sermons

Radical Hospitality

Our Legacies of Hospitality

Steve Watson

Jan 12, 2025

Last week, a childhood friend of my family passed away. And as I thought about Corrine, and her four children I played with in our backyard as a kid, I started thinking about all the people – those now living and those who have passed on – that came in and out of my childhood home. And there were a lot of them. 

Maybe like 90% of the time, our home had no guests in it, but the 10% that we did disproportionately shape my memories.

My mom worked part time at a pet store at the mall for a few years when I was a kid. And for a while, some different folks who worked at the store would stay in our basement when they were displaced – couldn’t pay rent, going through a break up or a divorce, that kind of thing. And they were a colorful crowd. Different things happened while they were in our home, not all good, like the time one of their dogs attacked me. But memorable. One time one of them was around and a huge food fight broke out at our table. We were not a food fighting kind of family. But with these new characters in our home, a food fight erupted at the table, and it spilled out into the front yard as my father chased our guest across the yard, heaving a whole bucket of water in his direction. My father was mostly not a playful man, but he was then, and I loved it. 

Another memory I have was of one of my mom’s friends. She came over sometimes and was smoking at our kitchen table while preteen me was on some kind of anti-cigarette rage kick, and I remember grabbing a bottle of Lysol and walking around her in a circle as I kept spraying that thing right at her and her lit cigarette. Shockingly, she left, and my mom was so angry with me, as she should have been.

Paula, the friend, must have forgiven me later because she was a single mom and for a while, I watched her kid after school. And my mom got a call years after that while Paula was in the hospital dying telling my mom to come see her quickly, and I went with my mom to her beside as she lay dying, so that Paula – once the guest I had so rudely driven away – was the first person I ever saw pass from this life. What holy hospitality, to be invited to someone’s bedside as they die. 

Not pretending that all hospitality is happy. But it’s all important. It shapes us – not just the people who receive it, but the people who give it as well. There’s something about interrupting the privacy and separation of our walls – letting them be more permeable sometimes – that has a big impact on everyone. 

This is true in the collective memory of people of faith. Christians, Jews, Muslims, more than half the world calls Abraham and Sarah of the Bible founding father and mother figures of their faith, and their story is also shaped by their giving and receiving of hospitality.

Let me read the main scripture we’re thinking about today. It’s the first half of the 18th chapter from the first book in the Bible, called Genesis, the beginnings. It goes like this:

Genesis 18:1-15 (Common English Bible)

The Lord appeared to Abraham at the oaks of Mamre while he sat at the entrance of his tent in the day’s heat.

2 He looked up and suddenly saw three men standing near him. As soon as he saw them, he ran from his tent entrance to greet them and bowed deeply.

3 He said, “Sirs, if you would be so kind, don’t just pass by your servant.

4 Let a little water be brought so you may wash your feet and refresh yourselves under the tree.

5 Let me offer you a little bread so you will feel stronger, and after that you may leave your servant and go on your way—since you have visited your servant.”

They responded, “Fine. Do just as you have said.”

6 So Abraham hurried to Sarah at his tent and said, “Hurry! Knead three seahs of the finest flour and make some baked goods!”

7 Abraham ran to the cattle, took a healthy young calf, and gave it to a young servant, who prepared it quickly.

8 Then Abraham took butter, milk, and the calf that had been prepared, put the food in front of them, and stood under the tree near them as they ate.

9 They said to him, “Where’s your wife Sarah?”

And he said, “Right here in the tent.”

10 Then one of the men said, “I will definitely return to you about this time next year. Then your wife Sarah will have a son!”

Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him.

11 Now Abraham and Sarah were both very old. Sarah was no longer menstruating.

12 So Sarah laughed to herself, thinking, I’m no longer able to have children and my husband’s old.

13 The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Me give birth? At my age?’

14 Is anything too difficult for the Lord? When I return to you about this time next year, Sarah will have a son.”

15 Sarah lied and said, “I didn’t laugh,” because she was frightened.

But he said, “No, you laughed.”

Today we’ll explore three striking things about this story.

First thing is hospitality and gender.

There was some discussion about what we were going to call this teaching series. And when we went with the word “hospitality,” Ivy held back at first. And I asked her: why? And one of the reasons was Ivy’s memory of the hospitality ministry at her church as a kid, and how it was basically a bunch of women feeding everyone else, men included. 

And isn’t that the way things so often go. My mother was responsible for like 99% of our house’s hospitality, when it came to actually feeding our guests, whoever it was that invited them.

And look at Sarah here. Abraham is the one that welcomed these three guys into the house, and he says:

how about a little bit of bread?

And then he runs and tells his wife:

hey, go knead like five gallons of flour and make a whole bunch of baked goods.

No wonder Sarah’s kind of punchy by the time they start eating and talking. 

I don’t think this is the way. Any men in the room married to women, if the woman in your life does the lion’s share of cooking or chores or hosting and hospitality, if you think she likes that, you might want to ask and check. We have mostly caught up in our times with division of labor outside the household – lots of dual working couples in this church for instance. But in our straight marriages and partnerships, we haven’t all caught up to equitable division of labor and responsibilities in the home, and I think we should. 

While Sarah’s busy getting her team on all those baked goods, I’ll mention too that it’s important to us that in our in-person welcome team – the people who put out food and drinks for us on Sunday and clean up – we have plenty of men that serve. Same with our kids’ ministry. That’s important. Thank you all. Hospitality is for all of us. 

Second thing that jumps out to me is what a beautiful and complex story of hospitality this is – hospitality both human and divine.

First on the human side.

It starts with three strangers showing up at someone’s house unannounced. Like when does that ever happen in our world. And who of us would be like: come on it, and we’re going to rearrange our whole plan for our time and our labor and our household supplies, and we are going to throw a feast.

But for ancient Israel, this story was like a paradigm for them. It showed them the way. 

Ivy talked about this last week, how the commitment in the Torah – the ancient Hebrew law – to love the stranger – was this radical innovation. I’m reading a book called Judaism is Love by Rabbi Shai Held that I’m going to respond to at a conference this winter. And Rabbi Held says the same – he says the ancient biblical mandate to love the stranger, to love the vulnerable outside your own group enacted a moral revolution in the world. It was unheard of to this point.

But it’s practiced by the founding father and mother of our faith and of many faiths. And it is commanded by God in no uncertain terms. The stranger – like the one who is not from your country, not from your people, not speaking your language, the one others would try to legislate against, to say they do not belong here – these so-called strangers are part of our moral obligation. 

My folks taking in random employees from the pet store at the mall, they showed the way in this. Thank you, Mom and Dad.

This church has many beautiful stories in our legacy of this radical hospitality as well. A number of you have housed refugees, asylum seekers, undocumented travelers in your homes. You have moved me with your holy and faithful love. 

Full disclosure – one of the reasons we are doing this teaching is in light what some have called our migrant crisis in Massachusetts, and in light of the possible scapegoating of immigrants and trans people by the incoming presidential administration. Ivy and Lydia and I are praying that there might be a few households at Reservoir Church who will open up our homes to a stranger this year or next. 

If you feel the nudge that it might be you, please let one of us know. No commitment, just to explore. We believe that our church community could robustly support with money and resources and helping hands any of us who are willing to do this. 

Because it’s what love looks like. It’s what our faith teaches. And we’ve done it before, Reservoir, and we can do it again. 

This obviously takes some discernment. Probably many of us will be stretched in this series to greater hospitality. But our team got a really thoughtful note this past week from one of you who was like: actually, I think I’ve been too unguarded sometimes about who I let into my home and who I let into my life, and I’m wondering if I need to learn about boundaries or about better discerning how many people I can let in and how much. 

And how beautiful to see if that’s where the Spirit is leading you. We’re here for that too. 

This whole story, though, is a call to a little more radical hospitality with strangers. Abraham and Sarah are the father and mother of faith in part maybe because they go for it. Not everyone does. There are other stories in Genesis about rejection of the stranger, and of a serious fail in hospitality, and we sense that this coldness, even this disregard toward the outsider so disappoints and frustrates God. 

Because God loves the stranger, and God wants us to learn to love how God loves too.

Speaking of God, there’s the whole weird mystery of just who these guests are, making it a story not just about human hospitality but divine hospitality as well. 

• Who in the world is visiting Abraham and Sarah?
• Is it three people?
• Is it three angels?
• Or is it God? 

The text is deliberately ambiguous on this front. Maybe all at once. Maybe God is visiting this household in the form of three human strangers? Maybe there’s shape-shifting going on?

Deliberately ambiguous. Thus the New Testament has this tiny comment on this story when in the letter called Hebrews we get this bit:

Hebrews 13:2-3 Common English Bible

2 Don’t neglect to open up your homes to guests, because by doing this some have been hosts to angels without knowing it.

3 Remember prisoners as if you were in prison with them, and people who are mistreated as if you were in their place.

I love this little passage. Angels in Hebrew and Greek just means “messengers of God.” And so it’s like:

remember Abraham and Sarah – when they welcome the people into their home, it turned out they were messengers of God.

And then right next to that, it mentions

not to forget the incarcerated folk.

Because when as a free person, you visit someone who is incarcerated, sometimes you’re like God’s messenger, and sometimes you discover God’s message to you inside the prison.

All the ways that God comes to us. 

Maybe God came to teach me hospitality, or to teach me to stop being a jerk, through my mom’s friend. Maybe God came in the form of an unexpected guest to start a food fight and teach my dad and my whole family some joy. I don’t know. 

I do know that the tradition around this passage teaches that as unique and special as this particular visit to Abraham and Sarah may have been, it is also an archetype – not only for human hospitality. But for divine hospitality as well. How God is always eager to come to us, and to open up God’s self to us. 

There’s a very famous 15th century Russian icon by Andre Rublev based on this scene. In it, the three guests are sitting around a table, maybe waiting for Abraham’s help to cook that calf, maybe waiting on Sarah and all those baked goods.

But they sit there in an open circle – three persons yet beautifully and mysteriously linked and connected as if they represent at some deeper level one essence, one purpose, one being. And when you look at the painting, their circle is open to you, as if you, the viewer, can take the fourth seat, can join this fellowship and be part of it too. 

Rublev’s icon is called Trinity, because it imagines these three visitors as many Christians have done over the centuries, as three persons who also are together one God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. 

And the icon invites us to respect and love and wonder about this divine being, who comes to us in many forms with hope and promises, as God did to Abraham and Sarah. But it also invites us to imagine, to experience that God is eager to have us join the circle, to bring to the table not just our food or our gifts, but our experience. Our old disappointments and yearnings, our whole self, welcome to God’s table. 

The first time I remember praying in a room where this icon was on the wall, I stared at it for minutes, without any words or spoken prayers. But eventually I teared up and then just wept and it sunk into my consciousness that God had room for all of me. God has time for me, God has interest in all the parts of me. God is so glad to be in the home of my life and to welcome all of who I am into the life of God as God’s child.

This divine hospitality isn’t always easy to talk about, but I’m going to try to do more at length next week and probably again in February. 

Because divine hospitality for us and for all creation really is the foundation of anything like faith in God or love for God, that God loves us first. And you can’t love who you don’t know and you can’t know who you don’t pay attention to with a hospitable spirit. 

Last thing that sticks out to me, though, is the laughter. It’s the full-throated joy, the full-throttled laughter this story ends on. 

Sarah probably hadn’t laughed in years. She and Abraham have had a kind of hard, miserable life for a decade or so. And that hurt has spun out and impacted others as well, since we know that hurt people hurt people, and they are no exception. To this point, only Abraham has had visions of God promising them a child, a future, a nation, a faith born from their marriage. This is the first time that Abraham and Sarah have had this word from God as a couple. And as many times as Abraham has thought this could be so, they hear it together now and Sarah laughs to herself – doubtful, sure, but maybe a little hopeful too. Something in her smiles or chuckles a little bit. She can’t help herself. 

And it sounds like the guests don’t like her laughter, like maybe God doesn’t like her laughter, since it gets called out, challenged, maybe, as a sign of doubt, of disbelief in the impossibly wonderful goodness of God.

But Sarah isn’t directly criticized for her laughter at all. I like to imagine the guests noticing the laughter and just wanting it to not slip by. Like: Sarah, the woman of the household who could easily keep slipping into the background of this story in this patriarchal culture.

Sarah, tell us more, why are you laughing? 

Regardless, Sarah and Abraham don’t remember this moment with shame. The opposite – months later they give birth to a son and they name him Laughter, offering him the legacy of his mother’s surprise, delight, wonder, and joy. 

And my friends, I wonder if this word on laughter isn’t the perfect accompaniment to a call to hospitality. 

What will expand our horizons, deepen our faith, open us up to new surprises and joys like radical hospitality? Radical hospitality is one way God provides to give us more laughter. 

Twenty years ago, my wife Grace and I were looking for a church. We were looking for a church where our biracial family would feel at home. We were looking for a church that taught the Way of Jesus but wasn’t rigid and close-minded about it. We were looking for a more inclusive church too, and a place where people seemed real and we could make friends. 

And when we visited, one of the reasons we stuck was the hospitality we found here. After the service ended, we met someone new each week when we said hello, and people seemed down to earth and authentic – not stuffy or hyper-religious, pretty down to earth, and glad to talk to someone new. We thought: we could probably make friends here, and we were right. 

And twenty years later, I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of get to know you conversations in this building after church. And I’ve had dozens, maybe hundreds of opportunities to be in someone else’s home or to have people in my home and say:

tell me more of your story, or have them say that to me, and have that make me feel a little more known or at home in this world, and I think for other folks to feel that too. 

I learned after being here for a year or so that there were at least two practices, two habits of this church that helped make this so. And in this radical hospitality series, we’d like to reinstitute these two practices, if you’ll give it a shot.

They’re called the 3-minute rule and Praying for your 6.

The 3-minute rule is simple. It’s one for our Sunday worship services. And the idea is that the first three minutes after the service ends, instead of immediately leaving or grabbing your kid and leaving, or instead of only talking to a friend or family member you already know, you say hello to someone that you don’t know already. Introduce yourself, ask them their name if you don’t know them already, and talk – just for a minute or two or three, that’s all. As simple as:

• What are you up to today?

• Or how’s your week been?

• Or how’d you like the service?

• Or did you grow up around here – yes?

• Whereabouts? Or no?

• Where did you grow up?

• What was it like there?

You get the idea. Just a small gesture of hospitality, of welcome. 

It’s not rigid or dogmatic – sometimes you’re in a bad mood, sometimes you’re in a rush, sometimes you have only introvert energy and you’re not ready to meet someone new. Fine. No big deal. But if it’s something enough of us do weekly, we’re a more hospitable community, a place where you can know and be known a little more and in time, make a new friend. 

The other one, praying for your 6,is what it sounds like – that more or less every day, you say a prayer for 6 other people. I’m going to put a little different twist on this than we used to have back in the day and just say that the spirit of the prayer is meant to be hospitable, not controlling. 

So you say a prayer for at least 6 people every day. And that at least some of them are people you don’t know super-well. And the prayers aren’t – God, can you change my doctor or my irritating neighbor or my boss to be a better person so they aren’t so annoying anymore. Nope, the prayers are hospitable, like in some way asking God to bless that person, to encourage them and help them find good things in life. 

I could go on with story after story about what it’s been like to do this over the years. Sometimes you pray that God will bless someone for years, and you have no idea if anything ever happened or it mattered at all. Sometimes you pray that God will bless someone and you don’t know if God’s doing anything or not, but you find that you have a kinder, more generous disposition to the person. Because we know that prayer changes us for the good, that’s a fact. And then sometimes you pray for someone and it seems like it’s somehow part of the picture of life turning for the better for them. 

So I’d encourage you to try that this week as well – short prayers for at least 6 people every day, making sure at least some of those prayers are for strangers you run into or people you don’t know very well. And we’ll keep reminding you in the weeks to come to try and see how this goes for you.

Both of these two practices – the 3-minute rule and the praying for 6 – long pre-date me even showing up at this church let alone me being the senior pastor here. But they are both gestures of hospitality and I’m convinced that they have been a big part of making us a relationally and spiritually hospitable and generous church.

So while I hope that some of us will have some big experiences of radical hospitality as a result of this series – folks we would never expect in our houses or at our tables, experiences of being known and loved by God that are more profound than what we’ve known so far. I know that even the little things – 3 minutes of new acquaintances and welcome, a minute or two a day of saying little prayers of blessing for others – will change us and change others for the good. These small acts of not very radical hospitality do a lot of radical good over time. I look forward to seeing what that looks like for us. 

Let’s pray.