A Sermon preached on 5 November 2023 (All Saints and All Sould) at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Revelation 7:9-17, 1 John 3:1-3, Matthew 5:11-12
The first words you usually hear from me at the beginning of the service every Sunday are “good morning and welcome!” To welcome someone, is of course an expression of hospitality and showing hospitality is a key part of being a Christian both as individuals, communities (and societies!). The dictionary defines hospitality as the “friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers.” We welcome guests, visitors, and strangers to our church services and to our time of fellowship – hoping that you will soon become friends, not strangers! We welcome guests, visitors, and strangers to our building when we offer or host concerts and other events, and those strangers often include the performers. We welcomed a stranger when we invited a homeless person to live in a house in our garden, and we welcome guests, visitors, and strangers when we serve breakfast to the homeless at the Teestube. And as their staff reminded us at a meeting just this last week, company and conversation, being made to feel welcome, are just as important as food and a cup of tea or coffee! But true hospitality is more than that.
Recently the term radical hospitality has become popular in Christian circles. It is not really new. Radical hospitality, the requirement that we welcome the stranger, not only into our homes, but into our hearts, lies deep within the heart of Benedictine spirituality, and as Anglicans we owe a lot to Benedictine spirituality: it influenced our worship and formed many of our cathedral communities. According to a more recent definition of radical hospitality: “When we live into the principles of radical hospitality, we give people a taste of the kingdom of God. When hospitality is done well, it changes lives.”[1]
Today’s feast day – All Saints – is all about people who changed lives, and, in our readings, we were given two visions of the kingdom of God, two descriptions of transformation.
In the extract we heard from the book of Revelation, we were given a lovely vision of the communion of saints — a great multitude “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages,” standing before the throne of God and before Jesus, the Lamb (Revelation 7:9 NIV). This is a stunningly inclusive and expansive vision. That kingdom of God we are invited to give people a taste of knows no barriers, no one is excluded. It is a place of great comfort: all our physical needs (protection, hunger and thirst), emotional needs (no more tears) and spiritual needs (the immediate presence of God and the Lamb) will be fulfilled! Sounds great, but how do we get to there from here? What do we need to do?
On the one hand, I could argue nothing at all. It is God who acts, and that multitude that no one could count are transformed, and their sins wiped away, not by their own deeds, but by Jesus’ sacrificial self-giving. Their robes, standing for their moral and spiritual state were cleansed and transformed in the blood of the Lamb. We do not have to inaugurate the kingdom of heaven, Jesus already did.
But – and that is what the Beatitudes, are all about – we can and should live today as if God’s kingdom is already here. That is what we pray for in the prayer Jesus taught us: Thy kingdom come! Now, here, in us and through us. To live as if God’s kingdom is already here, is to live by a different set of rules. The most important people, those who are blessed, are those who practice humility and do not worship possessions. Those who are saddened by and mourn the state of the world. Those who are gentle and considerate in achieving their goals. Those who yearn and strive for justice. Those who are devoted to God and God’s kingdom. Those who cultivate true peace and wholeness, and those who do not let the powers of this world stop them. After this sermon, and after the Sunday school children have introduced us to their favourite saints, we will renew our Baptismal vows. We do this because the Feast of All Saints is one of the days especially suited for Baptisms, but also because the vows we make, both of faith and action, all have to do with living in and furthering the kingdom of heaven.
Hospitality, radical or otherwise, is not only about being open to and inviting the other into our hearts and lives. Like the Saints we celebrate today it is also about being open to and inviting God into our hearts and lives. Saints – as I read in a reflection about All Saints Day[2] – “are people who offer their lives as a home for God, to make room in the world for God’s life to grow. They bear witness to what it looks like to let God live in this world through them.” Or in other words, they make the kingdom visible in their lives. The first saint, that author said, was the BV Mary as the person, according to the Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe, who “brought God’s salvation to the world.” She is the first person in the Christian story to show hospitality to Jesus — Emmanuel/God with us, God of her flesh.
And as I wrote in my email this week, according to the New Testament the saints are all the members of the Christian church. So, all of us are called to invite God into our hearts and lives, all of us can give other people a taste of the kingdom of God, all of us can welcome the stranger into our church, homes, and hearts. On All Saints’ Day we are being welcomed into a communion that reaches from Mary through countless saints, through people of every generation, to us. All Saints is an announcement of the radical hospitality of God, God’s love for the whole world, the love that we are called to share.
In the Letter to the Hebrews (13:2) there is a lovely verse about hospitality: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” That is not meant to be a threat, but a promise! How lovely it would be to entertain angels and saints. Amen.
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