Saintly Hospitality

 

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.

---

[1] https://www.churchleadership.com/leading-ideas/3-principles-of-radical-hospitality/

[2] https://faithandleadership.com/accompanied-communion-ordinary-saints

The Things of God

 

A Sermon preached on 22 October 2023 (Pentecost XXI) at St. Augustine’s, WI and St. Christoph, MZ

Exodus 33:12-23, 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10, Matthew 22:15-22

Today’s Gospel reading contains one of Jesus’ very well-known sayings, in its traditional version (KJV/AV): “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.”

This saying, and the story it is part of, has been interpreted in all sorts of ways, many of them contradictory. It has been used to justify no taxation, low taxation, or unlimited taxation. A whole theology – of the two kingdoms (one of this world and one of Christ) have been built on it, as has the separation of Church and State.

Briefly scrolling through the internet, I found one author stating that “Jesus drives home the message that the claims of God and those of Caesar are mutually exclusive.” In his opinion we either owe everything to God and nothing to Caesar, or we owe God nothing and Caesar, at the very least, the coin which bears his image. Another saw it proving that Christians are very much part of both kingdoms, at least temporarily. Under Caesar, we have obligations involving material things. Under Christ, we have very different obligations that involve things eternal. Some read the phrase "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" as unambiguous in commanding people to respect state authority and to pay the taxes it demands of them. In this they include the teaching of Paul in Romans 13 that “every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.” (Which we now often interpret as not being about the government at all – but the synagogue rulers). And yet others – in particular liberation theologians - have interpreted Jesus as saying that Caesar as an invader has no right and is not due anything at all.

I could go on. But what is Jesus saying? It’s certainly not as simple as “Worship God but pay your taxes.” Let’s first look at what actually happens in the passage!

Jesus has entered Jerusalem in triumph, acclaimed as the son of David and one who comes in the name of the Lord, just a few days before this event. And now a very strange coalition has been formed to trap Jesus. On the one hand the Pharisees, who are against the Roman occupation and for strict Torah adherence, and on the other the Herodians, people obliged to Rome for keeping their leader Herod in power as a puppet ruler. You would not usually find them together, but both have an interest in Jesus’ downfall.

They flatter him – O great teacher we know you only speak the truth without any deference – before asking their trick question. It is a trick question because if Jesus answers it the way they want – with a simple yes or no – he is damned either way. If he says that it is lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, he alienates the people who hate the Roman occupation and undermines his messianic support. If he says it is unlawful to pay taxes, the people will be pleased, but Jesus will then be liable for arrest by the Romans. The issue was not just the tax, though as a poll or census tax (remember Mary and Joseph’s trip to Bethlehem) it was unjust as everyone had to pay the same amount. Even more problematic was that it had to be paid with a silver denarius a coin that featured and image of the emperor with an inscription calling him “divine” and “high priest.” So having and using this coin could be seen as contravening the first of the 10 commandments: “You shall have no other gods before me” and “You shall not make for yourself an idol (or image).” This by the way is the reason why there were money changers in the Temple, so people could change coins with images and problematic claims into “kosher” coins that could then be used for tithing.

Jesus’ response has two parts. First, he shows them up as hypocrites. While he has no such coin, the Pharisees readily provide one – so in the sacred space of the temple, the Pharisees possess an idolatrous image. And then, instead of a binary yes/no answer we get the famous “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” [Just as an aside, binary answers are not always right or necessary, sometimes both/and is the better response. So, taking current events, it is possible to be both for Israel and their right to exist and for the Palestinians and their right to self-determination and a home of their own!]

Jesus’ answer is not just about avoiding a trap. It is not just supposed to be clever, and it is not about the way governments do their business. Jesus has greater concerns in mind. While the face of Caesar is stamped upon the coin, the face of God is stamped upon us, every human being bears the image of God (Genesis 1:26). Give yourselves to God because it is to God that you belong, Jesus says. All things come from God, our being, our talents, interests, time, and wealth. To belong to God means first and foremost that God will not forsake us. We heard this promise in the first reading from Exodus (33:14) “My presence will go with you,” God says, with Moses, his friend, and with God’s people. If we belong to God, then we also belong to the people of God, to the body of Christ “seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbour as ourselves” as our Baptismal Creed[1] reminds us. And finally, if we belong to God, we give to God that which belongs to God’s: We return some of our time and talent, and we give of ourselves, serving God and serving God’s people! And all of this does not just happen in church and during worship.

I am not a fan of the two kingdoms theory. As you may have noticed, I don’t like dichotomies, the either/or of science or religion, politics or religion, the world or the church. I am fully in favour of the separation of church and state as institutions. I don’t want the state running churches, as used to be the case with the Protestant Churches in Germany until the Weimar Republic. And I don’t want churches or religions running states, like Iran – but I’ll make an exception for the Vatican! But I am against any separation of church, of religion, of faith from life.  

We cannot serve God only through our worship in the church. God’s realm encompasses Caesar’s realm, and we cannot follow our calling to serve a living and true God if we do not also work through and in our societies and political systems to care for creation and to “strive for justice and peace among all people.”[2] And that can include paying taxes, which in the democracies we live in help finance the common good.

As I learnt from one presentation at a recent conference[3] on “The role of the churches in the democratic process”, the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain argued that the spirit of Christ can and should influence the state. Christianity is like “leaven in the social and political life of nations as the bearer of the temporal hope of mankind.”[4] And so we pray, in words taken from one of the Eucharistic Prayers of the Church of England[5]  “ Lord of all life, help us to work together for that day when your kingdom comes, and justice and mercy will be seen in all the earth.”

Amen.

---

[1] BCP, p. 305

[2] BCP, p. 305

[3] Council of Anglican Episcopal Churches in Germany 7 – 9 September 2023

[4] In “Christianity and Democracy: The Rights of Man and The Natural Law”

[5] Common Worship: Prayer E