sermons
Radical Hospitality
Radical Hospitality Is An Upside Down Business
Lydia Shiu
Feb 23, 2025
Let me pray for us. Holy Spirit, may the power of your truth speak to us now. That my words will fall and your words will stick. That everything we worry about, stress about, obsess about – may you suspend it for even a moment that you, God will be clear to us, that you will shine your face on us, that your breath will blow through us we pray, amen.
Matthew 15:21-28 (Common English Bible)
21 From there, Jesus went to the regions of Tyre and Sidon.
22 A Canaanite woman from those territories came out and shouted, “Show me mercy, Son of David. My daughter is suffering terribly from demon possession.”
23 But he didn’t respond to her at all.
His disciples came and urged him, “Send her away; she keeps shouting out after us.”
24 Jesus replied, “I’ve been sent only to the lost sheep, the people of Israel.”
25 But she knelt before him and said, “Lord, help me.”
26 He replied, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and toss it to dogs.”
27 She said, “Yes, Lord. But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall off their masters’ table.”
28 Jesus answered, “Woman, you have great faith. It will be just as you wish.” And right then her daughter was healed.
Hi My name is Lydia and I’m an Instagram addict. This is the part where you say, “Hi, Lydia.” Look, we’re all creatures of habit. It’s hard for us to change. I’ve been trying to replace my addiction with healthy coping skills, with Spotify, music, Libby, books, YouTube, clips of the Grammys. The dopamine hit is not hitting hard enough and I feel so bored and anxious. The other day my husband caught me pulling out my 6-year-old daughter’s watercolor and painting really ugly dahlias.
‘She’s obviously going through something.’
Things feel chaotic. I feel out of whack. Unsettled. These days, I feel grief and anger and then need to escape those things to enjoy something and it all feels like a paradox. How about you? How are you feeling these days? Anyone want to just pull out some watercolor and just paint with me? The bleeding water captures feelings I can’t seem to verbalize. Things feel topsy turvy upside down.
I want to invite us into this disorienting feeling. When things are shifting, when changes are being made, for better or for worse, it feels like having vertigo. My question has been how can we center down in this time. As we wrap up this sermon series of Radical Hospitality, I was drawn to another story about a table.
It’s a story of Jesus extending his own work, being challenged, learning and growing, changing his mind even. I like to point to this story, on a side note, as a picture of the impact we have on God. I believe that our petitions and prayers move God because of stories like this one. That even Jesus moves through discomfort to accomplish God’s radical, generous, lavish love bestowed upon not just a few but all.
The story follows a familiar or formulaic pattern of this kind of genre or style. Where the main character is obviously an outsider, asking for something, is then refused by the center of power or authority, but because of their unique wit or clever prompting, the outsider is granted something that would’ve otherwise not been granted according to tradition. It recalls characters like Tamar or Rahab, in which regardless of the impossibility of the situation, these ladies will, through using whatever they already have, get what they want from the place of authority.
Now one thing I love to do with any story in the Gospels, the first four books of the New Testament, is do a quick check if that story is in any other of the four Gospels. This story from Matthew, Mark also tells the “same” story, but a little different. I think this exercise has great things to offer our modern day folks. In an age of misinformation and disinformation, and really a post-modern world, we have to be more grounded with subjectivity and open, not afraid, of two or in the case of the Gospels, four, sides to the story. The New Testament wasn’t afraid of that. There was no assumption that someone had the best and most reliable source. Now I’m not saying, it’s okay to say whatever you want even when it’s literally and factually false. But the reality is, whether I think that’s okay or not okay, plenty of people, people in places of power and authority, are saying all kinds of stuff. I’m saying that we still have the capacity to hear diverse stories and the ability to gain perspective, understanding, and maybe even truth through foggy cracked lenses.
I love finding the discrepancies, or rather differences, between Mark and Matthew. Matthew, you have to understand, his target audience was the Jewish audience. He quotes the Hebrew Bible ( the Old Testament) alongside all his storytelling. You can find Matthew’s own commentary and expounding of the story in the story.
Mark, his style is a bit more succinct, even casual. It’s thought by most of the biblical scholars that Mark probably put down his story first and Matthew, along with other resources, had Mark’s account on hand.
In Matthew, Jesus “went” to the district of Tyre and Sidon and a woman from that district “came out”. Matthew may be upholding Jesus’ honor in some way, by not entering and residing and finding him in compromised soil.
In MARK, it says that Jesus “WENT INTO” the region of Tyre and Sidon and
“He didn’t want anyone to know that he had entered a house, but he couldn’t hide.”
Matthew omits this house part.
And even Mark mentioning that the fact Jesus was in this house was a hush hush thing reveals that Jesus being inside of a Gentile, an enemy’s home is noted but not widely accepted. Matthew changes this story. There’s no house Jesus enters.
And then in Mark, she just begs Jesus to cast out the woman, in a narrative style.
But in Matthew, he quotes the woman saying,
“Show me mercy, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely possessed by a demon.”
She starts with
‘have mercy on me’
placing herself lower than Jesus, showing her humility and her placement in the hierarchy of the relationship, which in that context, hierarchy of relationship is important. She calls him
“o Lord, Son of David,”
a proper use of his esteemed title, like calling someone “Oh the Reverend Doctor” and maybe even add a little curtsy. Which is how you should address me. Just kidding. Shh, not a doctor.
I point these discrepancies, sorry I mean, differences, out because in one sense it has implications for what they were trying to say. One might gain that, from Matthew, that the Canaanite woman, in order to be healed, had to assimilate and take on the tradition, the dominant and powerful tradition, in order to gain access and power. She had to leave her land, have the knowhow to call Jesus the right name, not only the knowhow but the willingness to submit herself to a tradition that’s not of her own.
Another reader of Mark, might say, Jesus intentionally and possibly illegally entered the homes of those who were considered foreign and strange. There, he said things like
“Let the children first be fed for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
in the acceptable ways for others to hear, intentionally, speaking the politically correct speak on purpose, knowing well that he was about to do the opposite of what he just said. Did Jesus really think Canaanites were dogs or was it performance art to those who were watching? I don’t know. But the woman was in the end honored. The difference is that maybe in Matt, he’s pushing a bit more for assimilation, or at least honoring of the old traditions, which isn’t like bad, it’s just his opinion.
In Matthew, Jesus says,
“Woman, you have great faith. It will be just as you wish.”
In Mark, there’s no prerequisite to the healing. Jesus simply refers to her witty remark, a picture of Jesus’ practical theology, saying,
29 “Good answer!” he said. “Go on home. The demon has already left your daughter.”
You see the slight difference?
When I’m talking about Radical Hospitality, this is what I mean. I don’t care how we do it. I don’t care if our philosophy or theology is more like Matthew or Mark. I don’t care if we are the place of power and authority, in a lot of ways our church is resourced and filled with people that have privilege and access. And yet in a lot of ways our church is also filled with many many people that are just like this woman in our text today. The woman who is desperate. Coming out of their territory of distress, crying, shouting to the rest of us,
“this is what’s going on and you need to do something!”
The woman who is begging and yet also teaching us, casting a new perspective on old thoughts, spinning well known wise sayings on its head to include her, to serve her, to save her and her family. Radical Hospitality isn’t about just being more hospitable, but radical hospitality is an upside down business. Radical Hospitality is an upside down business. It’s not just about the center of power and authority beseeching its charity unto those in need. It’s flipping it all on its head and putting the vulnerable, the hurting in the center of the story, letting them flip our script, letting them set the tone, letting them be the main characters, the driving force of the story, putting her faith in the center. Radical Hospitality is about becoming “Wrong” about the whole situation and letting the stranger, the vulnerable speak to the time and listen, making space for that voice to be spoken to tell the truth.
Cause it’s true, that woman, she doesn’t care about religion or politics. She cares about the health of her daughter. She doesn’t care if she’s being called a dog, it’s not important to her. She demands to be fed. She is scrappy and she’ll get it done.
This is a reason why I have really loved the method of doing justice work through community organizing. Because the foundation of community organizing is listening to the stories of those who are struggling.
“What’s the challenge or struggle that you and your loved ones are facing right now?”
is the question we ask in these Listening Session that Faith Into Action has been hosting. For many of us, this is hard. We think, well I’m privileged. I’m okay. There isn’t a story I can really share. But community organizers from GBIO (the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization) that helps and support Reservoir Church to organize our power, their organizer Sneh pushes me to go deeper. No, something is hurting. Maybe it’s not your finances. Maybe it’s not your access to healthcare. Maybe it’s your conscience. Maybe it’s your deeply rooted faith, sense of justice, shalom, and peace and righteousness. Something is not right for you and you’re not doing well. What is your broken, hurting, suffering part in you that is actually the STRENGTH AND THE POWER to move you? Speak that out. Shout that out and turn that into action and you will see the power of healing that can take place!
Because Radical hospitality is an upside down, inside out business. It’s moving out toward others but it’s also moving deeper into yourself.
In the book(The Four Pivots: Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves
He Talks about this way of doing justice with the first pivot being what he calls the mirror work. I haven’t read the book but one of our members Alicia who currently heads the The Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House (MFNH) which is a nonprofit that was founded in 1902 as a settlement house providing information and services to help immigrants. She showed me the food pantry they run, which you’ll hear more about in a few weeks, and told me about this book. The mirror work is turning the lens through which you see the world, where you see injustice, the wrong in the world and shifting that into a mirror on you to see the injustices right within you. That this is the first pivot you must make to become better activists and collective leaders.
Steve talked a few weeks ago in one of our Radical Hospitality sermon series, titled, ‘Can We Be a Friend to All the Parts of Ourselves?’ where he talked about Internal Family Systems theory from the therapy/psychology world. Meaning, there’s inside, a whole family of actors, right within us, that allows us to approach all the parts of ourselves with compassion and empathy. I’ve also heard that in Family Systems theory that the most problematic person isn’t the problem but the megaphone to the dormant unaddressed problems in the family.
A few weeks ago, one of our very own, Aubrie Hills, who is the Pre/K pastor and a new role in our staff as the Mental and Spiritual Wellness Director this year, taught a Grief Workshop for our community group and other ministry leaders, a training on how to journey alongside those who are grieving in our ministry work. She started the workshop with, Step One:
Question number 1. What is the earliest loss experience you can remember?
Oh C’MON! I came to this workshop to learn how to be there for OTHER people who are grieving. Not take inventory of my earlier loss experiences. In some ways the workshop is still workshopping me right now. She’s going to be running it again in April for the wider public and I promise you, you are going to want to attend this.
Cause the thing is, if you want to be there for others grieving, you’re going to have to grieve yourself FIRST. If you want to do radical hospitality to others, you’re gonna have to radical hospitality yourself, to your most vulnerable, most hurt, move locked in and forgotten selves. Because the kingdom of God is an upside down inside out business. Jesus said the First shall be Last and the Last shall be first. What would it look like to implement this kingdom value in you?
And when you do this, it’s going to feel weird. It’s going to feel like you’re an addict to power. You will sit in a room full of all the internal family members of yourselves, including the older sister you that makes everything run (think Louisa from Encanto) and the crazy uncle you (think Bruno), and your opinions, values, intuition and tendency will keep tipping toward the power and authority of your life that has been in place. It will feel WEIRD to veer that 18 wheeler of life as usual toward a radical change in your internal family systems. It will HURT. Some of them will act out. Just like the -The Laborers in the Vineyard: in Matthew 20, the story Jesus shared to illustrate the Last shall be First concept of the kingdom of God, where, same daily wages were given to workers that came to work 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 5pm. And the 5pm received first and the others were like, EXCUSE me? IT will not make sense.
But listen to little voices. Listen to them. Do you know where they are in the room? Can you place them? What do you think they will say to you? Mine started speaking in Korean to me after that Grief workshop.
I’ll close with this.
That woman reminds me of my mom. A first generation immigrant, who even through her broken English, bothered to always tell people about her life, always starting with, “When I lived in Korea…” And I was embarrassed of her. Embarrassed of my accent, that I got rid of it. I was lying earlier when I said I didn’t care if it’s Matthew’s or Mark’s view of Jesus. I like the Markan Christology to be completely honest. Well, now I do. When I first came to the US, I was like the Matthew Canaanite woman. I picked up, “Yo what’s up” and things like “toodaloo” to assimilate and sound American. Aubrie was telling us in the grief workshop, asking us how we engaged with our earliest loss. My biggest dramatic loss was the loss of Korea. I came to the US and I had to chop off everything back there, and only look ahead.
Aubrie shared this picture with us. Saying that staying connected to the loss in some way is a healthy way to move through grief. And so lately I’ve been re-excavating some chopped off Korean parts of myself. Starting with,
My Korean name is Injung, and I’m still an Instagram addict. (“Hi, Injung”)
Let’s stay connected, to the losses, to the grief, and move about from there to rise up and carry on, stand up and make a change. Let’s stay connected to the most vulnerable in our country right now. We have thousands of know your rights cards available. Take a stack. Drop it off in your local communities. You can join the Listening Session Reservoir Church is hosting for GBIO on Tuesday at 7pm, where you can share your injustice stories, cause that’s where our power lies. Grab a flyer on your way out from some of our Faith Into Action Core team.
If you’re not rooted down, you cannot reach out. I pray that the radical hospitality of our God, the abundant overflowing grace, mercy, and love may work in you and through you. Amen.