Exodus 16: 9-15 Paradise and Hospitality 1 Peter 4: 8-11

I have been exploring the understanding we have about paradise. The idea begins in the myth of Genesis with the insight that God calls this world of ours good. The affirmation made is that God is intimately involved in the evolution of this world and offers beauty and abundance. Genesis suggests we begin in the garden of beauty. This is an affirmation that our world is seen by God as good and creative and we belong here and can add both good and evil to our world

This theme, that this world is seen by God as place of abundance, and realistically understands this reality is not always achieved, flows through the Bible. There is a tension of what is and what could be. We saw this in Isaiah. There is a vision of paradise as a peaceable kingdom where all creatures live in abundance and harmony together. Yet it is not achieved. To do that, the vision of harmony leads us to the concept of friendship - harmony among strangers. In the ancient world it was hard to meet people outside of family, clan and work. In that world Christians become friends. They extend the idea of friendship to everyone - regardless of class, status, gender or honour. As friends of Christ they are friends to the world.

We struggle with our hope for abundance and the reality it is not shared. Thus the religious project is; how do we achieve this dream of God's - how do we enable the reality of paradise? How do we create friends?

The means to treating all as friends is hospitality. Our passages this morning are
about hospitality. Hospitality was crucial in the world of the bible. In a desert
environment - hot days, cold nights, where food and water are scarce, hospitality
literally meant the difference between life and death. Even today among the Bedouin, offering hospitality to travelers is a requirement of tribal life. Our texts this morning illustrate the place and importance of hospitality in our faith.
The story of the Exodus is a story about God's hospitality to God's people. Lost, tired, and hungry, the children of Israel are starting to lose hope in a promised land. God feeds them with quail and manna. God offers them hospitality in the desert. An act that more than restores their bodies - it restores their spirits.

This image of feeding is played out in the New Testament for Jesus feeds the poor and hungry seekers who come to the wilderness to hear him and his message of good news with a few loaves and fishes. He reenacts Gods gracious hospitality with generous abundance of his own.

Meeting people where they are and satisfying their physical needs is a mark of the
faith. Feeding the multitude with bread is a visual symbol that's not lost on the
onlookers. Bread rations were regular features of the Roman occupation and were
designed to pacify and placate the mobs. But Jesus' gift of bread to the crowd
reminds everyone that it is by God's gracious goodness we are fed and cared for. It is through God's hospitality that we have life.

The letter of Peter takes us back to the beginnings of the church and tells us that hospitality was an ancient gift and practice of the church. In fact the church stood out from other organizations and groups because of its practice of hospitality. He instructs his congregation to be hospitable to one another without complaining. They are to act generously toward one another. Since whatever they have is though God's grace, they are to act as stewards not owners of it. Peter makes several interesting connections in this passage which help to illuminate the nature of hospitality. He connects love for one another with behaving generously toward one another. Hospitality is not based on liking one another. It is based in love - in sharing and demonstrating the love of Christ and the generosity of God toward one another. Peter goes on to connect speaking with love and hospitality.

Christians are to speak to one another and to all people as if they are speaking for God. That is a tall order. It connects generous actions with generous speech and generous stewardship. Just as God loves and cares for the world and all its creatures, so are we Christians charged with the same task. It is a mark of Christians that they practice the generous abundance and peace of God's paradise and that they do so in the name of God. Hospitality which characterized the original paradise in the garden of Eden is also what characterized the early church. Hospitality is what made the early church distinct. It was through caring for one another, and caring for the poor, the widowed, the orphaned, the sick - all the outsiders of the community - that the church stood out. Christians were known for their hospitality to strangers. It was through hospitality that they made friendship real. It was hospitality that made the early church into a little taste of God's paradise.

This insight changed the world for now we see its outcome in action. We see this in such words as hospital or hospice.

In her book, "Christianity for the Rest of Us," Diana Butler Bass examines the ten
Christian practices that characterize mainline churches that are flourishing. The first on her list is hospitality. She describes contemporary life as nomadic. Old patterns of established families and villages have broken down - most of us now live in communities of strangers. It is a privilege in our contemporary world to know our neighbours by name; to know something about them.

We have not felt the full impact of that here, but that community we grew up with is disappearing.

Henri Nouwen describes contemporary society as, "a world of strangers, estranged from their own past, culture and country, from their neighbours friends and family, from their deepest self and their God."

In such a world, hospitality is just as crucial to the well being of others as it was in the first century. Hospitality is more than welcome programs designed to get more people into church. It is more than a Christianized version of the Welcome Wagon.

Nouwen says that real hospitality opens the possibility of free space where strangers become friends. Real hospitality greets the other in the name of God. Real hospitality opens itself and takes a risk that the encounter will change us both. That is the free space that Nouwen speaks of - the space of God, the space of paradise where all of us are transformed.

I know it is hard for us the find the way of being that open space where God is found. Our history is one of families who knew one another. And the fact of smallness also makes it hard to reach out. It is hard for newcomers to find their way to our worship because they stand out. It takes courage to join even when the context is one of welcoming. And there is the added problem of a world that has little place for the church.

What this means is that we must examine why we are here. What is the meaning of hospitality given our situation?

I suggest that our primary role is to create individuals who practice hospitality in the world. We may always be small but our impact can be great. We exist to form ourselves in paradise so that our living is one of care of our world. Out of the experience of God, of an deep encounter with the divine mystery found in our lives, we live affirming lives. We speak in our society for those who experience alienation. We are force, where threats of boycotts are made, to actively live and speak hospitality that invites and celebrates a community of difference. We work towards a political reality where the stranger and the poor experience the hospitality of our world.

Hospitality is who we are. We learn that in the way we are as a church and that reality forms our character so we practice it in our daily lives.

Amen

Thanks to Suzanne E. Sykes