True Christian Hospitality

True Christian hospitality is far more than polite greetings or dinner parties. Rooted in Scripture and modeled by saints like Benedict, it means genuinely opening the door of your heart to another person. From Abraham welcoming strangers to the woman of Shunem keeping a room ready for the prophet Elisha, the Bible consistently shows that welcoming others is central to the life of faith. Jesus Himself promised that whoever welcomes His disciples welcomes Him, and that even a cup of cold water given to the least will not go unrewarded. In a world more digitally connected than ever yet more deeply lonely than ever, the call to real, personal hospitality has never been more urgent. Faith is passed on through relationship, and the people around you will remember not what you said, but how you made them feel. This week, make one intentional, personal act of genuine welcome toward someone in your life.

Transcript

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My brothers and sisters of the Lord, in the fifth century, the Roman Empire was collapsing. Because of invasions from the Goths and the Vandals and the Huns, the Roman Empire was in chaos. And because the Roman Empire was in chaos, society was in chaos and crumbling all around. In the midst of all of that, we have a man who comes onto the world stage. All of us know him, a man by the name of Benedict. Today we would call him Saint Benedict. And it was during this time, when society was in shambles, when culture was crumbling around, that Benedict began to found monasteries throughout Italy, beginning in the region of Subiaco and going even further out. And one of these things that these monasteries, these communities offer, is that when society was in chaos, when society was crumbling, the community, the monastery, offered a place of refuge. It offered a place of peace. It offered a place of order in the midst of all the disorder that existed all around. And as Benedict began to found these communities, we have to remember, my dear friends, that in the beginning, they weren't just open to only monks. Benedict welcomed monks, but he also welcomed peasants. He also welcomed pagans. He even welcomed royalty. Whoever wanted to become part of this community was welcomed by Saint Benedict. And even until today, my dear friends, Saint Benedict and the Benedictine Order is known for their great hospitality. It's one of their charisms, it's one of their gifts. And my brothers and sisters, in the world in which we live, we have lost the meaning and the virtue of hospitality as it's truly called to be lived out. But you see, my dear friends, where did this notion of hospitality come from for Saint Benedict? Well, it was very scriptural. Go back first to the Old Testament. First book of Genesis. What do we read? God welcomes Adam and Eve into the garden. There's an invitation, there's a welcome. Abraham welcomes the three visitors. The prophet Elijah is welcomed by the widow of Zarephath when he has nothing to eat. And she provides him with sustenance. We see this welcome in the New Testament. Notice, my dear friends, that Jesus, as he's going about to the various towns and villages preaching the gospel, as he sends his disciples out to preach the good news and to heal, they too rely on the hospitality of others. They rely on the hospitality of others for some place to stay. For you see, my dear friends, in biblical times, there was no such thing as the internet. Or even in my childhood, there was no such thing as the yellow pages. And so you did not just look and see what hotel am I going to book as I traveled. There were no Airbnbs. You relied on the hospitality of others. That's why hospitality, my dear friends, is more than just welcoming friends and neighbors. The true virtue of hospitality is also welcoming strangers and travelers and everyone in between. And so Jesus was welcomed by others. Many times when Jesus taught, my dear friends, it was around what we would call the dinner table today. Many of his parables spoke about the kingdom of God being a feast or a banquet, about people being welcomed and the invitation being sent forth. The virtue of hospitality lived out by Saint Benedict and called to be lived out, my dear friends, by all of us who carry the name of Christian. For you see, my dear friends, as we see in our first reading, we have the prophet Elisha. And the prophet Elisha was welcomed by a woman and Shonan, and she was so very fond of him that she said, Whenever you're in town, you got a room. It's ready for you. And he wanted to repay the woman, and so he found out that she was without child. And her husband was up in years. He was an old man. And so he prophesied that she would give birth to a son, and she did. It was realized as a gift and blessing of God. We see it in the gospel today. Jesus says, Whoever receives me receives you. And whoever receives you receives the one who sent. Whoever receives me receives you. Whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. Another word there, my dear friends, is the word welcome. Whoever welcomes you, welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me, Jesus says, welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever gives just a little cup of cold water to one of these little ones, these least of mine, you will not lose your reward. The virtue of hospitality, the duty of hospitality. My brothers and sisters, hospitality is a central principle to the Christian faith. It's a central principle of what it means to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus. It's also, my dear friends, important as we continue to live our lives, because we have to be open to the invitation that God sends to us each and every day to receive that invitation, the hospitality of God, the radical hospitality of Jesus, and then we have to be able to mirror that hospitality to one another. That's why I like to always say hospitality is the essence of the kingdom. Hospitality is the essence of the kingdom. And I grew up in a family that greatly believed in hospitality, particularly my grandmother. Nona never went anywhere to visit anyone without bringing a little gift. She might have baked a cake, she might have had some cookies or some chocolates or something else that she made. In fact, she believed so much in the virtue of hospitality that there was always an emergency gift in her trunk. Just in case you ended up somewhere and you weren't expecting it. A bottle of wine in cooler times, a box of chocolate. I remember one time when I was a child, we stopped by her sister's house unexpectedly, and she said to me, Go into the trunk and get the salami. She was Sicilian, you always carried salami. The virtue of hospitality, my brothers and sisters, do we live that out? Hospitality is the essence of the kingdom. Do we allow God into our own hearts? And do we open our hearts to others? Because hospitality, my brothers and sisters, as a virtue, hospitality as a Christian duty, has nothing to do with Martha Stewart. Hospitality is the ability to welcome. And not just welcome in the sense of saying, hello, how are you? It's not small talk. Hospitality is not just opening our door to individuals of our homes. Hospitality is opening the door of our hearts to others. Do we really open the doors of our hearts to others so we can be in true Christian relationships? Or, my brothers and sisters, do we go about doing our own thing in our own way? We live in a culture, we live in a time, we live in a generation, my dear friends, that via technology, we're the most connected generation that's ever existed. Yet studies over and over have shown that we are the most lonely and the most isolated generation that has ever existed as well. With all the technology that we have, we are so separated from one another. Because we do not practice the virtue of hospitality, we do not open our hearts to people so that we can accompany them and walk with them and share our faith with them and they share their journey with us. And you know what one of the biggest obstacles to the virtue of hospitality is? Just about everyone in this church is carrying one right now. Right here. Because we can receive text messages and we can receive notifications and we can receive emails and we can scroll and scroll and scroll on social media, but we cannot have a conversation. I challenge you, if you don't look at it, to go home and find out what your screen time was last week. How much time you spent on a device rather than in a true relationship. I remember some time ago, not that long ago, I was walking along just a pathway, a sidewalk, and there were benches on each side. And there was a teen on one side and a teen on the other side. And of course, they were on their phones, and I asked them as I was passing, what are you doing? What are you looking at? And one of them said to me, Oh, we're talking to one another. Literally, they were across from one another and they were texting back and forth. My brothers and sisters, hospitality is the essence of the kingdom. It is how we welcome people, it's how we build relationships. And in doing so, it's how we continue to spread our faith. For my grandmother, there was always extra food on the stove because everyone was welcome to the table. I have to tell you, even if she didn't like you, you were welcomed, like some of my friends. But you were welcome because she was going to make a disciple out of you one way or the other. But without the connection, without the relationship, my dear friends, we can never pass on our faith. And we can never be the disciple the Lord Jesus desires us to be. However, at the end of the day, people will remember how you made them feel. Do we allow people to feel welcomed? Do we open our hearts to people so that they know that they're loved? Because you and I, my dear friends, may be the instrument that God desires to use to love someone today. Or we're going to be too distracted on our phones to see the person in front of us, to make them feel loved and welcomed, to extend hospitality. Not as a dinner party, my dear friends, but as a virtue of allowing us to build the kingdom of God. Amen?