The Park Road Pulpit

  Sermons from Park Road Baptist Church

      Russ and Amy Jacks Dean, Pastors

Greetings and Grace

Hebrews 13.1-8, 15-16

Russ Dean, September 2, 2001

            Two weeks ago at Lake Greenwood in South Carolina, we were joined on our vacation by two sets of seminary friends. One couple brought two kids from Black Mountain. The other hauled three boys and a dog all the way from Kansas City, MO. They spent eighteen-and-a-half hours in a van, and for what? To spend five days in a small house with seven children, under the age of seven!? “What’s vacation about that?” you ask?

            It is the best of what vacation should be – but for the six adults it mostly begins about 10:00 p.m. After the kids are in bed, the kitchen table becomes a sacred site. A place where sharing and fellowship, monologue and dialogue, laughter and tears nourish our souls. One night we struggled with one of the couples who have not yet found a church to call home. They have chosen to stay out of church since their last move, more than three years ago, rather than to subject their children to shallow theology and oppressive religious language. But as their children grow, they want them in church. They know they need a community. They know we cannot be “Christian” alone.

            So, the mother, intensely interested in finding community brings to the table a proposal. “I may have found a church,” she says. “A church that preaches justice and equality, not hellfire. That seems to value what we value. A church whose theology seems open and engaging. And it’s just two miles from home.”

“Sounds great,” we say… “So what’s the problem?”

Pause… “It’s Mormon.”

A momentary hush falls across the room as we begin processing. And then a grin comes over several faces -- what a great conversation! For the next several hours, we struggle, together. We sympathize. We agonize. We deliberate. We question. We disagree. And the issue that becomes central in our debate is family. What does it mean to be in a “family of faith?” Can a Mormon church be even a temporary “home” for these Baptist friends? And, most importantly, if the father stands firm in his refusal to attend a Mormon church, what this say to their children? “Daddy won’t go to church with us”?

This was a great conversation – but it was not meant for a cocktail party. It would have been impossible over the internet. A conference call would not have worked. But, the debate survived the interruptions of crying children and trips to the coffee maker and refrigerator… because of the table. We kept coming back. To the table.

In my own home, the table had a similar gravity. Even in the hectic high school years, most mornings we shared breakfast as a family, and many evenings we were together for dinner. And my parents loved to entertain guests, especially on Sundays and holidays, so our table was often crowded – because of the strangers in our midst.

I have a vague memory of a maid sitting there, on one of those heart-pine benches, which had been fashioned by an old craftsman in my dad’s first church. I can’t remember her name, but I remember my mother insisted that she not eat on the porch. So, she sat at our table. Uncomfortable. Out-of-place. Tentative. She would not consent to eat with our family, so she sat alone. I was too young to know that in Virginia, in most white homes in the late ‘60’s, a maid would not have been invited to the table. But my parents’ table has always been a place of welcome. And so it was for her.

The Table has always been a sacred place.

The writer of the book of Hebrews instructs his readers, “let mutual love continue” and, he continues with equal emphasis, “do not neglect to show hospitality… to strangers.” (In his native Greek tongue, his words demonstrate the kinship of his thought: philadelphia, is mutual love (“brotherly love”) and philoxenia is love for the stranger. (You may know the word “xenophobia” – fear of strangers. philaxenia is the “love of strangers.”) The list of ethical imperatives found here at the end of the book begins with this exhortation to philadelphia and philaxenia.  It is a command to show hospitality: Open your hearts. Open your homes. Welcome strangers into your midst. Lead with love.

In practicing hospitality, many have entertained… God… without knowing it!

In her book Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, Christine Pohl reminds us that hospitality was at the heart of the identity and life of the early church.[i] She calls it “central to the meaning of the gospel.” In an environment of persecution, a Christian minority would not have survived without hospitality. Today, Pohl observes, we “confront strangers on a massive scale,” yet hospitality “has been largely eclipsed.” So she offers a challenge:

“If we use hospitality as a lens through which to examine our homes, churches, jobs, schools, health care, and politics, might we see them differently? Can we make the places which shape our lives and in which we spend our days more hospitable?”

Hospitality does not mean bringing total strangers from the streets into your own bedrooms, or giving them the keys to the car. But there are many ways to show hospitality. How many “strangers” do you confront in a day’s time? In a city like Charlotte, the number is probably staggering. And, how “hospitable” are you to them? Let me suggest to you that one of the best ways you can practice hospitality these days is by introducing folks to your own church.

I can tell you that I have never, personally, been as interested in “evangelism” as I am here. (There’s a certain, beautiful irony to that, isn’t there!?) I want strangers to know the God of Park Road Baptist Church. I want strangers to know you. I want strangers to believe in the God who believes in us, and to experience here what my family and I experience here. And as much as we talk about budgets and growth, please hear me say that I am not interested in strangers for their statistics or for their money – I want strangers to become a part of a family called Park Road Baptist Church, because I believe the Gospel -- the good news of Jesus Christ – is being lived, right here, right now.

Amy and I continue to praise you for your “hospitality.” You are a warm and welcoming congregation. Nothing is more necessary to the Gospel, nor more important in the world in which we live, today. But in her book, Christine Pohl also reminds us that “hospitality” is a discipline that must be practiced. A discipline which should be fine-tuned through continued exercise.

On our last Super Sunday, Amy introduced a program called “Greetings and Grace” to our Deacons. Even as wonderful as you are, there are still some of you here who do not know even the people sitting on your pew this morning. (Shortly after I moved to my last church, I was in a Deacons’ meeting and, trying to learn everyone’s name there, I whispered to the man sitting next to me, “Who is that across the room?” This veteran Deacon said to me in a curious tone, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that man before in my whole life!” Deacons cannot serve together if they are strangers to each other.) And we cannot be a “family of faith” if we cannot, at the very least, call each other’s names.

“Greetings and Grace” will put together one Deacon (and his or her family), with two other church families, and a new member or a new family of this congregation. How many of our 27 new members who have joined since last October, have you met? We need to be more intentional about offering hospitality to these “strangers,” so that they will be comfortable to sit with us at our table. “Greetings and Grace” will join four families around a table, for a simple meal and the fellowship that naturally takes place any time that people and food come together!

Amy and I are praying for our Deacons. We are praying that they will truly lead us in this effort in hospitality, because we believe that this kind of hospitality will change our church. We also believe that hospitality is the only thing that can truly change our world.

            “Greetings and Grace” combines “dialogue and digestion.” Speech and action. And it is this combination of Word and Deed, that the writer of Hebrews concludes, is the only sacrifice, which is continually “pleasing to God” (Heb. 13.16). Let us greet one another, that we might learn the subtle ways of grace, and be emboldened to show hospitality even to the true strangers all around us.

            How open is your table?

May it be so! Amen.