Hospitality, a sermon based on Deuteronomy 24: 10-18 preached on July 16, 2023

Today, we continue this summer sermon series on spiritual gifts. Now, we’ve stepped it up by adding a spiritual gifts inventory that you can take on the church website or in a printed version available near the main desk outside the Great Hall. There’s more information in your bulletin about how to participate. This inventory will help you identify the spiritual gifts that God has given you, and according to the inventory, mine is encouragement, so let me encourage you to go take the inventory. Each person in this Sanctuary has received gifts from God. It brings us joy to put those gifts to work. It makes our church stronger when you use your spiritual gifts to the glory of God. Having covered encouragement, discernment, artistic expression, generosity, and teaching, now we move to hospitality, which I believe is my father’s spiritual gift. My father can be a quiet man. He’s cerebral, but I remember how many times he noticed the people just on the outside of a group and invited them in. That’s what I’d like you to think about as we consider hospitality today. Who notices those on the outside and invites them in? When I watched my dad offer hospitality, it was to the kids on my baseball team who needed a ride to the game, or when a scout in my brother’s troop didn’t have the money to pay for the trip that everyone else was going on. My dad noticed those kids and stepped up to give him a ride and to pay his way. My dad, who was often my baseball coach, would have us leave the house early to pick up the players who were raised by moms with inflexible jobs or whose families had one car that someone else used to get back and forth to work. Whatever it was that would have prevented these guys from getting to practices or the games, my dad stepped in and helped, which meant that I had to help, too. Riding with him, I got to see for myself that not everyone lived in a house with a two-car garage, two parents, and money for the latest baseball cleats. Some of these guys would be waiting outside their houses for us, wanting to meet us before we could get close enough to see beyond the front door. They didn’t ever want us to go in their homes. They preferred to meet us outside. My dad would pick them up and take them back. If the game lasted until after dinner, then on the way home, we’d always stop to eat, and this is what I remember most clearly, so clearly that I can still see it, how after one of these games, one of my teammates who needed a ride to and from the game went with us to McDonald’s for dinner. He was so thankful that my dad paid. He thanked him again and again. Then, he savored each one of his McDonald’s chicken nuggets like it was a gourmet treat. I was used to eating out, so I had likely put away a box of twenty nuggets by the time this guy was on his third. Once I finished, I watched this guy slowly make each nugget last. Three bites per nugget. Deliberately chewing each bite. Taking the time to taste what he was eating. When we dropped him off at his home, I could imagine why he ate this way. I could imagine that for him, eating out at McDonald’s was something special. For me, it was just a quick meal with my dad. In fact, I was so used to him taking me out to eat and letting me order whatever I wanted, I wonder if I even thanked him. This teammate, on the other hand, had been denied what I took for granted: a ride to the game, a hot meal after, and a father to take him, so when he ordered nuggets with us, he took the time to enjoy my dad’s hospitality. My dad’s spiritual gift is hospitality. He notices people and invites them in. He notices the kid standing just on the edge of the group. He recognizes that not everyone has a parent who can drop everything to drive to baseball practice or who can afford each scout trip. Not everyone notices, and only years later did I come to understand why my dad was this way. Growing up, he was a scout, but his dad didn’t participate much. At one scout meeting, the scout master - it must have been Veteran’s Day or something - asked my grandfather, who had served in Korea, to come and speak to the troop. My dad wasn’t excited about having his father come to the troop meeting, and it all unfolded out just as he feared it would, for his father walked into the scout meeting drunk. The scout master covered for him and slowly walked him out of the meeting room while my dad watched. Can you imagine? It happened in front of all his friends and in his safe place. His dad nearly ruined a place where he could get away to feel like a normal kid. He never forgot that feeling of watching his dad escorted out of the scout meeting, so, in every teammate of mine who had it rough, with a mom who worked all the time and a dad out of the picture, I now know that he saw himself. The intention of our second Scripture lesson is the same. Our second Scripture lesson came from the book of Deuteronomy, and Deuteronomy is a difficult book to get excited about. However, Jesus quoted this book of the Bible nearly as much as He quoted His favorite book, the Psalms. We read in Deuteronomy that the foundation for treating the poor with equity is the reminder that: “You were a slave in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there.” Remember that you were a slave in Egypt. My dad was once the kid without an attentive father, and he never forgot it. He remembered what it felt like to be the boy without the money to do everything that the other boys were doing. He remembered what it was like to need a ride to practice and a meal after, so he provided them with hospitality. He made them feel more at home on the team or in the troop. He could remember what it felt like to be one of them. Memory, then, is a foundation for hospitality. Many of those who are hospitable remember what it was like to be stuck outside. So many of those who invite others in do so because they know what it feels like to need a warm welcome. One of my favorite stories about Flora Speed is what happened to her the first time she walked into this room. Her husband was the new pastor, about to preach his first sermon from this pulpit. Her kids were young and were probably dressed in matching outfits. They walked in together and sat down near the front, as a show of support, only after settling in, someone walked down the middle aisle, and, reaching the pew the Speeds were sitting in, announced, “That’s my pew.” Together, they stood up and made their way to the balcony, where they sat from that moment on, yet I can’t help imagining that one of the reasons Flora Speed welcomed so many into this church is that she remembered how uncomfortable her first Sunday was. Remember that you were once new here. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt. Do you remember? Do you remember what it was like to be poor? Do you remember what it was like to be young? Do you remember what it was like to be a teenager? This last week, I was a chaperone for our high school youth group. We went to the Montreat Youth Conference. Every year, Presbyterian high school students from all around the country go to Montreat. Hundreds were gathered in this great, big auditorium. I was looking around, remembering what it was like to be one of them. Do you remember? Now so much is different, but it’s also the same. The smell of body spray almost covers the smell of armpits. There are the kids who have been there before, who walk around like they own the place. Most of our group hadn’t been before. They were all nearly new. However, there was a young man going into 9th grade who was in a more awkward situation than any of our kids. He had just moved to a small town in Kentucky. He was the only one in his youth group. His mom heard about us and asked us to adopt him into our group, which we did, but I felt sorry for him because I didn’t expect our kids to let him in. Do you remember what it was like to be a teenager? You’re there with your friends from your youth group, who all go to the same church and live in the same town. When someone from another church and another town, whom no one knows, tries to fit in, it’s going to be an uphill climb, especially when it comes to Marietta kids. I was standing in line with another pastor who heard I was from Marietta. She said, “Oh, my husband’s from Marietta.” “Oh, yeah? Where did he go to high school?” I asked. “He went to Walton,” she said. “That’s not Marietta,” I responded. Of course, I’m much more hospitable now, but who cares if the pastor is nice. The pastor must be nice. What about the kids? When I heard about this kid from Kentucky wanting to be accepted by our group, I thought about how hard it was for kids on the other side of town to feel accepted in our youth group, much less a kid from another state. Only, I wasn’t thinking about how my father’s granddaughter is now in our youth group. Let me tell you, when I write down a name on my card, it will be Lily Evans and her friend Emma Grace Rutledge. They basically assaulted this kid from Kentucky with hospitality. They peppered him with so many questions, it was like he was a guest on Oprah. They found out that his mom is a pastor, he has a 12-year-old brother, and his last name is Evans, so Lily was calling him her long-lost twin. Sooner or later, they had more than let this guy in. From the outside looking in, you’d have thought he’d always been there. When we left for home, I looked in the rearview mirror and noticed he wasn’t there, I panicked, asking, “Lily, where’s your twin?” Remember that you were once on the outside. Remember that you were once the new kid. Remember that you were once a slave in Egypt. Remember that you were once lost. Remember that even after you’ve been found. Hospitality shares the same Latin root with the word “hospital,” which reminds me how those who are looking for a place are not so different from those who are injured. They’re both in need of something lifesaving, be it healing or community. Likewise, that word “hospitality” is also related to “hospice.” Jesus said, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” I quote that Scripture at most every funeral. The promise that, when we reach the end of our days, we will be welcomed matters. Knowing that He has prepared a place for you and me, that He will welcome us into the heavenly kingdom, helps us to understand that those who show hospitality here and now embody this Christlike quality. Who has offered it to you? Who showed you the hospitality of Jesus by welcoming you in? I’ll be writing down Lily and Emma Grace on my card this morning. Who will you write down? Who welcomed you when you were out in the cold? Who opened the door and let you come in? Who invited you into the group? Who has the power to make you feel like you belong? Who reminded you of Jesus, the One who will welcome us all into the Father’s house in the kingdom of heaven? Take just a moment and write his or her name down on your card. Now hold it up and keep it there for just a second. This summer, we aren’t saying the Apostles’ Creed like we usually do to affirm our faith. This summer, we are affirming our faith by reminding each other and ourselves that God is at work in our world. Look around to see that, in a world that can seem closed and inhospitable, God is at work among those who have been given the gift of hospitality. God is not dead, but at work in our world today. Halleluiah. Amen.

Evangelism - a sermon based on Acts 8: 26-40 preached on July 2, 2023

“Evangelism” is the title of today’s sermon. Are you nervous already? After the early service, I heard that our church once hosted an evangelism training. Years ago, a specialist came and trained those brave and willing members of the congregation who signed up. She began by asking: Do you know what all Christians and non-Christians have in common? The non-Christians are scared that someone is going to come and knock on their doors, and the Christians are scared that someone is going to ask them to. What is evangelism? Who among us has this gift of the Spirit? What good does it do? As you can tell by looking around the Sanctuary, this summer we’re preaching a series on spiritual gifts. So far, we’ve celebrated the gifts of encouragement, discernment, generosity, and artistic expression. Today is evangelism, and let’s start, not with what evangelism is, but with what evangelism isn’t. The opposite of evangelism is sharing the bad news. There is no need for us to take time to celebrate those who proclaim the bad news, who take it door to door, for those who share the bad news are a dime a dozen. We wake up, turn on the TV, and watch daily coverage of the bad news. Drinking our coffee while reading the headlines in any daily news source, there it is again. Go to the doctor, we’re scared we’ll hear it. Walking through life, we brace ourselves for it. All day long, everywhere we go, we hear about how the world is falling apart, how the good guys are losing ground, and young people are worse than ever. Have you heard how people love to share the bad news about young people? I hear folks talk about how young people are always on their phones. They don’t want to work. They’d rather be on facetime and tweet their tiktoks. Listen to this opinion piece, which could have appeared in any news outlet over the weekend: Children: they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. They no longer rise when elders enter the room, they contradict their parents and tyrannize their teachers. Children are now tyrants. Guess who said that. Socrates. The bad news is always around us, and it has been with us forever. The worst thing about it is that it feels true. The bad news feels true because hearing or reading that things are getting worse and worse reinforces what we’re already thinking. According to the National Science Foundation, the average person has 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts a day. Out of all the thoughts that pass through our minds in an average day, 80% of them are negative. 95% of them are repetitive. All day long, within our minds we are assaulted by the bad news, and if we are also reading and watching the bad news then it will drown us. Bad news is everywhere. The question for this morning is: Who in your life has shared with you the good news? That’s evangelism. It’s different from encouragement, which we covered already. Encouragement says, “You can do it.” Evangelism says, “God can do it.” Having hit a closed door, then knocked until your knuckles bled, has anyone said, “God can do what you cannot?” As you felt troubles rise to your neck, did anyone help you to hear His voice saying, “Don’t be afraid for I am with you”? When you were isolated and alone, did anyone dare say, “You have a friend in Jesus?” I’ve done it best when I’ve made it simple. Holding the hand of a wife who just found out that her husband is dying, I said, “This is going to be hard, but you’re going to make it.” Preaching the funeral of a man who took his own life, I leaned on the book of Romans and proclaimed, “Even today, nothing will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Evangelism is not rocket science, nor is it brain surgery. You don’t have to make a theological argument, nor do you have to have the Bible memorized; however, the Good News is always countercultural because it is different from what we’ve been hearing and what we’ve been thinking. Evangelism contradicts most every other voice who has spoken, including the voice inside our heads. I was a seminary student in my last semester, and I heard it. As I had for all three years, I worked the breakfast shift in the school cafeteria for my work study. I was shoveling grits and scrambled eggs. Because it was my last semester, my classmates were talking about the churches they would go to after graduation. My friends were getting called to churches as pastors and associate pastors. I, on the other hand, while I’d had an interview or two, was coming up empty. I had few contacts, no leads, and I was getting scared. A classmate must have been able to read the desperation on my face. She asked me what I’d do after graduation, and I told her I didn’t know. She looked me in the eye over the steaming hot bar, and she said, “Every student here is studying to become a pastor. Some of them are supposed to be. You, Joe Evans, are supposed to be a pastor. Just wait.” Have you ever heard something like that? Do you know what it’s like when you’re opening rejection letters, and the thoughts in your head are telling you that you aren’t good enough? One source of bad news reinforces the other. 80% of your thoughts are hopeless, critical, and told-you-so, and that 80% cycles on repeat, then counter to the rejection letters and the negative thoughts, someone speaks into your life a different message. In comes the evangelist with some good news. In our second Scripture lesson, an Ethiopian eunuch was sitting in a chariot, trying to make sense of the Bible. You likely know what a chariot is and what the Bible is, but do you know what a eunuch is? I’m not going to get into the details today. I’m going to tell you the same thing my 7th grade Sunday school teacher, Ken Farrar, told me when I asked him. “Joe, you need to ask your father that one,” Dr. Farrar said. What’s a eunuch? Ask your father for the details. Let me tell you about the consequences. In a world where some are clearly male and others clearly female, the people who don’t fit neatly into either suffered a lonely existence. Many were slaves, made eunuchs by slave drivers because eunuchs could be sold for more. They underwent surgery in unsanitary conditions, and if they survived, they were bought and sold to serve at the table of the prince’s household or at the feet of the well-born Roman socialites. Husbands would assign them to their wives’ chambers without fear of any consequence. They were like men, though their voices were high, they couldn’t grow a beard, and they could father no children. Among the slaves, they were high ranking, for they were valuable and trusted; however, were one granted his freedom, he might have more trouble making a living free than had he remained enslaved. Why? Because he didn’t fit. People found his appearance disturbing, so imagine with me a person who never fit in, who worked for nothing, who’s never been on a date. Valentine’s Day comes around and no one gives him a card because the place of an Ethiopian eunuch is a dead end that leads to nowhere. In no hurry to get back home because no one there is waiting for him, he’s sitting in a chariot reading the book of Isaiah, and listen to what he read: Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, And like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe this generation? For his life is taken away from the earth. Asking the disciple Philip, “Who is this about?” Philip tells the eunuch about Jesus, but the eunuch wants to know who it is that the prophet speaks because it felt like the prophet was talking about him. He was like a sheep led to slaughter. He was like a lamb, silent before its shearer. In his humiliation, justice was denied him. When he dies with no offspring, his life will be taken from the earth. That’s the story of the eunuch, and because that’s his story, he is friendless and alone. Yet if the prophet speaks of the Savior, then the eunuch has a friend in Jesus. That’s evangelism. When the bad news says it can’t be done, the evangelist says, “God can.” When the bad news reports on a world full of locked doors, the evangelist says, “There’s a place for you.” When the world leaves you out in the cold, and the thoughts in your head tell you that you’ll always be alone, listen to the good news, for if the eunuch has a friend in Jesus, so do you. All the time Jesus was welcoming in the outcast. He invited all the sinners to His table and was a guest of the tax collectors. The religious authorities turned their backs and locked their doors on people like eunuchs, maybe even to people like us, but at this table, we find our welcome. Who helped you to see that? Who helped you to see Jesus? Who helped you feel welcome, instead of judged, in church? Has anyone ever heard the bad news in a church? About this time of year, an old country church I drove past often would always put out on the marquee: “Sinners, you think it’s hot now?” I don’t know how many people found their way into the church after reading that message, but I do know that in the case of the Ethiopian eunuch, as Phillip left him, he went on his way rejoicing. Twelve thousand to 60,000 thoughts move through your brain each day. 80% of them are negative. 95% of them are repetitive. Whose voice broke the cycle? Whose voice pointed you towards the mighty love of God in a world of bad news? Write their names down on your cards. Now hold your cards up. In a world of bad news, there are those who have proclaimed the good news. This summer, instead of standing to say what we believe using the words of the Apostles’ Creed, we affirm our faith by celebrating the gifts of the Spirit, given by the God Who is at work in our world still. God is not silent, nor is He dead. Halleluiah. Amen.