Sermons

 The Hospitality of Preparing

John Wilkinson	Third Presbyterian Church
December 6, 2009	Malachi 3:1-4, Luke 3:1-6

Let us pray. In this season of hope, O God, we share our hopes: for justice and peace in our hearts and homes, for the RIT community, for justice and fairness for all citizens of the state of New York, for the safety of police officers in Rochester and Lakewood, Washington, for soldiers being deployed to Afghanistan as we remember the events of Pearl Harbor, for peace in Pakistan and Somalia and each place where violence rages. Our hopes would draw us closer to you, and to one another, and to your word. Open it to us now, that by its hearing we may be transformed. In the hope of the coming Christ child we pray. Amen.

***

In his memoir called Born Round, Times food critic Frank Bruni recalls a period when his mother was fighting cancer, and he was living at home, collaborating on a book with his writing partner. Day after day they holed up in a basement room to write.

Bruni writes: “Mom, then winning her battle with cancer, had decided that her contribution to the book would be caloric. She kept us fed…She decided that fresh turkey sandwiches would always be available. Every few days she bought a new selection of breads and a new turkey (to roast). She’d make them for us. Not because she was some meek, doting servant: Mom drew too much attention to her exertions and was too transparent in her bid for plaudits to be taken for meek, doting or servile. She made the sandwiches for us because she knew we wouldn’t slice the turkey as strategically as she did, in narrow but meaty slivers. We wouldn’t arrange those strategically sliced slivers on the bread so that each bite of the sandwich pulled out some but not all of the meat. We might not take the time to clean and dry a leaf of lettuce… and we might not remember to spread the mayonnaise on the meat, not the bread, because bread too readily sponged it up… She made the sandwiches, in short, because she was better at it. But she also made them because doing that, and presenting them to us, was her shorthand for telling us that she was rooting for, and watching over, us. That she was rooting for, and watching over, me.” (Pages 195-196)

We live in a Martha Stewart world, it feels at times, and never more so than in this season of dinner parties and social obligations and endless Christmas cookies. Not that I have anything against thread counts, or salad forks or the perfectly executed apple tart. There are times, in fact, when certain shows on the Food Network make me nearly giddy. The problem is when such situations cause anxiety (for host or guest), unrealistic expectations, stress, or even exclusion.

If the thing called the “hospitality industry” leads to inhospitality, then something is wrong.

But Frank Bruni’s mother, in her turkey sandwich making passion, was rooting for her son, watching over him. That’s true hospitality – whether the meal is steak tartar or bologna sandwich, served on leaded crystal and bone china or a paper plate.

That is the radical hospitality we are exploring this Advent season, hospitality that claims the welcome of God in our own lives, and then extends it to others, so that strangers and even enemies may become friends, as we root for and watch over them.

And here is where I would agree with Martha Stewart, or Rachel Ray, or any other hospitality guru – though for different reasons. Preparation matters. How do we prepare for those opportunities, not to make the perfect meal or to host the perfect party, but to be ready to receive God’s welcome and extend God’s welcome when the moment presents itself?

Two sets of challenging, even in-your-face words, suggest how we prepare, how this deeply faithful hospitality might happen. The prophet Malachi asserts that when God sends God’s messenger to prepare the way for God’s coming, two things will happen. We will be cleaned as with strong soap, and purified as if by fire. That is to say, we are dirty and we are rough, unpolished. It’s language we don’t particularly like. To be properly prepared, to reflect the cleanness of heart and purpose, the precious and valuable nature of God’s hopes for us, will challenge us.

John the Baptist, borrowing words from the prophet Isaiah, continues that theme. Repent, he tells his followers. You are like a rough and winding road, with hills and valleys, potholes and detours. The one who comes will make the way clear, smooth. Be open to such transformation; pursue baptism as a sign of it.

So that whether we need the soap’s cleansing, the fire’s purifying, or the clarifying work of the prophet’s warning, preparation is daunting. These are potentially scary propositions.

But we know what in our culture needs this, and we know what in each of our lives needs this. Our communal list would start with gun violence in Rochester and go from there. Our personal lists might include choices, relationships, lifestyles, attitudes.

Daunting indeed. But the promise is that such preparation is not about self-help. Rather, God’s messengers will do the hard work, the heavy lifting of transformation. God does the preparing. We are participants and recipients.

Which is one way to connect the dots between Advent and preparation and hospitality and this (communion) table.

Elizabeth Newman writes about her own religious upbringing: “Like many Southern Baptists, I grew up celebrating the Lord’s Supper infrequently (four times a year) with a sip of grape juice and a ‘chiclet’ of bread. A far more enduring image of the abundant feast of God’s hospitable Kingdom were the seeming miles of tables at our Sunday ‘dinner on the grounds,’ all of them groaning under the weight of the wonderful dishes of food. For me, that great day when God gathers people from north, south, east and west will look like one of those dinners. What it will not resemble is the sip of grape juice and the crumb of bread that was my portion when we observed the Lord’s Supper. In worship, as God’s guests, we open ourselves and delight in the abundance of God.” (“Untamed Hospitality,” pages 14-15)

Methods of serving communion aside, the point is well taken. John Calvin, who I’ve promised not to mention in Advent, now for the second time, argued – even from his anti-Roman Catholic perspective – that we should celebrate the Lord’s Supper every week. That was deemed too much for many Scottish churches and therefore American Presbyterian churches, something about the availability of ministers to preside over the sacrament.

But you get the point. Abundance, abundance and hospitality. We should celebrate as often as we can to remind us as often as we need reminding of God’s gracious welcome, God’s abundant hospitality.

And methods of serving communion aside, every time we remember that meal of Jesus with his friends with this meal of Jesus with his friends, we remember the power of his invitation, and what it means to RSVP to it.

There is no more powerful symbol, no more profound reminder, of God’s grace than this table and this meal, where we show up, hungry and lost, are seated, without reservation, and are fed in abundance.

And when we get up to leave, we thank the host, who has somehow also been a guest, and then we are called to do the most wonderful thing – to re-enact this meal for others, those we know, those we don’t know, those we like, those we don’t like, those similar to us, those vastly dissimilar to us.

Jimmy Dorrell writes that “Who sits at our dinner tables is an important indicator of our spiritual condition. Indeed, Scripture measures spiritual maturity not by our use of religious language, church attendance, or biblical knowledge, but by common acts of feeding the hungry, visiting the sick and imprisoned, and entertaining strangers…Biblical hospitality has little to do with prepared dinner invitations and dinner parties for selected guests. Instead it involves spontaneous common acts of daily life, especially with those with whom we rarely share life together.” Then recalling Jesus’ great parable of the great banquet that we discover later in Luke, Dorrell writes: “Jesus encourages us to quit trying to solve all the calendar conflicts of the usual guests of our house parties, but to ‘go out at once into the streets and lanes of the towns and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame’ to fill our homes for a more heavenly-type banquet.” (“Pass the Potatoes, Please,” pages 71-74)

“Let every heart prepare him room.” We will sing those familiar words in a few short days.

* Prepare him room, in our hearts.
* Prepare by being cleansed, by being refined, by being smoothed-out.
* Prepare by treating this table not as a place where invitations are tightly guarded, but rather as the place where the radical and abundant hospitality we have received in God’s grace is extended to all God’s children, through us, in us, and not just for these few moments, but in every moment.

Let every heart prepare him room…so that in the end, our hearts and this table and the manger and this broken and fearful world into which this baby will be born are of a kind – places where God’s love, the God who roots for us and watches over us, will dwell, and welcome us in, and send us out, to celebrate and to serve. Amen.