recognized Jesus, so must we recognize the image of God in each other through sharing the sacrament. In the same Emmaus story, Jesus immediately vanishes after he is recognized (Luke 24:31). It seems to me that we need to continue the practice of breaking bread together in order to see him again. Then we might see our tables at home and at church running over with the abundance of grace.
“TASTE AND SEE”
July 4th, 2010
Luke 10:1–12, 17–20
A discipline is a habit or a training that results in a certain pattern of behavior. If someone were to ask us to compile a list of spiritual disciplines, we would think of activities that are designed to make us faithful Christians. I imagine that we would start with prayer and Bible study. Then we might add regular church attendance, tithing, and fasting. These are well known spiritual disciplines. What about the practice of hospitality? Would that make our list?
Perhaps we don’t usually think of hosting a traveler for dinner as a pattern of Christian behavior; maybe we don’t even think about church potlucks in a spiritual sense. Yet we should adjust our thinking.
Hospitality might not have been the first idea that struck you about this morning’s text. But when Jesus sends out the seventy into the mission field, he invites them to experience the hospitality of others. Jesus instructed these missionaries to remain in the homes that welcomed them, eating and drinking whatever was provided (Luke 10:7). While the missionaries are important, Jesus declares the importance of their hosts as well. The mission of the seventy would not have worked without the generous hospitality of these strangers.
There are also other texts in the Bible that point to the importance of hospitality. Consider the story of Abraham and three unexpected guests who turned out to be angels (Gen 18:1–15). The moral of this account is, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it” (Heb 13:2). As the biblical word for “angel” can be translated as “messenger,” hosting a messenger of Jesus is the practice of entertaining angels.
Hospitality, then, is a spiritual discipline. One of my former professors, Paul Galbreath, has written that hospitality is the practice of meeting with friends or strangers so that we can meet God.2 We share a meal and share a laugh; we open our homes and open our hearts; and we discover Emmanuel—God with us.
Today we have the opportunity to practice hospitality by celebrating Holy Communion. The Lord’s Supper is a commemoration of the Last Supper between Jesus and his disciples during the Jewish Passover. As Jesus hosted this meal to symbolize his sacrifice for those seated around his table, our observance of Holy Communion is a celebration of Jesus as the Great Host. Jesus pulls out a chair and invites each one of us to sit down. Grace is the only word to describe such an invitation. God invites us, not because of anything that we have accomplished or merited, but because of what God has done in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is the divine practice of hospitality.
But our Great Host gives us a responsibility as well. Whenever we eat this bread and drink this wine, we are reminded of Jesus’ words on the night he was betrayed: do this in remembrance of me. The importance of “doing this” is reflected in the spiritual discipline of hospitality. Communion is not just about our individual relationship with God; instead we are commanded by the remembrance of our Lord to welcome one another, to share food and drink, and to pray together. Just as the mission of the seventy was made possible by the hospitality of strangers, so our acts of welcome can have a profound impact upon others.
Journalist Sara Miles was an atheist. One day, for no apparent reason, she happened to walk into a service and receive communion for the first time. She had never been to this particular church before, yet she was invited to receive the sacrament. What happened next was nothing less than miraculous; in her words, “Jesus happened to me.”3
Her personal experience of Jesus was so profound that Miles converted to Christianity and began to worship regularly at that church. But the story does not end there; something equally as miraculous as her experience of Christ occurred when she started practicing hospitality as a spiritual discipline. She writes, “What happened once I started distributing communion was the truly disturbing, dreadful realization about Christianity: you can’t be a Christian by yourself.”4
After this dramatic revelation, Miles started a food pantry to feed the homeless. Her ministry grew until her food pantries fed more than a thousand families every week! How does she explain such an amazing ministry? She wrote in her memoir, “It was about action. Taste and see, the Bible said, and I did. My first, questioning year at church ended with a question whose urgency would propel me into work I’d never imagined: now that you’ve taken the bread, what are you going to do?”5
As we celebrate the transformative power of Holy Communion in our lives, I want to take this question to heart. Miles’ emphasized that her experience at the Lord’s Table was about action: taste and see! Communion is an eye-opening experience.
This morning, I invite us to see hospitality as a spiritual discipline. I challenge us to receive communion as a life-altering experience. In just a moment, I invite you to pray the Communion Prayer of Thanksgiving with your eyes open.6
By keeping our eyes open, we see the bread being broken and the cup being poured. By keeping our eyes open, we see the people around us. We are reminded that the Lord is our Great Host and that we are called to be hosts for one another. We remember God’s grace that invites us to the table and to serve in our communities.
This table is the Lord’s Table and it is wide open to anyone who would take the bread and the cup. So then, may we come with our eyes wide open, remembering Jesus our Great Host, and staring grace directly in the faces of one another. My friends, taste and see that the Lord is good.
1. Galbreath, Leading from the Table, 109–110.
2. Ibid., 56–57.
3. Miles, Take This Bread, 58.
4. Ibid., 96.
5. Ibid., 97.
6. Galbreath, Leading from the Table, 109–110.
3
Take My Hand
PRACTICING SELF-CARE
MY BROTHER, JOHN, AND his wife, Kelly, came to visit shortly after I arrived in the town of Dublin. They live in Brooklyn, which is a long way from my home in more ways than one. Kelly remarked that it was amazing to hear the crickets at night instead of the traffic. Her comment took me by surprise; I had been thinking about next week’s sermon. My mind was as busy and congested as a street in Manhattan. After only a few weeks on the job, I realized that I needed to take better care of myself.
Sabbath is a time of rest and renewal. It is also one of the Ten Commandments (Exod 20:8–11; Deut 5:12–15). While no sermon would suggest that the other nine laws are optional, even the best pastors sometimes act as if honoring the Sabbath was merely a friendly suggestion. When Barbara Brown Taylor worked in the parish, she stayed just as busy on her “day off” as any other day. With refreshing candor, she examines her inability to rest: “Taking a full day off was so inconceivable that I made up reasons why it was not possible. If stopped for a whole day, there would be no more weekend weddings . . . Sick people would languish in the hospital and begin to question their faith. Parishioners would start a rumor that I was not a real shepherd but only a hired hand . . . If I stopped for a whole day, God would be sorely disappointed in me.”1
It is due
