Beeson Podcast, Episode 377 Christy Harper January 30, 2018 https://www.beesondivinity.com/podcast/2018/Sabbath-Hospitality Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now, your host, Timothy George. Timothy George: Welcome to today's Beeson podcast. You know, one of the great formative figures at Beeson in our reading, our study, is Dietrich Bonhoeffer. A few years ago, we had a whole semester of chapel services that focused around the theme Finkenwalde in the School of Bonhoeffer. We're going to listen to a message, a sermon that was preached during that series by our own Christy Harper. Christy is the director of alumni relations at Beeson Divinity School. She also works with Vicky Gaston, the curator of Hodges Chapel, does wonderful ministry in our school. This was a sermon that she developed on Sabbath hospitality. Let me just say she would mad at me if I didn't say that she's married to Chris and they are the parents of a darling beautiful baby girl named Ruth Evangelin. Here is a mother who loves Jesus Christ and loves the church and can preach the gospel. You're going to hear it in this sermon on Sabbath hospitality. Dr. Smith. Robert Smith Jr: Christy presents a message on hospitality and community. A sermon must have then, George, a sense of unity and she takes and unifies the interpretation of the text and the application of the text. Throughout the sermon, this union is inextricably tied together. She speaks with vocal conviction. You can tell this topic is very, very close to her heart. She teaches doctrine through the lens of Biblical narrative, obviously. In this case, it's parable. It's Luke 14. It's the parables of Jesus. It's a prophetic word. It's a prophetic voice that she has afflicting the contemporary congregation. She says to us, we're like the Pharisees in Luke 14. We're not far from the idea of spiritual blindness on our part as well. Her preaching is to inform but really to transform us. It addresses the inauthentic interaction of hearer to hearer when it comes to Biblical integrity. She supplies a visual of hospitality, which is powerful. She says hospitality is seeing each other through the eyes of Christ. She says what she sees but she also sees what she says. She bookends her sermons. She opens up with the idea of hospitality in terms of community and party. She ends with an inference that points to the marriage supper of the lamb. She furnishes eight snapshots of the Luke and table fellowship and she takes and treats this message canonically. Deuteronomy five, Luke 14, Revelation 19, Revelation 21. In preaching, her main pericope is this idea of interpretively walking through each verse of the passage so that she ties it up and ends up in the end with eschaton, real hospitality when it has reached its zenith in all of eternity. Timothy George: You know, Dr. Smith, this is a sermon that's exegetically sound substantial, but it also is a challenge. Robert Smith Jr: It is. Timothy George: I think you're going to be blessed by listening to this sermon by Christy Harper. She and her husband, Chris, are active members at Shades Valley Community Church near our campus, and we're going to go to our own chapel, Hodges Chapel, and hear her preach on Sabbath hospitality. Speaker 4: A reading from Deuteronomy chapter five verses 12 through 15. "Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day." The word of the Lord. Speaker 5: A reading from Revelation 19:6-9 and 21:1-4. "Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, 'Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure' For the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, 'Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.' And he said to me, 'These are the true words of God.'" "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I saw a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." This is the word of the Lord. Christy Harper: It is my joy to be with you in this way in our community this morning. I have felt your prayers. I'm as prayed up as you could possibly get I think with all of the prayers and all of the encouragement you sent to me over the weekend and today. I'm not standing alone and I'm very aware of that. I thank you and I bless you. As we continue our series with Bonhoeffer and his life in the seminary at Finkenwalde, we're looking today at the theme of hospitality and community. I think you would agree it's pretty hard to separate the two. If you're going to host a party at your house, you kind of need to be there. If you're going go to a wedding, you actually need to go and eat the cake and dance in the awkward line dances. You can get a feel for the day. We just celebrated a wedding. There was some awkward dancing, mostly by Beeson folk that were there at our wedding, but it was wonderful and great. You have to be there. You have to be present. Hospitality and community go hand in hand. I would argue that our Scripture is one big story of hospitality and community. In Genesis, we have a God who creates, creates a home, he creates his people. He comes and he walks face to face with his people. In Revelation, we have a God who comes back, has promised to bring us home, face to face, as it always should be. We have 66 books from Genesis to Revelation about the story of hospitality, community, of being a blessing. In the Gospel of Luke, we have this robust theology of the hospitality of Jesus. As you go through the Gospel of Luke, there's eight moments in this narrative where he's sharing a meal. I think Luke does this very intentionally. We have Luke five where the newly appointed disciple Matthew throws a party. There's a meal. His friends are there. Jesus is there. The Pharisees are there. Luke seven, Jesus goes to Simon the Pharisee's home. While he's there, he heals a woman with a very dark past and he shows Simon, his host, just how dark he truly is. In Luke nine, he feeds the over 5,000. That's quite a hosting job. We didn't have nearly that many people at our wedding. I'm really thankful because that's a lot of people to plan for and feed for and that's like herding cats. You don't want to do that. That's a lot of people. Luke 10, one of the most famous stories of hospitality, Martha and Mary and Jesus in their home. Luke 11, Jesus goes to another Pharisee's home and his table conversation probably wouldn't go on the list of how to make great table conversation and get invited back. He uses some very bold words and he exposes the pride and hypocrisy of his host and those with him. Then, our story here in Luke 14, he goes to another Pharisee's home. We jump ahead to Luke 22. He celebrates his last meal, the Last Supper, the Passover with his disciples. In Luke 24, there's two mini meals, you might call them. He walks with the disciples on the Emmaus road and he breaks bread. He eats with them. Then the passage following, he appears to some of the disciples who haven't seen him yet after his resurrection. They're not quite sure what to do with him so he does a very humble normal thing. He eats in front of them. Table fellowship and hospitality are intricately woven into his DNA. It's who he is. We find him at the table. We find him healing. We find him teaching, offering hospitality. It's who he was. I think Luke points out that he does this often with a group that we like to criticize quite often, the Pharisees. Over half, actually half the meals in Luke, he's with the Pharisees. I think he does this quite intentionally. The Pharisees are the ones who have poured their lives into knowing what the law says and how to instruct others to do it. They've given their life to this work, but they've also lost sight of the heart of the law. Instead of bearing up with, they put burdens on the people. Jesus goes to them and he exposes how much they too are in need of healing and a savior, which brings us to our passage this morning in Luke 14 verses one through 14. You're welcome to turn there and read it with me. I'll be reading from the ESV so you're welcome to follow along in your pew Bible or just listen to the word. "One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully. And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy. And Jesus responded to the lawyers and the Pharisees, saying, 'Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?' But they remained silent. Then he took him and healed him and sent him away. And he said to them, 'Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?' And they could not reply to these things. Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, 'When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.' He said also to the man who had invited him, 'When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.'” This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. We find Jesus going to dinner. Church is done and it's dinnertime. Many of you probably grew up and maybe after going to church, you had a family in your home for Sunday dinner. My mom was great at this. The pot roast would be in the crock pot and we would come home and share a meal with either church members in our home or extended family. It was always a great time. Then the nap came and that was glorious. Jesus is heading to dinner on the Sabbath. He's coming from worship, the same place that his host and the guests that are coming to dinner, they've been there too. Let's remind ourselves. What's the purpose of the Sabbath? We heard from Deuteronomy five early this morning that Moses is reminding the Israelites they keep and remember the Sabbath because they were slaves and are now set free. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. The Sabbath is not for putting others in bondage. It is for freedom. It's for extending rest and release to virtually all of creation from Deuteronomy five, 12, and 13. It's for giving rest. It's for declaring I have everything I need because my God is going to take care of me and be the provider for everything that I have. It's a gift. Sabbath is a gift given by God to his people. It should be treated as a gift. Sabbath is a theme that's opened through Luke's gospel as well. We find Jesus on the Sabbath in Luke four declaring Isaiah's prophecy that the messiah has come, has been fulfilled, and he is there to give released, to give liberty. Now, after he does the sermon, his hometown wants to kill him, which is not a good hospitality moment for the [inaudible 00:14:58] of Nazareth. No points there. He declares, "Who is the Lord of the Sabbath?" He is. He heals on the Sabbath. Two other times already in Luke he has healed and he has released, proving himself, "I have the power to do this." The Pharisees have seen this so they're watching him carefully we're told in verse one. They've seen him at work on the Sabbath before. By this point, they know they can expect something from Jesus on the Sabbath. What does he do? On the way to dinner, verse two, there was a man before him who had dropsy. We would call this today edema, a condition where the body has too much fluid, joints are swelling to the point of pain. Outwardly, you look very full like you have too much, but the irony of this disease is that you're still thirsty even though your body is full to the point of pain and your joints are swelling, usually because of something deeper going on inside your body that's not well. You're still thirsty. In verse three, Jesus responds. It's an interesting way of putting this verse. He responds to the lawyers and Pharisees and saying, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?" They haven't said anything. They haven't said anything out loud, but he responds because he can see the heart. He can see what they're thinking. He can see how they're perceiving or maybe not even noticing this man before him who is in bondage. He responds and says, "What should I do? Is this lawful or is it not?" They have no response. I love how quickly Jesus acts towards this man. The Greek conveys [inaudible 00:16:47] very speedily. He took. He healed. He released. It was done. He was free. He doesn't make a spectacle or an example out of him. He releases him. Then he turns to them again and says, "Which of you, having a son or an ox that's fallen into a well on a Sabbath, will not immediately pull him out?" If your son is in danger and about to die, you're going to rescue him. You're not going to think twice. It'd be ridiculous for you to say, "I'm sorry, son. Should have fallen in a well on a day other than the Sabbath. I've got to prove my piety and how moral I am. Sorry." You wouldn't do it. It'd be ridiculous. It is this thing that Jesus is getting at. It is so wrong to deny people rest, release. He's showing them he's not the Sabbath rule breaker they are. They're the ones that are too blind to see how to fulfill the heart of the Sabbath, of how to trust that their Lord is the God who gives and the God who heals and the God who extends rest with his mighty hand and his outstretched arm. They are in just as much need of healing as the man that has just been healed. As we continue to think about this, we're not too far removed from this kind of attitude of spiritual blindness in our own culture. Bonhoeffer experienced this as well. He was a student at Union Seminary in New York City and this was the heyday of preachers [inaudible 00:18:23] men who were skilled and knowing how to preach, beautiful orators, eloquent, but they had no heart. They wouldn't say that Jesus was Lord, that the Scriptures were truly authoritative, that they were true. He experienced preaching such as this. Where's the gospel? Why don't they preach about the whole gospel, about Jesus, about sin, about death, about resurrection? Where is it? He saw this side of Sabbath hospitality, but then he also saw a very redemptive side, a side that changed him and shaped his soul. He had a friend named Frank Fisher who was a seminary student, an African-American seminary student with him. He took to Abyssinian Baptist Church, an African-American congregation. This German pastor, not even quite a pastor yet, but a German student going into a very foreign context and they showed him hospitality. They welcomed him. They fed him through the word, through their worship. They invited him into their homes for meals. They got to know him. They shaped him. They gave him a place to serve. He taught a young boy Sunday school class. Any of you who have taught elementary or middle schoolers know. Bless you. You are amazing people. Bless you. Sabbath hospitality. It shaped him. I think that's why the spirituals may have been so important to him and why he took these records of their worship back to Germany and through his travels because he couldn't be there in spirit and body, but he could be there in spirit. He could worship. They shaped him. They molded him. Sabbath hospitality welcomes in even the people who don't look like they belong or he would say you can go somewhere else. You don't fit here. As we move to the table conversation and the teaching, we have to keep verses seven through 14 intricately connected to this healing on the Sabbath that's preceded it. They are not separate events. We have to keep in mind this is on the Sabbath, today, they've just seen this healed, and now they're going to the table. These two things are intricately linked. He tells a parable when they get to the house and people are starting to take their seats. It's the Pharisees who have watched Jesus closely in verses one through six and now it's his turn to watch and observe. He takes it all in when he sees how they're jostling for positions. He addresses the guests first. As a guest, your role is to be a recipient. You are dependent upon the nature and the grace of your host. You didn't invite yourself. Usually, you got invited. To be a guest in this culture, both Jewish and Roman culture, was to acknowledge that you were someone the host valued. You had a place at his table. Being a guest revolved completely around your social standing and the opportunity for a power play. If you could just puff yourself up a little bit more, if you could be invited to this party, to this gathering, people would see you as a person of importance. It mattered where you sat. If you're 10 places down from your host, chances are you're probably not going to have a chance to make a good impression or find out what it is that he could gain from you and vise versa. The parable Jesus is telling is threatening their whole system of social status and social cues, per se. At the beginning, his words might sound kind of proverbial. When you're invited to a feast, you don't want to be shamed. You don't want to jeopardize your social standing. After all, it's your host that invited you so sit back. Let him be the one to give you the honor. Let him tell everybody else just how important you are. Let him do the work. I don't need to act like I need the highest seat even though it's what I really want. I'll let him give it to me and everybody know how amazing, how important, how worthy I am. Okay, that might have been enough for the Pharisees and those listening to say, "Good advice," but then he has to end it by saying, "For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted." Jesus is saying your pride, your need to assert yourself, your need to be recognized by your peers, your need to be more is going to cripple you. It's going to bring you down. It's not going to work. Those hidden motives, those things that you think nobody else sees, you look completely authentic on the outside, but your insides are thirsty, gnawing for more. It's going to cripple you. Jesus, the Lord, has shown them on the way to dinner that the man who was sick and who was broken, who was least, was greater than they are. This parable, I think, finds echoes in one of the most beautiful passages of Scripture, Philippians 2:1-11, "Do nothing from rivalry or conceit but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Look also to the interests of others. Have this mind among you, not the fear of other's opinions, not the fear of trying to figure out how valuable you are, have the mind of Christ who humbled himself to death, even death on a cross. And therefore God the Father has highly exalted him Lord over all." If the Lord can be humble, if he can lower himself, so shouldn't you. What an exhausting way to live life if you're constantly worried if someone is going to upstage you, or become more important than you, or that you're not doing enough, that you're not worth enough. It puts fear into the way that we relate to each other. It doesn't extend true hospitality. It doesn't allow true community. If someone else's church grows bigger than yours, are you okay? If somebody else's church has more resources than yours, are you okay? If somebody else has their thesis picked up and they can go do their dissertation, are you okay? If somebody else gets the promotion, are you okay? If you see all these Instagrammable moments on your newsfeed and Twitter and Facebook, are you okay? How terrifying that is to constantly be wondering and jostling for the greatest. Those are natural fears. I think we all have them. We're all wondering, "How worthy am I? What's my value? How do people perceive me?" What if we were to offer up those fears to the only person who can take them? What if he were to reach down with that mighty hand and that outward stretched arm and give us his grace and his humility and his love to trust that he is the giver and the provider and the opener of doors, the relationship giver, the peacemaker, the healer, the eyes to see the world around us as he would see it? In Sabbath hospitality, when you're the guest, your only job is to receive and receive it with gratitude because you didn't earn it. Surrendering these fears allow us to actually be present with one another and to see each other and to trust one another. This is a freeing joyous gift of hospitality and community. Bonhoeffer in Life Together picks up on this. He has a section on the day with others. In this section, there's a part about table fellowship and sharing a meal and hospitality. He writes the purpose of the fellowship at the table is to be a festive quality, as a constantly recurring reminder that at the midst of our everyday work, God rested after his work. He reminds us as the Sabbath as the meaning and the goal of the week. Hospitality, sharing a meal, breaking bread, sharing with each other's burdens and sorrows, seeing the world around us, seeing each other with the eyes of Christ so it points us to joy and it points us to worship. In verses 12 through 14, it's the host's turn. He's first addressed the guests and now he has words for his host. He says, "When you give a dinner or a banquet, don't invite your friends, your brothers, your relatives, your rich neighbors because they will also invite you in return and you will be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind and you will be blessed, because they can't repay you. But you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just." According to the social cues and the codes of hospitality of this culture, hospitality wasn't just a chance for the guest to be uplifted and become more important, it was also a power play on the move of the host. By inviting the people, he can choose who it is that's going to benefit him, who it is that makes him look even grander and more important and more powerful than he might actually be. He's not offering his guests a chance to rest and receive. He's manipulating them. He's putting them in a position where they have to repay them. It's not rest. It's not release. Instead, Jesus says to him you commit social suicide and you invite the people that can not possibly even come close to benefiting you or giving you something that you want. Go invite the people who wouldn't have known how to get to your house because they wouldn't have even known that you saw them. Go find those people. Find the people that you would otherwise deem as less, on the fringes, and of no value. Go get them. Why? Because you gain nothing from this. This is not beneficial to you at all except there's going to be a resurrection. He's going to come. No wonder Hitler had a problem with Jesus and with Scripture and with this passage in particular as well. Nothing about this passage would fit the message of Nazi Germany or the move to create a German church that would say Hitler is lord. We determine who is worthy and who is valuable and who is not. Nothing about this bodes well for a successful dictatorship, but it does bode well for looking like the Lord of the Sabbath and the Lord of all creation, because Sabbath hospitality loves sacrificially because it's not focused on instant gratification or a bigger following. It's focused on inviting people to the table so they can meet Jesus, so they can receive the food and the drink that's going to nourish their soul and quench the thirst that they have and the longing they have, the question of value and of worth that they have that answers it in Jesus. It's hospitality that's framed around the truth that Jesus gave us a home, he is home with us now through his Spirit, and he is taking us home. Sabbath hospitality points us towards eternity and it doesn't stay isolated. As we go on through the chapter, the table conversation continues, he tells another parable about the wedding feast. A host throws a grand feast and he invites all of these people, but they start having excuses. What does he do? He says, "Go out to the hedges, to the roads, and bring in the people who would never have known unless somebody had gone and told them they could come. Bring them in. Go out." Sabbath hospitality doesn't stay isolated. For Bonhoeffer and his seminarians, they didn't stay isolated either. It would have been easy to retreat fully from the mess and from the pain and the suffering that was going around all around them, but they didn't. Bethege, Bonhoeffer's friend and biographer, writes about there were times when the community would take in people who had been in prison, people who had been injured and hurt, who didn't have a place to go. They opened up their space, which wasn't a whole lot. They didn't have a commons like ours. They didn't have a space like ours, but they shared it. They welcomed people in with the presence of Jesus. There were people in the neighboring towns of the seminary who needed a pastor. They needed somebody to come minister to them. They would go out. They would go be the body. They didn't just stay and they didn't just study even though that was important. In our own community of Birmingham, we have some of the richest neighborhoods in the United States as well as some of the most torn apart. What does Sabbath hospitality do with that? How does it do more than just create beautiful spaces, more restaurants, even though I love them. They're delicious. We have great food. How does it go beyond that? How does it show the presence of Jesus? For students, as you're here, how do you engage in Sabbath hospitality? How do you go beyond the safety of Beeson and the safety of theological debates with your peers? Even though that's formative, it's still safe. How do you go and show the presence of Jesus? How are you being hospitable? How are you sharing in community with one another? How are you releasing your fear of value and of worth and letting God replace it with his word? He is home with you. He is present and he is going to come home. On this Sabbath day in our passage, Jesus taught a group of Pharisees about what community in the kingdom looks like. On another Sabbath day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer did the same thing. On April 8, 1945, he offered a service for some of his Catholic cellmates in prison. Sabbath hospitality. His texts for the day were Isaiah 53 and 1 Peter 1:3, "By his stripes, we are healed. We have a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." Even on his last moments, he was modeling Sabbath hospitality, giving of himself, pointing people to Jesus, reminding them God is the giver. He is the restorer. He is the resurrection. He had modeled a life of hospitality as a theologian, as a pastor, all these things that we know him so well as, as a brother, as a fiance, as a son, as a seminary director. He knew the cost of following Jesus and he knew his Lord. He knew he was going home and he is home. For us, as we're still here on this side of eternity, Sabbath hospitality still remains for us to give and to show, but it's always pointing us towards our home. It's always pointing us towards eternity. Jesus used a wedding feast as an example in this parable. He's pointing us to the wedding feast when he comes home when we're the guests and we're the participants and we're the receivers of all that he has done for us and he's back with us home. Sabbath hospitality is always pointing us to the hope of the resurrection and the joy that we have and practicing that with us now as a body and always for eternity. I pray for us as a Beeson community and a larger Birmingham community that we live that, that we start asking the Lord of the Sabbath, "How do you want us to live? How do you want us to be in community with each other? How do you want us to release our fears? How are you replacing it with your hope and with your joy?" Let's pray. Father, I thank you that you created all things and you created Sabbath and you gave it as a promise that you are with us and that our hearts are longing for you, and that they are filled by you. I pray for our students and for our staff and our faculty and our friends and our churches, Lord, for those of us who are scattered all over the world as alumni and people who are serving you. Would you strengthen us and would you encourage us for the days ahead, to not retreat, to not stay isolated, but to go out, to be humble and to be honest with each other, to invite each other to see more of Jesus? We love you and we trust you. In your Son's name that we pray, amen. Announcer: You've been listening to the Beeson podcast with host Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson podcast at our website BeesonDivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson podcast. https://www.beesondivinity.com/podcast/2018/Sabbath-Hospitality beeson-podcast-episode-377-harper_01 Page 8 of 10 Need Help? mailto:support@rev.com Get this transcript with table formatting