Sermon for St. Anne’s

Eleventh Sunday after Trinity

Ecclesiasticus 10: 12-18

Psalm 112

Hebrews 13, 1-8, 15-16

Luke 14. 1, 7-14

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

There are some weeks when Sunday’s readings come thrillingly into conflict with the world as it is, and this is one of those weeks. ‘Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers,’ says the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, ‘for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.’ Just a few days ago the leader of a British political party made a speech explicitly rejecting strangers, saying that if his party won the next election, it would deport 600,000 migrants during the next five years. The “only way” to stop small boats crossing the English Channel, he said, was by “detaining and deporting absolutely anyone who comes via that route”. Hospitality to strangers of the kind that the writer of Hebrews is advocating doesn’t seem to be part of his plans- this is a way of thinking and talking that demonises people simply because they come from far away, which makes out that strangers are threats to our way of life rather than individual men women and children made in the image of God who are escaping trauma we can hardly imagine. The appearance of the flag of St George on roundabouts and from lamp posts near hotels housing asylum seekers in recent days must make the people staying in those hotels feel vulnerable, unwanted and afraid. St. George himself knew something about being a migrant and a wanderer; his family background was very definitely multi-cultural. His mum was from Syria, his dad was a Roman soldier, he himself was born in what’s now Turkey and none of them ever came to England. His family had much more in common with the migrants some seek to demonise than with the people we’ve seen waving his red and white cross and protesting outside migrant hostels this week. So, today’s readings with their emphasis on hospitality and care for strangers speak directly to the challenges we face as climate change, war, famine and other forces combine to send people on perilous journeys to places where they hope they’ll be safe but where increasingly they seem threatened and unwelcome. Today’s Gospel reminds us that as Christians we are called by God through Christ to stand up for strangers and for the gospel values of hospitality and tolerance. We’re called by God to show compassion for those who are at risk from people traffickers, those who come to us for safety because they’re fleeing for their lives, those who long for sanctuary and safety, for the vulnerable who others would choose to deport. The author of Hebrews tells us that empathy and not fear is how we should respond to the needs of strangers - ‘remember those who are in prison as though you were in prison with them’, they tell us, ‘Those who are being tortured as though you yourselves were being tortured’. When the writer of Hebrews calls for ‘mutual love to continue’ they’re inviting us to see God at work in each one of us through our love for our friends, family and for those it might be challenging to love- prisoners, outcasts, strangers. What they call ‘mutual love’ is God at work in us; it’s how God’s love is made real through our ensuring that every human life we encounter is cherished, loved and respected. Caring for the stranger is about much more than just being kind; it’s how we enable God’s love to be a force for good in a world which otherwise can be cruel and divided.

One of the best responses I ever experienced to a potentially divisive situation involving refugees came a few years ago when the head teacher at the school I work at was asked to find places for lots of Sudanese children; their parents had fled Sudan due to religious persecution. He assembled the whole school community in the chapel, teachers and children and asked us to put up our hands if we or our parents had come to Brighton from somewhere else- and pretty well every hand in that chapel went up. His point was made: we had all come from somewhere else, and that meant we should understand and answer the needs of those who were new to our community. Today’s readings remind us that it’s God who calls us to do good in this way, to share what we have with strangers, and that when we do these things we’re acting in and through Him. In Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the lawyer Atticus Finch teaches his daughter Scout that you can't truly understand a person until you consider things from their point of view. In Atticus’s words ‘you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view ….until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it’. Scout gradually learns to empathise with people she doesn’t instinctively like or trust by imagining their perspectives and as the novel develops, we see her become a wonderful embodiment of the values today’s readings call us to share. Scout understands exactly what it means to be empathetic in the way that the writer of Hebrews calls us to be: ‘remember those who are in prison as though you were in prison with them’, ‘those who are being tortured as though you yourselves were being tortured’.

Rather strangely the compilers of today’s readings have chosen to miss out verses 2-6 of the passage from Luke. These are the verses in which Luke tells how on his way to the Pharisee’s house for dinner Jesus stops to cure a man of ‘dropsy’ on the Sabbath. Luke’s Gospel seems a little strange to us with all its arcane rules for where you should sit at dinner, but just as the writer of Letter to the Hebrews calls on us to show hospitality to strangers so Jesus in this story from Luke tells us to prioritise ‘the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind’, people who in Christ’s time would have been excluded from status-conscious dinners like the one Jesus describes because they’d have been seen as outcasts due to their disabilities and their poverty. This is why his healing of the man with dropsy matters. Jesus makes healing and showing love a far greater priority than where he sits at dinner. It turns out that welcoming strangers is also about turning established ways of seeing the weak, the outcast, and the stranger upside down. It’s about replacing pride, power and personal prestige with humility, love and empathy.

Today’s readings taken together form a profound rejection of the philosophy which seeks to claim as much as possible in our society for the wealthy, the proud and the powerful. A philosophy which we see at work as much today as it was in Jesus’s time. This is why the healing of the man with dropsy just before the dinner is so important; it’s Christ’s way of showing us how we too should make time and space for people who need our gifts of love and companionship. Humility, love, empathy and compassion for the stranger, the imprisoned, and the tortured are how we’re called to live by and through God in a world where some openly reject, demonise and mock those who are weak, poor and defenceless. But if we can answer Christ’s call to live humbly, lovingly and with compassion for the strangers in our community then we too may find ourselves entertaining angels unaware...

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,

Amen