Welcome and Hospitality – Sermon for Racial Justice Sunday

Welcome and Hospitality   

Genesis 18:1 – 8, Matthew 2:13 – 22

My experience of living in shared accommodation as a student was somewhat mixed. I had some really nice housemates during my eight years of university, who’ll hopefully be friends for life. However, others were rather less pleasant to live with. When I was an undergraduate in Bath, one of the people my friends and I were going to share a house with dropped out at the last minute. The landlord advertised the room without consulting us, and we ended up with the housemate from hell. She had a serious alcohol problem, evidenced by her ability to still be standing and reasonably coherent after downing a dozen or so cans of lager. Her preferred way of obtaining the money to pay for this meant we never knew which young gentleman would be joining us for breakfast each day. Added to this, she stole our food, and once had a go at me for daring to move my tomato ketchup out of the kitchen cupboard. Most annoyingly, she also had a fondness for playing cheesy dance music so loud it made the house shake.   (to read more click on title_

Most of the time, I dealt with this by just not being about very much, spending my days in the university chaplaincy playing Scrabble and drinking hot chocolate instead. However, this caused problems around exam time, as I needed somewhere to study that was quiet and relatively people-free. One of the chaplains, Jinny, knew about this ongoing saga and realised I was struggling, so she offered to let me stay with her and her husband for a few days. The welcome, hospitality and sanctuary they gave me meant I got through the exam period without going insane, and as it turned out, both Jinny’s cooking and taste in wine were excellent, so I also had a thoroughly good time! I ended up becoming really good friends with Jinny and Andrew, and they came to both my PhD graduation and my wedding.

My experience of being offered refuge from my problematic housemate got me through a tough period, but millions of people around the world find themselves needing to seek sanctuary from far more serious situations. We live in a time where migration is a huge issue, whether we’re looking at vast numbers of refugees fleeing conflicts in places like Syria or the Yemen, or people so desperate to escape grinding poverty that they risk their lives in ramshackle boats trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea. According to the UN High Commission for Refugees, Pakistan, Iran, the Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey were the top five hosts for the fifty-one million people forcibly displaced in 2014, with well under one percent of those coming to Britain. The number of displaced people is likely to keep growing as war, famine, disease, climate change, poverty, prejudice and injustice continue to cause tremendous suffering throughout the world. Here at Cornerstone, some among us have been forced to seek sanctuary in another land, for a variety of reasons, and I hope you’ve found us to be a community of welcome and hospitality.

Welcome, hospitality and sanctuary are key themes that run throughout the Bible. Our Gospel reading for today is usually a Christmas text, but it’s very appropriate for this Racial Justice Sunday. Jesus and his family were forced to flee their homeland and seek refuge elsewhere, ironically in the very country that God liberated the people of Israel from in the time of Moses. Herod the Great was the ruler of Judea at time of Jesus’ birth, but was effectively a puppet king, dependent on the authority of the Roman Empire. He had a reputation as a tyrant, and brutally suppressed any dissent. After hearing rumours about a new king in Judea, he hatched a plan to get rid of Jesus, by tricking three travellers bringing him gifts. However, when this was thwarted, he unleashed his wrath on the children of Bethlehem, slaughtering everyone under two years old. Having been warned in a dream, Joseph took Mary and Jesus to Egypt, and they stayed there until Herod died. As it still wasn’t safe to return home, they ended up settling in Galilee.

Now, as much as it’s uncomfortable, it’s important that we remember the massacre that’s recorded in Matthew’s Gospel, because it’s highly relevant to what we see in the world around us today. Back in July, David Cameron referred to desperate people trying to get into the Channel Tunnel as a ‘swarm’, as one might talk about an insect infestation, at the same time as claiming we live in a Christian country. I suggest that he might want to revisit this account of Jesus’ flight, and contemplate the situation which forced God to become a refugee. It might help him have a bit more compassion for the people whose plight we see daily on the news at the moment. Moreover, talking about ‘genuine refugees’ is little more than slippery language designed to sow the seeds of doubt in people’s minds when they hear the stories of people fleeing, in the same way the authenticity of disabled and unemployed people needing to rely on social security has been questioned. The way we talk about issues like migration matters.

So, in contrast to the negative attitudes we hear from politicians of all shades far too often, the City of Sanctuary movement that’s emerged in this country is really positive. It’s a grassroots movement that began in Sheffield in 2005, and has spread to thirty towns and cities in Britain and Ireland. Alas, searching for ‘Milton Keynes City of Sanctuary’ brings up luxury spa weekends as the first result on Google, but it doesn’t mean things can’t change! The aim of this movement is to build cultures of welcome and hospitality, in which people are proud of the sanctuary offered to all in need of safety, and all residents are enabled to contribute positively and fully to the life of their community. It’s not about everything needing to be perfect and sorted, because that’s never going to happen, but being a City of Sanctuary is about a commitment to working together to combat racism, hatred and bigotry, thereby building a more life-giving environment for everybody, whether born and bred in a given place, or a new arrival. At its heart is hospitality, and being willing to take the risk of welcoming the stranger as a friend.

That brings us nicely to our reading from Genesis. Abraham and Sarah were relaxing in the heat of the day in the shade of some large trees, when Abraham noticed three men standing at the entrance to his tent. Without hesitation, he offered them hospitality in the form of water to wash their tired feet and bread to eat. He got Sarah to make some bread and a servant to prepare some meat, which he then laid before his angelic guests, and they ate together. This passage is sometimes called ‘the hospitality of Abraham’, though given all the running around others did, it’s probably more accurately called ‘the hospitality of Abraham, Sarah and the servant’! Either way, it’s the inspiration for Rublev’s famous icon of the Trinity, which some of you may know. The Father, Son and Spirit sit around a table, and gaze lovingly at each other, representing the love and relationship at the very heart of God. There’s a cup on the table and an empty space; we’re invited to join in with that joyous communion.

And if you think about it, when we share Communion together, we’re doing something that’s all about welcome, hospitality and sanctuary. For starters, the table we gather around doesn’t belong to us; it belongs to God, and because there’s no such thing as a person that doesn’t matter to God, that means all are welcome. We receive the bread and wine as gifts from God which nourish, sustain and transform us; it’s an act of divine hospitality. Moreover, we can only share the bread together once it’s been broken. We’re meeting Jesus in his brokenness, and it’s through his self-emptying love that sanctuary can be found, and we can trust that the suffering and misery that forces people to take refuge in other lands doesn’t have the last word.

So what does all this mean in practical terms for us here at Cornerstone? Well, the kind of welcome we offer to those who come here seeking help matters a great deal. Our pastoral workers, receptionists, and many other volunteers do a great job of this, which isn’t always easy. But there’s always more we can do, starting with simple things like greeting someone we don’t recognise after a service, making them feel welcome. It might mean getting involved in initiatives that try to make Milton Keynes a more hospitable place to live, like Citizens MK, or contributing to a local initiative to help displaced people in Calais and elsewhere. On this Racial Justice Sunday, I think it’s also about having the courage to go against popular prejudices and stick our heads above the parapet. That means holding politicians to account when they spout damaging rhetoric, and challenging the lazy stereotypes that generate hostility towards people who need sanctuary and hospitality.

Most importantly, though, we need to pray for the Holy Spirit to guide and shape us, so that when we sing these words, we can really mean it: Let us build a house where hands will reach beyond the wood and stone, to heal and strengthen, serve and teach, and live the Word they’ve known. Here the outcast and the stranger bear the image of God’s face; let us bring an end to fear and danger: all are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place.

Karl Rutlidge