Radical Hospitality: Receiving God’s Love

Ron Campbell
Fellowship Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

March 13, 2011

Text: I John 4:19

Our church has adopted the report from our Compass Committee which sets a vision for TUMC for the next 5 to 10 years!

It is very exciting to see how our church, after three years of “Holy Conversations,” has set the course for the future with a foundation based on core Biblical practices and an emphasis upon the church as the community within which disciples are drawn into God’s love and grace, and equipped to be disciples which bear spiritual fruit in all aspects of our lives.

You will be hearing much more this year about the key tools we are using to initiate this journey into the future.

The tools are the books and writings of Bishop Robert Schnase, the resident Bishop in the UMC Missouri Conference. Robert is one of our very own Southwest Conference pastors, formerly the Senior Pastor at the First United Methodist Church in McAllen, Texas.

JJ worked on his staff for 18 years and brings his vision and practice of ministry to share with us.

Our four mission teams this year, Honduras, McCurdy, Uganda, Russia and Russia are using the foundational principles of ministry he outlines as the devotional focus of all four teams.

JJ is the Spiritual Leader and VBS Coordinator on the Uganda mission trip.

Bishop Schnase’s first book is Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations.

These practices are:

1. Radical Hospitality
2. Passionate Worship
3. Intentional Faith Development
4. Risk-Taking Mission and Service
5. Extravagant Generosity

Bishop Schnase’s second book, Five Practices of Fruitful Living, mirrored the first by using the same core practices, but focused on how we as disciples live these core practices in our daily living.

This morning my message is focused on Bishop Schnase's first core practice of fruitful living, "Radical Hospitality."

The practice of radical hospitality, the first core practice, is simply, our deep motivation and desire to love God with all of our heart, all of our mind, all of our strength, and all of our soul.

Practicing Radical Hospitality is our intentional focus on growing daily into deeper awareness of God’s real, unconditional and extravagant love, which embraces us even before we know it, and that enables us to love ourselves, love God, and love others.

 It being open and receptive to God’s presence in every circumstance and moment of our lives, and being compelled to share that love with others.

This morning I ring the bell ring strongly for this first core practice of fruitful living, but also, I want to open the door to the other four practices by focusing on the importance of us being open and receptive God's love for us in our daily living as the well-spring of the other four.

Think about one of those metal circle water sprinklers with holes in it, attached to a water hose.

To water the yard we have to first turn on the handle of the water faucet attached to the water pipe at the house.

Think of the first core practice of fruitful living as the water which flows through the hose into the circular metal sprinkler at the other end of the water hose.

Wow! When the handle is turned fully open, the water explodes through the hose, into the circular metal water sprinkler.

Now imagine that this circular metal water sprinkler has four holes through which the water streams outward in four different directions.

These four holes can represent for us the other four core practices of fruitful living, passionate worship, intentional faith development, risk-taking mission and service, and extravagant generosity.

These four direct the water, God’s real, unconditional and extravagant love, to the four corners of the yard.

You see the other four practices flow out of this first reality, that our hearts are full and overflowing with love. And the source of this love is the transcendent God, who is most clearly revealed to us in this Jesus, who is known to us in the deepest places of our souls through the living presence of God's active and real Spirit within us.

So, at the center of a life which overflows with passionate worship, intentional faith development, risk-taking service, and extravagant generosity, is the well spring of God's love for us.

As we practice over a lifetime living more fully into the living and loving presence of God in us, our lives are more and more open to the love of God in us, begin to overflow with the joy of the Spirit, and we become faithful and fruitful instruments of God's love and grace for others.

Let me give a real life example of how living from this core practice enable us to open the flow of God’s Spirit through our lives as the source of blessing for others and for ourselves.

Story: Jack Wolfe, Prison Ministry experience last week, medical unit at Huntsville.

• Jack volunteered to go into the Ad Seg units (Administration Segregation Units) for the first time in his many years of participation in the Bill Glass Prison Ministry.
• These are the units where prisoners who cannot function well in the “yard” with the general prison population are placed in single cells for 23 of 24 hours seven days a week. The other hour, if they get it, they get to exercise in a tiny little open space work out area for one hour.
• You can imagine the insanity that is a constant way of life in these units with everyone screaming and sending notes on little strings back and forth to maintain some kind of connection with other people, as sick as it is.
• After volunteering to go into Ad Seg, Jack was diverted into the prison hospital, where he encountered several hundred prisoners in various conditions. About 80 or so were receiving dialysis for four hours each day.
• When I asked him to share with me his most moving experience, he did not hesitate to tell me about a 58 year old man lying on his bed in the dark, withdrawn from the rest with his face turned to the wall.
• Jack started a conversation, and as soon as he told the man he was with the prison ministry, the man burst open with gratitude.
• He told Jack that he had just received word that he had one year or less to live and that he was terrified about his soul!
• Jack had risked going into prison to witness his faith and give comfort to those incarcerated. Then he took an additional risk by volunteering to going into the lock up units to those in solitary confinement.
• Then by chance or “God design” he ended up in the prison hospital at the bedside of a dying inmate who was terrified about the condition of his soul.
• Jack listened to the man ‘pour out his soul,” taking full responsibility for all of the terrible things he had down. Them with Jack’s guidance he prayed with deep remorse to God for forgiveness and for pardon.
• Jack was able to be his priest, “In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.”

• Jack Wolfe demonstrated “radical hospitality” as he opened himself with trust and love to God, and let God use him as an instrument of his grace and peace.
• Jack’s radical hospitality to God, shared with his new friend in prison, opened the flow of God’s Spirit for both of them as they “practiced” passionate worship, intentional faith development, risk-taking mission and service, and extravagant generosity with each other, in the name of Jesus Christ.
  

Now let’s make a transition in which we apply these fire core practices of fruitful living to this church season of Lent.

Lent is a time to intentionally focus on our faith development.

As we begin this time of reflection, contemplation, and meditation upon our relationship with God, we internally walk the path of Jesus. 

We walk with Jesus from his baptism by John, to the 40 days in the wilderness tempted by Satin, and through the three years of demonstrating how to live a life totally open and receptive to God's presence.

We witness how Jesus worshiped God with deep, passionate love and praise, how he interpreted every aspect of life as sacred, and how he experienced every moment of life as soul food for growing in spiritual knowledge and strength.

We notice more intently how he was constantly sensitive to the hurts, needs, and the deepest fears and aspirations of others, and how he responded in ways that put the needs of others ahead of himself.

And we appreciate more deeply how he demonstrated generosity that was so extravagant, it could only flow out of the divine knowledge that everything we have.

That even our lives are really not our own, but are something which we are holding for the true owner, who is God the transcendent Father, God the Son in Jesus Christ, and God in us, the Holly Spirit, God, three in one, whose very nature is the definition of the five practices of a life of grace and fruitful living.

So, I offer the invitation today for you to open the doors of your hearts, minds, and souls, to be more fully receptive and hospitable to the unseen presence of the living God.

That for these forty days, we may intentionally focus on how we may grow closer to this God in us, which was fully in Jesus whom we call the eternal Christ.

The last week we will walk with Jesus to Jerusalem, through the golden gate into the temple grounds, with the crowds cheering and waving Palm branches and singing hosanna, with him through the five days of confrontations with the Jewish leaders and teaching the crowds and his disciples.

Then finally we walk with him and his disciples to the last supper in the upper room, the arrest, the trail before the Sanhedrin, the beatings and long night in the stone pit in Caiaphas palace, and then the excruciating experience of Friday, the trials before King Herod and Pilate, the humiliation, cruel and inhumane torture, and the parade down the Via Dolorosa, the way of sorrows and tears, to the cross on Golgotha, and into the cold tomb on Friday night.

Now we are prepared, prepared to die with Christ, to go into the tomb with him that we may also experience with him the power of the Sunday resurrection!

As we travel this 40 day journey with Jesus through this season of Lent, we will practice with him all that he came to teach us. And at the end of this journey, Easter Sunday, we will have opened ourselves so  intentionally and fully to receive God's love within us, that God's grace will overflow from us in more faithful and fruitful living.

Today we’ve focused on the practice of radical hospitality, which is simply our deep motivation and desire to love God with all of our heart, all of our mind, all our strength, and all of our soul.

The other four practices, which we will take one by one the next four Sundays, flow out of this first reality, that our hearts are full of love because the source of this love is the transcendent God, who is most clearly revealed to us in this guy Jesus, and who is known to us in the deepest places of our souls through the living presence of God's active and real Spirit within us.

Amen