How to Share in the Ordinary

a weekend-ready sermon on Jesus + hospitality

Today, in the final homestretch before Tuesday’s launch of Start with Hello, I’m sharing something I’ve been holding onto for months. Right here. Just for you.

Back in the Spring, I partnered with my friend Beth Graybill to lead a six-week series at South Bend City Church (my church home away from home) while pastor Jason Miller was away. Beth is a storyteller by nature, along with being a dream co-collaborator. (She’s also a bit of an Enneagram expert. Another story for another time. Any Enneagram people around here?)

At our first official planning meeting, the day after I returned from Ireland and very randomly ordered a latte (butterscotch) for the first time in my life, Beth and Jason eventually convinced me it made sense to structure the series around Start with Hello. I was reluctant for a number of reasons (specifically, I didn’t want to be that person).

I intentionally wrote Start with Hello in a way that is not faith-based (though absolutely faith-informed.) Because it’s a book about connecting with people who we might see as “different” from us in some way, it felt important to make it accessible to a variety of people from a variety of places and perspectives. Living as neighbors is a dream built for everyone.

That was the right move for the book. But it was definitely fun to dive into scripture with SwH in hand and see just how well they play together. I know (and value) that not everyone reading this letter identifies as a Christian. If that is you, I’m so glad you’re here! Feel free to skip this one, or just read along with curiosity.

My time at SBCC cracked me up a bit, allowing me space to feel the breeze through the stuffy corridors of me. Faith feels precarious for many of us right now. But Jesus is here through it all, holding onto us, reminding us we aren’t alone and we don’t have to be afraid.

I hope you enjoy this special Sunday service. I’ll link to the podcast series at the bottom of this email, in case you’d like to listen through the rest of the series.

Love you all! Talk soon.

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South Bend City Church: Start with Hello week 4 (from May 15th, 2022)

(I’m sharing the key points of my message, along with a few quotes and scripture passages. This won’t be a full transcript, because that’s not quite how I roll when speaking/preaching. You’re getting my notes and cues, which is a peek inside my brain, maybe? Hopefully fairly coherent. If you’d like to listen to the actual message, just click here.)

Week 4 – How to Share in the Ordinary:

We invite others in, seeking to connect, not impress.

My friend Tim Soerens recently said, “How we are together matters more than what we do together.”

This is the “how we are together” week.

·         Hospitality – sharing our homes, spaces, selves. (mutual vulnerability)

·         Sharing food whenever possible. (Disarming, brings us together, a shared value.)

Quote:

“The Gospel is a story of meals, opening in a garden and ending at a feast…Jesus did not separate the practice of feeding the hungry from that of feasting with friends. He enjoyed communion with them all. Dismantling the social stratification of meals was, in fact, one of his main intentions. Jesus hosted dinner parties that turned the forgotten into guests of honor.” – We Will Feast by Kendall Vanderslice

In Luke 19 we read the story of Zacchaeus to the tune of one of the most popular Sunday School songs ever written. The details are cemented in our memories: a small man climbs a sycamore tree to see Jesus, Jesus calls him down from the tree, Jesus invites himself to the man’s house for dinner.

Sketched within the catchy melody is our roadmap for loving our neighbors in the midst of ordinary life.

Scripture reading: Luke 19:1-10 (NLT)

“Jesus entered Jericho and made his way through the town. There was a man there named Zacchaeus. He was the chief tax collector in the region, and he had become very rich. He tried to get a look at Jesus, but he was too short to see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree beside the road, for Jesus was going to pass that way.

When Jesus came by, he looked up at Zacchaeus and called him by name. “Zacchaeus!” he said. “Quick, come down! I must be a guest in your home today.” Zacchaeus quickly climbed down and took Jesus to his house in great excitement and joy. But the people were displeased. “He has gone to be the guest of a notorious sinner,” they grumbled.

Meanwhile, Zacchaeus stood before the Lord and said, “I will give half my wealth to the poor, Lord, and if I have cheated people on their taxes, I will give them back four times as much!” Jesus responded, “Salvation has come to this home today, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.”

(pause)

What stands in the way of sharing our spaces with others?

·         Lots of barriers: vulnerability, awkwardness, comparison, space, money, time, energy, fear, insecurity…     

We have to believe it matters (incarnation), then practice building trust.

·         Go first.

·         “We can impress or we can connect, but we can’t do both.”  – Shauna Niequist

·         Set the bar low. Ease into letting others see us as we really are.

·         Live (mostly) integrated. This is who I am, and I invite you in.

·         When we’re willing to live exposed and vulnerable, it brings down the walls.  

Quick story: Sungbin Kim receiving welcome from the guys in jail.

The truth is, we don’t really know each other until we share. The story of Jesus and Zacchaeus is a perfect hospitality story because it tells it slant. We think of Biblical stories about hospitality and we often think of Mary and Martha. We think of home-making and dusty gender roles

Here we see two people, in this case two men, paying attention, eager to engage, unbothered by the possibility of scandal, and willing to risk the vulnerability connection requires.

We watch as Jesus receives from someone near him. We aren’t well-practiced in that. It’s so much easier to position ourselves as the one making the invitation, in control.

Community. Communication. Communion. All share the Latin root word communionem, meaning "fellowship, mutual participation, or sharing.”

We will never experience what God intended for our good and our delight until we commit to receiving.

It has to go both ways. (Ask for what you need. Offer what you can.)

I want to end with a practice for this week. Simply: invite someone in. Consider inviting someone who might be less familiar, or less comfortable in some way. Resolve to letting it be real, not spruced up and perfect. Invite someone into your yard for hot dogs around the fire pit, or into your kitchen for frozen pizza. The point is not what we serve or how the place looks, but how we are together. If that’s more than what you’re ready for, invite someone to meet for coffee or a walk-and-talk.

Connection. Communionem. Sharing.

And if someone invites you in? Be ready to receive.

It’s fitting that we would end today’s gathering by sharing in the eucharist – the Lord’s supper. I’m not Jason. I humbly ask you to receive my imperfect presence in this sacrament, trusting the Spirit of God is enough for us. Do you want to sit at the table with Jesus? We believe the eucharist - communion – is for anyone who wants to receive what Jesus freely gives.

On the night Jesus would be betrayed, he sat with his friends, around a shared table.

Bread – this is my body, broken for you. (Body of Christ, broken for you)

Cup – (wine, juice) This is my blood, shed for you (Blood of Christ, shed for you)

Ending Benediction:

“Jesus enjoins his disciples to participate in God’s work. Then he takes the bread and gives thanks to God, to show them that the bread doesn’t belong to them. Like everything we have, he says, bread comes from God, and your job is just to break it up and give it away. Give it to the wrong people, to the ones who haven’t washed their hands correctly, to the latecomers and the women, to anyone who’s hungry.” – Jesus Freak by Sara Miles

Grace and peace be with you.

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Throughout the series, we invited several guests to join us, including Judge Stephanie Steele, the first female Black judge in St. Joseph County, Indiana, and Kathy Burnette, WoC and owner of Brain Lair Books, an independent children’s bookstore owner (featured by Oprah Winfrey!) in South Bend, IN.

Listen beginning with Week 1 here:

I’ll leave you with a quote about hospitality and sharing ourselves with others, from Start with Hello, along with the gentle reminder that you’re running out of time to get the audiobook (read by me!) for free!! The only way to get that is by pre-ordering. (You’ll also get a beautiful piece of downloadable art and two behind-the-scenes videos of my life, working at The Window, and rubbing shoulders with my actual community at The Electric Brew.)

If you plan to buy the book, this is your chance to get two-for-one. Thank you for cheering me on and supporting this long labor of love! You can pre-order and claim your presents directly from my site:

“It doesn’t matter how comfortable of skilled we are in the kitchen. We don’t have to be a foodie. (That might even get in the way.) The question we should be asking is not, ‘Can I pull this off?’ but rather, ‘Who needs to know they’re not alone?’

We aren’t chefs or cooks. We’re caretakers. Noticers. We know how to feed people. We’re at our best when we toss the complications and set our default to the basic act of sharing ourselves…Healing is always possible - and it often looks a lot like lunch.”

- Start with Hello