Sowing Hospitality
Acts 9:36-43
Our neighborhood around Lakewood UMC is full of folks I would refer to as “spiritual refugees.” Spiritual refugees might have grown up Christian or become a part of a Christian community later in life, but what makes them refugees has to do with being hurt profoundly by the church they chose or were placed in as family.
No hurt stings quite as a deep as hurt that comes from family. And being a part of a faith community brings with it vulnerability—the people you are with are people you are sharing your most profound spiritual experiences with. But when a church stops being a safe place to live our your faith, what do you do? You have to leave!
You become a spiritual refugee—and its not as simple as finding a new faith home. It might be that you feel a profound betrayal by the whole of Christianity. Maybe you can’t imagine that there is much diversity to Christianity (it certainly doesn’t seem that way in our pop culture!).
I was a spiritual refugee for a while, myself. I had no idea just how big and broad Christianity was and when I could no longer claim the faith that was given to me as a child, I assumed I couldn’t be a Christian.
Others get hurt in much more serious ways by the church. They get judged and ostracized because of divorce. Maybe parents get hurt by a church that rejects their children because they are gay. Maybe doubters get hurt by a church because they dared to ask a challenging question of their church’s leadership.
And there are, of course, the worst abuses: when church leadership, from staff to pastors, commit heinous and criminal abuses only for the church to cover it up or look the other way.
All of those stories exist among the people living in the neighborhood around us at Lakewood UMC and that puts us in the position of not having the luxury of waiting for people to come to us. We have to dust off the practices of radical hospitality that are at the root of Christiantiy. We can’t just open the doors and sit on our hands, we have to leave the building and share an invitation to everyone to come join us.
Come eat with us! Come sing with us! Come explore scripture and your faith with us!
And our hospitality cannot be a bait and switch—we have to be willing to welcome in people we weren’t expecting. We have to be able to make space for people we do not understand.
There is a prevailing narrative over the past few decades that the church in America is dying—and there is certainly evidence of that. I want to propose that radical hospitality is a necessary part of how we bring about resurrection to the death that has become a part of our story. And that we not only welcome people to our community on OUR terms, but that we welcome the transformation that comes when the circle is drawn wider.
We might become something gloriously different simply because we sowed hospitality.
