When I visited the youth group on their camp-out, we put the gospel story in its first-century context of honor and shame-that odd cultural quirk, in which persons define themselves by their social cool in relation to others. The girls understood this. Remember junior high and high school? When one clique defined all taste and conduct, and no matter how cool other people thought you were there was never enough cool for you to be secure socially. If the clique wore Gap shirts, you begged your parents for the same. If the clique did football that was everyone's sport. If the clique hung out at Clackamas Town Center that was either where you wanted but were too scared to go, or you'd rather die than go there.

Remembering this, you can see why Jesus talked about who got to sit where at parties. Never mind first-century banquet practices, you know in your bones that if someone more rad (or more cool or having more "honor") than you even hints that you don't deserve that honor, you'll die of shame before doing that again. But Jesus says that honor isn't about one-upping others. More honor (for yourself or for your guests) isn't the point of hospitality. Nor is it about paying social debt. Jesus' guest list-the excluded and the included-makes hospitality a religious practice, an act of discipleship. A sign of the kingdom of God.

One of my lectionary buddies was at a church that spent buckets of money on a slick promotional campaign that even included a big cyberspace presence. When church attendance went up, the evangelism committee responsible for the campaign was thrilled and asked the new people, "How did you hear about us? What brought you here?" Every single new person, and all the lost-sheep-returned, said they came because a friend invited them. The invitation has value, friends. And I don't mean the kind of value that the so-called "hospitality industry" which assigns value to their "product" in profit and loss statements.

The story is told of a congregation that offers an 8 AM Sunday worship service they call, The Welcome Table. It's a curious service that provides hot breakfast and a small group Bible study for about 200 guests-all of them homeless. Since these are guests, the congregation calls makes it a point to call them by name and to use real china and silverware as they serve them seated at table. When the guests express their thanks, the hosts say and believe they are the ones who have been blessed. Apparently the liturgy didn't originally include a time for presenting an offering, but the guests insisted, and that's when a risky business got downright dangerous. The hosts found themselves learning about real generosity as they passed the offering plates down the rows, watching destitute people turn their pockets inside out to offer loose change and wadded-up dollar bills.
That's the thing. Hospitality is free, but it's not without cost. It is both risky and dangerous. Not everyone who comes is comfortable or easy to be with, as the Welcome Table congregation found. But hospitality changes people, both guests and hosts. This congregation learned that holding each other accountable for their faith journey and actions is hard, uncomfortable work. Two Benedictine writers point out, "Guests are crucial to the making of any heart." But then, as Benedictines, they know the virtue of receiving all guests as Christ-especially the poor, outcast, stranger, and pilgrim.

Diana Butler Bass writes about worshiping with a congregation that practices hospitality as a Christian virtue. During the passing of the peace, she watched three teen girls in dressed in black Goth attire who greeted an elderly woman in a wheelchair, who was happily anticipating their kisses of peace. This same congregation makes it a practice to invite visitors for lunch after worship. How many of you were beneficiaries of Ken and Winnie's after-worship lunches? The new pastor at Eagle Creek tells me that part of that congregation's welcome has been to feed him. One family after another has invited him home after church, almost always including one or two other guests. In Butler Bass' story, she reports bringing her 7-year-old daughter Emma with her as she traveled, observing vital mainline congregations. After a year of this, by way of conversation, Butler Bass asked Emma which church she'd liked the best so far. Without hesitation, Emma named the church they'd attended months and months ago, the one which unselfconsciously did what they always do: they invited guests out for lunch after worship. This was in a tourist town during the height of tourist season, but all the guests were invited to lunch with a church host. It wasn't the food that appealed to Emma. It was that, while the grown ups did church talk, an admirable teenaged girl talked with her. As if she was the honored guest.

That's hospitality as Christian virtue! That sounds so old-fashioned-virtue. But when Christians practice hospitality as "virtue," it doesn't morph into some product or committee work. Which means we need to know why we bother with it. The easy answer is, "Because the Bible tells us to." And that would be true. See today's Hebrews lesson. Or we could say we're followers of Jesus; hospitality is what he did, so we need to do it, too. And that would be true. Jesus defined hospitality as the inclusion of people "not like us" and made its practice a characteristic of God's kingdom, which is what we pray to come every time we say the Lord's Prayer. Any one of these reasons is "necessary and sufficient" enough for us to practice hospitality. They are what I call "for God's sake" reasons. Do hospitality-for God's sake! But there are reasons for us to practice hospitality for our own sake. Not in payment of social debt, nor in hope of having angels around the house (as you might suspect from Hebrews today). Hospitality is for our own good-when we welcome others not like us, when we share all we've got, when we become vulnerable in relation to strangers. When hospitality is for our own good, we discover that its practice helps us trust God. At the end of that list of "to do" imperatives in Hebrews today, the consequence of doing all that good discipleship and clean living is, "we can say with confidence, The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid." That's trust. When we take the risk of hospitality, we know intimately God's care for us. When we're generous, we discover that God provides for our every need, because we know God cares for this person with Down syndrome or MS or dementia or who is homeless or struggles with addiction.

To hear Jesus talk, some new table manners are required of Christians. Because community develops around shared life and bread, what happens at the table is too sacred to be perverted for private advantage. As Jesus urges his fellow guests to include the obscure and outcast, he reminds them that it's the invitation itself that has value. And this is true whether we are the host or the guest. That's the ambiguous thing about following Jesus. Sometimes we are the hosts, sometimes we're the guests. Both honored by sharing the table set and made sacred by Christ. The more we practice hospitality, this fundamental virtue of our faith, the more room there is for all God's people at this table. Which is how we learn we can trust God. And that's pretty much the point.