Hey everybody, welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast.
Thanks for being with us today as we continue our conversations about spiritual practices,
the things that we can do,
and some ideas about how we become aware of God and the world,
how we implement some spiritual growth into the various aspects of our lives.
If you’re just joining us for the first time,
this is one of several conversations that
have already happened.
If you’ve been with us,
And today we look at some spiritual practices,
Michael, that aren’t most obvious.
In fact, if you made a list of spiritual practices or asked people to do that,
I suspect that maybe our themes for today might not make a lot of those lists.
Yeah, I think that’s true,
Clint.
I think that in some ways it is maybe a surprising turn in these series of conversations.
Last week we talked a little bit about simplicity and about how that can be a tool as we seek
to practice the faith.
And here I think the themes track a little bit more closely with some of the themes that
were earlier on in our conversation,
such as confession and forgiveness.
Because today we’re going to talk about relationships and hospitality.
And I think we all know that to navigate these kinds of interrelated connections that we
have as people is messy business,
Clint.
It is difficult.
For some of us,
this is very dangerous ground.
It’s maybe ground that we avoid if we’re given an option.
Because sometimes we are left with feelings of distance instead of connection.
In some cases, when we think of what it means to relate to one another,
we see that as a
hostile or a tension filled kind of relationship.
And if that’s true,
if that’s a model that we’re comfortable with,
today’s conversation is going to be challenging.
Because as people of faith,
there’s no way around the reality that both scripturally
and theologically God has created us with the intention of interconnection.
God has this plan that has humans living in right relationship with one another and with God.
And in the midst of all of those moving pieces,
there’s complication,
there’s nuance, there’s a sense of both invitation but also struggle.
And so yeah, Clint, I think if you had made a list of spiritual practices,
maybe how you treat others maybe would have come to mind.
But I think we’re going to emphasize today the necessity and also some of the struggles
that come along with trying to live in right relationship with one another.
And most of the conversations we’ve had have been about things that I would call internal
practices.
We’ve talked about giving,
which has an external component.
But this is in some ways where all of that rubber meets the road,
where we put those
things into practice and we point them out into the world.
And the question I think that hangs over this conversation is how do those various things, how does gratitude,
how does joy,
how does inner peace,
how do those things inform the
way that we relate to others?
And really we’ll approach this today in kind of two categories.
We’ll talk relationships first and hospitality second.
And by relationships,
we generally have in mind those people we’re already connected to,
our friends,
our family,
those we go to church with.
You know, our lives, most of them are and should be a network,
a web of connectedness.
We have this natural propensity to not be alone and to connect in some way to invest
our lives into the lives of others.
And that’s not an easy thing to do all the time,
but it is a natural thing.
You also bring to that the reality that it is through relationship that we experience
so much of what we understand about life,
probably our greatest joys,
our greatest sadnesses, our greatest struggles, maybe our greatest pain have to do with relational realities.
And it is in the context of relationship that we experience so much of life and it is in
how we react to those experiences that often determine whether we’re willing to be in relationship,
whether we’re able, are we successful, how do we navigate our relationship with other people.
And I think the good news of that is that it is in the context of relating to others
that we are offered such a deep chance to understand some of what it means to be in relationship with God,
some of what it means to love,
to be loved,
to forgive and be forgiven,
to be accountable,
to be redeemed.
So much of the religious language we can kind of put skin on in our experience with other people.
Now this is a conversation that could go many different directions and it could stay very
surface level, but our intention is for us to dig a little bit deeper under the layers
and let me explain a little bit what I mean there.
When I was young,
my friends and I,
I went to a private school,
I don’t know what conversations
you have in a public school,
but in a private school we would sometimes talk about what
is the right priority of life and the answer,
the right answer was God,
family,
work,
friends.
That was the right answer and maybe you could argue over working friends,
right, which one of those.
But the answer,
God,
family,
that was rote and everybody agreed with that.
There was no debating it and to some extent you go on Facebook and you see the things
scroll by and you see a person say a version of that and a person who gets to the latter
years of life and says that family is the most important thing.
Everybody nods their heads and agrees.
That’s not what we’re talking about.
We’re not talking about that nice idea that we all agree to,
that family is nice because
while family is nice sometimes,
family is often the most difficult,
challenging relationships that we have to navigate.
I think we want to dig a little bit deeper under the surface than just platitude.
Let me give an example of that.
There was a friend that I had in seminary who I found a really encouraging person,
a thoughtful person and one conversation with him,
he mentioned how he tried to think of his life as one in
which he needed to be faithful to his vows.
I asked him, “Well, what do you mean by that?”
He said, “Well, I made vows to my wife.
I want to be faithful to those vows.”
He said, “When my daughters were baptized,” he said,
“I made vows of raising them up to
know Jesus Christ and I want to live out those vows.”
He said, “When I am called by a congregation,
I want to be one who lives out the vows I
take for ministry and to be a faithful servant and steward.”
I think that gets us closer to the kind of commitment that we’re talking about in relationships
because it’s not just about trying to appreciate the people in our circles.
That’s important, but really it’s about an intentional decision that we’re going to pursue
good in these relationships even when it is hard.
It has behind it this idea of having an intention,
a goal of this is where I’m aiming for and I’m
going to exert my own time and energy and effort to move forward in these relationships in a way
that is impactful.
It’s not just a thing that we assent to and then put in the junk drawer of our hearts.
It’s a thing that we must decide is going to become important and would be visibly important
to someone who saw our checkbook register or our calendar who could look and see that
we have indeed prioritized these relationships that God has given to us.
One of the challenges that is present in having this kind of conversation about relationship
being a spiritual practice is that relationship is something that everyone does.
You don’t need to be Christian to be a good parent.
You don’t need to be Christian to be a good friend,
but adding that word spiritual brings
with it the question,
“How does my relationship with Jesus Christ,
how does seeking to be a
person that is faithful to Jesus Christ,
impact how I relate to other people?
How do I parent differently because I’m a disciple?
How am I a different friend?
How do I relate to people in a way that is unique because of my faith?”
And there are wonderful people who are great friends and great parents and have great
relationships that don’t bring that question.
But as we undertake this discussion,
this conversation, that’s really the driving
question for us.
What does it mean that we are people of faith and how does that faith impact and direct
how we connect and maintain those connection with others?
And for that reason,
we understand that there are some moments for each of us that are probably
painful in regard to relationships.
There are people that perhaps we used to relate to that we don’t.
Some of us have had moments where we’re estranged from a friend or a family member.
Maybe we’ve betrayed someone or we feel they’ve betrayed us.
Maybe something has happened that strained or broke a relationship.
Maybe it was a marriage that didn’t work.
And what I think we want to be able to say as we move into this conversation is that
there does need to be a graciousness that hangs over.
You may not be at a point where you can reconnect and reestablish that relationship.
So maybe the struggle then for us in that moment is,
can I let go of the grudge?
Can I bring myself to pray for that person?
Can I do something encouraging?
Is there a way in which I can move a step from where I am?
The reality is we are not always going to be able to reconnect with people with whom
we’ve had broken relationships.
It simply doesn’t work that way.
It’s not that simple.
But we all can internally, perhaps at least,
make steps toward what it would look like to have some healing,
to have some grace impact our experience of that relationship.
And that gives this conversation, Michael, I think,
a power and a depth that is far
deeper than a kind of secular conversation about how are we friends or how do we treat
our kids or our parents or our grandparents.
I have thought numerous times that my closest relationships have been the greatest
magnifying glasses to my own personal brokenness.
And what I mean by that is,
if it wasn’t for my spouse and my children who are always there
and who often push the intensity of a situation to a level that I’m not comfortable with,
that gives me the opportunity to learn of the stuff that gets me riled up.
If I was by myself and all the things in life went the way that Michael Goecke wanted,
it would be easy to believe that I had everything buttoned up.
But the people who know your buttons,
the people who know and sometimes very willingly push them,
are the people that help us see I’m impatient or I wasn’t thinking of another person there.
I was really thinking of what I thought was in my best interest.
Or I have an opinion and I’m unwilling to hear someone else’s.
I think we find in someone like the Apostle Paul and the writing that he does about relationships,
specifically marriages,
sometimes we get a little hung up on them.
They may sound to us a little bit like there’s order to them that the man is the head of the
wife.
What we might miss in some of that discomfort is that Paul emphasizes in a
way that was not common in the ancient world a kind of mutuality of relationship,
a kind of self-giving.
He goes so far as to say that we should treat our spouse as if
we were replicating or we were exemplifying Christ giving himself for the church.
And we know that that Christ gift was his very self.
He gave up his life for the church.
His willingness to give was literally everything that he had,
his very last breath.
And I wonder if that was the bar that we brought to our relationships.
How might it change our response in difficult circumstances?
When we find ourselves rising up in anger,
when we find ourselves defending ourselves at all odds,
we might do well to ask,
is this an opportunity for me to practice humility?
Or is this an opportunity for me to practice discernment?
Maybe I can begin to hone this spiritual practice of trying to see things from an advantage
that isn’t my own.
Because Clint, as we’ve mentioned many times before in these conversations,
ultimately practicing the faith is merely trying to open ourselves to see what God is doing.
And we miss it.
God is always acting.
But we miss it because we get closed off and sucked
into ourselves.
And so relationships do provide this kind of canvas in which we can let these
things begin to sort of come out, to be expressed.
And then we can start to try to seek ways to see
them with new eyes.
But I think oftentimes,
instead of seeing these relationships as fertile
proving grounds for spiritual growth,
we see them as conflicts unto themselves.
Well,
my wife always says it has to be this way.
Or my kids always yell back.
Or I try to emphasize
this thing and no one listens.
And in the midst of those constant frustrations,
which are natural in human relationships,
it begins to become a fight with others instead of an opportunity to
grow and to mature.
And that’s a fine distinction,
Clint, but I think it makes all the difference.
One of the struggles I think we have in the context of difficult relationships is that we
replay the narrative over and over enough until it becomes the only way that we view it.
It becomes the only lens we can look through.
So what tends to happen is a couple will come into the office
and say they’re having some issues with one another.
And I’ll say, “Okay,
can you tell me
what’s going on?” And instantly it begins to feel like both of them are trying to get me on their
side.
Well, he does this and this and this,
and he always does that.
And well, she always this, this, and this.
And it is a fascinating jump that I have never once in the context of counseling
asked, “Who’s at fault?” I only ask,
“What are the issues?” And without fail,
the conversation in damaged relationships goes to who’s to blame and not what’s going on in the middle.
And that’s the danger we have in the midst of a relationship that is strained or painful
is to put ourself on the side of the one who has nothing to do with it and to put the other on the
side where there’s blame.
And when we do that,
when we build that kind of wall,
we make it almost
impossible to find that place in the middle where we can meet,
where we can begin to have compromise,
where that relationship communication can be opened up.
And part of what we’re talking
today is, of course, those closest relationships, our family,
our spouse,
children, parents, etc.
But then in a broader context,
we’re also talking about how is it that Christians maintain
relationships with people around them.
And the word we use in church here is community,
a co-unity, a unity made of many people becoming one and a common oneness.
This is what the word
community means.
And how do we live that out?
That’s no easy thing to do.
And Michael, it’s been my experience that maybe people live on one of two spectrums and the place we’re aiming
for is the middle.
So on the one hand, we have people,
I would say, who are naturally great
at relationships, but maybe they go too far.
They’re kind of enmeshed.
They’re connected with everybody.
They’re writing letters.
They’re emailing.
But sometimes it’s hard to tell who they
are apart from those connections.
If you’ve been with us for a long time and you can think back to Enneagram conversation,
sort of the classic struggle of the two who loves connecting with
people but overdoes it and gives up part of themselves in the mix.
And so on the one hand,
you have that person that’s just connected everywhere and maybe overly so,
maybe lacking some of their own identity.
On the other end of the spectrum,
I would say you have those people
who get along with people fine,
but if people move sooner or later,
that relationship will kind of fade.
If they don’t see a person for a while,
they’re probably not the one who’s going
to make the phone call or send the letter.
They can do relationships,
but they don’t work real
hard on them when they’re kind of out of sight, out of mind.
And then in the middle of those,
you have those people who are able to connect and who are able to stay connected but not be overconnected.
And I think in very simple psychological terms,
that’s the ground we
shoot for as people of faith.
That place where we treat our relationships as a precious gift
and we nurture them,
we put time and energy into them,
we genuinely care about the people without getting lost,
without using people to distract ourselves, without being selfish.
And that’s a fine line to walk at times.
Yeah, it’s a real challenge just being humans to live
in between these kinds of opposing ideas.
They’re not things that we should really see ourselves
are being caught in sort of some oppositional battle.
There’s just tensions we need to learn
to live with.
And Clint, I think the people who do that well,
it says far more about their own
character than it does about the nature of those relationships themselves.
Let me say that differently.
Some people make it look easy,
but it’s not easier for them.
It’s not that they’ve
just been handed a silver platter.
There is no family or relational system.
There’s no friend system in which there is not brokenness.
That is one of the classic lies that you look around you
and everybody else is living this perfect conflict-free,
frustration-free life.
If you for a moment have believed that,
it’s now time to put that away.
People are broken and that
brokenness works itself out across our entire community.
The people who find ways of living in
that tension in a healthy,
God-centered kind of way have done so because of work and prayer
and diligence and, quite frankly,
humility to ask for forgiveness.
And I think that calls to mind.
I think there’s maybe two things that I would lift up.
I think that are markers of a person
trying to live in that space, Clint.
The first is they resist arrogance.
I think it’s easy in our
relationship in the community to make things point back to ourselves,
especially when you’re in the
doing.
You want others to sort of raise you up.
It’s a classic version of what Jesus taught,
that the greatest will be least and the least will be greatest.
The one who’s going to live in the
tension needs to live in such a way that the stuff of life,
and I mean the achievements of life and
the public presence of life,
those things should never exist until unto their own.
If they do, if we are pursuing others seeing us,
we are being arrogant.
We’re making it about ourselves and
that is a thing that must be resisted if we’re to live in that middle place.
And I think another thing, quite frankly,
is a kind of authentic character.
Clint, we cannot be people who lie,
who cheat others, people who try to bend systems to our advantage and then try to make it go away.
And you say, “Well, of course we shouldn’t do that.
A person should be upright.” But if the world
around us isn’t clear enough,
people of upright character are still in short supply.
We must practice the kind of gifts that prove us to be people who are honest with our time,
to be honest with the goods and people around us,
the tasks that we’ve been given charge with.
We should be people who are known to be in good repute.
And these are essential components to be able to live
in right relationship in the community because the moment we betray people’s trust,
the moment that we’re willing to propagate lies that benefit ourselves,
the moment in which we are willing
to allow things to happen that advance our interests over others,
we are now participating
in systems that break down this web of relationship that God intends to be advanced.
And I think that
these are things that we literally must practice for us to be able to continue to grow in these relationships.
I would add to that,
Michael, that and to some extent I maybe would try to label what you’re saying.
Those who, in my experience, are best at relationships have an outwardness.
In other words,
they are genuine in their concern for others.
So to use this spectrum,
there are three things that can be happening.
Someone says,
“How are you?” And on one hand,
they’re saying it because that’s what they say,
and you get the sense that they don’t really want
a long drawn – if you’re bringing something to that conversation that’s going to take a while,
they – that’s not what they meant.
It’s not really invitational.
It’s relational in the sense of, “Hello,
how are you?” But it’s not real.
On the other hand,
you have that question that can easily be,
“How are you?” because I really want to tell you how I am.
I really want to get my stuff
out there, but the entrance is I’m going to make it look like I’m asking about you,
and then I’m going to dump my stuff.
And then in the middle,
is that person – and when they ask you,
“Hey, Clint, how are you?” Now,
I may or may not choose to,
but I know in that moment I could tell them.
I could give them a real answer.
There’s a genuineness of care.
And the reality is,
we all need some moments where it can be about us,
but we have to temper that with real moments
that are about others.
You know, this is how the best marriages work.
Both partners give and take being the center.
They give and take their need and their want,
and they’re able to balance that
in a beautiful way in which,
at the right time,
both has in the other, in the partner,
a person willing to listen,
to really listen,
and to engage with them.
And that’s never completely
one-sided.
It’s not always the giver and always the receiver.
There’s a mutuality to that.
It goes back and forth.
And I find that people who are great at relationships bring that kind of
authenticity or that kind of genuineness to those conversations in a way that
I think is apparent.
And when I think of trying to live up to be one of those people,
trying to become one of those relational people,
one of the challenges I see for me is to bring that kind of
true concern for those around me to the conversation. It’s a really challenging side to that,
Clint.
And that is that many of the people in my life
who I’ve seen exhibit that gift have gone through a very difficult wilderness season
in their life.
They are often people who have experienced a loss or they have experienced a very challenging trial.
And as someone who has not walked through that myself, who’s only
been alongside at best and oftentimes seen individuals go through these processes,
I think there’s a sense in which at our darkest moment,
we recognize how desperately we really
do need the connections to our community.
The people who have gone through some of life’s
most harrowing circumstances and say, “Thank you.
I could not have done it without you.”
These individuals mean those words.
“I could not have done it without you.” And they understand
this sort of interlocking mutuality that really does stand at the bottom of life.
And those who have not been through some of these sort of crucible moments, Clint,
may not have yet
gotten to the point where we completely understand that truth.
And so I think the practicing aspect
of our faith here is to seek to build in ways in our lives to reconnect us to that truth in real
and meaningful ways.
And there are some things that we already do I think that would be easily
repurposed towards this end.
That there are family gatherings that we put on our calendars on an
annual basis where we could introduce a small practice.
Maybe that’s just going around the
table to express gratitude for the people at that table and what they have done or said or meant in
the midst of that year.
Maybe that you’re going to take up the craft or the spiritual practice
of thank you card writing,
of writing to those people in your life and saying thank you for
being a voice of maturity for being a mentor to me.
Maybe it looks for you like going out and
being intentional about mentoring another person who you see going through a difficult season
that you would have had someone walk alongside you.
You know, whatever that is Clint,
I do think that we could be far more intentional in sort of taking moments,
taking opportunities, taking practices that will reconnect us to the reality of how much we truly do need these relationships
because that is at the center of God’s creation,
God’s intention.
And if we do not intentionally
bring ourselves back to that,
I think we often find ourselves falling back into a very closed
sort of orientation to the world.
Yeah. And I think that’s the exact word,
Michael, closed because it seems to me that relational people have an openness to others.
And once you’re in their circle,
there’s going to be connection.
But even as they just go about
their day, as a child, I used to be so frustrated.
My grandmother,
we would go to the grocery store,
for instance, and we would be in the checkout line and then everything would be loaded up and
she’s still talking to the checkout person.
And to my grandmother’s credit, I remember
those conversations as mutual.
In other words, she didn’t just have a captive
person behind the conveyor belt that they would be talking to her.
She would find out that they
had children or that they had grandchildren or where they were from or what they were doing,
were they in school.
And it drove me insane.
I was embarrassed by it and I thought…
And then
there came a point where I looked on it later and I thought,
“There is something beautiful
about that.
The idea that you could take a stranger,
meet a stranger and have the kind of
openness that treats them as a friend or that treats them at the very least with friendliness
and connects to those people that you don’t know.
That relationship for my grandmother was not just
reserved for the people she already met.
It was a thing she carried with her and sort of planted
those seeds everywhere and you never know where she might make that connection.
And as I grew old
enough to appreciate it,
I’ve reflected on it and I think that I didn’t at the time realize what I was seeing.
There’s this beautiful bridge between our internal,
our closest relationships and our external relationships.
And I think the word that I would use to describe it would be the word empathy.
And this is what I mean.
Empathy is the one thing that we must be able to do to navigate
our world in both settings,
whether it’s the people closest to you.
And listen, anybody who’s had kids or spouse or parents or whatever that is knows that there are times when they say that
thing or they do that thing and you have to forcibly remind yourself, “No,
they’re not just doing this to be frustrating.
They’re doing it because they have a reason or they’re doing it
because they think it’s best.” Empathy is a choice that you make.
We know that in these relationships.
And so is this true in our external relationships.
When the person cuts you off in traffic,
when a person in the line says that thing that’s insulting,
the people who respond most viciously
in public, someone just says an off-handed thing and suddenly they unload and you realize that’s
not really a reflection on the infraction,
whatever the bad thing was that happened out in
public in the world.
That’s really a reflection of that person just does not have any muscle or
ability in that moment to be able to ask,
“Well, why would you have said that?” Or,
“What’s going on?” There’s no awareness of the other.
There’s no empathetic response.
And friends,
a thing that Jesus says over and over,
as he often does challenge us,
is that we are to remain open
to our neighbor.
And famously, when asked to define,
“Well, who’s your neighbor?” He said the one who’s willing to help.
He famously doesn’t say the person who you want to be your
neighbor or you think is your neighbor.
The person who you might even consider your enemy
is your neighbor.
We are called to live open,
not just to those close to us in our lives,
but to those who are outside of that circle,
those in our community,
our state, our nation, world.
And interestingly,
Clint,
I think the idea of loving your enemy,
loving that person outside your circle,
it’s always been a struggle.
But in a world in which we feel so connected to all of these
groups and circles and people and isms and names and whatever, all the time,
I think there’s a
sense in which practicing the Christian gift of hospitality,
of empathy for other,
love of neighbor and of enemy, I think these things are particularly relevant in the world in which we live right now.
Yeah, I think, Michael, that’s a great bridge between the idea of relationship and the idea
of hospitality, which for the purposes of this conversation,
we’ve put together.
And they may not be on the surface,
obviously connected.
But in that sense,
I think that they are relationship
in terms of how we treat and how we treasure those who we’re connected with has to do with
practicing that gift and recognizing that gift in those people.
When we look outside the circle,
we see that same measure,
that same thing applied to those who we don’t know.
And even more so
to those who are in need,
hospitality, I would argue,
is less about how we treat those we care
about and more about how we treat those who need to be cared for.
And throughout the Old Testament,
there are all these calls to hospitality and all of them begin with,
“You were in need.
You were slaves in Egypt.
You were foreigners.
You were outsiders.” So now treat those outsiders with kindness,
with graciousness, with gentleness, and with generosity.
And I think where we have seen
in the scriptural narrative,
people fail to be hospitable.
It’s because that they were unable to imagine themselves.
When we see somebody and we lack concern for them,
in large measure, I think it is often true that we can’t imagine ourselves in their situation.
We can’t imagine ourselves
needing public assistance.
We can’t imagine ourselves having wasted all of our resources.
We can’t imagine ourselves not being able to hold down jobs or to take care of children,
whatever it may be.
We refuse to imagine that we could be in their shoes and therefore we fail
to be able to have compassion because we don’t see them as,
in some sense, maybe as equals.
This is the root of a thing like racism.
We see a person and we think because of
their color or religion or creed or sexual or whatever it is that you want to fill in that
blank with, we see them as other than us.
We see them as different than us.
And when we do that,
we break those intentions of what it means to be hospitable.
You may know this,
the word hospitable is the same root for hospital.
It means to care for.
So hospitality is, how do we care for people?
Yes, it means if you’re having Thanksgiving dinner,
how do you serve and how do you take care of people?
Of course, it means that.
But it also means when the person shows up in your community that has a need,
how does the church treat them?
When the person shows up at church who is clearly different than the rest of us,
how do we receive
them and welcome them?
And hospitality, Michael, is an ancient, ancient practice.
The ancient world, I think, put far more emphasis on the idea of hospitality than we do in our culture.
And I think it’s a place where we at times struggle.
I think one of the reasons why we struggle,
Clint, is because we try to make systems and processes to deal with things that hospitality
used to be the tool,
the practice in which something got done.
Olmsgiving, which is a thing we see all throughout scripture of giving funds to the poor,
was the social way to provide
the daily bread for those who could not work for physical reasons or really for health reasons, whatever that was.
Olmsgiving was a spiritual practice expected.
In fact,
if you are a
practicing Muslim, it’s one of the five pillars today all around the world.
Olmsgiving is expected of that religious tradition.
And in the ancient world,
Olmsgiving was a thing that you were
expected to do as a person who lived in that community if you were going to be faithful.
And so that is how the needs of these folks got met.
Well, we live in a world,
especially the western sort of American world,
where the expectation is there are programs,
there are administrations,
there are people whose jobs are to try to find ways to meet these needs.
And so when you begin to separate yourself from the actual need of hospitality,
it becomes easy to
debate the idea instead of beginning to recognize the need that lives in front of you.
And Clint,
I worry when the church begins to get caught in whatever the prevailing idea of the moment is.
Ideas are good and helpful.
They’ve surely proven that it’s good to have support for people who
need it.
But Christians should be less concerned,
I think, with debating the merits of this policy
proposal or this administrative system.
And we should be unendingly focused on the loving need
of those who need it,
to be engaged with people who do have needs,
those who are the weakest,
the poorest, as the gospel writer Luke would say,
the lost and the least.
This is challenging stuff,
Clint. The reality is most of us live our lives trying to not be made uncomfortable by the most
difficult things in life.
And yet the call to be a hospital,
to be hospitable people,
does, I think, on some level challenge the comfort that we try to hold as our normal,
to say, no, get out there,
find ways to help get mosquito nets to people who literally die from the diseases they get
from mosquitoes or get into the fight and try to help end sex trafficking because it’s doing
damage to real people in our country,
in our world, right?
Whatever the thing is, Clint,
we shouldn’t be blind to the reality of the thing itself for the ideas that we build up surrounding it.
Absolutely.
And folks, we know these are complicated and difficult conversations.
And there are certainly times where some of the efforts that we may pursue to help
actually do just the opposite.
And those things have to be weighed.
And Christians, I think, are called on to navigate those things with some savvy,
right?
There are ways you can check on organizations.
There are ways you can donate directly to needs if you’re uncomfortable
with how money might be spent by an individual or by an organization.
There are ways that you can
try to be careful in that.
What I think we have to make sure doesn’t happen is that we don’t do
anything because we’re not sure what to do.
We can’t be paralyzed or inactive because it’s complex.
And, you know,
Michael, I’ve always sort of thought, you know,
I think I’d rather be out
the $5 that a Burger King meal costs given to someone than to think that I saw someone who
had a genuine need and,
for whatever reason, I talked myself into thinking it wasn’t my problem
or I misunderstood it or it wasn’t real.
I would much rather answer for being too generous
than not being generous.
And, you know, that’s on a personal level.
We can also have these conversations in church.
You know, it’s a challenge for a church to say we are a group of
people who are largely similar,
especially in our part of the world,
in our part of the culture.
And when two people walk into church and one seems like us and one seems nothing like us,
do they get different reception?
Are they welcomed differently?
Are they treated differently?
And if they are, we have some serious questions to ask about,
are we practicing Christian hospitality?
Because the word Christian modifies the word hospitable.
It changes what it means to welcome
people.
And it is a great opportunity for us to enact the kind of openness that the Bible
shows us that the Scripture demands of us when we have that opportunity to welcome and care for those.
And that can be messy,
but it is certainly important.
You know, I think that one thing that is a key criteria for being able to open ourselves to
others is we must identify and we must engage in substantial ways wherever we have fear of the other.
I think that fear is a great sort of spiritual thermometer of how well we’re doing actually seeing another.
Because as Christians, we believe that all were created in the image of God.
And so when we look upon another,
even people who are radically different from ourselves,
if in that encounter we are afraid of them or what they stand for or what they look like or
what trappings come with them, whatever that is,
I don’t know that we’re seeing the one who is
called beloved by God,
the one who has every one of the hairs of their head numbered by the one
who made them and loves them.
When we see others from God’s vantage,
it affords us an opportunity
to recognize that even in the midst of what may be extreme difference is actually an opportunity
for love to exist.
And I don’t mean love in a sort of sentimental sort of throw it out there kind of
way.
I mean the kind of love that we see within God’s own self,
the love that binds together the
Father and the Son is the very love we’re called to exhibit in the world.
And sometimes that love
is going to take us into some really challenging places.
Saint Augustine said that the church is a
hospital for sinners.
We shouldn’t be surprised when sinners show up in church.
It’s going to be
hard to be a hospital.
It’s going to be hard to practice hospitality because it’s going to bring
some sick people into our number.
But friends, let’s remember we too are sick and the same God who is
tending our sickness desires to tend the other.
And I think when we live in a good healthy relationship with others,
those in our close circles and those in our father circles,
we begin to see these waves and waves of grace,
God’s love sort of worked throughout all these
things.
And now if you can’t tell,
we’re already now we’re talking about how this is a faith
subject, about how God is able to work through these practices to help us see God’s work in a
new and powerful way.
When I served in Texas,
there was a gentleman in the congregation named
George.
George was in his seventies probably at the time.
And while we were there,
we,
along with the partnership of several other congregations in town,
began a food ministry,
a kind of soup kitchen type ministry.
And George was involved in that process and became passionate about it and
really became the champion for that.
It became known as our daily bread.
And George had done well.
He was an executive at GM at one point.
And though he wasn’t showy about it,
George had resources.
He had done really well.
And he was used to dressing nice.
So he would generally shirt and
tie or sometimes a sweater and a long sleeve shirt.
He always looked nice and he would be at
the soup kitchen nearly every day.
And to watch George interact was such a fascinating lesson.
Here is this significantly wealthy older white person in very nice clothes.
And over the course
of time, George became able to call nearly every person who came by name.
And he would move around
the room and he would sit and he would engage people.
He would sometimes send food home with
them or plug them into resources if they were struggling.
And to watch George just plop down
and eat lunch next to the out of work black man or the single Hispanic mom whose children were crawling over him.
And he did it with such graciousness.
And he just literally conveyed,
it just flowed from him the message,
you are welcome here.
You’re safe here.
It’s okay for you to be here.
We care about you.
And to see that lived out was extraordinary.
It was a gift,
not only for that,
it was a gift to watch and to see a man who just was so able to embody hospitality.
It didn’t matter what walked through,
who walked through the door or what their circumstances was.
George was going to shake their hand,
sit down with them, have lunch,
hear their story and make sure that he gave them his full attention,
which is in some ways,
Michael, I would say the intersection between relationship,
being able to give our full focus
to another person and hospitality,
the idea that it doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter who that
person is or what their background is.
And I saw that lived out in him.
And when I think of trying
to be a hospitable,
a Christian hospitable person,
George always comes to mind.
As with any spiritual practice,
anything worth doing is going to require challenge.
It’s going to require work.
It’s going to require discipline and intention,
but it would be foolish to end our
conversation today without recognizing that practicing relationship with those closest to us
is challenging when oftentimes you’ve been quarantined with them or you’ve been stuck with
them more than you would both like to be together or you would all like to be together, however that is.
And it’s also difficult to practice hospitality in a time in which we talk about a virus spreading
between people and a kind of social virus that happens when we flip open our phones and see people
demonized or turn on the television and hear things said that do not represent this kind of open-handed hospitality.
And so, Clint, I do think we live in a moment in which practicing this is so incredibly
important and yet maybe never more challenging.
I would agree, Michael, and then you have the other hand where there are people we’re not seeing.
There are relationships that are difficult to nurture because we’re not able to be in physical
space together.
We’re not able to go to dinner with our friends,
couples perhaps, or maybe that’s become more difficult.
We weren’t able to take the trip and meet up with our friends as we planned.
So,
to be more intentional about those moments and to,
I think in times of stress,
in times of fear,
it is a very human inclination to kind of shrink and to make our circle small.
And there are,
you know, probably reasons for that.
But one of the things we have to fight against,
I think, is that temptation and to continue to try and check in with one another,
to try and continue to
encourage one another and to do so from “social distance” or over media.
That is not an easy task.
And I know a lot of people,
you know, this will come out the day before Thanksgiving.
And I know some very difficult decisions being made by families about is it responsible
to get together?
Is it safe to get together?
Are we able to all be together?
And if you are,
I hope that you are grateful for that because there are many who aren’t able to,
and so I would
hate to see any of us take that opportunity for granted.
If you’re not,
then I think it is worth
thinking about how can I,
even from a place of my own sadness,
how can I, without making it about me,
be encouraging to other people?
How can I connect with those I might have been with,
if I could have been,
in a real way,
in an encouraging way,
in a way that recognizes
the struggle without wallowing in it,
and is a blessing to them in whatever way is possible?
Yeah, I think maybe the only thing I have to add to that,
Clint, is I think that there should be
some level of permission named in the conversation to own the struggle here.
If you’re one of those
people who have been in quarantine,
I know that we have several who join us regularly for this conversation,
to talk about relationships and hospitality in some ways is an odd conversation
when what has been your experience has been probably largely a sense of isolation and separation.
And the idea of the fact that we’re built for relationships,
that we should try to be
hospitable towards others, these are not only things that you are not taking for granted,
they may be things that you desperately miss.
And I wonder if,
as in all of life’s most difficult moments,
we should then turn to one another to help bear that burden.
In other words, you’re not the only one who’s isolated,
you’re not the only one who’s experiencing loss and grief,
and maybe even depression.
Whatever that is,
find help in the places where you need and can find it,
in the relationships that you’ve had,
connect as best as you can.
In some circumstances, maybe it is time to ask someone to be a voice outside of your circle.
Maybe that’s a counselor,
maybe that’s a spiritual director.
There are some seasons of life where building in relationships
on purpose can be incredibly valuable tools as we seek to grow in the faith.
But friends, however this conversation finds you,
and whenever you join us for it,
I truly hope that we do practice a kind of open-handed generosity with others to whatever extent that we possibly can.
The world desperately needs Christians to demonstrate the kind of self-giving
that Christ has given,
and if we do that,
it will transform our family relationship,
it will transform our close friend relationships,
it will also transform our view and image of the world that surrounds us,
and in that,
Christ will receive glory.
Yeah,
and maybe a final word,
and I hope this isn’t a depressing word,
but one of the most educational aspects of serving as a
pastor for a while has been funerals,
and I have had the privilege of being involved
in funerals for people who were tremendously successful,
who won accolades and awards,
who had done literally great things.
I have done funerals for people of staggering wealth,
and people who had very little.
I’ve done funerals for people who were extremely successful,
and people who had fairly humble jobs and worked their careers,
you know, in relative
consistency,
and the thing that seems always true is that when it comes time to say goodbye to someone,
those things are mentioned—the wealth,
the success, the whatever,
the job, the education.
Those things aren’t unimportant,
they’re mentioned,
but they’re never the thing that matters most.
The thing that matters most,
no matter what else is true about your life,
is how you’ve connected with people,
and if you have done tremendous things,
but not had tremendous connections with others,
my experience is your funeral will be sad,
and people will miss you,
but I can always tell the difference when I do a service for somebody
who has loved others well,
because there’s a tangible reality to it, and when you
have loved people and been loved by people,
it seems to me,
Michael, that’s the height of
Christian relationship, and when we’ve done that,
not only from our own places,
our own hearts, but in the name of Jesus Christ,
it is an amazing thing,
and I think the legacy we would all hope to leave behind,
and it’s something we have to work on as we go.
It rarely just happens.
There are those few remarkable people who do it naturally.
For most of us,
it takes some work,
and we hope that there’s been something in this that is challenging and encouraging as we all try to
take those steps forward.
So friends, we look forward to our next conversation.
We’re going to bring some of these themes together as we seek to find some conclusion on this series as
we talk about what it means to practice the faith and how this spiritual practice enables us to move
forward in our discipleship.
So we look forward to seeing you next week.
We will talk more about
what is going to follow this series,
and we look forward to that,
but until then, be blessed.
Know that we are thinking of you wherever you join us for this conversation,
and of course, share it with those around you so that they might be able to be connected,
encouraged,
challenged in their own relationships.
And until we see you again,
we wish many blessings on you.