The Kingdom of God is like Turpin Christmas Eve—A Sermon on Hospitality

I preached this sermon to the good people of Lutheran Church of the Incarnation, as part of continued drop-in sabbatical coverage for their pastor.

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Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

Last week, I was in my Southern California hometown of Encinitas with my fiancé and our families, doing some wedding planning and celebrating, including a bridal shower hosted by my aunts. There were seven of us staying at my parents’ house—my mom and dad, me, Jonathan, Jonathan’s mom and dad, and Jonathan’s brother. My dad kept laughing as we filled up the dishwasher, again, that there was a lot more action in the kitchen with 7 eaters instead of their usual 2. It was a fun week, packed with appointments but also with plenty of scheduled time to sit in the backyard and look at the ocean. We ate a lot of homemade guacamole. My mom knows how to host.

My mom and her mom (and by extension my aunts)  are who taught me about hospitality. Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays, graduations, weddings, births, deaths, every occasion has been honored and celebrated in their homes, with our entire extended family gathered in from all over the place.

When we say “all are welcome” we’re not kidding—everybody is welcome any time, any place, whether we were expecting you or not. We’ll pull up a chair, no worries. We were already cooking way more food than remotely necessary, so there’s plenty to spare. We are like this, because we would never want someone to arrive and feel like they weren’t important. We work behind the scenes to ensure that there’s always plenty, and all contingencies have been accounted for.

We all pitch in to make this possible—on Christmas Eve, for example, Aunt Jackie makes the mashed potatoes, Uncle Greg keeps tabs on the meat, I bring the pies, Uncle Mark plays Santa, my dad pours the wine, my teen cousins fill the water glasses, my Aunt Cathy blesses the meal, the young adult cousins wrangle the babies, my brother leads the carol-singing...

Sure, we could function without one of these, but we’d be out of sorts. Since we’ve all put the evening together, we all revel in the chaos of all the kiddos running wild during the gift exchange, and the reminiscences of our 92-year-old traditions. Every Christmas Eve, I think, “the kingdom of God is like this.”

I think that for a few reasons, not the least of which is that I would love to spend eternity with my all my favorite people. But I especially think that the kingdom of God is like Turpin Family Christmas Eve because everyone has a place in it. Everyone who is there is loved and cherished, and their contribution to the success of the evening—whether that’s preparing food, or exchanging gifts, or bouncing a baby cousin while his mom scarfs down her spanakopita, or washing the dishes at the end!—no matter how small, is significant. 

Our gratitude on Christmas Eve is intertwined, as we all worked and played together to celebrate. The house at which it’s hosted is certainly a key part of the equation, but it would be an empty house if we weren’t there together. Those who cooked the meal are highly valued, but they’d be wasting their time if there was no one there to eat it. And those who make their way through the kitchen at the exact right moment to hand Aunt Suzanne the potholder she needs are the unsung heroes of the feast.

I don’t know if this sounds like Christmas Eve at your house—but I pray that it is at least a familiar scene. I don’t know what role you play in the foreground or background of your community life, but since you’re here today, I know you at least have one. In our gospel lesson for this morning, Jesus is speaking right to this. It’s so short and sweet, I’m just going to read it out to you again.

It is written: "Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward” (Matthew 10:40-42).

When we show hospitality to our siblings in Christ, we show hospitality to Christ himself. These few words call to mind some more famous words from the Gospel According to Matthew. The righteous ask Jesus, “‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’” and Jesus answered, “‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me’” (Matthew 25:37-40).

When we show hospitality to our siblings in Christ, we show hospitality to Christ himself. Here at LCI, you may have a hospitality committee, or something of that nature. Some good folks who make sure that visitors are welcome—especially visiting pastors—and when there’s an event of some kind, they’re making it happen. Perhaps you are part of this committee, or perhaps several different groups of folks share these responsibilities.  

Whatever you are doing, here, to bring about the kingdom of God, it is part of the mission and you are important. If you are pouring the coffee after the service, you are important. If you are registering kids for day camp, you are important. If you are formatting the name tags, you are important. If you are vacuuming the fellowship hall, you are important. If you are updating the website, you are important. If you are folding the bulletins, you are important. If you are tuning the piano, you are important. All of the good work that happens “behind the scenes” in the church is important.

It can feel sometimes like the heavy lifting is done by the pastors, or the bishops, or the people on the synod staff. While all those are doing good and necessary work, “the reward is not simply for the preachers and prophets among us but also for those whose calling is simply to pour the drinks and play the host.” [1] Every piece of the puzzle is critical.

And it doesn’t stop here at church! I saw someone online this week call this the gospel of “five welcomes and five whoevers.” What five welcomes can we offer? To which five whoevers? There are some types of welcome and some types of whoevers that we’re much more comfortable with than others. This plays out on every scale—from visitors at church to immigrants to the United States.

All of us have opportunities to show hospitality to our loved ones and to strangers every day as we go about our lives. We can chose to be open to engaging new kinds of people in new kinds of ways, or we can be closed off. We can choose to share of what we have, or we can hoard it. We can engage our broader communities—the city of Davis, the university, the state of California—to stand for more welcome, more often, for more whoevers.

It is not necessary to do this in big and flashy ways. Our work of hospitality need not be so consequential that it makes the front page of the newspaper every week in order to advance the work of God’s kingdom. “The divine mission is as much about the unnamed people who provide a thirsty servant a cold drink of water as the familiar names that dot the pages of church histories." [1] 

You are important. Your work is meaningful. Everyone around you is important, and the work of everyone around you is meaningful. We are all in this together, working to bring about the reign of God. Each and every contribution is valuable. Each and every person is valuable. This value is not earned or meted out in such a way that anyone is ever exchanging their value for the value of another. Your belovedness comes to you direct from the source, from God your creator. Your life in this community—at LCI, and in your family, and in the work you do or the school you’re in or the retirement you enjoy—is yours because you are God’s.

Truly, I tell you. Amen.

The (Good) News—A Sermon on Preaching and Power

School is out at UC Davis, so my weekly Wednesday beat is on hiatus until September; I preached this sermon to the good people of Lutheran Church of the Incarnation, as part of a handful of Sundays of sabbatical coverage throughout the summer.

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Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

Preparing a sermon each week is an interesting task. It’s one of my favorite things about my job, and it can be the most difficult part of my job. There’s always so much to say, and each week, I get to say it through the lens of the lectionary. And as the three-year cycle of the lectionary rolls through, even though we get the same texts, the sermon is never the same. And that’s because the world is never the same. The preacher is never the same. The congregation is never the same.

If years have passed, and a preacher has nothing new to say, I’m just not quite sure how that could be. I think, sometimes, that I could preach on the same scripture every week and still have something new. Because the Spirit is always moving. I am participating in the world around me, and I am reading literature, and I am talking with my friends and family, and I am scrolling through twitter, and I am listening to the news, and there is never a dull moment around here. Sometimes the constant movement of the world around us is overwhelming, and it causes preachers—myself included—to scrap a sermon and start over. This happens, in particular, in the wake of national tragedy or a major global event or even the results of a sports game, especially if it’s your local team. And especially if it happens on Saturday.

There’s a saying, attributed all over the place, but we’re pretty sure it was Karl Barth who said it: “Take your Bible and take your newspaper and read both.” He meant it for everyone, but it is most critical for religious leaders. So critical for preachers. In my life as a preacher, newspapers have been fewer and farther between, but I carry the whole internet in the palm of my hand. I sat down to write this sermon—like I do each one—having perused the news of the day on twitter, and taking into account the non-stop nature of our cultural development. Sometimes, someone tweets something that inspires me. Sometimes, someone tweets something that angers me. Sometimes, my entire timeline is dedicated to a breaking news story, and I know that that will dominate our hearts and minds for a while.

This week was one such week. On Wednesday, I awoke to news of a raging apartment fire in London, the official death toll of which has risen to 58. I kept scrolling to see that congressmen had been shot while practicing for their annual softball game, and that a UPS employee had killed three of his co-workers in San Francisco. On Friday, Amazon announced that they’re buying Whole Foods, and a lot of folks in the grocery industry—like Safeway, and Costco, and other giants of food in our nation—are wondering what this might mean for their jobs. Also on Friday, a jury in Minnesota acquitted Jeronimo Yanez of last summer’s murder of Philando Castile.

All of these news stories swirled around in my head as I read through this week’s lectionary texts, but none so heavily as this verdict. There have been so many black men and women killed by police in the last few years, that I have absolutely lost count.* Some of them stand out more clearly in my memory, like this one in particular, because it was broadcast on Facebook Live by Mr. Castile’s fiancée, who was in the back seat with her 4-year-old daughter. I didn’t watch it live, but it eventually made its way into my feed and it broke my heart.

Yesterday was the two-year anniversary of the murder of the Charleston Nine, black church leaders and Bible study participants who were gunned down by a white terrorist. That violence touched us directly—the shooter was a member of an ELCA congregation, and two of the pastors had graduated from our Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary—and so we acknowledged it more openly, including our Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton.  

It is hard, as a white leader in a predominantly white denomination, to know what to say from the pulpit about another instance of racist violence in our nation.

In the case of Dylann Roof, he has been tried and convicted and sentenced; he is accountable for his crime in Charleston. In the case of Jeronimo Yanez’ acquittal, no one has been held responsible for this crime. Philando Castile was a beloved child of God, and he was murdered, live online. 

The injustice of it all renders me speechless—and not a lot renders me speechless. Fortunately for me, the Spirit moves—and others speak. I have many clerical colleagues that I only know from the internet, and I turned to them this weekend for guidance. One such colleague, the Rev. Marcus Halley, is a black Episcopal priest in Minneapolis. He tweeted, on Friday, about not being scheduled to preach this morning: “I want so badly to articulate a new world, and my anger over the senseless deaths of POC at the hands of police prevents me from seeing it. So, until I can see it, I will commit myself to praying for it, hoping my words can paint a world I'm not sure I believe in some days.” Father Marcus folds his hands in prayer, and for a moment, I stop wringing mine.

Fortunately for me, and for Father Marcus, we have Jesus to turn to, to help us see. We have stories of compassion, and justice, and healing, and liberation, and resurrection to turn to. In the most serious of manners, I exclaim “hallelujah!”

The Gospel story we are given this week is very lengthy, and, in it, Jesus is far from speechless. He gathers his disciples and friends and sends them out, empowered to continue his work in the world. He sends them to “proclaim the good news”—the kingdom of God has come near—and to “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” When we feel rudderless, Jesus’ instructions set the course. There is good work to be done. There is good news to be shared.

In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul makes it so clear. “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we now stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God” (Romans 5:1-2). Again, I say, “hallelujah” because grace abounds. There is nothing that we have done, nothing that we have left undone, nothing that we can do, nothing that we can fail to do, nothing whatsoever that will affect the grace in which we now stand. We can sometimes get antsy here, as Lutherans, because we’re so nervous about the slippery slope of works righteousness. As Martin Luther reminds us, good works do not cause our salvation—we have obtained access to this grace through Jesus the Christ. Our good deeds are not a necessary component of some cosmic transaction—but they are necessary.

In our life together, we respond to the grace we have been given with gratitude to our God and by showing God’s love to our neighbor. Paul’s letter to the Romans continues: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:5); and because of this, because of the grace we have received, because of the love we have been shown, because of the power that has been shared, we are moved beyond our own understanding to love and to serve and to bring forth the kingdom of God. 

You may have noticed, though, as I was reading the Gospel text, that there were some caveats and some warnings. This good work of loving and serving and healing is not without its challenges. Some folks do not want to hear the good news, if it means they have to do something differently. (Some of us do not want to hear the good news, since it means we have to do something differently.) Some folks do not want to be healed, if it means they have to do something differently. And no demon is agreeable to being cast out, so that’s probably going to take some work.

There are a lot of stories of people reacting negatively to Jesus entering their communities—the folks who try to run him off a cliff earlier in Matthew’s gospel, being a shining example—and so he knows the disciples’ triumphal entries will be few and far between. He does not discourage them from going, or tell them to go only where it’s safe, or somehow make a way for them that has no trouble. He says, “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16).

The Rev. Alexia Salvatierra is an ELCA clergyperson and a community organizer in Los Angeles. She wrote a book about faith-rooted organizing, and devotes a lot of words to the ideas of Serpent Power and Dove Power, concepts developed right from this verse. “Serpent Power,” she writes, “is evident and measurable. It is the power of force, wealth, social influence, and numbers. There is nothing wrong with the use of serpent power with integrity….however, if all we use is serpent power, we have lost our unique call and contribution—the capacity to embody the power of the dove….When we take dove power seriously, we take seriously the best in people, the reality of the image of God in each of us, and the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.” We, as disciples of the risen Christ, must rely on our deeply held dove power. “We believe in the power of prayer. We believe in the power of truth and the power of love. We believe that there are contexts and moments in which moral authority is real, tangible, and effective" (74).

Jesus knew that the power at work in the world was mostly serpent power, and so the disciples would have to know how to maneuver through that. But they would also need to challenge serpent power with dove power. They did not need to be imbued with serpent power—their humanity and their society gave them that resource freely—but they needed the power of the Holy Spirit to be given to them, and the encouragement of Jesus to push them out into the fray. We do not need to be imbued with serpent power—our humanity and our society gives us that resource freely—but we need the power of the Holy Spirit to be given to us, and the encouragement of Jesus to push us out into the fray.  

Again, I say, “hallelujah” because that has been done for us! As members of the body of Christ, we have all the power we need. We can, as humans interacting with other humans, use our power for good or for ill. And when folks use their power to hurt us, it can be hard to turn that around and just “shake off the dust” (Matthew 10:14). But it is my prayer, for all of us, that we will rely on our dove power, and that we will “be brave enough to be kind." [2]

Amen.

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* — Dear reader, you can peruse excellent statistics and reporting on this from mappingpoliceviolence.org and the Washington Post's Fatal Force.

God-for-us, God-with-us, God-in-us—A Sermon for Trinity Wednesday

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always. 

Here we are, at the end of the year. And what a year it has been!  Last September seems like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it? We’ve celebrated together and we’ve mourned together, singing and praying and eating and laughing our way through. We’ve learned new things—some we like, some we don’t like—about who we are and what we’re capable of. You’ve studied so hard you can’t believe any more information can fit into your brain, or that you can type any more words than you already have, or work any more hours than you already have. And yet, somehow, you will. 

Shall we take some of our patented finals week deep breaths?

Okay, so, this week, our liturgical calendar brings the focus to the Holy Trinity, our favorite Christian paradox. God the three in one, one in three. We name God the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. We name God the Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. We have countless names that could go on this list—Savior, Rock, Shepherd, Prince of Peace, King of Kings, Source of Life, Fountain of Mercy, Wisdom, Healer, Mother, Advocate, I imagine you have a favorite or two. Our scripture and our hymns are full of these images and metaphors and names for God. Are there any I left out that you love?

Trinitarian monotheism is a critical component of our Lutheran Christian theological heritage. Councils have been called, creeds have been written, heretics have been burned, and wars have been fought over this and other doctrines of our church. You may be a person who is very concerned with orthodoxy—and you are not alone—and so you are committed to understanding the sticking point of the Son being “begotten, not made, of one being with the father” in the words of our Nicene Creed. Or perhaps you are drawn to the Gospel According to John, in which it is written than “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the word was God” (John 1:1).

You may be unsure what any of that is that I’ve just said, and are pretty okay wrapping your head around this—God the Creator, Jesus the Christ, and the Holy Spirit are fine by you. Tonight, I find myself closer to this camp. Yes, I have a seminary education and so am technically proficient in explaining that the Holy Trinity is consubstantial, and that the words “person” and “substance” in their ancient languages are not quite direct translations to our clumsy English. I could point you toward the writings of Martin Luther and many others about the delicate intricacies of this divine dance.

But several years ago, a pastor of mine reminded me that the Holy Trinity is not merely a complex theological concept to be comprehended, but a relational reality to be lived. God-for-us, God-with-us, God-in-us. [1]

And so I wonder about how this three-in-one and one-in-three thing really works. Is it like a high school group project, where everyone gets the same grade even though only one member of the group really did any work? Or is it like a 3-on-3 basketball team, where each player has distinct roles toward the same ends? There’s an old quotation, often erroneously attributed to Benjamin Franklin, that “the best committee is a committee of three, where two are absent.” Is this how the persons of the Trinity feel about one another? Or are they like singers, harmonizing beautifully in three parts? Perhaps. 

It is awesome—and by that I mean the slang of my Southern California home and the literal inspiring of awe—that God relates to us in these varied ways. God created this universe and everything in it. God came among us, his beloved creation, as one of us. God continues to move through us and inspire us.

We need not be able to explain why or how this is so in order to respond to it.

This week’s gospel text is from Matthew’s account of the life of Jesus; we often call this story the Great Commission. The risen Christ stands before the disciples, once again, and says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:18-20a). But just a moment before, the text tells us that, upon seeing the risen Christ, the disciples did two things: worshipped him, and doubted. Classic. 

Even these 11 men, who had spent years with Jesus, are not 100% sure what they’re seeing and hearing. They know him, and when he says “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” they exchange glances like, “is this real life?”

But here’s the thing. They still do it. They go out and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them.

They remember the commandments that were given to them in the Torah and emphasized by Jesus. They remember the way he healed the broken and bleeding; they remember the way he preached good news to the poor and liberation to the captive; they remember the way he led them through the storm; they remember the way he cast out demons and raised people from the dead; they remember his life, death, and resurrection. They eat and drink together, in remembrance of him.

For the disciples, and so for us, being a member of the body of Christ is not an intellectual exercise, but a way of life. Yes, we are called to love our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind—here at UC Davis there is no question that you are reveling in this deep usage of our minds. The task set before us, dear ones, is not to “fashion a homiletical proof of the Trinity...but rather to profess the love of God in Christ.” [2]

Trinity Sunday—or in our case, Trinity Wednesday—isn’t about diving into deep, convoluted complexities. We’re headed back to basics.

Our scripture this week draws us back to the creation of the universe, when God called it all good. And when God, in the plural, said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness” and called each of us forth, in turn, beloved.

As we go out into the world, we need not affix a button to our lapel that says “official trinitarian” on it. We need not prove our theological chops by dissecting the creeds, line by line. We are called, much more directly, to love our God, and love our neighbors as ourselves. We are called to be co-creators with God the Father, co-conspirators with our lady Wisdom.

Our sending hymn tonight is one that is near and dear to my heart. It’s not a traditional Trinity hymn, but it’s a traditional “see you later” hymn—when people graduated from seminary at PLTS and moved out of the student apartments, we would all gather in the parking lot to send them off and sing this song. Sometimes at 6:00 in the morning. Sometimes it was more beautiful than others. Tonight, we’re going to sing it because we are going our separate ways. Some of us will see each other again very soon. Some of us will see each other again in a long while. Some of us may never see each other again in this life.

But the song is called “God Be With You ‘Till We Meet Again” for a reason. We will all meet again, whether that’s tomorrow morning when you meet in the kitchen because you are housemates; whether that’s this weekend when you see each other downtown; whether that’s next fall when you come back to Davis for a new school year; whether that’s many months from now, when you come home to Davis after a year abroad; whether that’s in several years when you plan a reunion; whether that’s, as the song goes, when “we meet at Jesus’s feet.”

God will be with us until we meet again. God will always be with us. Jesus promised us, in this story from Matthew, that he is always with us, “even to the end of the age.” Whatever comes our way, wherever we go, whoever we become, the Holy Trinity is the promise that God is for us, God is with us, God is in us.

Hallelujah! Amen.