The Heart of the Matter Sermon Series #1 “In God’s Time”

Isaiah 66:10-14, Luke 10:1-11

A Sermon preached by the Rev. Dea DeWitt

July 4, 2004

University Baptist Church

First Congregational Church

Minneapolis, MN

 

Jesus’ words to the seventy missionaries in Luke always hold special meaning for me.  I never felt more like a disciple of Jesus than when I worked in Ghana!  I remember one day in particular.  I was wearing a political suit, much like the one I’m wearing, had my bible in one hand, and was walking stridently alongside my mentor, Rev. Hilliard as we went to church.  The red sand and dust stirred around me, and for a moment I was in awe of how ancient the land was.  I had quite an experience being a missionary! 

It wasn’t all positive either.  My aforementioned memory was one of the few positive experiences I had during my time there!  In the two-plus-months I worked in Ghana, I got very sick with food poisoning for three days, so sick at one point I thought I was going to die.

Speaking of food, I never got used to eating some of the indigenous dishes, either.  The texture of the traditional food was so different that I had to play tricks on myself just to eat!  I often had to eat certain foods by swallowing without chewing, and I gagged alot before I learned to take small bites!  The hard part was not offending the family who hosted me as I did my work. I lost a lot of weight that summer…

I also experienced betrayal.  Betrayal is always part of a good story, isn’t it?  The family I stayed with, the Tettehs, they had a son who befriended me.  He offered to show me around town and wanted to know all about me.  Being the trusting person I am, I did not think ill of him.  His family, from the very first day, were very warm and opened their lives to me.  Maowena, Mr. Tetteh’s oldest daughter, took care of me.  She washed my clothes, made my meals, and was good company when I slumped over my late night meals.  It was odd for me having someone do all those things for me, but I would have dishonored Maowena to refuse.  I will never forget the Tetteh’s hospitality, even though I was betrayed.  Their hospitality kept me going when I no longer wanted to.

 

See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves.

 

Yes, as was my luck, a wolf found me.  Remember the son I started talking about?  He got to know me so well that he “cased” me, found out when I wasn’t home, calculated when I was going to leave Ghana, and robbed me of my valuables before I could.  I felt violated, and so did his family.  His father, an older man, broke down and wept when he heard what happened, he was so ashamed.  The son used the vulnerability intrinsic to his family’s hospitality to take advantage of several people.  I had come to proclaim the gospel as a missionary of sorts, and was unexpectedly hurt.  It made things awkward and uncertain, because I still had to live there while in Ghana.  Evil motives always rear their ugly head in times of uncertainty.

Both scriptures read today were written in times of great uncertainty.  Isaiah’s prophecy was written sometime during the 10^th century Before the Common Era (BCE), in an tumultuous time for the Israelites. 

 

I will also mock them, and bring upon them what they fear; because, when I called, no one answered, when I spoke, they did not listen; but what they did was evil in my sight.

 

The kingdom of Judah had fallen, and the Babylonian Empire, the reigning superpower, would soon fall to the rising Persian Empire.  Isaiah’s prophetic ministry was also during a difficult “harvest” time.  His prophetic calls for Israelites to turn back to God were met with resistance, and even rejection.  Israel’s actions against Isaiah were indicative of a people who had undergone exile, assimilated parts of their identity, and placed their trust in the idols of the world.

The political situation during Jesus’ time was hardly different.  The Roman Empire conquered many other nations, including Israel. The Jewish people were again an occupied people.  The Jews also had to wrestle with whether to vigorously assert their national identity, or assimilate and become culturally Roman.

In the midst of such turmoil, in times ancient or present, hospitality is the glue that holds society together.  It is the guiding principle that should govern our work and relation to one another.  It is the bastion of comfort and vulnerability amidst a growing culture of fear.  Fear is as old as hospitality.

Hospitality, from the view of scripture, is how we authentically open ourselves to receive the full God-given dignity of other human beings.

Given that today is Independence Day, how well have we practiced hospitality as a nation?  Our track record looks grim.  Let me lift up three brief examples.  Two days ago was the fortieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  It is sobering to think that many places I enjoy as a social or recreational outlet were once off limits to me, at the threat of jail time, or even death. 

Just think of Emmett Till, a young Black man in the wrong place at the wrong time who said the wrong thing to a white woman.  He was a Northerner, did not know the ways of the South, and was introduced to Southern hospitality by having his body so badly beaten that he was unrecognizable.  His murder would be the powder keg to force African Americans to demand this nation live up to its claims of hospitality.  I’m talking about the claim that we’re “One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”  As great as this 1964 Act is, can we ever legislate hospitality?  I have gone to many places, and they still feel uninviting.  Does this sound like hospitality to you?  Me neither…

On that same day a groundswell of support was gathering in Arizona to make it more difficult for legal immigrants to attain work and live in that state.  It was called something like the “Protect America Now” referendum, and requires certain forms of identification to filter out certain immigrants. 

Wait a minute!  Isn’t this “the land of the free, the place where our fathers and mothers died?”  Where’s the hospitality here?  Not, apparently, in Arizona!  Guess what state I’m not moving to?

Finally, was the latest uproar on CSPAN about Bill Cosby’s willy-nilly comments on the state of African Americans.  Cosby called Black youth “dirty laundry,” citing such embarrassing behaviors as cursing, the N-word, bad clothing, and loitering as reasons why they need to get their act together and get an education.  Many of the show’s callers agreed with Cosby, that the biggest problem was lack of a formal education. 

Where is the spirit of hospitality in telling your people that they are no good because you say so?  I found Bill Cosby’s words profoundly lacking any pastoral dimension, let alone a spirit of hospitality.  There is a way to speak critically of loved ones that does not diminish their dignity.  To call Black youth “dirty laundry” blinds us to the overwhelming systemic reality pervading their lives.  The unnamed spectre of nihilism and its power to make life pointless is a force against the changes we as a nation need. 

In all these examples, I am left troubled.  I’m troubled by the illusion that education is the great panacea against social ills.  I have known people in my own life who got their Master degree and end up selling drugs on the streets because they could not get a job.  Unless you come from a social location of privilege, you are not likely to change your lot in life with just a college diploma.  We cannot be the change we want to be by ourselves.  We need God’s help, at all times.  The moment we find ourselves thinking otherwise is when we will suffer, just as many are now.

We are backsliding into a national mode of being where we seek only to relieve the pressure of our social failures.  Our social failures as a nation produce our anxiety and fear.  Instead of seeking healing, many are lapsing into finger-pointing, a response rooted in fear, not hospitality.  The response, even fear itself, begins to become comfortable, and we adjust ourselves to its seductive whisper.

 

That whisper, Beloved, is fear’s call to worship.  Fear is our new god.

 

We are making idols out of our fear, turning to it in homage.  The way the prophets point to, the way Jesus died for, is too hard and inconvenient.  It feels easier to close ourselves off, cling to fear, lose our way, and wonder why we feel like something is dying inside. 

Thanks be to God, we are called to repent toward the way of life!  Though our sense of hospitality is lost in these troubling times, God points us to the places resident in our faith that bring us closer to God’s purposes, in God’s time.  Beloved, hospitality is not just being nice to an unexpected visitor.  To the contrary, hospitality is about living in expectation!  Jesus’ instructions to the seventy missionaries were given in expectation of their Holy Spirit-filled presence ushering in the peace only God gives.  This peace comes only when we boldly declare God’s still better way.  It comes when we proclaim that the kingdom of God has come near!  We will each proclaim differently, because God uses our spiritual gifts for the building of this coming realm differently.  The point is that we must proclaim.

We can see what this call will mean from Jesus’ words.  One thing you will see, if you haven’t already, are the consequences for this world if you don’t do you part to usher in the kingdom.  As Christ said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”  There is a great urgency here!  If all of us are not out doing what we were called to do, the harvest will spoil!  There are already too many people in our world willing to let that happen!  Just think back on the examples I gave.  Now is the time, because now is God’s time!

We must also be willing to pay the cost of discipleship.  This will also be different for each of us.  My own foretaste of the cost was the loss of some valuables in Ghana that I will never see again.  The cost is often undeserved, but because you are a Christian who lives out your faith, you will indeed be considered a lamb, a push-over by unscrupulous others who do not follow this same way.  Know this however: the cost we pay does not go unnoticed by God. 

 

Rejection is real too.  Jesus knows this, and tells the disciples:

 

…whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, “Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you.  Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.

 

The reality of rejection isn’t dealt with for those who do the rejecting.  It’s a message to us.  Rejection hurts, especially when it’s unmerited.  In the case of my young thief, I did proclaim the kingdom of God in his life.  I visited him with food when he was put in jail.  I even washed his feet after receiving a command to do so from God!  I got down on my knees, took off his sandals, and washed his feet.  I told him the story of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet.  I then told him to remember this moment.  Truth be told, however, I have no idea whether anything I did affected him.  What was in his heart is between him and God. 

I knew then, however, that God was showing me even when someone wrongs me, I am still no better than him.  I was reminded that we are both human beings of incomparable worth.  My own sense of worth was no longer bound up in those things I had lost.  I was no longer mired in the betrayal, as someone close to me said.  The footwashing enabled me to move on, and I did.  I kept my heart open to God and to those who showed me such hospitality.  My open heart also enabled me to leave my blessing upon the Tetteh’s house.  In God’s time, God was able to bring healing and comfort to those who truly desired it. 

Whether it is a moment in the throes of betrayal, or a nation at odds with its unresolved identity and social ills, God is there for us all.  This is the good news, the promise upon which all life rises and falls.  Hear God’s sweet words revealed to the prophet Isaiah:

 

All these things my hand has made, and so all these things are mine, says the Holy One…You shall see [my comfort], and your heart shall rejoice; your bodies shall flourish like the grass; and it shall be known that the hand of God is with her servants.

 

Go in peace, Beloved.  Amen.