Romans chapter 12 11.11.18
When I was in Year 6 we celebrated the new population figures for Australia which had reached a total of 10 million. This year (2018), we hit 25 million. Where have we all come from? 49% of us were either born overseas, or were born in Australia to at least one parent born overseas.
Why do so many want to come to Australia? There aren’t too many safer, richer, better countries in which to live in 2018.
Where would you head to 3,000 years ago? Israel was a great option. In Israel, the rights and importance of migrants and aliens were written into the Law of Moses:
· When it came to owning property, you had the same legal rights as the locals.
· Your life was as precious under the law as any Jew’s, and the judges and the police were duty bound to protect you.
· If you did not own any land, then those who did must make sure that at harvest time there was grain left in the paddock for you, and fruit on the vine.
There was a mutual understanding that you could not impose your culture, or bring in your own laws or your religion. You had to fit peaceably into what was there, for it be a cohesive nation. That was certainly a place of great blessing for strangers and aliens!
When the New Testament uses the word ‘hospitality’, it is talking about something like that. The word is literally, “love for the stranger” – for the person outside your beliefs, outside your lifestyle, outside your culture and outside your family and group of friends.
We are the new Israel of God. Love for the outsider is part of our worship. It is part and parcel of who we are.
· Romans 12:13 “Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.” Why? Because, in the light of God’s mercies to us, we want to worship him with our souls and our bodies (12:1).
· Hebrews 13:2 “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers.” Why? Because it is a vital part of the worship we offer God (12:28).
· 1 Peter 4:9 “Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.” Why? So that “in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ (v11).
What is hospitality going to look like, for us? Before we go there, may I try to remove two roadblocks that may prevent us even beginning to be truly hospitable?
Roadblock 1, thinking wrongly about what hospitality is.
Do you think it’s all about the food, and that if you lack the ability to cook gourmet food, and plenty of it, or do not live in a fancy house, you cannot be hospitable?
Not once does God define hospitality as a gourmet meal. Sure, loving strangers over a coffee, or at a picnic, or over dinner makes a lot of sense, but hospitality is not the same as entertaining.
Jen Wilkin writes:
Entertaining is always thinking about the next course; hospitality burns the rolls because it was listening to a story.
Entertainment obsesses over what went wrong. Hospitality savours what was shared.
Entertainment, exhausted, says ‘It was nothing really!’ Hospitality thinks it was nothing. Really.
Entertainment invites those who it will enjoy. Hospitality takes all comers.
Entertaining seeks to impress. Hospitality seeks to bless.”
Hospitality God’s way is defined in terms of your heart for strangers, and never by the food on the table. Does knowing that allow you to be freer to be hospitable?
Roadblock #2 Thinking like unbelievers think.
Romans 12:13 says to “pursue/chase after hospitality”. We get that … but there is something that is further back in the chapter, which is the key to that?
Back in verse 2 God says “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind”.
What’s the default thinking in this world when it comes to loving the stranger?
Ø If there’s not as much pleasure in having strangers over, as there is in having friends in, don’t do it.
Ø If it impinges on your privacy and your plans, don’t do it.
Ø If others (family or friends) judge you for mixing with the wrong kind of people, then don’t do it.
Ø If it’s inconvenient, or is hard work, then don’t do it.
Ø If it costs, and if it means you can’t buy the things to which you are entitled, and for which you have worked, then don’t do it.
Ø If it makes you feel uncomfortable, then don’t do it.
Now let’s think more about that. Doesn’t being transformed by Jesus, and not conformed to this world mean that it is different for us:
Ø that we don’t decide what to do on the basis of pleasure alone?
Ø that more often than not we will put the other guy’s needs ahead of our comfort?
Ø that we aim to be givers more than takers?
Ø that if something good to do is also difficult, we opt for what is good, because it us pleasing to Jesus?
Is this the roadblock for you? More self-absorbed than self-forgetful? More about you than the glory of Jesus? More about your rights and entitlements than your love for lost, alienated people?
So many people here are better than that, but are you? If not, you really need to overhaul your thinking, and your loving, so that they are transformed, remembering that once you were strangers.
Let’s assume that we know that hospitality is not about the food. And that we all want to be self-forgetful on this one. Where to next? What are some of the ways in which we can pursue hospitality?
May I suggest 3 practical steps to being hospitable?
1. THINK IT THROUGH & MAKE A PLAN
When God says in Romans 12:2 that our “minds” are to be renewed, he is speaking in part about what we think. That’s going to involve re-thinking all the things I’ve just mentioned about my being happy or satisfied, my entitlement to privacy, my comfort, my money, my convenience and so on, in order for me to pursue self-forgetfulness.
It also makes sense to think about the options that are available to you when it comes to hospitality, and to plan wisely.
· When I’m thinking about a drive, or a picnic, or a coffee in town, is there someone who lives in my street, or works where I work, whom I could invite along? How about a street Christmas party?
· If I meet some newcomers at church, could I invite them home for lunch? It doesn’t take much to plan ahead to have sausages and bread at home for a sausage sandwich, or have my pizza vouchers with me I can pick up some pizza on the way home?
· If I can’t do that regularly, can I plan to do it once a month? And if I’m not great at talking to strangers, can I line up someone else here, in advance, to come along who is a good talker?
· Am I more likely to get to know the person who serves me at this shop, if I keep going there, than if I haphazardly go anywhere? And who knows what might come from that?
· Is there someone in my class at school you could plan to include in my circle of friends, or share a snack with?
· When I know I’ll be watching a game of football or a good movie, is there someone who could come over and watch it with me?
Or a hundred others. Some of us are just naturals at doing this. We talk easily to people we haven’t met before, and just seem to fall quite naturally into ways to demonstrate love for them. It seems such a breeze.
For most of us, however, it doesn’t happen without some thinking and some planning. Doing it isn’t a natural fit for us – it all feels too risky, and we’re not sure we’re up to it. That brings me to the second suggestion I have:
2. MAYBE DO IT WITH OTHERS
So many of God’s ways for us work out best when we do them together. That is certainly true of hospitality.
If I invite people over for a BBQ on the front lawn, could I ask a few of you over as well, to help with some food, some of the cooking, and to kick along the conversations? If I’m going to put up someone who is in need of a month’s accommodation, could I ask you to help by doing some things socially with my boarder? If I’m going to give driving lessons to the young guy down the street who has no father, could you share that with me?
Or can we commit, together, to loving someone who is new to our country, or to our community? Could you go with them to the bank, to Centrelink and to Joblink Plus, and be an advocate for them? Could you help with some driving lessons? Could you help with some transport, medical appointments, shopping or conversational English?
We have so many resources here, we could make a big difference by loving the stranger, together.
Here on Sundays, we can do it. Sitting alongside the person who has come to church for the first time in 20 years. Welcoming by our conversation and interest. Introducing them to others who might connect better, and making sure we cover lunch for the next 10 Sundays until they feel like they can belong and feel accepted as they are.
We would welcome someone who has a criminal record, wouldn’t we? A man trying to kick drugs? A woman who isn’t quite like us? A young guy who swears, or is homosexual, or is Buddhist or is somewhere else where we are not? Wouldn’t we?
Easy? Who said it was easy? It may not be but we might be able to do it better, together, because we want to be like Jesus, the “Friend of sinners”, we know it’s the way to go, don’t we?
The way ahead?
1. Think it through and make a plan
2. Maybe do it with others
3. START
I’m not an expert at anything, but one thing I do well is to think about what I should do, make plans to do it, and then forget about it. Through laziness, fear, procrastination, or a desire for what’s easy.
The ESV translates Romans 12:13 as “Seek to show hospitality”, as though we might give it a shot if it’s not too hard. The word that God uses is “Pursue hospitality”. He makes it sound like you run it down, and grab it by the throat. That’s it.
Will you just start talking to the people where you shop, who cut your hair and deliver the mail? Will you try the picnic invitation, the game of football, the coffee, the offer of the driving lesson? And if they aren’t your thing, then something else?
It really doesn’t matter too much where you start – but will you start? Just start. This week. Today, during morning tea.
Back in the 1970’s Australia’s spending on foreign aid was about 65 cents in every $100 of all the money we earned. Not much, maybe, but over the past 5 years of Coalition government in particular, it has now fallen to 20 cents in every $100, an all-time low. As a nation, by that measure, we are stingier (less generous or being mean) than we have ever been.
We are stingy in a world that is sad and harsh:
· 8 million children live in orphanages world-wide and nearly 50,000 in out of home care in Australia.
· In Australia one quarter of all homes have only one person in them, alone.
· 80,000 babies are killed each year in Australia in the womb.
· Who knows how many people in Tamworth feel estranged from others, and how many more are deeply estranged from Jesus?
How different from Israel where aliens were cared for and where orphans and widows were loved. Where even strangers got to taste God’s goodness, and on a good day saw the Living God.
Australia isn’t Israel, but the church of Jesus is the new Israel. I know that we are called to love the stranger even if our nation does not, by being hospitable, to find, as I quoted last week from Rosaria Butterfield, we “Get close enough to the stranger to put her hand into the hand of the Saviour.”
We have the huge privilege as we love the stranger, of showing off Jesus, and holding him out, in a sad and harsh world. Can you think of a privilege that is better than that one? Putting Jesus on display … by our hospitality?
Will you chase after hospitality? Will you think about how you can do it, and make plans? Will you see if it’s something we can do better together? Will you start, committing to this in the future?
For Jesus’ sake, and to his glory?