Readings for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 9 Year C)
2 Kings 5:1-14
Psalm 30
Galatians 6:(1-6)7-16
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
This sermon was preached by Fr. Daniel London at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on July 7, 2019.
A key theme that I see running through our Scripture readings this morning is one of the core and foundational values of Christ Church Eureka and one of the core values of our country: and that is the value of hospitality. In the Gospel, Jesus sends out 70 disciples as lambs in the midst of wolves, completely vulnerable and fully dependent on the hospitality of others. Jesus says, “If people welcome you and treat you with hospitality, then bless them with my peace and let them know the Kingdom of God is near. But if people fail to welcome you and show you hospitality, then ‘shake the dust off your feet and don’t look back.’ Don’t waste your time with them, because when you’re out there, you’re representing me; and if they reject you, they reject me.”
In his letter to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul argues in favor of hospitality to the Gentiles. Paul’s audience, the Galatians, were descendants of pagan Celts who lived in Asia Minor, which is modern-day Turkey. So the Galatians were actually Celtic Christians before ‘Celtic Christianity’ was a thing, hundreds of years before St. Patrick and St. Columba. These original Celtic Christians were being told by Jewish Christians that they needed to be circumcised in order to be true followers of Christ. Paul says, ‘That’s hogwash!’ He refuses to make circumcision an obstacle for people entering the church. For the Gentiles, Paul demonstrates a generous and radical hospitality, at the risk of severe criticism and rejection from other Christian leaders. It is partly because of Paul’s risky and holy hospitality to the Gentiles that the Christian Church has been able to survive and, in many cases, thrive for almost 2,000 years now. If Paul did not uphold and practice this hospitality, most of us here would not be Christians today, unless we were already Jewish.
Today, we will all have the privilege and opportunity to extend hospitality and love to someone who will soon become the world’s newest baptized Christian, young Kamryn Bozzoli, whom we will pray for and baptize in a few moments, whom we will wash in the holy waters of the spiritual river Jordan. And this leads me to our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures about a Syrian king named Naaman who reluctantly dunked himself in the Jordan river to be healed of his leprosy, thanks to the wise advice of a young Hebrew girl. Now I’ll admit that this story puts a different spin on the theme of hospitality. King Naaman expected the backwater prophet Elisha to lavish him with praises and then conjure the power of his god in performing a shamanic healing ritual over the king’s leprous skin, thus enacting a dramatic and magnificent cure. Instead, the prophet Elisha does not even give Naaman the courtesy of greeting him at the door (!). Elisha sends a messenger to tell Naaman to wash seven times in the Jordan, a muddy river that pales in comparison to the beautiful rivers of Naaman’s home in Syria.
This Scripture reading reminds me of a story from the tradition of the Desert Fathers and Mothers of the 4th and 5th century in Egypt, when the great and renowned Archbishop Theophilus went to visit and seek spiritual wisdom from a desert father named Abba Pambo. All of Abba Pambo’s disciples urged their master, who remained silent, to please say something to edify the archbishop. But Abba Pambo said, “If he is not edified by my silence, he will not be edified by my speech.”[1] Like the prophet Elisha, Abba Pambo offered a very peculiar form of hospitality.
According to Scripture and Christian tradition, there are many cases in which prestigious people of wealth and high status actually receive a serious lack of hospitality; and this seems to be a very good thing. Because in this way, the hosts are serving them a most generous slice of humble pie.
King Naaman eventually decided to eat his slice of humble pie by wading into the water of that muddy River Jordan, where he experienced healing and newness of life. The text says, “His flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was made clean.” We Christians have understood this story as a foreshadowing of Holy Baptism, a sacrament in which we call on the Holy Spirit to sanctify the water of our font and give it the same healing properties of the Jordan river, making it into a well of everlasting life, through which we are all made clean, through which we all can become healthy and vivacious children of God.
Jesus said, “Unless you become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 18:3). This is Jesus’s way of saying, “All are welcome, but some may need to eat some humble pie before they’re ready.” I’m sure we can think of many prestigious and powerful people today who could use a healthy dose of humility.
A few days ago, we celebrated the birthday of our country, which just turned 243 years old. I believe one reason why our country has been able to survive and thrive for over two centuries (and will hopefully continue to survive and thrive) is become it was founded upon the core values of equality, liberty, justice, and hospitality. If our founding fathers and their descendants failed to uphold and practice this biblical and Christian value of hospitality, then most of us (if not all of us) would not be here today. Just as we Christians are indebted to the Apostle Paul’s hospitality for our full inclusion in the church, so too are we citizens indebted to our country’s hospitality for our full inclusion in this nation.
If my Russian Jewish ancestors remained in their homeland, they would have been killed, either as a result of the pogroms in the late 19th and early 20th century or as a result of World War II. I know this because, after WWII, all the Jews of my great grandparents’ village were completely wiped out. I thank God that the United States showed them hospitality when they needed it. And I also thank God for the prophetic voices of citizens and activists who often had to serve our elected officials several slices of humble pie by reminding them of our nation’s core values. I am particularly thankful for one prophetic young woman who advocated for my family and for other Jews escaping anti-Semitic violence in Russia and who helped my family settle into a new, safe, and healthy life here in the United States. This prophetic woman was named Emma Lazarus. She was an activist, a prophet and a poet. She used her poetic gifts to remind our nation to uphold and practice generous hospitality, especially in her moving poem titled “The New Colossus” which is written upon a bronze plaque inside the Statue of Liberty. Just this last week, our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry referenced this poem in his address to the clergy of the diocese. Also this last week, the seven bishops of the state of California (including our newly consecrated Bishop Megan Traquair) issued a prophetic statement reminding us, as a nation, to uphold and practice hospitality, specifically to children at our borders. It doesn’t matter if we’re Republicans or Democrats, Trump supporters or liberal Leftists, or anything in between. As long as we are baptized Christians, it is our duty to pray for and try to help any child who is in need. It is part of fulfilling our baptismal vow to strive for peace and justice and to respect the dignity of every human being. And it is our duty as citizens of this great nation to uphold the core values of our founding fathers, especially hospitality.
So my brothers and sisters in Christ, let us pray for all children, remembering that Jesus loves all the little children of the world, for they are precious in his sight. And let us prayerfully and joyfully welcome into the Body of Christ Church Eureka a beautiful child named Kamryn Bozzoli, who will soon become the world’s newest Christian, after we pour upon her the healing waters of the River Jordan. And as we learn to uphold and practice hospitality, perhaps with a slice of humble pie, let us give thanks for our church and our country as we hear the powerful words of Emma Lazarus’s prophetic poem “The New Colossus”:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
MOTHER OF EXILES. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Amen.
[1] The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, trans. Benedicta Ward (Cistercian Publications, Trappist KY, 1975) Theophilus the Archbishop, Saying 2, p. 81.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 