Rev’d Peter Balabanski

Pentecost + 12 C -Jrm 2 4 -13, Ps 81 1 10-16, Heb 13 1-8 15-16, Lk 14 1 7-14

Day of Prayer for Refugees

We tell our children not to trust strangers. Yet today Hebrews 13 tells us not to neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.

Our readings this week speak powerfully to this National Anglican Day of Prayer for Refugees. Jeremiah reminds God’s people that they’re descended from refugees and migrants. And that reminds us that we’re descended from refugees and migrants, if we’re not refugees or migrants ourselves. More than that, as followers of Jesus, we’ve been adopted as children of God. The Hebrew people were strangers in a foreign land; but as adoptees into that ancient family, we are doubly strangers.

It’s in that light that we read today’s New Testament lessons. What does God require of a people like us – strangers and adoptees – when it comes to the way we treat strangers who seek shelter with us? The reading from the Letter to the Hebrews says it clearly. Don’t neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourself were being tortured. … Don’t neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. Can it be any clearer!?

Those are very strong words. And Jesus says it in the gospel too. We’re called to give strangers generous hospitality, and compassion. There’s no softening this message with concerns about stranger danger or running ourselves short. And the hospitality we’re to offer is to be top of the range; the sort we’d offer an angel – hospitality we’d hope to receive ourselves, no less. Jesus calls us to offer hospitality to strangers. And he tells us exactly what sort of people those strangers might be. … when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. Back in his time, they were the people no-one wanted to be seen with.

He can ask us to do this because that’s what God’s done for us. We’ve been invited to God’s banquet regardless of who we are, and we’ve got absolutely no way of repaying God for the honour of this invitation. So the idea of us turning up our noses at some other guest that God invites is ludicrous. Imagine being queued up at the door of a banquet hall, and another invited guest turns and tells us to go away because they don’t want to eat with people like us. We’re all God’s guests. The only one who calls the shots is God. And God has invited everyone.

We are God’s guests. We are God’s people, and God wants us to welcome strangers too. We’re to offer them the same hospitality that God has shown us. And that’s traditional hospitality; nothing less than the best we have to offer.

I love the way this parish supports refugees. Mary Mag’s Co-operative and the Hutt Street Centre do this too – give unquestioning hospitality to strangers. God’s people feed hundreds of homeless people every week. But there’s pushback. There was a strong push in recent years to move the Hutt Street Centre somewhere else – unspecified, but not in our back yard. And if Churches try to set up a similar ministry in residential areas, there are often complaints that the Church is encouraging undesirable people to come into a safe neighbourhood. That makes me remember the parable of the Good Samaritan. Who does Jesus say is a neighbour?

I wonder if the people who’d make those complaints have anything to do with Jesus’ poor, crippled or blind – with refugees. Lots of new street people now are middle-class baby boomers down on their luck; mostly women. They’re like us; not strangers; they’re not other. And newspapers keep receiving letters that horribly misrepresent asylum seekers as somehow other and evil. Have the writers ever met an asylum seeker. Have they ever been hated because of their difference?

God calls us to offer hospitality and compassion. And today, we also see that the example Jesus gives us is to stand against selfishness and mistrust.

I was delighted to read a letter to a newspaper from a friend who was doing precisely that; standing against selfishness and mistrust My friend wrote in response to the way our punitive asylum seeker policies are like slamming the door on a needy person on a cold wet night. The letter was entitled Not today thank you.

It reads: There’s an urgent hammering on your front door.   It’s late at night, howling wind and rain outside. You struggle out of your comfortable chair, leave the warm heater. What’s so urgent? You stumble to the entrance, flick on the outside light, wrestle the dead-lock and open the door. She’s bedraggled and soaked to the skin, plainly terrified. “Please, can I come in?” You think for a moment, see that she’s not from around here. You slam the door, lock it, and turn out the light. That’s how populist politics would have us treat asylum seekers.

Christians, we are called to name wrong when we see it. Christians, we are called to offer by our own example an alternative vision to the people of God’s world: a vision of hospitality, compassion and trusting generosity. Because that’s what God offers everyone. Because that’s God’s wish for everyone.  Amen