonging it'll just flow out of us and touch the lives and bring hope and life to all we encounter it's the Holy Spirit we just create space for you in our hearts tonight we just pray that you will fill us we receive you now we receive your love we receive your welcome we receive your grace we receive your hospitality Jesus we hear you're not coming to our church coming to our church tonight Jesus we're here we want fellowship with you come Holy Spirit

Channel: Church of the City New York

Views: 1,876

Rating: 4.826087 out of 5

Keywords: God, Jesus, Christianity, Church, Church of the City, Jon Tyson, This Must Be Stronger, This Must Be Stronger Than That

Id: tv5LvQ6H5Uw

Length: 52min 36sec (3156 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 13 2018