A Very Friendly Congregation...but What About Hospitality?

John 10.11-18 [Jesus said,]“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. ¹²The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. ¹³The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. ¹⁴I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, ¹⁵just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. ¹⁶I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. ¹⁷For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. ¹⁸No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.” (NRSV)

This past week was the Rocky Mountain Synod Assembly.  Like most Synod Assemblies this one was held at a hotel in Colorado Springs.  This was the second year in a row we stayed at this particular hotel.  It is a very comfortable hotel the rooms are nice, clean, and the bed restful, but that is not the only reason we have come back to this hotel two years in a row.  They also do a wonderful job with meals.  As is typical with any group this size (550+) there are a number of special dietary needs, whether vegetarian, pescatarian, gluten free, or some other food allergy.    Despite the large number of meals that need to be served in a short period of time, the hotel staff goes out of its way to make sure all those special dietary needs are met.  Even when a request is made that is not related to diet, the staff does its best to accommodate the guest.  Rather than expect the guest to come into their hotel and conform to them, the hotel staff becomes like us.  In becoming like their guests they are able to offer vegetarian, pescatarian, or gluten-free meals.  They add extra recycling bins in the common areas, because we are a green church.  They make sure and have a union contract and pay an equitable wage to their employees, so we can use their facilities for our assembly.  In becoming like us they model for us what hospitality is all about.  Sure they are financially rewarded for their hospitality, but that doesn’t make them less hospitable. 

Hospitality was one of the marks of the early church.  Those early Christians practiced a radical hospitality that wasn’t about financial reward, but based on the understanding that each person has been created in God’s image.  It didn’t matter whether they were Jewish, Greek, Roman, or Samaritan; they were welcomed into the early church because they were beings who had been created in God’s Image.  Their value and worth to the community was based solely on that understanding, and not on their family, birthplace, or ethnicity.  

But then, approximately 1700 years ago we began to replace hospitality with friendliness.  Now there is nothing wrong with being friendly or being nice to people, but it is not the same as hospitality.  Being friendly to people is easy.  It is easy to shake someone’s hand.  It is easy to say “good morning” to someone who has just come in.  It is easy to engage someone in small talk, to talk about the weather, the NFL draft, how the baseball season is shaping up etc.  No matter how friendly we might image ourselves to be, friendliness is not hospitality.  We still expect people who come into our congregation to conform to us, to be like us. 

In that way, we have become like the hired hand.  The hired hand who leaves the sheep, because he doesn’t value them they same way he values himself.  To him they are just sheep who haven’t become like him and thus don’t need to be protected.  Our congregations treat people the same way.  Unless you are a charter member, or related to a charter member, or have lived in the town for generations, or come from the right ethnicity you are left on the outside, because we just don’t value them the same as ourselves. 

The good (here good is being used as an example to follow) shepherd however stays to defend the sheep and is even willing to lay down his life for the sheep.  He doesn’t care that they haven’t become like him.  They are God’s creatures and their value is based solely on that fact, and not on which family they are part of, or how long they have been a member of the flock, or where their ancestors came from.  The good shepherd values the sheep at least as highly as himself, becoming like them and that is the difference between friendliness and hospitality. 

Maybe it is time for us as a congregation and as a church to return to our roots, to return to a genuine practice of hospitality, where everyone is valued on the basis of being created in God’s image, and not on the tenure of their membership or their ethnicity.  John reminds us there are still other sheep who are not yet part of the flock.  It is real hospitality that will make possible the promise of other sheep coming into the flock, the promise of one united and universal flock.