FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Jeremiah 28:5-9

Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18

Romans 6:12-23

Matthew 10:40-42

Prayer of the Day: O God, you direct our lives by your grace, and your words of justice and mercy reshape the world. Mold us into a people who welcome your word and serve one another, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” Matthew 10:40.

Jesus presumes on hospitality. Success of the mission upon which he sends his disciples in the verses previous to our reading depends on their finding a welcome among the people they meet. Jesus expects that his disciples will be welcomed by the curious, the generous, the hopeful and open minded. He is counting on hospitality.

In this respect, Jesus is thoroughly grounded in traditions of the Hebrew Scriptures. At the dawn of history Abraham and Sarah welcomed three strangers travelling in the heat of the day with shade, water for their tired feet and the best meal of which they were capable. They had every reason ignore or turn away these visitors. The world was a dangerous place during the bronze age. For all they knew, these three strangers might have been bandits or representatives of the nearest city state come to run them out of the jurisdiction. Instead, they opened their home, their larder and their hearts and, as the author of the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews tells us, ended up “entertained angels without knowing it.” Hebrews 13:2.

Of course, Jesus is well aware that he is sending his disciples out into an inhospitable world. Alongside the example of Abraham and Sarah is that of Sodom and Gomorrah. The citizens of these two towns met the same strangers so lavishly entertained in the tent of Sarah and Abraham with threats of gang rape. Jesus knows that his disciples will be “sheep into the midst of wolves.” Matthew 10:16. He warns them that they “will be hated by all because of my name.” Matthew 10:22. The disciples can expect that their good news will be met with rejection. They can expect that doors will sometimes be slammed in their faces. They are not to be dismayed, nor are they to seek retribution. They simply move on to the next town. What might the church of today look like if only more missionaries of the 19^th and 20^th Centuries had taken the same approach rather than riding the coattails of colonialism?  

Hospitality to strangers is an integral part of the church’s life. As noted above, the Letter to the Hebrews urges us to “show hospitality to strangers.” Hebrews 13:2. Saint John commends Gaius the elder for welcoming, housing and providing for strangers. III John 5 Throughout the Middle Ages, monasteries afforded hospitality to pilgrims, travelers and the wandering homeless. Today refugee sponsorship and resettlement are important ministries of the church-and increasingly so given that, as of the end of 2021, no less than 89.3 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence and human rights violations. USA for UNHCR Website.

It is against this back drop that I wish to reflect on two events that transpired over the last couple of weeks. One was the tragic loss of the Titan submersible in which five people were lost. The other was the sinking of a packed migrant boat off the coast of Greece in which at least seventy-nine people were lost and dozens more missing. In the case of the submersible, which was carrying four billionaires and a nineteen-year-old son of one of them, the United States Coast Guard and governments from around the world conducted an extensive search sparing no expense and employing the most advanced equipment. The migrant boat received aid only after it had gone down, having previously been seen in distress. The fate of the submersible was televised non-stop by all major news outlets. The migrant tragedy got only a passing notice. Sadly, while the loss of the submersible was a unique event affecting a few adventurers who willingly assumed a substantial risk, the fate of the migrants off the Greek coast is but one among many such tragedies affecting thousands of individuals whose decision to put to sea had little to do with thrill seeking and everything to do with a desperate effort simply to remain alive. The juxtaposition of these two shipwrecks makes painfully clear which lives matter and which do not; which deaths are newsworthy and which are not significant enough to make the obituaries.

We are reminded by these events that the world today is no more hospitable to sojourners, refugees and aliens than it was in the days of Abraham and Sarah. The hardline stance of Europeans and North America against migration from Africa in the fist instance and Central and South America in the case of the United States has left persons threatened by war, gang violence and starvation little choice but to embark on dangerous journeys by land and sea in the hope of finding sanctuary. The cruelty of these policies rivals that of Sodom and Gomorrah. We who stand on what we deem our side of the border would do well to contemplate the fate of those two cities and consider whether we are not earning for ourselves the same judgment. God has a particular concern for the refugee, the stranger, the people without a country. See Psalm 107:4-9; Leviticus 19:33-34.

There is a reason why hospitality to strangers has been woven into the fabric of Torah and constitutes a core practice of the church. It is simpy another word for “gospel.” As we learn from the book of Genesis, all human beings spring from the same descendants, share the same blood and are all alike made in God’s image. As the Book of Revelation makes clear, it is God’s intent to reunite the human family in a new creation consisting of every tribe, nation and tongue under heaven. In addition to embodying the practices of Jesus, the ministry of hospitality serves as a witness to the gentle reign of God Jesus proclaims and God’s gracious will that God would have done on earth as in heaven. Jesus tells us that one criterion under which the nations of the world will be judged is the degree to which they welcome strangers. Matthew 25:35. As the visible presence of Christ’s Body on earth, the people of God are to live into God’s future. The people of God are to be, in the words of Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farm, a demonstration plot for God’s kingdom. Jesus teaches us that hospitality invites transformation, builds trust, births friendship, overcomes prejudice and extends visit by visit the just, gentle and peaceful reign of God. To reject the stranger is to reject Christ, resist the work of the Holy Spirit and rebell against God’s gracious will for creation.

It is for this reason that we sponsor, resettle and assist refugees and migrants seeking entry into our country. That is why we advocate for open borders. It is why our churches seek to become places of sanctuary and safety for LGBTQ+ folk in states that have adopted violent, repressive and discriminatory laws that put them in jeopardy. It is why we strive to remove from our worship, language and practices all that would become a stumbling block for someone who might be open to Jesus and the kingdom he proclaims. As the GEOCO commercial says, “it’s what you do” when you follow Jesus.   

Here is a poem by Remi Kanazi from the perspective of the refugee, stranger, sojourner, outcast.  

Refugee

I.

she has never

seen the sea

sunlight imprinted

on her father’s skin

waves crashing

at his feet

smile tattooed

underneath boyish grin

snapping pictures

with closing eyelids

her father’s face

flush on recollection

the same waves that had

clenched like an angry jaw

at his mother pushed him

forward like a train car

watched his neighbor drown

tears streaming

eyes connecting

screams muffled

as inhalation

suffocated lungs

muscles weary

skin pruning

barely a boy

knowing he would

never return

his neighbor

    an older man

born in Akka

looked dapper

at dinner parties

looked helpless that day

    his body revolting

    against death

a pool intent

on swallowing him

so many stroking

to get on boats departing

who’d have known this gulf

would be their deathbed

II.

she has been beaten

ID checked

body thrown to the ground

fists and feet pummeled

fractured hip, shoulder broken

heart, too many times

tear gas inscribed on her lungs

she wrote back on her breath

that the canister’s defeat is near

III.

these fields are ours

she told me

before the Europeans

    and Brooklynites

before the swimming pools

    army jeeps and barbed wire

before the talks, roadmaps

    and Swiss cheese plans

before declarations rewrote history

    those hills met footprints

    and that can’t be erased

like village massacres

    can’t be erased

like broken bones policies

    can’t be erased

like the screams ringing

    in her father’s ears

    can’t be erased

we are the boat   

    returning to dock

we are the footprints

    on the northern trail

we are the iron

    coloring the soil

we cannot

    be erased

Source: Before the Next Bomb Drops: Rising Up from Brooklyn to Palestine, Remi Kanazi (c.  Haymarket Books, 2015). Remi Kanazi (b.1981) is a Palestinian-American poet, writer and community organizer currently living in New York City. He is the editor of anthologies of hip hop, poetry and art and the publication Poets for Palestine. He is the author of two collections of poetry. Kanazi’s political commentary has been featured by news outlets throughout the world, including the New York Times, Salon, Al Jazeera, and BBC Radio. He is a Lannan Residency Fellow and is on the advisory board of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.