Sermon for St David’s, Applecross

9:30 am Eucharist, 2 September, 14^th Sunday after Pentecost, AD 2007

Hebrews 13:1-8,15-16 and Luke 14:1, 7-14

Some years ago, I preached a memorable sermon from the high ropes platform up there. ‘Memorable’ probably not because you remembered it, but because of why I remember it. You notice we don’t use the pulpit any more. From the pulpit, the preacher can see the people in the back row, and so can see who is asleep. So out of respect for your privacy we no longer use it, and for some other liturgical reasons, which I am not going to tell you; ‘cos they are ‘secret priests’ business’!

The memorable sermon was about the weakness of God. I was trying to say that God does not use almighty power to get his way. God’s strength would simply overwhelm us humans, so God uses weakness to win people. Christ’s weakness was on display on the cross, and it was that weakness that attained resurrection.

I obviously did not say it very well. When I had finished, a woman stood up and came to the front, to the crossing here. With obvious courage, she said to me, “You’re wrong. God is not weak. My God is all powerful and mighty. Your God is not true.”

In that moment, the last place I wanted to be was standing high above everyone else in the pulpit, dressed in robes as a representative of the church universal. Whatever I said to this person could only come across as overpowering. “I’m telling you that God is weak. You had better believe it because I say so.”  
I would have been the old cliché: I would have put myself ten feet above contradiction.

Before I tried to explain, I climbed down from the high wire so I was physically on the same level as she was. From here, it felt more appropriate to argue about strength and weakness.

It is a constant challenge for a preacher – finding the words that will best convey what you believe God is saying through the Bible readings. I have reflected on that exchange of views several times since then: how could I have better presented the paradox of God’s strength in weakness?

 “The humility of God.” In the past few months, this phrase has come repeatedly to my mind. It is the title of a book, The Humility of God by Franciscan sister Ilia Delio, but the phrase surfaced in my mind both before and after reading Sister Ilia’s wonderful book: “The humility of God”.

This is the idea that God chose, in Christ, to bend down to our level. Because God is love, God is also humble. To love someone, you have to be on their level. To love someone, you have to make space in your life for them. You have to be humble.

This morning’s gospel reading with the two parables about being humble as a guest and as a host, brings that phrase floating to the top of my mind: “the humility of God”. Humility is making space for others, not taking their space.

So the lesson of this morning’s readings:  be humble. As Jesus said, “Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 14:11)

But there’s a catch: is it is hard to get to be humble just by wanting to be humble. The more we try to be humble, the less we succeed. If we try hard to be humble we will end up being either arrogant (“Look how humble I am!”), or humiliated (“Look how stupid I have become by acting beneath myself!”)

Trying to be humble is what psychologists call a ‘paradoxical desire.’ Like trying to be happy. You can’t be happy by trying. It doesn’t work. Happiness seems to be a by-product of having worthwhile things to do and of reaching out to help others. If you do those two things, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be happy ever after. But those two things – meaningful tasks and caring for others – give you a chance for happiness. Happiness is a gift – or in Christian jargon – happiness is a “God-given grace.”

So if we want to be humble as God is humble; if we want, like God, to love from that deep part of our heart that invites others to love, we need to learn why the New Testament places so much emphasis on hospitality.

In this morning’s gospel, Jesus tells us, when you are a guest, don’t presume on your host. Assume that your host has invited more eminent persons that yourself. And when you are a host, be genuine in your hospitality and invite people not to get invited back, but just to be generous.

“Be hospitable to strangers,” says the reading from the letter to the Hebrews, (13:2) because some have entertained angels without knowing it. Hospitality works like the stone thrown into a still pond. You can never know in advance how far those ripples will circle out, especially with strangers.

When George Appleton was archbishop of Perth, every Christmas he and Marjorie used to fill the old Bishop’s House with homeless street people and lay on a Christmas meal. That sort of hospitality has a way of spreading out, especially if it is done just for the sake of being hospitable.

The New Testament calls us to be hospitable, and not just providing food and accommodation for needy strangers. New Testament hospitality is a basic attitude to other people. We are to practise welcoming people to our world.

When we are a host, we answer the door, and invite people into our space. We greet them with a kiss, or handshake, or hug, we acknowledge them as a person, and then gesture with our hands: Come into my space and share it.

That body language is important. Practising hospitality includes practising being aware of whether we appear welcoming to other people. Those of you who remember Fr John Wardman will remember the way he walked to greet people with his warm smile. Sometimes we catch ourselves with a frown on our face, our arms folded like St Patrick’s breastplate and our eyes every which way except towards the other person. We make ourselves the very opposite of hospitable.

So although it sounds extraordinarily basic, today’s readings give us homework: practise hospitality: Practise the attitude of hospitality. Practise being hospitable. I expect morning coffee today to be unusually warm and friendly!

By practising hospitality, we may end up – there are no guarantees – but we may end up graced with the gift of humility.

In the New Testament, hospitality was serious business. Mary Marshall can  tell you about the social background of the meals and banquets that Jesus attended. Being hospitable to one another – then and now – is important because it’s our way of sharing in God’s munificent hospitality.

God says to us in creation, “Welcome to my world.” And that’s not just the glib talk of a salesman. God has to give up something to create the world. Think back to the beginning, if you can. Think back to the time before creation when there was only God. God was infinite. God was all that there was. There was no space for creation, no room for us to exist. Infinity was already full. Some Jewish theologians have a theory called “"zimzum"”. This is the idea that when God created the cosmos, God had to make space within himself. The picture I have is that zimzum is a little like God breathing in, God pulling his tummy in to make room for the Universe.

In some mysterious way, God had to sacrifice something of Godself to make room for us. Creation is a gift to us which costs God significantly.

So God says, “Welcome to my world,” and the words carry a weight of loving sacrifice.

God says, “Welcome to my world,” and Jesus puts his arms out to welcome us in embrace – on the cross. Jesus is God’s humility, God choosing to climb down from the high platform to where we are to tell us how much God loves us.

Some verses in the middle of Chapter 13 from the letter to the Hebrews are omitted from this morning’s reading. It’s always good to know what we are not allowed to hear, so I will read them to you:

…the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. ¹²Therefore Jesus also suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood. ¹³Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse that he endured. (13:11-13)

Extraordinary. How hospitable, how humble Jesus is. The lengths that Jesus goes to find us and to tell us how much God loves us. He will go even to the stinking ever-burning rubbish tip outside of respectable society to find us. He will find us wherever we are and extend to us his hospitality. There is no place within us that is so stinking and despicable that it is not welcome to God. God loves even our nastiest depths.

There is no human being anywhere that is not welcomed by God. A rather naïve billboard in the US read, “Jesus loves Osama bin Laden.” I’m not sure that’s the best way to express this extraordinary truth, but Jesus does love the worst terrorist, the most psychopathic child-murderer, the most unrepentant tyrant.

And that’s just verse 12. Verse 13 then talks about how far we should go in practising hospitality and learning humility. We should go to him outside the camp and bear the same abuse as he did.

This hospitality is not about being nice Christians. Jesus calls us to extreme Christianity. We are to practise being hospitable to the least desirable parts of ourselves – that’s hard, that’s outside the camp, but it’s where Jesus is. We are to practise being hospitable to the most despicable human beings. That too is unnatural, it’s difficult, but we can do it, because they are outside the camp and that’s where Jesus is, with us.

Christian hospitality is challenging. It’s not just about sharing pleasant cups of tea. It’s about cultivating the attitude of positively embracing every part of our human existence… our own nastiness, and the nastiest of our fellow-humans. It’s about practising that attitude because it is God’s essential attitude.

Of course, allowing God to embrace the worst of human existence gives God the opening God needs to forgive and transform, so there’s good reason to be joyful as we practise hospitality.

One hospitable Christian was the eccentric Albanian, Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She made space for the homeless, for the dying, for many needy groups, and she also encouraged the church to also make more space for the needy. Malcolm Muggeridge quoted Mother Teresa saying that when she cradles a dying man in the squalor of the streets, she is cradling the Body of Christ.

If you’ve been following the controversy this week over the publication of Mother Teresa’s letters to her spiritual directors, you will know how much it cost her to go outside the camp and practise hospitality. For 20 long years, while she continued to work and encourage the growth of her Order, these letters show that she felt nothing of God’s presence. She continued on in the certainty of her vocation by cold willpower.

Mother Teresa’s vocation was about bending down to embrace the dying and the homeless children of Kolkata with God’s humble love. So we come back to this image of bending down: God bending down to embrace us, and us bending down to embrace others.

Christian hospitality can not work from a position of superiority. Despite what we say, we are not better human beings than Islamist extremists; we are not better humans than murderers and child-molesters. To be Christian is to set aside our false belief of superiority; to get down from the high platform, and learn better how to welcome every creature we meet as our equal.

Then we may begin to know God gracing us with his gift of humility.