Welcoming Others requires Time
Welcoming Others requires Time
19th November 2023
Luke 10:38–42
Today we are continuing our exploration of the faith practice: Welcoming Others.
We are looking at how we activate welcome in our midst – how we express the faith in our hearts.
Because, surely, welcome is an important identity-marker of who we are as a community that follows Jesus?
The world seems to be more and more dangerous each day.
We are very aware of the sad conflicts occurring around the world – in Israel/Gaza and Ukraine.
And, here too, people feel vulnerable in their homes.
Many environments are competitive, hostile and unsafe.
Safe places and safe people are few and far between.
As the Church, we know what it is to be welcomed into the love of Christ and to know the hospitality as dearly loved children of God.
Because of this we are able to be a community of safety and healing.
Author Christine Pohl (who passed away a few months ago) wrote the book Making Room.
She recognises welcome is expressed as hospitality:
“A life of hospitality begins in worship, with a recognition of God’s grace and generosity.
Hospitality is not first a duty and responsibility;
it is first a response of love and gratitude for God’s love and welcome to us.”
Our Bible story today is about hospitality.
Martha welcomes Jesus into her home;
and gets busy preparing a meal!
Martha complains that her sister Mary, instead of helping her, is sitting listening to Jesus.
Jesus urges Martha to recognise the bigger picture;
to give up the good for the great.
I want us to consider that idea for ourselves today:
giving up the good for the great.
Mary " sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying.” (v39)
In Hebrew culture, to sit at someone's feet indicates a relationship between a disciple and a teacher.
And, culturally, it was virtually unheard of for a woman to be a disciple.
Martha’s actions represented the normative cultural expectations for a woman in those days.
So, Mary defies the cultural norms by prioritising attentiveness to learning from Jesus.
And Jesus praises this as giving up the good for the great.
To practice welcome – God’s kind of welcome –
might we also need to defy the norms of our culture?
What good thing might we give up, to devote time and energy to better things?
How can we prioritise loving God and loving our neighbours?
In our culture, productively is valued.
But living a hurried, frantic lifestyle is not what I think Jesus wants for us.
Love takes time.
Love makes time.
Think about this for a moment…
can you remember a time when you were with someone and sensed they were trying to rush you?
Or can you remember a time when you were trying to rush someone else?
I remember putting my son to bed once, and he asked me “Dad, why are you rushing? Are you trying to say Goodnight to me as quickly as you can?”
I was rushing, and he felt it.
This is not expressing love – not properly.
Love requires time.
Welcome requires time.
And because prioritising time this way really is so counter-cultural, I want to offer specific suggestions today for ways we can practice welcome.
1. Firstly, Make the Main Thing the Main Thing.
Perhaps much of your time is focused on building relationships with others, based primarily on convenience:
· co-workers
· parents of your kids’ sports team
· people who like doing the same things as you
· or a small group of longtime friends
And there's nothing wrong with that.
But you might also hear in Jesus’ Great Commandment to, “love your neighbour”
the priority of practicing welcome to all people.
And, a tangible starting point to love your neighbour might look like practicing welcome with your actual, literal neighbours; the people who live near you.
Instead of fitting in your relationship with your neighbours within any leftover time, perhaps you might prioritise these relationships as a way of loving all.
To practice welcome with those who live near you is not only a response to Jesus’ commandment, it seems a real way we can make the world better.
2. A second way to practice welcome, is to eliminate time-stealers.
Don't be afraid to say no to time-stealers that get in the way of your top priorities.
I recently heard the comparison of social media companies to ‘Big Tobacco’.
Overseas, legal action is being taken against the big social media companies for knowing the harm their product causes, and continuing to make money from it.
I’m not necessarily saying all social media, tv, games, etc
are evil; just that a lot of it is pointless. 😊
I was in Florence (some years ago), and saw the famous statue David by Michelangelo.
Michelangelo himself described his process as
‘starting with a block of marble and taking away everything that wasn't the masterpiece’.
He was a master of the art of elimination.
In the same way, to practice welcome, we too must practice the art of elimination.
To prioritise what is important, means to choose to eliminate what distracts us.
3. A third way to practice welcome, is be interruptible.
The idea of being interruptible is being willing to be inconvenienced.
This might not feel natural at first, but it's part of living at a healthy pace.
We can learn to create some space to notice others, and offer them our attention.
Instead of filling our days with to-do lists, we can create buffer to allow us to take moments (that decrease stress about being interrupted by others).
These are three specific ways we can practice welcome:
· Make the Main Thing the Main Thing – maybe a first step is our neighbours where we live.
· eliminate time-stealers
· be interruptible
This Bible reading today tells us that to practice welcome, we might need to defy the norms of our culture.
Our culture is fascinated by celebrity and talent.
I like movies about extraordinary people doing extraordinary things.
Perhaps you do too.
Imagine watching a movie about someone who
· goes to work every day,
· has dinner with her family each night,
· and reads books to her kids before they go to bed.
· Occasionally she invites her neighbours over for a drink and they talk about their jobs and their families.
· When one of the neighbours is going through a hard time, she's available.
· When a neighbour needs a babysitter because something unexpected comes up, she is available.
Imagine in scene after scene of this film, we watch someone who is consistently practicing welcome to those around them.
This would be a terribly boring movie.
No one would pay to see it.
But…
Jesus says practicing welcome with our neighbours is exactly the way we change the world