Coding Social and Actual Space with Hospitality

12  Pentecost, Cp17, August 28, 2022

Jeremiah 2:4-13 Ps. 112

Heb.13:1-8        Luke 14:1, 7-14

Lectionary Link
Best seats at at the concert and ballgame.  High end neighborhoods.  Honored seats at the table for banquets.  This is proof that space is socially coded and valued based upon standards of wealth, privilege, and power.  As those who would rise to be social climber, we are encouraged to reach those spaces of social privilege.

What spaces do not have social value?  The other side of the tracks, slums, ghettos, red-lined districts, back row seats, sitting in the back of the bus.

Space is socially coded, and one might say that it is coded on a continuum of inhospitality to full hospitality.

The message of the observations of Jesus regarding social behavior is a commentary on the social coding of space based upon the pride of position which he observed in human behavior.

In human pride, people seek to segregate themselves by vying for the so-called spaces of prestige in human society.

What does this pride of position create?  It creates the conditions of inhospitality.  Many people are relegated to unfavored status, and pushed to the margins of both geographical and social space.

Jesus founded a new community of people and the practice of Holy Eucharist to institute a correction in how people and space become socially coded.

The Holy Eucharist establishes hospitality as the chief value of God, Christ, and the people who are called to the community of Christ.  This makes the term "closed communion" a profound oxymoron.

Hospitality is the way in which we practice the healing of how space and people are socially coded.

With regard to space,  all places belong to God and as human stewards of God's places, we are challenged to make the places of God welcome to all.  The segregation of people into so-called good neighborhoods and bad neighborhoods is an offense to the hospitality of God.

The segregation of people into categories of disapproval and exclusion from fellowship is a severe violation of the hospitality of God in Christ. 

We can be outright offenders of hospitality by open and blatant racism, discrimination, prejudicial and biased behaviors.

We can be subtle offenders of God's hospitality by being such slaves of our own affinities, familial, and social groups that we neglect others outside our preferences.  We can be saying, "Well, people like to be with their own kind."

The hospitality of God challenges the blatant offenders and the subtle offenders.  Blatant offenses need to be challenged with laws and enforcement of justice for all.  Subtle offense of hospitality need to have the disciplined teaching of the practice of crossing artificial social barriers which keep us from knowing in personal and intimate ways how much we need each other even when we might seem profoundly different in how we have had our social identities constituted.

Our lessons from the epistle to the Hebrews and from the Gospel establish that hospitality is a chief virtue of the community of Christ.  The Gospel is the good news that we are called to overcome barriers which segregate human beings from each other.

Those with power, privilege, and wealth have the freedom to break down the barriers to hospitality.  

Let us renew our commitment to the hospitality of God in Christ, as it is expressed in the welcome to the Eucharistic table.  Amen.