Fourth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 8A, June 28, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 8 A - June 28.2020

Jeremiah 28:5-9
Romans 6:12-23
Matthew 10:40-42

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Three weeks ago, we painfully decided to suspend our ministry of hospitality for another several months. Welcoming retreatants in our Guest House and Monastery is one of our main ministries. Who do we get to be when our ministries change upon us?

In the last few months, we have had to explore what it means to be hospitable when dozens of new guests do not stream through our open door every week. We have worshipped without in-person visitors. We have had the great privilege of continuing to worship with our community of brothers.

We have also had to be welcoming of our moods and emotions in these times of pandemic and social upheaval. Like all our friends, families and associates, we have had to deal with fear, worry, anxiety, loss, sadness, frustration and anger.

We have had to welcome reality, in part because it offered us no choice. But we  Brothers have gotten to do it in the company of one another.

We have had to exercise compassionate welcome on these brothers of ours. We do that as a matter of course, but even more in these trying weeks and months.

And we have done a pretty good job so far, I might add.

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But in today’s gospel passage, Jesus calls us to be hospitable to those who visit us on his behalf.

So how do we welcome the prophets, the righteous persons and the little ones in these times? How do we welcome Jesus in each other? How will we welcome people in person again eventually? How do we welcome people in remote and mediated ways?

As welcoming others into our home has temporarily become too problematic to entertain, we have sought to extend hospitality in other ways. Most of this has occurred on online platforms be it Facebook livestream, Zoom retreats or YouTube videos. 

We have shared some of our worship. We have shared some of our prayers and some of our study. But we have also spent more quality time reaching out individually to family, friends and associates. This has happened by phone, by email, by text messaging and video-conferencing. 

I have found myself spending more time on WhatsApp with Belgian friends lately. God knows when I will be able to see them in person. I have found myself checking in on monastery associates and friends whom I would normally have seen in the Guest House at some point or another.

In a way, we have found workarounds to our missing in-person hospitality ministry. We will all be glad to go back to shaking hands and giving a hug when the time comes. But in the meantime, we are coping as best we can.

So Jesus meets us in our brothers and sisters, here at home first and foremost. But Jesus also meets us through the friend or stranger who comes to us through the internet.

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I liked what The Rev. Dr. Emily Townes, an African-American Christian social ethicist and theologian had to say about today’s gospel passage.

“Compassionate welcome means approaching each other through God. This is how we recognize that genuine human relationships emerge from putting the grace-filled hospitality of God’s love at the center of our lives and at the center of our relationships.

God’s hospitality teaches us that close, loving, enduring relationships are to be valued along with distant, occasional, and abrasive ones -- as difficult as the latter ones may be.

This lively, and sometimes maddening, dynamic is the welcome Jesus speaks of in today’s passage. Further, if we live into this welcome with each other, we will find the rich rewards of discipleship found in God.”

Emily Townes

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I appreciate The Rev. Townes’ realistic talking about hospitality. She calls it “sometimes maddening.” And we go, “Yep! Been there!” And she insists that God’s hospitality is to be embodied in even the episodic, short or even brusque interactions.

We are to practice a compassionate welcome with the lovely and the not-immediately-so-lovely people. They are all our chances to welcome Christ as he is in his immense variety and diversity.

In the months to come, may we continue to identify Christ and welcome him as he comes, even as a little one, whether that be in the mirror, through the door, on the phone line or through the ethernet cable.

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May we continue to enjoy the rich rewards of compassionate hospitality throughout the covid-19 pandemic and beyond.

Amen