sermons
Radical Hospitality
The Way Out of No Way
Steve Watson
Feb 02, 2025
Most months, I have one day where I clear my schedule for a prayer retreat. I know, it sounds wicked lazy, and maybe it is, but don’t say I didn’t tell you.
Beyond an aversion to real work, though, I do it for a few reasons. As the senior pastor of a church, I don’t really have a pastor myself, so during this day I meet with one who’s looking out for me. Pastors also pray for people, we promote a life of prayer, so if I’ve fallen off the wagon at all in my spiritual life, I use this day as a reboot. And lastly, it’s a day for my own focus and health and well-being and all that. And last month, on my prayer retreat, I weirdly found myself doing the Baby Shark song motions over and over… Mama shark, Daddy shark.. Just holding out my hands in a big triangle as I was thinking about life.
And what I was trying to get at in the gloomy mood I was in that day was that I did not like the range of possibilities available for us all.
Here’s what I mean.
You can imagine your past as a single point at your birth, and then every moment, every hour, every year, there’s different ways your life can go. Get read to or get sat in front of the TV when you’re two. Eat oatmeal for breakfast or a big plate of sausages when you’re six. Parents make that big cross country move when you’re 14 or they don’t. Walk down the street where the car crashes into you and end up in the hospital or walk down the one where you bump into and meet the love of your life. There have been a maze of possibilities in our lives, personally and as a whole collective human family, and the one set of lines we’ve followed by accident or choice or other people’s choices to this point represents our past.
But then today, here we are. There’s only one present. I can’t be here in Cambridge and down the street in Boston at one time. I can’t be preaching this sermon and working as a plumber at the same exact moment. We get one present – here we are.
And then out in front of us, so to speak, there are all our future possibilities. There are so many, and they’re not sorted out and all decided yet, not even by God. We have real choices we get to make. And so does everyone else. And there is chaos and accidents and all kinds of good and bad things that will affect our future paths.
Our futures are open. But they are not infinite. When one of my kids was little, someone asked them what do you want to be when you grow up, and they said:
a frog.
I loved that – what a bold vision. A frog!
But becoming a frog next year is not in my range of possibilities. Not mine, not yours.
And that day on my prayer retreat, when I kept making the daddy shark arms to express what seemed possible now, I was struggling with these ranges of possibilities. There were a couple things I wanted in my life and in a couple of other people’s lives – people I love very much – that for a variety of reasons – were off the table in the near future. They just weren’t going to happen! Those possibilities were out here somewhere, in the land of the impossible. And I was like I hate that.
I felt the same way for our country. As 2024 was wrapping up, there were a few things that really pissed me off, pardon my language. As a country, as a species, as a planet, there were things that I wanted for us all that were not in our range of possibilities, at least in the near future. And I had not made my peace with that yet.
Here I am.
Here we are.
Here’s what’s possible.
And I do not always like it!
- What do we do with this present moment that we have inherited?
- How do we make our peace with it?
- How do we embrace this moment for all that is possible?
- How do we live into what the Way of Jesus says are the most important things in life – increases in faith, hope, and love – wherever we are?
One way or another, I preach about this a lot, because it comes up a lot and I think it’s near the center of our meaning and purpose in life.
One way I talk about this is through a phrase I’ve learned and love, that Reality is the Friend of God.
And another way I want to talk about it today is through another lens, which is the radical hospitality of God.
We’re talking about Radical Hospitality for much of this winter. Some of this discussion is growing our human to human radical hospitality in how we pray, and how we interact with friends and strangers and everyone in between, but some of this is deepening our perception and experience of what God is like too.
So let’s talk about the radical hospitality of God some more.
For our scripture, I’ve got the beginning of a prayer from the Bible’s prayer book called Psalms. Here it is.
Psalm 116:1-7 (Common English Bible)
I love the Lord because he hears
my requests for mercy.
2 I’ll call out to him as long as I live,
because he listens closely to me.
3 Death’s ropes bound me;
the distress of the grave found me—
I came face-to-face with trouble and grief.
4 So I called on the Lord’s name:
“Lord, please save me!”5 The Lord is merciful and righteous;
our God is compassionate.
6 The Lord protects simple folk;
he saves me whenever I am brought down.7 I tell myself, You can be at peace again,
because the Lord has been good to you.
I herniated a disk in my back last year, and I’ve been spending months rehabbing, trying to get stronger as the pain slowly subsides. And my physical therapist had me weightlifting again. And some of the exercises – like the deadlift – are kind of weird. Because if I do it just right, I get stronger in all these places that support a healthy lower back. But like 10% off in my approach, and I push up all that weight, and, PAH, like there goes my back again. Not good.
The approach really matters.
Reading the Bible is like this, friends, all of it, including these Psalms.
Our approach really matters. Bible reading can be so encouraging and life-giving and empowering for more loving and just and flourishing lives, or it can mess us up, make faith more difficult or make us more difficult to the people around us. The approach matters.
Like with this Psalm.
There are three movements going on here. The first two are clear and moving.
One, there’s the state of the human.
Full of trouble and grief, calling out to God – I need kindness, attention, help. I need mercy. We’ve all had our moments like this. We’ll have more to come. Because life is vulnerable. And the Psalms in the Bible give voice to a huge range of our vulnerability.
Two, there’s the posture of God.
Once, early in our work together, my therapist asked me about a particular time in my life – she said,
when things hurt, who did you talk to?
And I thought about her question, and I said
the answer, truthfully, was nobody.
There was nobody to tell, at least I didn’t think so.
Friends, moments in our lives if you’ve ever had them, when our troubles command nobody’s attention are heartbreaking. We were not meant to live without any relationships of tender care. And if that’s your current state, I pray that the warmth of an attentive, compassionate friend or family member returns to you. I do.
But the Psalms tell us that
with God at least, this is never true.
That when we ask God for attention and mercy, this is what God is like.
God is faithful and compassionate and attentive. God says:
I hear you. I see you. I know how important this is to you, and I am glad to be with you in this.
This is the radical hospitality of God, to attend to all the experience of everyone and everything with empathy, compassion, and care. It’s beautiful really.
But then three, and here’s the tricky part, here’s where the approach makes all the difference between rich, empowering faith, and a way of religion that ends in judgment, delusion, or despair.
Three is the reaction of God. What God does in response to us because God loves us so.
The language in this Psalm is that:
God looks after simple folks, like you and me. That God saves us. And that our peace can and will return because God has been our help.
God saves us.
God has been and God will be our help.
Let’s talk about an approach to these big claims.
If you think that God’s help is going to be fixing everything, or reversing time and taking us back in those past possibilities that have moved on, well, that’s not going to go well for you.
Me in December with my range of possibilities, if I’m like God, I want a world with healthy wise governments that respect human rights and the rule of law, and protect children and treat the earth with respect and choose compromise and collaboration instead of war and battle, if I’m praying that our world will look like that today, then my choices are delusion or despair.
Find a way to pretend that God’s 100% in control and everything is OK, or lose my faith.
If I pray for my friend who is hurting, like God, I hate this problem. Take it away, make it like it never happened, again, that’s not the way things work.
Faith involves in part a surrender to the way things are. Here we are in reality. This present moment. Like it or not, what can mercy and saving help from God look like?
This is a three point sermon – you ready?
One, it’s not fantasy based but reality based.
When we call out to God for help, God’s not like:
shoot, how did we get here? Where’s the rewind button? Can we get a do-over?
God does not live in the past, but in the present. And whatever faults, even whatever horrors the present may hold, reality is the friend of God, because reality is where God lives. Remember, God is compassionate, omnipresent, empathetically attentive everywhere. And so God is always re-wondering, revising the best possible range of options we’ve got today.
Hey, what have we got here that can be great, or at least better?
Maybe God didn’t want us to burn all that wood and oil and gas. Too much carbon! But there were so many of us, and we didn’t know better, and then some of us did know better, but we hid those insights and we lied, because some of the human family knew we could make an awful lot of money burning all that stuff. And then, now, most of us know better, but it’s really hard to change our habits. I’m there, friends, right?
So here we are, with our species changing our climate at unsustainable rates, and we call out to God, and God’s never going to be like, hey, let’s pretend this never happened. God doesn’t deny the present or change the past. And God’s also not going to be like:
“ha, ha,told you so, now you’re screwed. Good luck, y’all!”
God doesn’t give up on us. God’s not like:
you all have made a mess of this planet, I’m out of here.
No, in the radical hospitality of God, God will sit at every table we have set, no matter how messy or stinky we have made it. God will work with every situation we have got, no matter how weird or complicated or dysfunctional. God is with us still. God’s going to work with reality.
So one, God is reality based, not fantasy based.
Two, God does not control, but inspire.
Keeping with the whole environment thing, God’s not going to take our cue from all our burning and just lightning zap all the fossil fuel equipment, and lightning zap all those of us who still burn gas in our cars and our homes, and just like – bam, make us stop.
God’s not doing that.
Change the example, if I’m praying for the course of my beloved friend’s life to change or for my beloved child’s life to change, God is not going to take over their brain and body and circumstances and just MAKE THEM CHANGE.
Like puppets control their life into health and function and thriving choices. Not gonna happen. God does not control like that. God does not force. What God can and will do is inspire, invite, lure, woo.
Maybe God empowers some awesome scientists to invent cleaner, cheaper ways to mass produce energy.
Maybe God inspires cultural movements to be more content and consume less.
Maybe God helps more people get curious about indigenous wisdom that thinks more sustainably and looks forward seven generations, not seven freaking minutes, when making big policies and big life choices.
And with my friend or my kid, maybe God helps them grow a friendship with a person that has a nurturing, healthy influence on them. And maybe God stirs a kind of yearning in their soul for a new way forward.
And I know God does these things. I have experienced it. And I have borne witness to it again and again, in history, and in my life and in so many others. But it’s on us to perceive it and to pay attention and to walk in some faith and hope to say yes to a next step that is healthier, freer, move full of love and goodness. God doesn’t control, but God inspires.
And lastly, God has not pre-planned every bit of the future, but God improvises toward the best possible ends given where we are today.
Improvisation is the art of acting or making music where things aren’t all scripted out. But you listen to what’s happened to what’s happened so far, you work with the reality in front of you. And you say yes to that. You accept it, receive, and then take it somewhere interesting. Yes, and…
This is actually what God is like.
God has not magically steered and controlled every person and every creature of all kinds and every minute of time and every element of nature to follow a single pre-set course. Some religions, some forms of Christian faith talk like that’s the way things are. But if that is true, then our sense of freedom and choice is 100% an illusion, and our faith, our will, our efforts, none of it matters.
God hasn’t scripted out the exact course that anything will follow going forward. But, given where we are today, and given the everlasting kindness and love and wisdom of God which in God’s character do not change, God will again and again inspire whoever is listening toward good paths forward.
The saving help of God is based in reality, is about God’s next ways of inspiring and encouraging, and is adaptive to our every cry for help and every need. Our loving God, our ever present help in times of trouble.
Friends, I took some acting classes when I was young. We had a kid that took all the acting classes their big high school offers too. So I’ve seen a lot of bad improv. Where you’re like: what the heck is going on here? And folks, this is not funny. Nice try, kids, but can we have a different show please?
And I don’t know if I’m laughing or crying with this connection now. But sometimes these days I feel like life is a bad improv show.
Like:
how did all these people get on stage?
And what the hell is happening? Like how did it get so weird? And by the way, this is not funny. Is this supposed to be a joke? Because it’s not. It’s not.
Couldn’t somebody have written a script for this moment?
Friends, if you feel this way, I would encourage you simply to not give up on God. And also to not give up on ourselves or each other either.
This is not the first time in history that people have had big troubles. It is not the first time in history where nations have faltered.
It’s the start of Black History Month, and there’s an old saying that’s been circulating in the Black church now for centuries, that God makes a way out of no way.
That when the present or future looks bleak, hopeless, like all is lost – no way forward. Just then God has an idea. A way appears. And we can have the courage to get up and go there with God or not. Making a way together out of no way.
A friend just told me she’s using the word “FEARS” as her wordle starter, because it gets her curious about what we can make out of our fears. I love that.
In every fear, there’s an opportunity, a set of actions hiding there. In every time of trouble, there’s a God who’s ready to help.
I love the Lord because he hears
my requests for mercy.
2 I’ll call out to him as long as I live,
because he listens closely to me.
Friends, don’t give up on God. Because our radically hospitable God is still with us, and God hasn’t given up on us.
Let’s pray together.
A theological coda note-
Some theologians talk about what I’m saying by calling this the consequent nature of God. They see God has a primordial, everlasting nature. God has God’s ever changing essence and character. God is spirit. God is truth. God is wise. God is love. God is creative. Always has been, always will. And God has original intentions: the desire to grow life, to see increasing love and beauty come into being. The primordial or the everlasting nature of God.
But God is also adaptive. God is radically hospitable. God receives into God’s being, into God’s heart and mind, all of our experience. God takes it in. God feels it all. God smiles. God weeps. God sings with joy. God yells in anger. Whatever response is appropriate to a fully wise and fully loving God who receives the present moment. And based on everything that is happening, and based on all God knows and has experienced, and based on the range of possibilities, what is actually possible yet, God does everything God can to inspire creation to the next best possible actions.