sermons
Radical Hospitality
“See Here,” Sowing Seeds of Truth
Ivy Anthony
Feb 16, 2025
Since the beginning of the year, I’ve taken up walking to a coffee shop very early in the morning. I timed it so that I would arrive just as the place is opening. And on two mornings a week, I usually run into an old friend of mine who is also trying to get a coffee before she heads off to her therapy practice.
Our moments of catching up are brief. I mean, both of us haven’t had any caffeine yet, so there are only so many coherent words we can string together. But recently she asked,
“So how are things in your world?”
and for a few seconds, I just paused—doing the mental checklist of ALLLLLLL the things happening in my inner world, in my personal life, and in the bigger world around me. And after a moment, I landed on,
“You know, we’re getting by—we’re standing up.”
And she—being a therapist—read that pause (and the panic and the attempts to de-panic that raced across my face), and she said,
“See here. When the macro is as dark as these days, the micro needs to be softer.”
We “cheers’d” our coffees, with that prayer hanging between us, and went on with our day.
We began this sermon series on Radical Hospitality on January 5th—just a few weeks ago, but it feels like January could have been a full decade ago! The world around us, the “macro,” has felt (in part), like a tornado of chaos. We don’t know where it will land, but we know it’s touching down and wreaking havoc, kicking up debris, dust, and uprooting good things—good things in us and around us.
And this is why this series on Radical Hospitality has felt so timely and timeless. It’s not only about welcoming people into our homes or churches; it’s about actively sowing truth into the landscapes we inhabit every day—in the micro and the macro. It’s about directly combating the forces of division, fear, and dehumanization that threaten it. It’s about recognizing the vulnerability of being alive and the need for compassion in a world that’s often hard and unforgiving.
To be alive is inherently vulnerable, isn’t it? Knowing that whatever storm is brewing, could touch down right in the center of our own lives—just as much as it does someone else’s. Radical Hospitality isn’t just a good idea—it’s an essential practice. It’s an active practice of sowing truth and mercy into the soil of our everyday lives, where we remember that the truth of who God is — our center, our core — is unshakeable, un-uprootable.
And when I think of the tension between chaos and truth/peace in our world, I’m reminded of a beautiful set of words by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who said,
“God has two outstretched arms—one is strong enough to surround us with justice and move us toward justice, and one is gentle enough to embrace us with tenderness and grace.”
This balance of justice and grace is what radical hospitality embodies—it’s the strength to face the storms of injustice and the tenderness to offer compassion to one another in the midst of it.
- So, how do we live this out?
- It’s what we’ve been exploring these last few weeks. How can we practice radical hospitality in a world determined to sow division and fear?
We will explore this together today — as we do, let’s ask ourselves:
- How can we bring softness to the chaos?
- How can we embody radical hospitality in our own lives today—no matter how stormy the world may BE and feel?
Prayer: God help us to call to mind the truth of who you are. The shelter from the storm — a refuge in turmoil — rest and peace in uncertainty.
To help us answer these questions, let’s turn to the wisdom of scripture. The prophet Isaiah spoke to a world in chaos and turmoil, much like the world we experience today, offering a vision of leadership and a just future. Let’s read together from Isaiah 32:1-8 as we look for guidance.
SCRIPTURE | Isaiah 32:1-8 (Common English Bible)
1 See here: A king rules to promote righteousness;
rulers govern to promote justice,
2 each like a shelter from the wind
and a refuge from a storm,
like streams of water in a wasteland,
like the shade of a massive cliff in a worn-out land.
3 Then the eyes of those who can see will no longer be blind,
the ears of those who can hear will listen,
4 the minds of the rash will know and comprehend,
and the tongues of those who stammer will speak fluently and plainly.
5 Then a fool will no longer be called honorable,
nor a villain considered respectable.
6 Fools speak folly;
their minds devise wickedness,
acting irreverently,
speaking falsely of the Lord,
leaving the hungry empty,
and depriving the thirsty of drink.
7 As for the villain, his villainies are evil.
He plans schemes to destroy the poor with lying words,
even when the needy speak justly.
8 But an honorable person plans honorable things
and stands up for what is honorable.
CONTEXT
There are a couple of points I want to draw out of this scripture this morning. The first of which is the simple phrase, “See here,” that starts us off.
It’s a phrase that immediately demands attention. In the midst of all that is swirling — God calls the people to pause, to stop, and to encounter the truth clearly. It’s an invitation to look beyond the chaos and the distorted narratives around them and to fix their gaze on what is just, true, and honorable.
I appreciate this because it becomes easy to absorb and be overwhelmed by the distaste in our days — to give focus and energy to that… . And harder to identify what truths might be getting lost in the noise around us. This phrase “see here” asks us to recalibrate.
During the period when Isaiah was prophesying, Judah was facing both internal and external pressures. The kingdom was under the threat of invasion from neighboring empires like Assyria, and internally, it was experiencing a decline in righteous leadership. Kings and rulers were often corrupt, and just horrible.
And there were just widespread injustices — the rich were exploiting the poor, and those in power were more interested in their own gain than the welfare of the people.
The ‘villain’ and the ‘fool’ mentioned in these verses of Isaiah were not just those who acted immorally in personal (micro) matters — they were political figures, leaders, who had distorted God’s vision for justice and love. As the passage puts it, they
‘spoke falsely of God.’
This false narrative of God—one that justifies oppression and exploitation—only deepened the pain of the marginalized.
When the kings of the time, when the rulers of the day distort the image of God, it doesn’t just lead to poor decisions, it activates harm, it compounds harm, it is violence. It creates a storm of confusion and despair, leaving people without hope or the resources they need to thrive. This is why, for those who were oppressed — Isaiah’s words were not only a rebuke to corrupt leadership but a hopeful vision for what true justice and righteousness could look like—when the truth of God — one who promotes good things(!) — is held at the center.
When the truth of who God is is distorted, all hell breaks loose. Sickness and despair take root, and systems of injustice become entrenched, keeping the vulnerable in bondage. The kin-dom of God here on earth becomes a quest to dismantle these systems of oppression and to restore the brokenness that false images of God have caused. It’s a radical invitation to participate in God’s kin-dom, to be the hands and feet of God’s love and justice in the world, and to embody that…..
“See here —
It matters how we talk/what we say about God, it matters what we believe of God, it matters how we embody the truths of God.
1 See here: A king rules to promote righteousness;
rulers govern to promote justice,
2 each like a shelter from the wind
and a refuge from a storm,
like streams of water in a wasteland,
like the shade of a massive cliff in a worn-out land.
Julia
Last month I attended the funeral of our 20 year old neighbor. She died unexpectedly of natural causes – home on Christmas break — at an unnatural age. The ripples of such unimaginable loss, disrupted life, and searing pain are now an unwanted part of the fabric of our neighbor’s household.
Death is its own horrific injustice. Grief its own perfect storm. One that whips up without warning, ambushes the rhythms of ordinary life. And, as I sat in the church pew at her funeral listening to story after story of friends and relatives and close family — her brother, her mother, her father, I braced myself for the final words of the pastor. I’ve been to many funerals where the opportunity taken by the pastor is to command everyone to
“Get right with God! Before your day comes!”
A grief-stricken audience, shaken by their own vulnerability and mortality, often becomes the perfect prey for a version of a God who seeks to threaten and control — rather than comfort and restore.
But this pastor got up and shared a few words I don’t remember fully — encouragement to the family and love for the family — and then, in much a way that mirrored the opening of these Isaiah verses, he simply said,
“See here.” “See here.”
With such a gentle and confident cadence he went on,
“Our God is unshakeable,” “we serve a good God.”
“We serve a loving God, a God of comfort.”
“Our God will not leave us, our God is with us.”
Words I’ve heard and have SAID many a time before. But that morning, those words landed differently — they reverberated in my spirit as undeniable truths even as my mind and body in grief couldn’t fully absorb them. No one in that room could deny the grief, the overwhelm of what felt night-marish — yet, there was also a force of comfort and truth that was roused in our spirits as he said those words.
The truth of God can not be nuanced.
We need that truth — sown into our hearts. And WE need to actively sow that truth in the world around us. Because life does not often come to us in a nuanced fashion. It often comes with stark, unfiltered reality.
“See here. See here. Our God is unshakeable.”
These are the truths // the seeds we sow when we practice radical hospitality.
Point #2:
With the truth of God at our center, comes clarity.
A parting of the fog and bombardment in a storm.
And with clarity comes restoration and transformation.
Isaiah 32 doesn’t just promise righteous leadership, but also restoration of the entire social order. It promises that the
‘eyes of those who see will no longer be closed’, and the ‘ears of those who hear will listen.’
This speaks to a future clarity, a time when people will be able to discern truth from lies, and live with truth.
Many of these people had never experienced a world that wasn’t infused with oppression, injustice and violence. So familiar was this pain and suffering, that these evils became the very air they breathed. A people exhausted by deception and manipulation, by false prophets and misleading leaders.
So these words in Isaiah would have been an invitation to hope—a reminder that God’s justice is coming to set things right, and it is also about a radical transformation of society that plans honorable things and stands up for what is honorable — for a just society where the truth of God’s love becomes a guiding force for social transformation.
JESUS
In Jesus, the promise of Isaiah is realized:
the blind see, the deaf hear, and the oppressed are set free.
In three of the gospels we read the story of Jesus and his disciples crossing the Sea of Galilee in a boat to escape the crowds.. Where they become caught in a literal storm — threatening to sink the boat and threatening to sink their belief in Jesus. The disciples had known Jesus to be a teacher, a miracle-worker, a healer, a prophet of sorts — but here Jesus reveals himself as the one who surrounds them with an unshakeable force of love. The one that says,
“See here” — “I am with you in the midst of upheaval and scary-things. “A shelter from the wind — and a refuge from the storm.”
Jesus’ dynamic presence in that story and storm — interacts with the disciples in real time, in real circumstances. His words and actions in the storm are not predetermined or scripted but showcase God’s responsiveness to our human needs and emotions. God is constantly working toward clarity, healing, and restoration. The storm on the Sea of Galilee is not only about Jesus calming the wind and waves, but about God revealing the truth of who God is—both powerful and compassionate—and inviting the disciples, and us, to partner in that restorative work as well. Calling us to be the good leaders who promote righteousness and promote justice.
Toward the end of this passage, in Isaiah 32:17-18, we hear a promise:
“The fruit of that righteousness will be peace; its effect will be quietness and confidence forever. My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest.”
ALL OF US
When Isaiah speaks of peace, security, and undisturbed rest, it is a picture of the world as it is meant to be….. And Jesus’ invitation isn’t only for us to DREAM of that peace, or receive this peace, but to be agents of it —- to engage radical hospitality.
Jesus’ invitation to us is to help clarify the air.
YES — to mourn. Yes, to break out into tears when confronted with the absence or rupture of God’s truth and to use that ache, to disrupt and dismantle what is evil and breathe new life into beloved community.
And it’s why in part I believe we gather together here each week — to dream and gather strength to act –for a world we believe for, but don’t yet see. To still hope. To not give up on the God we think God is. To know God. To grow a deep knowing of God that becomes written in our bodies, our souls and our hearts as unshakeable truth.
See here. The practice of radical hospitality of sowing seeds of the truth of who God is— is not about stepping out of the motion of life and curating the perfect table or house or church meeting or whatever. It’s about embodying the love of God and stepping deeper INTO the fullness of our VERY REAL lives (whatever they might bring), WITH God — To know so deeply the love of God with such clarity — that we see it, hear it, speak of it — we can PRACTICE it wherever we go.
Howard Thurman says,
“The evil in the world around us must not be allowed to move from without to within. Drink in the beauty that is within reach, clothe one’s life with simple deeds of kindness, keep alive a sensitivity to the movement of the spirit of God. This is as always the ultimate answer to the great deception.
Just because “a lie is elected does not mean the truth disappears.” — Andrea Gibson
Don’t give up gathering with one another, encouraging one another. Engage in chit chat in line at the coffee shop, take pound cake and soup to grieving neighbors, say “hi” to a stranger — whatever it is — don’t give up on seeding the
“micro with the softness of God’s unshakeable truth.”
Radical hospitality puts our spirituality into practice — the truths of what we know, believe, experience, and hope of God — into the real world around us — storms and all.
The spiritual practice of radical hospitality is how we are called to live our lives.
It’s how we grow our capacity to love.
It’s how we grow stronger to love.
It’s how we grow more tender to love.
Again, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his book Strength to Love says,
“God has two outstretched arms, one is strong enough to surround us with justice and [and move us toward justice], and one is gentle enough to embrace us with [tenderness] and grace.”
Divine justice and mercy are inseparable. And in our lives, this intertwining of strength and tenderness, justice and grace, wrapped in the truth of who God is —embodies the very essence of radical hospitality.
It is the call to extend God’s love through our very bodies and arms to others.
After years of driving in and around Boston I’ve developed what my kids call a “mom arm” — where I throw my arm across the passenger seat when we hit an unexpected stop or bump, or sideways threat — whether someone is sitting in the passenger seat or not. It’s an instinctual, protective-even, loving response in the midst of danger and uncertainty. I think it’s how God invites us to show up for people, how we offer care, and compassion—without hesitation, instinctively, because we know the truth of God’s love so deeply. This is how we sow seeds of truth, it’s how we become honorable people, who plan honorable things, and stand up for what is honorable….
And here’s where I want to close with an invitation to a tangible way of sowing truth *and peace* into the world around you — in your neighborhoods and city.
One of the ways we sow truth is by empowering others to know their truth, their inherent worth and dignity. To know their rights, their civil rights. And in a landscape right now where many citizens and non-citizens alike are feeling threatened, scared, confused we produced 10,000 Know Your Rights cards.
If you haven’ seen these cards before — they are small, RED informational cards that outline the legal rights of individuals, particularly immigrants, in the United States when interacting with law enforcement, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). They provide clear, easy-to-understand guidance on what people can and cannot do in various encounters with ICE or other authorities. We have them printed in Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian-Creole, English, Vietnamese and Chinese.
I know many of you work directly with immigrant communities in health, education, and shelter programs. In a conversation with one of you this past week, it became clear that these cards are running out in hospitals and other community settings. Given the widespread radius that the Reservoir community reaches —we have a unique opportunity to help distribute these cards to businesses, organizations, and individuals who need them most.
So if you want to please grab a stack on your way out today — drop them at your local public library, take an envelope of them to a local restaurant, or daycare, or health clinic — wherever it feels helpful in your neighborhood and community.
1 See here: A king rules to promote righteousness;
rulers govern to promote justice,
2 each like a shelter from the wind
and a refuge from a storm,
like streams of water in a wasteland,
like the shade of a massive cliff in a worn-out land.
3 Then the eyes of those who can see will no longer be blind,
the ears of those who can hear will listen,
4 the minds of the rash will know and comprehend,
and the tongues of those who stammer will speak fluently and plainly.
5 Then a fool will no longer be called honorable,
nor a villain considered respectable.
6 Fools speak folly;
their minds devise wickedness,
acting irreverently,
speaking falsely of the Lord,
leaving the hungry empty,
and depriving the thirsty of drink.
7 As for the villain, his villainies are evil.
He plans schemes to destroy the poor with lying words,
even when the needy speak justly.
8 But an honorable person plans honorable things
and stands up for what is honorable.
17 The fruit of righteousness will be peace,
and the outcome of righteousness,
calm and security forever.
18 Then my people will live in a peaceful dwelling,
in secure homes, in carefree resting places.
Prayer: God, I ask you to surround us with your arms of justice and grace now. Help us to know the truth of who you are, that you are always at work in the world. Help us to embody your love — teach us to live in such a way that this is reflected through us in the smallest and the largest of ways. May our lives be an act of radical hospitality, a witness to the truth of your love that is always inviting, always healing, and always present. Amen.