Mission Marker #2 – Radiating Hospitality

The Overflow is following along with some themes from Faith Baptist’s Mission Edge Church journey right now, and we explored the second of six “mission markers” last Sunday – radiating hospitality. You can watch or listen to that week 2 message through these links if you missed it. My goal isn’t to re-present that message but to add some additional thoughts from the Mission Edge Church material and a few other reflections that might add something to our thinking.

Here's a story Rev. Dr. Greg Jones shares about one of his pastoral experiences:

He was small, wiry, and volatile. I forget the details, but somehow he made his way to our church and there had found a place where he could belong ... at least on the fringes. I wasn’t sure of his story, though I think there had been a period of incarceration in his past. Room was made for Kenny because at our best we at First Baptist Moncton were a church that attempted to recognize and honour the inherent God-given dignity of each person who came to us, remembering that we – both individually and corporately – were called to be the physical presence of Jesus in our community.

This didn’t mean we excelled at loving everyone; we certainly didn’t. We were but neophytes on a journey. It was challenging to know how to love some of the people that God sent to us. Kenny was certainly high-maintenance; incredibly exasperating, and potentially even dangerous at times. In fact, I remember how one Sunday morning just moments before our worship service was to begin that one of our Deacons came and asked me to talk to Kenny. He was upset about something and was mouthing off that he was going to kill someone. Thankfully Kenny never did harm anyone, but he wasn’t always easy to have as a part of the church, and I and others were frustrated with him at times.

I felt that at best we were probably something of a safe place for Kenny and a place he could belong; likely something he never had much of. I suppose my personal compassion for him came in the realization he essentially was a fifty-year old man with a five-year old’s emotional composition. I remember that our youngest daughter Molly was five at that time, and I was struck by the incongruence that while it would be unthinkable that we as a society would ever expect her as a five-year-old to somehow survive on the streets on her own, we expected all the Kennys out there to somehow muddle through.

There’s one particular incident regarding Kenny that stands out in my mind. Before I tell you the story, you have to understand that on this particular day I was incredibly upset at him. I don’t remember why. As I’m writing this now, I’m wondering if what I’m about to tell you may have happened the day after Kenny had made his threats. Regardless, whatever it was, I admittedly was really irked at him, and I didn’t handle or hide my irritation very well.

It was a Monday morning and Kenny showed up at my office asking if I would take him for a coffee so we could talk. I agreed. While we sat together in a nearby park, he said something that I just wasn’t expecting. He told me he disagreed with something I said in my sermon the previous day. That he – or anyone – disagreed with me wasn’t what startled me; it was the fact that Kenny had actually been listening and had processed something I had said.

I asked what it was he had disagreed with. He told me it was that I had said every person who was a part of the Body of Christ was important to the rest of the body; that everyone had something important and necessary to contribute. He then said “I give nothing. I take, but what do I have to give back?” (After all these years I admittedly can’t remember the conversation word for word, but I certainly remember the essence of it and I remember the impact his words would come to have on me.)

I’m not particularly proud of my first thoughts when Kenny said this to me. I was still pretty peeved at him, and my first impulse was to agree with him and tell him that I didn’t have any idea what he contributed either. Trying to think of something that I could possibly say, and

still dealing with my own anger at him while also figuring he probably wouldn’t really get what I was saying, I heard these words come out of my mouth: “Well Kenny, at least you help us learn how to love hard-to-love people.” Not my finest moment I know.

I’m not sure what if any impact those words made on him, but as soon as they were out of my mouth a whole bunch of realizations began to dawn on me. My first thought was essentially this: ‘Wait a minute! That in fact IS why God sent Kenny to us ... to help us learn how to love hard-to-love people.’ In fact, seen in this light Kenny is more of a gift to us than we are to him! If our goal in the Christian life is to become increasingly like Jesus, then don’t we need to learn how to really love even when it is difficult to love? After all, as the Apostle Paul emphasizes “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” In other words, while each of us were “hard to love” Christ out of his love died for us!

As all this was rolling over in my mind, I realized I still had it wrong. I was wrong to imagine that Kenny alone was the one hard to love. The truth is, we’re all hard to love. You are. I am. We all are Kennys. We all are hard to love. And this is one of the primary reasons why God calls us into meaningful, ongoing community with one another ... not because it’s easy or always fulfilling to be in community together, but because at times it’s downright hard, and will require everything we have to give – just exactly like Jesus gave to us.

Switching from Greg back to Borden now, Romans 12:9-10 says:

“Don’t just pretend to love one another. Really love them. Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honouring each other.

That sounds really nice! It’s a wonderful vision of loving community of the kind Jesus can help us to enact. But we’re bound to get it wrong some of the time. Maybe more than some of the time. Because hard-to-love-people are, well, hard-to-love! And I think Dr. Jones is right when he says that all of us are worthy of that title.

But keep in mind that “love” doesn’t mean warm feelings and pleasant moments. Love is working for the good of the other. Love is putting the other person first. Love is striving to serve and sacrifice as Jesus did. And this kind of love, says 1st Peter 4:8, “covers a multitude of sins.”

This means being willing to wade through messiness and forgive people’s failures. Sometimes it means giving someone a fresh start – resetting the relationship not because they’ve managed to address everything they’ve messed up but because it’s no less what Jesus did for you in offering you a new and everlasting life.

What I’m talking about can be slow, painful, and awkward. I’ve seen sacrificial love and reconciliation win the day. And I’ve seen times and situations where people weren’t willing or able to sort things out. In your own families, friendships, and church experiences I imagine you’ve seen successes and failures too, and possibly more failures than successes.

But here’s the thought that haunts me: if the Church can’t do this well, what hope is there?

I hear many people disillusioned at the state of the world – a world which seems like it’s become a more impersonal, unfriendly, and divided place. So who is going to show our world a better way? It has to be the Church, doesn’t it? Aren’t we the ones with the example of Jesus we’re committed to following and the power of the Holy Spirit to actually do it – to love like we could never love without God’s help and encouragement?

And that means, as big as the world’s problems might seem, we are not powerless to do something about them. We can radiate hospitality. We can love hard-to-love people. We can come together in Christians communities ready to navigate messiness, overlook faults, and work things out in a way where we prioritize the good of the other. You can help bring the world back from this dangerous trajectory starting with a greeting, an invitation, a word of welcome, a phone call, or a meeting.

So what does this mean for radiating hospitality? Setting a nice table and inviting people to it is a great start for mission marker #2, but we should also be prepared for the hard-to-love people who might come and how to treat them the way Jesus would. “Don’t just pretend to love one another. Really love them. Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honouring each other.” That’s Jesus’ Church. Let’s be a good outpost of it.