Our Epistle reading from Hebrews this morning says to us: "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it."

Hospitality is a big word in the Church right now. Diana Butler Bass identifies hospitality as one of the ten practices of the faith which can deepen Christian life and help congregations grow and thrive. Church growth and evangelism leaders talk a lot about how we can practice greater hospitality in our congregations: how we welcome people in, how we help people feel at home in our churches, how we might be able to take our distinctive Episcopal way of worship--with its bulletins and hymnals and standing and kneeling and sitting and making the sign of the cross and receiving communion in a particular way and all the unspoken background we bring to the familiar way we do things Sunday morning--evangelism leaders challenge us to ask how can we take all that and make it more accessible for people who aren't used to doing things the way we're used to doing them, but still might be seeking a spiritual home. Here at St George's, we are acting out hospitality with our very building: welcoming other groups and organizations to use our space, keeping our gardens beautiful for the enjoyment of our neighbors, even redecorating the narthex--have you noticed how the new paint on the narthex ceiling makes the whole area look more open and more light and more welcoming?--so that that whole space now exudes a new feeling of warmth and hospitality. Hospitality is a big deal for our church these days.

But hospitality is more than just a tactic for church growth. I think hospitality is a basic part of our mission, a core practice of Christian being. Hospitality in its radical sense is more than just a social grace: it is a spiritual discipline of opening up to entertain angels.

That reference we hear in Hebrews to entertaining angels points back to a story in the Book of Genesis, when Abraham is sitting by the door of his tent in the heat of the day, and he looks up and sees three strangers approaching, and he runs out to them and invites them to come to his tent and he and Sarah serve them a big meal--and these strangers turn out to be angels of the Lord who promise Abraham and Sarah that in one more year's time they will have a son. Abraham and Sarah's welcome to those strangers became for them a revelation of angels, a communication of God's saving power that came to them through their practice of hospitality.

And hospitable encounters with strangers can become moments of revelation for us, too. I met a seminarian at Sewanee a few years ago when I was helping to mentor a field-ed group, and he told a story about volunteering in a homeless shelter, where it was their ministry to offer hospitality to men who literally had nowhere else to go, and how one night he spent almost the entire night talking with one man who just came in off the street. They talked about how hard it is to make a life on the streets, and how it only takes one or two bad financial turns to get you to a place where you can't pay your rent and you lose your home; they talked about how you keep your hopes up when everything seems hopeless; they talked about finding gifts of God in the simplest little things that keep you going from day to day. And as my friend tells the story, it was in that conversation that he first began to really understand that the poor and the homeless were people, with names and stories and identities, not just statistics and issues and stereotypes. He said it was in that conversation that he began to understand that social ministry wasn't something to do for the poor, but something to do with the poor, to be in relationship to build better mutual well-being. It was in that encounter with a homeless stranger that he felt a call to do social ministry, to do the work of Jesus in a way that would bring the gospel out of the church and into the streets. That stranger in the shelter was an angel for him, a messenger of God calling him to mission. And for us too, the way we welcome the stranger can become a place to discover angels of God's grace, communications of God's saving power, coming to us in and through practices of hospitality.

And I think Jesus calls us to a deeper welcome, an even more radical practice of hospitality. In the Gospel today, Jesus says "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." Inviting those whom no one else will invite seems like pretty radical hospitality.

But I think it is easy for us to listen to these words of Jesus and think that what Jesus is describing is a hospitality that functions like a sort of philanthropic largesse, a situation where the haves invite the have-nots to come and have some for a change. Now it's good to share what you have. But the problem with hospitality of haves inviting have-nots to come have some is that in the end, when the banquet's over, the basic relationships of having haven't changed. Some still have, some still have not. Some still own the table, while others have to leave the table once their invitation has expired. But Jesus calls us to something deeper than that. Jesus says the humble will be exalted and the exalted will be humbled; the first will be last and the last will be first--Jesus proclaims a reign of God where the relations of higher/lower, have/have-not, host/guest, powerful/powerless, all those relations will be changed, undone, transformed, and everyone will gather around a table at which everyone has an equal place.

And I think that one of the jobs of the church is to mirror in its own life those changed power-relationships Jesus talks about in God's reign. One of the things church is supposed to do is provide a place where we can experiment with what it feels like to change those relationships of who's in and who's out, who's up and who's down, who has the power and who doesn't. One of the functions of church is to be a place where everyone can come to the table and have an equal place, an equal share. I've often thought it would be great if we could act out that spiritual truth in a very physical way in our church life: I've thought about what it would be like if we at St George's could remove the pews in our church and put in chairs instead, chairs that we could move around and set up in different ways for different occasions. On a day like today we could put the altar in the middle and the chairs all around it, so that there would be no front and no back, no up close and no far away, but everybody would be sitting right around the table to which Jesus invites everybody to come. Can you imagine what it would be like if we were able to enact physically that mystery of our equality in Christ? Can you imagine how that would inspire and encourage and empower us to go out into the world and replicate those equality relationships in all the communities we belong to, all the different tables we gather around in our daily lives? I think that would be a powerful symbol of the radical hospitality, the welcoming of everyone as equals, to which Jesus calls us.

But I think even that is not as deep as our scriptures this morning call us to go in the practice of hospitality. Because more than welcoming the stranger, more than welcoming everyone, our scriptures also call us to welcome God, our scriptures call us to practice the hospitality of opening up a space where we can let God come into our lives. In our First Testament lesson today, Jeremiah says "The priests did not say, 'Where is the Lord?'"; the people "have forsaken [God], the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water. " The priests and the people have not extended hospitality to God, they have not opened up the space in their hearts and minds and spirits where God can come in and make a difference in their lives. God wants to give them living water, God wants to give them the flow of God's own Holy Spirit to empower and enliven them; but they have chosen not to open up that space where God can come in, they have chosen to shut their hearts to God's flowing Spirit; they have chosen to refuse the hospitality that would welcome God's transforming grace into their lives.

And of course we have that same choice. We can welcome God's transforming grace into our lives, we can open the space for God to come in and change us--or we can refuse that hospitality, we can close in upon ourselves, we can rely upon our own resources, our own cracked cisterns, and turn away from the flowing grace God offers us. Showing hospitality to God means entertaining God's angels; it means entertaining the new possibilities God sends us; it means entertaining, holding in our minds, and believing, the crazy idea that, with God's Holy Spirit animating us, we can become more than we had ever imagined. It means entertaining the notion the God wants our church to grow--not only to grow in numbers, but also to grow in ministry, to grow in mission, to grow in spiritual maturity, to grow in the way we rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, to grow in the way we help each other discern our gifts for ministry and then use those gifts in the world, to grow in the way we dwell in the Word together and help each other hear God speaking to us, the way we grow in the joy of the Lord--and by growing in those ways attract more people and grow in numbers as well. Showing hospitality to God means entertaining the crazy idea that God wants each and every one of us to be whole and happy and faithful and abundantly alive and generous and compassionate and enjoying God's love forever--and showing hospitality to God means entertaining the crazy idea that God wants us to live that way here and now and always.

"Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it." The Good News for us today is that we can entertain angels and know it, we can practice spiritual hospitality for strangers, for each other, for our society, even for God. Let it be our prayer today that God will give us hospitable hearts, and that we will always welcome God with us. Amen.