A sermon on Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7; Matthew 9:35-10:23 & Romans 5: 1-8 by Nathan Nettleton

The names Sodom and Gomorrah usually conjure up in most people’s minds images of sexual perversion and God’s fiery anger rained down in judgement. This is understandable, because in the original story, which comes from the time of Abraham, it is the attempted violent rape of a man that precipitates the destruction of the towns. But…, contrary to the popular perception, of all the latter references to Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible, only one makes reference to the sexual nature of their sin. All other references to the nature of their sin speak of it in terms of injustice and particularly of a failure to offer proper hospitality. The intended victim was a visitor to the town and the men of Sodom offered the very opposite of hospitality.

The reading we heard from the gospel of Matthew is an example. Jesus sends out his twelve disciples to preach the gospel and heal the sick, and he instructs them to stay in any town that welcomes them, but if they are not welcomed, if they are refused hospitality, to leave, shaking the dust off their feet to symbolically disassociate themselves from the town, and says Jesus, “Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of Judgement than for that town.” Why Sodom and Gomorrah? Because they are the archetypal image of the town that failed to offer hospitality to the stranger. And in refusing hospitality to the stranger, they are refusing hospitality to God.

Many of the laws given in the days of Moses related to the need to behave hospitably to both neighbour and stranger. In our day hospitality is either an industry, or something that we offer to friends and those we need to impress. It is not something we would usually go out of our way to offer to strangers. There are exceptions in special circumstances, and sometimes our nation has even shown it on a grand scale. The welcome our nation offered to Kosovar refugees nine years ago did us proud, whereas the way we subsequently responded to refugees from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Iraq would have given the disciples every reason to shake our dust of their feet, scratch our names from the maps, and leave us to a fate worse than Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham was the model of extravagant hospitality when the three strangers came his way in our first reading. This story of the three strangers is the basis for the depiction of them as the holy trinity in the icon over here. Abraham begged them to stay, offered them baths, baked cakes and killed the fatted calf. They had been just passing through, but Abraham pleaded for the opportunity to offer them hospitality.

You can perhaps imagine what a different world we would live in if everyone was that eager to offer hospitality to one another. If instead of regarding every stranger as a potential invader, as a suspicious threat to our property, our safety and our happiness, we regarded them as messengers of God, as people in whose very strangeness there is the promise of new insights, new learning, new wisdom to be shared if only we will make them welcome and hold them long enough over good food and wine and conversation to discover the riches they bring. What a wonderful world it would be.

The ultimate in hospitality though, is seen in Jesus Christ, and can be tasted again every week at this table. In Jesus we see hospitality that embraces not just neighbour and not just stranger but even enemies. And we see a hospitality that goes way beyond offering a bath and good food and wine, for Jesus offers us his own self, his own life. Jesus goes even as far as death to ensure that we know we are loved and welcomed to the banqueting table of heaven. He could have shut up and saved his life, but no, he went on touching the untouchable, loving the unlovable, including the outcast and proclaiming God’s extravagant welcome to the poor and the broken and the left out. It cost him his life, but he wasn’t going to let that get in the way of welcoming us to his table.

As Paul said in our reading from Romans, you can maybe imagine that someone might give up their life for someone really special, someone who’d really earned it through their extraordinary goodness – someone might die for a Mother Theresa or a Nelson Mandela – but God proves his love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, while we had done nothing to deserve any special favours, Christ died for us.

God’s offer of hospitality knows no limits. You and I and everyone, regardless of who we are or what we’ve done are embraced in the love of God and invited by an eager host to share in the bread of life and the wine of the Kingdom, and to stand at the table with the strangers to our left and right who may not be just our brother and sister in Christ, but may, if we will embrace what they have to say, be the messengers of heaven bearing good news to us.

One of the ways we symbolise our hospitality is through the practice of the catechumenate. Naturally, the symbols have to be backed up by a wider and more wholistic expression of our hospitality, but the catechumenate is clearly about hospitality. How do we welcome in those who are new to the faith or new to our gathered living of the faith? How do we enable those who have arrived on the fringes of our congregational life to journey into the centre, into full participation and membership? How do we maintain a distinct identity as a covenantal colony of God’s people and at the same time be a community with open borders and open arms that is always ready to welcome in and fully include newcomers?

The catechumenate is both a symbol of the answers, and one of the practical expression of the answers. In the catechumenate, we welcome people into our life, to explore the faith and our living of the faith with us, and to journey towards full membership with us. We take responsibility for prayerfully supporting them and handing on the faith to them, encouraging and nurturing them and sharing the struggles and joys of our journey with them. Like most of the symbols of our liturgy, it is not a symbol that rejoices in how good we are at this, but a symbol that reminds us of our call and calls us all to journey more deeply into the extravagant life-giving hospitality of God. It goes on calling us beyond ourselves, to stretch and grow and more and more fully offer ourselves in Christ for the life of the world.