House of Hospitality

Luke 10:1-12, 16-17   Leviticus 19:33-34    Romans 12:9-13           Rev. Todd B. Freeman

Bethany Presbyterian Church, Dallas                                                     August 22, 2004

Have you been watching the Olympics? I have. And I must admit that one of the main reasons I am enjoying them is because of their location – Athens, Greece. I am pleased that coverage has included stories of the fascinating, beautiful, sometimes violent, and rich history of the city of Athens and the country of Greece.

As many of you have heard me mention before, I was fortunate enough to have taken a three-week tour of Turkey and Greece back in 1996. The seminary I attended sponsored the trip, which included a visit to most of the biblical towns where the Apostle Paul founded churches. As a seminary student, I was required to take a year of Greek, the original language of the New Testament. In the process we learned a lot about the country and its people.

Many of the words in our English language have Greek roots. Theology is one such word. Theo is the Greek word for “god”, and ology is the suffix that means “the study of”. Biology and geology are also from the Greek.  In many instances Greek is a much more expressive language than English.

Our English word “love” for example, is expressed by three different Greek words, agape, eros, and philia. Each has different nuances that we miss in our single word. This is true with the English word “time” as well. The Greeks have two words: chronos and kyros.

Chronos is the word from which we get chronological. It is the passage of time, like on a clock or a calendar. Kyros is best defined as a significant moment in time, a time that is special or unique.

Using an example from the Olympics to illustrate the difference, we could say: Michael Phelps posted the fastest swimming time (chronos) in most of the races in which he competed. His resulting gold medals made this one of the most meaningful times (kyros) of his life. The Olympics have become a “kyros moment” for him and many other athletes.

Now there is a purpose for this Greek lesson this morning. I believe that we are entering a “kyros moment” in the life of this congregation. I say that for several reasons. First, today is the first Sunday for our Seminary Intern Pastor, Nancy Willet. She is a Presbyterian student at Perkins School of Theology at SMU, and has come to share and hone her ministry skills with us for the next nine months.

In addition, today we will also be having a Congregational Meeting immediately following this service of worship to visit about the precarious situation in which we find ourselves in this moment in time.

The scripture passage that I have selected to preach from this morning addresses both of these elements: church leadership and church survival. Luke tells the story of Jesus’ commissioning of seventy persons, sending them out in pair to help broaden and participate in Jesus’ ministry. It had become obvious that Jesus needed more folks to help him in his ministry efforts. First there were the Twelve disciples, then there were these additional seventy.

I can’t help but believe that through the providence of God, God has sent Nancy to Bethany at this particular time in the life of our congregation. Additional staff help doesn’t mean less work for the pastor, it means an increase in the ministry that we will be able to offer and provide.

It is with this sense of God’s call and commissioning that we welcome you, Nancy, and your gifts for ministry, to the Bethany family of faith.

The role of those seventy who were commissioned and sent by Jesus was to be about the work of aggressive evangelism. And since a person working alone can easily become discouraged or overwhelmed, Jesus sent them out in pairs. In our Congregational Meeting you will hear about a new approach to our stewardship campaign this year. We will be sending out three teams, in pairs, to visit all the members of the congregation.

Their purpose will be to not only share financial information and ask for your personal commitment of time, talent and financial resources, but also to ask for and receive input from each of you concerning the life and ministry of our congregation in light of the challenges we face.

Concerning evangelism, you will also learn in our meeting about a new strategy from our Evangelism Area of Ministry. We purchased and have received mailing labels with the names and addresses of the folks who have recently moved into five different zip codes that we have selected. We will be receiving a new list each month. The list of folks who have moved into these areas in the past six months will receive a new, informative, and beautifully designed mailer from us, inviting them to visit our church. There are over 1400 households who will be receiving this mailer in the next month. Our hope is that many of these folks will not only visit Bethany, but chose to become members.

The element of evangelism, and how we respond to it as a congregation, is reflected in the next section of today’s Gospel Lesson. When these pairs of missionaries entered a town they were to stay in the home of one of the residents, and remain there throughout their visit.

The ancient world had strong customs about hospitality. We referenced that this morning in the Old Testament passage from Leviticus, and heard about its importance from Paul in his letter to the Romans. The result of relying on the hospitality of strangers was quite confronting: you either welcomed these people or you turned them away.

In Jesus’ day, it was accepted that enemies should not be offered hospitality. But were these missionaries enemies or friends? They claimed to be envoys of peace and wholeness, including healing. They claimed to be announcing the reign of God and by their actions bringing its reality into life in the here and now. To receive them was to receive the one who sent them, and to receive them was to receive God, to be open to the kingdom.

That is the expectation in this biblical story. Reject these messengers and you reject Jesus; reject Jesus and you reject God; reject God and you invite judgment.

So to prepare them for possible rejection and even danger, Jesus tells the seventy that they are being sent out “like lambs into the midst of wolves” (v. 3). If they do not receive hospitality from a particular town, then they are to wipe the dust off their feet as they leave. And in quite a shocking statement of judgment Jesus declares, “I tell you, on that day [of judgment] it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town” (v. 12). This is biblical proof that Sodom’s notoriety was not homosexuality, as later generations made it, but failure to offer hospitality.

It is common, at this point in the sermon, for preachers to cast the congregation in the role of the seventy who were commissioned by Jesus. The congregation must be involved in aggressive evangelism. There’s nothing wrong with that, just that it’s not the complete application of this passage.

So in a bit of a twist, which always makes the Scriptures come alive for me, I would like for you to consider casting this congregation into the role of the town that must decide to demonstrate hospitality, or not. I have said this before, and most likely will say it again, our ability to offer true hospitality lies at the very heart of our evangelism efforts! Ultimately, it plays a major role in our ability to grow as a congregation.

First of all, it also applies to how we receive our new Seminary Intern Pastor. I’m not suggesting that Nancy has been sent out like a lamb into the midst of wolves. Actually, Nancy, we’re a very open and receptive place. We do have a responsibility, however, to receive Nancy as a leader in this church, and to offer her ministry opportunities that will allow her to share and develop her gifts for ministry.

What about receiving others in order to grow? In Rick Warren’s very successful 1995 book, Purpose Driven Church: Growth Without Compromising Your Message & Mission, he has a chapter entitled “Surfing Spiritual Waves.” He begins by stating, “Surfing is the art of riding waves that God builds.” It is not we who build the waves, but God. Later he writes:

The problem with many churches is that they begin with the wrong question. They ask, “What will make our church grow?” This is a misunderstanding of the issue. It’s like saying, “How can we build a wave?” The question we need to ask instead is, “What is keeping our church from growing?” What barriers are blocking the waves God wants to send our way? What obstacles and hindrances are preventing growth from happening?

These are tough questions, I admit, but ones we better address – yet without scapegoating.

Our biblical text provides a partial answer to the problem. Verse 2 tells us that Jesus states to those who have been commissioned, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” This is one of those “good news / bad news” passages. The good news is that the harvest is plentiful. I have no doubt about that. But there is something called the Pareto Rule that says that eighty percent of the results can be attributed to twenty percent of the causes. Twenty percent of a firm’s customers typically account for eighty percent of their sales.

This rule has long been recognized to be fairly true in churches as well, where twenty percent of the people give eighty percent of the money and do eighty percent of the work. In other words, pew-sitters are many, but actual laborers are few. While I believe that Bethany has a higher percentage of workers than that, I still want to encourage every member’s full participation. Our future may depend on it.

We will explore these issues of church growth, church mission, and church commitment during our upcoming Every-Member Stewardship Campaign.

I want to close with a brief comment about hospitality. I shared these words, interestingly enough, way back in 1997 – in only my seventh sermon here at Bethany as your pastor.

Hospitality is not the same as simply being friendly and offering words of welcome. All good church folks are basically friendly and can muster a “good morning”. Hospitality is much deeper than that. True hospitality begins with the basic attitude toward others that calls for entering into relationship with them. Hospitality involves intentionally reaching out to strangers and friends alike. It is a way of saying by our actions, “Everyone counts!” 

As Henri Nouwen explains it, we must open up within ourselves (personally and as a congregation) a space, an open and safe space, which welcomes the stranger and allows that person to enter. We need to make ourselves available and receptive and fully present for the stranger in our midst. With God’s blessing we will hopefully have the opportunity in the near future to put this into action in a big way.

This is truly a “kyros moment” for us.

Amen.