On a dark and early May morning in 2016, a
text message from a neighbor came into my cell phone at 5:15 a.m. This is what it said, "What's going on at
Hank's house? Why are police surrounding the house? Are you okay?" But my phone was turned off and in the other
room, so I did not get the message. Peaceful sleep sounds echoed from children's
rooms. Even the dogs were sleeping. My Bible was open with notebook and coffee
cup in arm's length. I started my devotions that morning, as I
had been doing for the past eighteen years, and as Ken and Floy Smith modeled for me,
praying that the Lord would open my eyes to see wondrous things in His Word. I typically intersperse prayer with Bible
reading and note-taking, and in the morning I pray in concentric circles. I start by confessing my sin, seeking deeper
repentance, praying that the Lord would increase my love for Him. I long for the Lord to grow me in holiness
and to give me courage to proclaim Christ in word and deed as a living epistle and make
me a more loving wife and mother and friend. I then pray for my family, the church, my
neighbors, my nation, foreign missionaries and missions, and I thank the Lord that He
is risen. I thank the Lord for the covenant of which
I am a part. With notebook open, I pray through names and
situations. Well that morning, my prayer time stopped
at the category of neighbor. I was praying for my immediate neighbor, Hank,
a typical morning, except that the phone I had turned off continued to receive text messages,
alerting me that something was terribly, dreadfully wrong in the house across the street, the
house of the man for whom I was praying. Our house and Hank's share a dead end, and
it stops where two acres of woods open up. When Hank's moving van first backed down his
driveway in 2014, he was a self-described recluse. He worked in his yard digging ditches, for
reasons no one knew. He played loud music. He occasionally received cell phone calls
that got him seething mad and shouting obscenities. He owned a one-hundred pound pit bull named
Tank, who ran the streets without collar and tags. Each neighbor can recall how we saw our life
flash before our eyes the first time we saw Tank bounding up to us at full throttle. Hank did not cut his grass for three months,
and by the time the city fined him for creating a meadow as well as an eyesore, no regular
mower could tackle the cleanup. Well truth be told, Hank was not the neighbor
we prayed for when Edie sold the house and moved her family to Wisconsin, but we trusted
that Hank was the neighbor God had planned for us. Good neighboring is at the heart of the gospel
we know. So when Hank moved in, we walked across the
street, rang the doorbell, shared with him our contact information, introduced him to
our dogs and kids, and waited for him to reciprocate. Instead, he dismantled his doorbell. We prayed for Hank, and gossip started to
spring up about this man who did not fit in. And then one day, Tank ran away. One day turned into one night and nights turned
into weeks, and many neighbors expressed relief that that large pit bull was not running the
streets. But in the crisis of a lost dog, one who was
also the closest companion of a lonely man, the inkling of our friendship began. We offered to help find Tank, and Hank received
our open hand. We posted Tank's information on Nextdoor,
a social media app that organizes communication in our neighborhood of three hundred houses,
and we enlisted other dog-loving neighbors to come to Hank's aid. My 10-year-old daughter cried herself to sleep
as she prayed for Tank's return, and one morning she told Mr. Hank about her prayers for both
for Tank, and her prayers thanking God for His faithfulness. And when Tank was finally found safe and sound,
we became fragile friends. Hank actually gave us his cell phone number
and email address, and we started to walk our dogs together and eventually we were eating
meals together and spending holidays at our table and sharing life. We learned that Hank lived alone, had severe
clinical depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, social anxiety, and had even lived
as a homeless man. Hank loved the woods behind our houses as
much as the children and I do. As winter opened into spring, we kept a tally
of our red-shouldered hawks, our calling American toads, our migrating and returning robins,
blue jays, woodpeckers, and towhees, and our ambling box turtles. Hank helped us chop down our dead trees, always
checking first to make sure there were no baby hawks nesting in them. In his garage he always had a knick-knack
that we might need, a small flashlight to attach to a reflector vest for night runs
or a hook that would hold a doggy bag on a leash. Well Hank was uneven, we assumed his depression
made him so, and sometimes he stayed secluded in his home for weeks on end. We'd text and call, but to no avail. The only sign of life was that his garbage
can would appear at the curb at the appointed night and time. And as neighbors were texting my turned off
cell phone about commotion at Hank's house, I was sitting at my desk, praying for his
salvation and that's when I noticed it, burly men ducking around the back of my house, wearing
orange shirts marked DEA, Drug Enforcement Agency. Serene morning darkness exploded with the
unnatural intrusion of police lights. Yellow tape appeared everywhere, marking the
crime scene. I left my Bible open to Psalm 42 and ran to
Kent. I grabbed my phone and turned it on. Text messages started bouncing to life, "What's
going on at Hanks house? Is there really a meth lab across the street
from you?" Well, what does the conservative, Bible-believing
Christian family who lives across the street from a meth lab do in a crisis of this magnitude? There's not a play book for that that I know
of. How ought we to think about this? How ought we to live? Well, we could barrack ourselves in the house,
remind ourselves and our children that evil company perverts, and like the good Pharisees
that we are always poised to become, thank God that we aren't like evil meth addicts. Or, we could envelop our home in our own version
of yellow crime scene tape, giving the message that we are better than this, that we make
good choices, and that we would never fall into this mess. We could surround ourselves in fear. Well, what if the meth lab had exploded? They do that, you know. The room closest to the lab was my daughter's
bedroom. What if she had been hurt or even killed? Or we could berate ourselves with criticism. How could we ever allow this unstable and
dangerous man into our hearts and into our home? But that of course is not what Jesus calls
us to do. So as neighbors filed into our front yard,
which had become the front-row seats for an unfolding drama of epic magnitude, I scrambled
eggs, put on a big pot of coffee, set out the Bibles and invited them all in. I mean, who else but Bible-believing Christians
can make redemptive sense of tragedy? Who else can see hope in the promises of God
when the real lived circumstances look so dire? Who else knows that the sin that will undo
me is my own, no matter how big my neighbor's sin may be? And where else but a Christian home should
neighbors go to in times of unprecedented crisis? Where else is it safe to be vulnerable, lost,
scared, helpless? How else can we teach our children how to
apply biblical faith to the real facts of life, a process that cancels out neither reality
as it begs Jesus for hope and help, redemptive meaning and saving grace? Well, if we were to close the shades and numb
ourselves through media intake or go into remote monologues about how we always knew
he was bad or how we always make good choices, well what legacy would that leave to our children? See, here's the thing about soothing yourself
with self-delusion, no one actually buys it but you. I had other things on my list of things to
do that day, but none more important than what I was doing, gathering in distraught
neighbors, helping the children, mine and others, process this, and praying for my friend
Hank. Well, neighbors let the police know that we
were Hank's only known friends. It gets worse. We provided them with Hank's mom's phone number,
and one of the officers was a pit bull lover and she said, "Pit bulls sprung from meth
labs don't last long at the pound. I hate to do this to this dog." Well, Kent assured the police that we would
take care of Tank and keep him safe until Hank was released. Kent detoxed the dog with the garden hose
and Dawn dishwashing liquid, and then he dried off in the sun embraced by our own children. And with raised eyebrows the police told Kent
that this dog would be dead two times over before Hank saw the sunshine again. All morning, our house was like a trauma center
with the DEA and other members of the police team using our kitchen and bathroom and with
neighbors coming in, in a steady stream of concern, lament, and criticism. By one o'clock, the DEA told us that they
were going to leave our home and open the meth lab, and what that meant is that they
would open all windows and doors and that the noxious toxins would be released into
the air that we breathed. We were told to stay inside until 6 p.m.,
especially given our proximity to Hank's house. The warning given was stern. Well some neighbors left, but many stayed
the afternoon inside with us. Grief and sadness and betrayal mingled with
the tangled feeling of entrapment. People were fuming. Bill, pacing in my kitchen and finishing up
the last of the coffee in the pot declared, "I can't believe you were friends with him. Do you want to know the problem with you Christians? You are so open-minded your brains are falling
out your ears." There are times when I would pay to have somebody
put that out about me on social media, but it takes a certain giftedness to get your
neighbor to polish off the last of your coffee and insult you in the same breath. Cissy, an older woman, very wholesome, just
held me and cried, and more than one neighbor asked, "Did you know about the meth lab?" You know … and then more than one neighbor
accused, "You had to have known about the meth lab." Well the jury was in, the neighbors hated
Hank, and they really weren't sure how they felt about us, knowing that we claimed him
as our friend. The press swarmed our neighborhood with relentless
fixation. Ours was the largest drug bust in Durham for
a year, for that year, and the press did what it does best, stirred up unrest and left neighbors
exposed, raw, frightened. And by the day's end when it was safe to open
our windows and doors, and when neighbors all finally trickled home, we gathered our
children and we prayed for Hank. And after we tucked the children and dogs
in bed, for the first moment of the day Kent and I were alone and we could talk. And we looked at each other in the eyes, and
we tried to piece this together. I mean, how could we miss a meth lab across
the street? Was Hank -- gentle, scared, depressed Hank
-- really a dangerous man? Kent looked at me and said, "Would you have
done this any differently? I mean, you know, befriending Hank." And I knew what he meant. For the past two years, our neighbors had
been suspicious about Hank. They just had a bad feeling about him. Were they right and we wrong? It sure seemed so. "No," I said, "Jesus dies with sinners … Jesus
dined with sinners and so do we." "Right," Kent said, but being known as a friend
of sinners has an edge to it that I hadn't experienced before now, and that edge is sharp
and that edge was ours now, like it or not. And what is that edge? It's this, when Christians throw their lot
in with Jesus, we lose the right to protect our own reputations. When we love the stranger, we become strange. There is no way to love the stranger without
losing some skin in this game. We stayed up and wrote two letters, one to
Hank reminding him of our friendship, our love, and the promises of God, and the other
was an open invitation to our neighbors, all of our neighbors, to come to our home for
a cookout in three days. We posted this invitation in the Nextdoor
app, and it went out to three hundred households. See, now my next line doesn't work, because
you're laughing. I was about to say, "This might sound excessive,
even lavish, but you're a bit ahead of me." Okay, it gets worse. Kent and I actually do this regularly, and
we have come to appreciate the power of extending wide-open and inclusive invitations to strangers,
people we have not yet met. Two things happen when you invite everyone
in your neighborhood to a cookout in your front yard. Number one, one hundred percent of your neighbors
will feel loved, and they will tell you so. And number two, about ten percent of your
neighbors will show up. Kent wrote the invitation, and it was short
and to the point. "Dear neighbors, let's meet for a cookout
at the Butterfield's this Lord's Day starting at 3 p.m., we have a lot to talk about. I'll cook burgers and hotdogs, and we will
serve sweet iced tea. Please bring lawn chairs. In Christ, Kent." When we pulled into the driveway after church,
neighbors were already at our house, setting up lawn chairs and extra tables in our car
port. Soon other neighbors started walking from
every direction, familiar faces, open arms, bouquets of homegrown irises clustered in
a little girl's apron, a warm pan of home-baked beans in Sam's hot pad-holdered hands. We embraced each other warmly. After coolers of water and sweet iced tea
were poured over ice, Kent brought the first tray of burgers and hotdogs, hot off the grill
to the red-checkered table cloth, and he gathered us to the front yard. The timing was perfect, as voices had already
started to rise in disagreement over the meaning of Hank's odd behavior and the discovery of
the meth lab. Standing in the middle of the driveway, Kent
delivered a combination of a sermon on loving your neighbor and a table blessing for the
food. "Hank was our neighbor," Kent said, "and Jesus
calls us to love our neighbors, all of our neighbors, both the ones who are easy to love
and the ones who are not." Kent described Hank as a mild-mannered recluse
who helped us chop down some trees. Kent shared that Hank struggled with depression
and had served time in the Army, and Kent warned us of the destructive power of gossip
and of failing to forgive each other. And he reminded us that drug addiction makes
slaves of men, and he said that we were each capable of all kinds of sin. And then Kent let it be known that the same
power that raised Jesus Christ our Lord from the grave is bestowed on all of those who
repent and believe in Him. "Hank's story is not over yet," Kent said,
"and neither is yours. Jesus saves sinners just like us." After we ate and kids ran off for water gun
fights, playing cops and robbers in the woods and jumping with hose-drenched clothes on
the trampoline, making rainbows with every leap, Kent gathered us back to the driveway
to talk. Some neighbor's wrath, as the King James puts
it, challenged Kent on his sympathetic interpretation of Hank. Others worried aloud about property values. As adults talked, the children flopped on
the warm grass, holding rainbow push-up pops dripping down their arms. Then Tank rolled over on his back, giving
all the children ample belly to scratch. As the sun set, I brought out mugs with steaming
coffee, and people lingered over the risky friendships that we were all forging here,
of coming together in spite of strife, betrayal and grief and disagreement about who Hank
was and who we are. We stood there drinking coffee and picking
at potato salad until it was too dark to see our forks. Neighbors embraced as they departed, tentatively
but genuinely wiping runaway tears from the back of a hand. One neighbor told Kent that she had once been
a little girl in a Baptist church who had once long ago believed what Kent said about
Jesus saving sinners just like us, and she hadn't thought about that in twenty years,
and she wondered if Jesus was still waiting for her. Another neighbor said that the pastor of his
church had talked that morning about the meth lab in Durham, but hadn't put a personal face
on it, either the personal face of Hank or the personal face of Jesus. Another woman said that at work that week
someone had said that rotting in prison alone would be the just outcome for that awful man,
but our neighbor told her colleague that Hank's Christian neighbors would stick with Hank,
because that's what Christian neighbors do. It was a procession of hope, a vision of promise,
a drop of expectation that Jesus will make something good about all of this, for Hank
and for the rest of us. After the all-neighbor barbecue, the cleanup
of the meth lab began to take place in real time right before our very eyes, and it seemed
that as soon as neighbors started to heal, something else happened to open the wound. Because ours was right across the street,
there was no missing every gory detail. Meth is toxic and anything in the house, including
floorboards and walls were removed and destroyed. Dumpsters filled the driveway, hauling away
personal treasures from a life lost to us. As the children in the neighborhood watched,
they grieved. Children are not insensitive in the ways that
adults are. They feel the acute pain of losing a drum
set and a dog and your favorite t-shirt and your baby pictures and all the important stuff
in your junk drawer. Tank, who had become our dog, let the children
bury their tears in his enormous head. We helplessly watched the dumpsters fill and
depart, fill and depart, and with each dumpster the shame of getting caught was laid bare,
that the wages of sin is death is a palpable horror when you watch your neighbor disappear
one dumpster at a time. It took seven to erase him. The children kept count. Summer turned to fall and fall to winter,
and still the house remained enveloped in crime scene tape. The betrayal and grief in our neighborhood
remained thick, and it was during this time that Kent and I started to practice ordinary,
radical, and almost daily hospitality; gathering our church family, especially the singles
and the students alongside our neighbors for dinner, Bible time, singing a Psalm, and praying. These were open invitations, and people started
coming. Sometimes people brought food, other times
people brought friends. Nightly we gathered, we grieved, we opened
our Bible, and we prayed. And then one winter day when we were snowed
out of church, something happened that broke the cycle of anger in our neighborhood. A snowstorm in the South is a disarming event. This one started at about 4 a.m. I know because my children were just peeled,
watching the outside window. It started at about 4 a.m. on Saturday, and
snow and ice came down fast and we were all homebound. By midmorning, all local churches were canceling
Sunday services, so Kent asked me to write something on the Nextdoor app, inviting the
whole neighborhood to have worship at our house. I wonder if Nextdoor knows how I use it. I mean, there might be a problem. This is what I posted, "Dear neighbors, because
of hazardous road conditions the church that my husband pastors, First Reformed Presbyterian
Church of Durham, will be closed tomorrow. We are therefore inviting all of you to join
us for a worship service in our home at 10:30 a.m. We will sing Psalms, and Kent will deliver
a sermon. After worship, you are all invited to join
us for a meal of soup and bread. Come as you are and bring a neighbor, and
if you know anyone in the neighborhood who is in need of help, please let us know. Peace and grace, love in Christ, Rosaria." Well, by Saturday noon the roads were what
we call "southern bad." Like in Indiana this would mean nothing, but
in Durham, North Carolina, this was an event. It was perfect for kids and sledding. Five inches of snow had already fallen, and
the snow was still coming down and the children, well they were over the moon. After a few hours of sledding down streets
in laundry baskets and boogie boards (you know in the South you don't prepare for things
like this), they returned to our house and I had a pile of children with frozen eyelashes
melting in our home-school room. A pyramid of wet, white athletic socks appeared
at the front door, and all of my towels and what was left of the Arnicare gel went to
the cause of drying and mending tired bodies. Kent kept an eye on the roads, enlisted the
bigger kids to shovel driveways, and started revising a sermon that he wanted our neighbors
to hear. Kent had been praying about what to preach,
about what would bring healing and saving grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ as
Prophet, Priest, and King. I marveled at the opportunity that God had
given us in this neighborhood to proclaim Christ because of the crisis and to continue
to have neighbors seek us out, to ask where God was in all of this mess. Even as we disappointed each other in our
conflicting responses to Hank's crime, neighbors continued to come together regularly at our
dinner table for food and fellowship, Bible reading, and prayer. And our family continued to pray for and write
to Hank. Kent was able to visit Hank, although visitations
at the county jail are loud and public and generally not conducive to genuine conversation. Hank wrote back, always grateful to hear that
Tank was safe and loved and that the kids didn't despise him for what he had done. His helplessness to care for his aged mother
or his beloved dog made his anxiety never ending. Hank's life of incarceration was filled with
constant worry and unyielding fear. The steady fall of snow and the steady stream
of children coming in for hot chocolate and then returning to the snow either to shovel
neighbors' driveways or pummel each other outside was comforting. I kept my eye on the worsening weather and
the great prospect of the Lord's Day worship with neighbors, many of whom do not know the
Lord. I started cooking for a crowd. That afternoon I baked whole-wheat oatmeal
bread, assembled Brazilian black bean soup and Indian dhal, and prepared a whole chicken
for the Crock-Pot. I rinsed the rice before boiling in the morning
and brought down the sixty-cup percolator from the top pantry shelf. Kent and I have been doing this for seventeen
years now, anticipating a big group in our home for worship when inclement weather prohibits
going to church. Throughout all of these years of marriage
and ministry, Kent has never viewed a weather-related church cancellation as a day off, never once. A snow day is a day on for Kent in an evangelistic
and spiritually rigorous way. On Lord's Day morning, I felt sheer panic. Why in the world had we invited three hundred
households over on a day when we really could have had a nice time of family devotions? What if everyone actually comes? This was not exactly outdoor barbecue weather. Would we be able to house and feed everyone? But then the scarier thought came to me, what
if no one comes? So I poured my coffee and started my devotions,
letting the Word of God comfort my agitated heart. And after private devotions, I gathered the
pots of soup from the screened-in porch and put them on a low burner and started to rice
and then set the tables. The children readied the house for worship. We have been through this before, but no matter
how often that we get to do this, it is always exciting. And after breakfast of oatmeal and eggs, we
put away the almost-finished Monopoly game from the coffee table in the family room. Kent would be using that soon as a makeshift
pulpit. As soon as Kent prayed for our day and I started
the big percolator, my beloved neighbors started to walk through the door for worship. Missy, the two Millers, Ryan and his son Ben,
the three Meuthers, the five Shepherds, the Harviews, six McKenzies, people I had not
met before, some of them. Suzanna and Mark and Eddie are here too from
church, and twenty eight neighbors in all and a gaggle of extra children. Some bring pots of soup and loaves of bread
and good coffee beans. I'm serving tea and coffee and hot cocoa,
and the kids are embracing their friends. My daughter is squealing with delight while
my son finds places for coats and boots. Bella, our small and elegant Shih Tzu will
soon be burying herself in these. We gather our mugs and our smiles and press
cold cheek to cold cheek. Donna, my neighborhood prayer partner, locks
arms with me as she whispers, "This is bigger than my dreams." One set of neighbors looks across the room
and sees an older lady for whom they had been praying for two decades. They have longed to see her in church, in
Christ. The barriers have always seemed insurmountable,
but the Lord, who numbers and names the stars, who heals the brokenhearted and binds up their
wounds, and determines the number of stars and gives to all of them their names, well,
He also heals broken hearts. And here she is, and here they are to behold
the fruit of their twenty-year-old prayer. Kent welcomes everyone and reminds us of the
powerful role that Jesus bestows upon neighbors. People sit on the couch, the floor, the piano
bench, the chairs that were just brought in from the dining room. The children distribute every Bible and Psalter
in the house. We don't have enough to go around, and so
people sit close to each other, close enough to share. The yellow crime scene tape is glaring from
the front window, and Kent goes right there. He tells us that he will be preaching on forgiveness,
on Christ's forgiveness of those who repent and believe, and of our response of forgiveness
for one another. Kent says, "Jesus calls us to forgive because
without forgiveness, we cannot be agents of grace or be in the path of grace." No more small talk. Kent assembles our worship service with prayer,
and then he asks us to open our Psalters to Psalm 23. Kent explains that in worship, we sing psalms
a cappella, without instrumental accompaniment. Well, some neighbors have been through this,
but many have not and those who have not, well for the first time in six months, they
register full panic, and this time it has nothing to do with crystal meth or plummeting
housing prices. In the fear of the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom, it's okay to … the panic is rooted in a cappella psalm singing. The melody for this psalm is one that we have
already sung at this conference. It's Crimond and for some, this Welsh rendition
is familiar and elegant. We sing it slowly, and we savor how mere words
weave reassurance. "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in pastures green. He leadeth me the quiet waters by." The waters outside are eerily frozen, and
the tire swing in the front yard shimmers, encased by ice and we continue to sing, "My
soul He doth restore again, and me to walk doth make within the paths of righteousness,
even for His own name's sake." I savor every word, every promise, each soul
here. "Yea, though I walk in death's dark vale,
yet will I fear no ill; For Thou art with me; and Thy rod and staff me comfort still." My mind wanders to the documentary of Temple
Grandin, a professor of animal science and an autism rights leader. She studies cows and she developed a system
to move cows through a chute in order to make a slaughterhouse more humane. So paradoxical, so distasteful, and so symbolic
of what atheist modernity does to a culture. It makes the slaughterhouse seem both inevitable
and innocuous. But cows are different from sheep. Cows must be prodded from behind. Sheep must be gently led from the front and
comforted from the side. That's the only way we can walk through life
and death. Jesus, our shepherd, leads gently and the
psalm continues. "A table thou hast furnished me in presence
of my foes; My head Thou dost with oil anoint and my cup overflows." God's word rings realistic. God protects us in the midst of danger, not
necessarily from danger. He says in Luke 10:3, "Behold, I am sending
you out as lambs in the midst of wolves." And I ponder this. We are singing more slowly than we do in church,
and many are singing for the first time. And the words of Christ are sinking down,
down, down. And then we conclude, "Goodness and mercy
all my life shall surely follow me; And in God's house for evermore my dwelling place
shall be." We take a breath and we look around. This is intimate business. When we sing a psalm together, we speak the
truth of God's Word one to another, truth unhinged from our problems and our peeves. Maybe for the first time in our lives, people
can be neighbors for decades and not do this ever. Well, Kent prays for our worship and asks
God to be present with us, to work healing where healing is needed and repentance where
repentance is needed and salvation where salvation is needed. Kent doesn't mince words. Kent is not one man in the pulpit and another
man in his home or in the neighborhood. As I watch him open the Bible, I am so deeply
grateful that God allowed me to marry this man. Kent's sermon is from Matthew 5:7, "Blessed
are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy." The beatitudes are so rich. Delivered to the disciples, they require faith
to execute. Kent starts to preach. Kent tells our neighbors, "You can show mercy
only if you know God's peace. If you are still mad at Hank, then you have
spiritual work to do. Do you have God's peace?" And Kent concludes with this question, "Have
you made peace with Jesus? Do you know Him? Have you repented of your sin and placed your
hope in Christ alone? Today is the day of salvation." And then Kent prays. He prays for salvation where needed, and he
prays that God would help our unbelief. And nothing about this worship service is
business as usual. It is all raw, all open, all transparent,
and all risky. Kent concludes by reading the doxology from
Jude 24-25 as our benediction, "Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and
to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to God, our
Savior, who alone is wise, be glory, and majesty, dominion, and power, both now and forever. Amen." And then after the benediction, Kent invites
everyone to step into the dining room and kitchen and foyer and home school room and
to all of the rooms with place settings. And we bring the dining room chairs back to
the dining room, and we also bring in the piano bench. Snug aromas and singsong tones of neighbors
promise good tidings. That morning I had set places for twenty-five
people gathering around three tables. I underestimated, but that's okay. Some of us are happy to sit on the floor. We make an assembly line, passing pots of
soup through a narrow hallway and we "Ooh" and "Aah" over the warm bread that Masie just
pulled out of the oven, and the amazing white chicken chili that Tina brought. The children pile their plates high and bowls
deep, and then head out to the freezing cold screened-in porch to eat without grown-ups. We talk about kids and snow and work, cancer,
and bad knees and politics, and then the talk moves to Hank. "Kent, tell us how Hank is doing. I know that you visit him in jail," David
offers as the warm bread makes another pass around the tables. Kent takes a breath, "Hank is fragile, of
course. Jail breaks a man, but Hank has just recently
committed his life to Jesus." This is truth unmasked. Hank's recent faith in Christ is not cheap
news. This is the kind of news that moves mountains. Quiet descends. A holy hush hovers over the table, and Kent
explains that Hank has been desperate for help, but there is no real earthly help for
him. There is no pretending otherwise. Hank needs Jesus the rescuer, because no one
else can go where Hank has been taken. He has detoxed from meth and he is feeling
completely, utterly lost. Hank does not need a pep talk. He needs Jesus the Savior to shepherd him
through the long, dark days ahead. Hank was not raised in the church and so all
of this is very new, but he is reading his Bible and praying for grace to get through
each day, and he prays for all of us, and he is thankful that we are praying for him. Kent is speaking softly now, and the room
once bursting with talk and laughter is captive in silence. Kent explains that Hank is no longer the meth
addict across the street. He is a Christian brother. It's hard to explain what happens in a community
when the local drug addict, when the man easiest to despise and resent commits his life to
Jesus. But I suspect you can imagine, it changes
everything. You see the gospel changes not just the fate
and future of an individual, but the gospel changes everything. God puts the lonely in families, and how does
He do this? He works through you, your house, your life,
your weakness, your dining room table. And we see this principle in the Gospel of
Mark chapter 10 and if you have your Bibles, please open to the Gospel of Mark chapter
10. Gospel of Mark chapter 10. "Peter began to say to Jesus, 'See, we have
left everything and followed you.' And Jesus said, 'Truly I say to you, there
is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or
lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this
time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecution,
and in the age to come eternal life.'" The gospel meets us as strangers and enemies
to God, and the gospel delivers belonging in the family of God, and it promises a one
hundredfold of these vital and intimate relationships to all who repent and believe and put their
trust in Jesus. But this hundredfold now in this time that
this verse promises, that hundredfold is very practical. It addresses things like, "Where will I live? With whom will I eat dinner and pray? How will I face the burden of my sin and my
weakness and my loneliness? How will I get through this grief?" The hundredfold promise in this verse is not
going to fall from the sky. That hundredfold promise is not somebody else's
responsibility. It's going to come from the family of God
living like a family, or it's not going to come at all. The gospel comes with a house key and if it
doesn't, you are only living half of the gospel. Gospel life is communal, it's covenantal. When the gospel comes with a house key, we
put a nail in the coffin of our culture's obsession with individualism, which is the
bedrock of modernity. If you believe that these are dangerous and
desperate and barbaric times, then you are right. The princes of this world are demolishing
what it means to be human, made in the image of God, male-female, to be an image-bearer
with a soul that will last forever in a gendered body that will either live in glory in the
New Jerusalem or suffer an eternity in hell. The highest achievement of atheistic modernity
is this -- the autonomous, freely choosing man finding meaning in nothing but himself. Major sectors of the church have gone apostate
and many more are teetering on the brink, because the threads of Christian tradition
sewn into the fabric of culture is good for everyone as it tends toward creation-mandated
life. Likewise, its current steady erasure will
mean, and maybe sooner than you think, that Christians will find ourselves inhabiting
a similar situation as that of the early church in Rome. And in these desperate times, Jesus is still
leading from the front of the line. Hospitality is the frontline of evangelism
in this post-Christian world. Let me put it clearly, your neighbor can't
fire you from sharing the gospel as you pray before a meal, and it is after all your food
he's eating. Hospitality is the new face of godly, spiritual
warfare. Your home is not your castle. Your white carpet is not your god. Your time is not your own. Every Christian home is an incubator and a
hospital for gospel life. And let's turn our Bibles now to Hebrews 13:1-3. And my prayer for all of us as we face this
post-Christian world, my prayer is that we will not be naïve and that we will not be
frightened, but instead we would let these verses, rooted in holiness guide our steps:
"Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers,
for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Remember those who are in prison as though
in prison with them and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body." And all of God's people together said, "Amen." Thank you.
