Because sermons are prepared with an emphasis on verbal presentation, the written accounts may occasionally stray from proper grammar and punctuation.

Hospitality of the Heart Rev. Sarah Juist Deuteronomy 30:11-20 The Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time July 10, 2016 Introduction  This  morning,  we’re  going  to  hear  from  the  book  of  Deuteronomy.  These  words  are  attributed  to  Moses,  speaking  to  the  Israelites  just  before  they  entered  the  Promised  Land  after  forty  years  of  wandering  in  the  wilderness.  They  stood  on  the  border  and  looked  into  the  land,  and  we  enter  the  passage  at  the  climax  of  Moses’  final  speech  to  the  people.    

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I  want  you  all  to  know  that  I  chose  this  text  and  title  nearly  a  month  ago,  just  a  few  days  before  I  left  to  go  with  the  youth  group  to  Atlanta.  It  sounded  like  a  great  idea  then,  to  listen  to  one  of  Moses’  best  speeches  and  talk  about  making  room  for  the  words  of  life  in  our  hearts.  

And  then  Orlando  happened.  And  then  I  got  to  spend  eight  days  with  our  high  school  students,  learning  and  serving  with  people  experiencing  homelessness  in  Atlanta.  And  then  the  attacks  in  Dhaka  Bangladesh,  and  Baghdad,  and  Medina,  and  Istanbul  happened.  And  then,  when  I  sat  down  to  write  on  Thursday  with  my  nice  stack  of  commentaries  and  my  notebook  full  of  notes,  I  opened  my  Twitter  feed  to  find  that  at  least  two  more  black  men—Alton  Sterling  and  Philando  Castile—were  shot  and  killed  while  in  police  custody.    

And  then,  I  woke  up  on  Friday  to  news  that  five  police  officers  had  been  killed  by  a  sniper  in  Dallas  and  seven  more  injured—officers  who  were  protecting  peaceful  and  hopeful  protestors  affiliated  with  the  Black  Lives  Matter  network.  

Faced  with  extrajudicial  killings  by  police,  targeted  killings  of  police,  and  threats  of  violence  everywhere,  I  had  to  really  ask  myself  how  I  was  going  to  stand  up  here  and  preach  this  text—the  one  that  says  “these  commandments  are  not  too  difficult  or  too  wondrous  for  you”—when  it  seems  that  the  systems  of  injustice  and  violence  are  just  too  complex  and  too  rooted  in  our  hearts  to  do  anything  about.    

I’m  supposed  to  have  something  to  say  about  this  text  that  says  if  you  obey  the  commandments,  then  you’ll  live  and  prosper—when  we  live  in  a  world  that  is  quick  to  blame  the  dead  for  their  own  demise.  

I’m  supposed  to  be  talking  about  hospitality  of  the  heart,  with  a  word  that  says  “choose  life!”  when  the  world  around  us  seems  so  bent  on  choosing  death—over,  and  over,  and  over  again.    

One  of  my  preaching  professors  told  me  once  that  “with  weeks  like  these,  you  take  the  text,  you  cling  to  it  for  dear  life,  you  wrestle  with  it—and  you  do  not  let  go  until  it  blesses  you.”  

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Hospitality of the Heart

So  that’s  what  we’re  going  to  do  this  morning.  We’re  going  to  grab  hold  of  all  of  this,  and  wrestle  with  it  until  it  blesses  us.    

As  far  as  Old  Testament  speeches  go,  this  is  one  of  the  greats.  It’s  right  up  there  with  Joshua’s  ”choose  this  day  whom  you  will  serve,”  and  some  of  David’s  best  psalms,  and  any  one  of  the  prophets.  It’s  passionate  and  inspirational,  but  it’s  also  demanding.  It  demands  that  we  make  a  choice  between  life  and  death.  It  demands  faithfulness,  not  just  from  kings,  priests,  and  prophets,  but  from  the  brick-­‐‑makers  and  the  laborers,  the  farmers  and  the  shepherds,  the  bankers  and  the  lawyers.  Moses  stands  on  the  edge  of  the  promised  land  that  he  will  never  enter  and  calls  heaven  and  earth  as  witnesses  to  that  demand.    

And  of  course,  no  one  is  going  to  stand  there  and  say,  “I  would  like  a  double  helping  of  death  and  curses,  thank  you.”  That’s  why  there’s  no  opportunity  for  the  gathered  people  to  respond.  We  all  want  to  choose  life  and  prosperity.    

But  here’s  the  twist:  this  part  of  Deuteronomy  was  written  several  centuries  after  Moses,  and  the  Exodus,  and  the  wandering.  It’s  pretty  likely  that  Moses  didn’t  use  those  exact  words  in  a  last  grand  speech  to  the  Israelites  as  they  looked  into  the  Promised  Land.  

But  you  know  who  probably  did?  The  leaders  of  the  Nehemiah  generation.  This  was  written  after  most  of  the  Israelites  had  been  exiled  to  Babylon,  when  the  people  were  beginning  to  return  and  rebuild  Jerusalem.  The  people  of  God  had  already  failed  to  uphold  the  commandments,  ordinances,  and  decrees  of  God.  They  had  forgotten  to  love  God  and  neighbor.  And,  as  a  result,  they  had  been  overpowered  and  conquered  and  removed  from  the  land  once  already.    

And  so,  they  asked  the  questions  of  a  defeated  people:  “Could  God  possibly  restore  us?  Are  we  going  to  fail,  just  like  our  ancestors  did,  and  be  separated  from  those  promises  again?  Will  God  really  renew  this  covenant  with  us?  Should  we  even  try?”  They  stood  on  the  edge  of  despair.  

Here,  using  the  voice  of  Moses,  a  new  generation  of  leaders  calls  the  people  of  God  to  renew  their  covenant  promises,  just  as  God  already  had.  They  borrow  some  words  from  the  prophet  Jeremiah,  who  gave  voice  to  God’s  never-­‐‑ending  love  for  the  people  when  he  wrote:    

The  days  are  surely  coming,  says  the  Lord,  when  I  will  make  a  new  covenant  with  the  house  of  Israel  and  the  house  of  Judah.  It  will  not  be  like  the  covenant  that  I  made  with  their  ancestors  when  I  took  them  by  the  hand  to  bring  them  out  of  the  land  of  Egypt—a  covenant  that  they  broke.…    

But  this  is  the  covenant  that  I  will  make  with  the  house  of  Israel  after  those  days,  says  the  Lord:  I  will  put  my  law  within  them,  and  I  will  write  it  on  their  hearts;  and  I  will  be  their  God,  and  they  shall  be  my  people.  (Jeremiah  30:31-­‐‑33)  

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Hospitality of the Heart

We,  like  that  defeated  generation,  stand  on  the  border  between  promise  and  despair.  I  think  we  know  what  it  it’s  like  to  question  our  ability  to  be  faithful  in  this  time  and  this  place,  to  feel  helpless—or  at  least,  I  do.  Maybe  y’all  have  this  figured  out  and  I’m  just  preaching  to  myself.    

But  if  we’re  going  to  say  that  loving  the  Lord  and  walking  in  God’s  ways  will  lead  us  to  life,  then  where  and  how  do  we  decide  what  that  looks  like?  It’s  easy,  when  we  look  at  the  headlines  and  the  hashtags,  to  throw  our  hands  up  and  say  “It’s  too  big!  Too  much!  I  can’t.  I  don’t  know  where  to  start.”  Did  anybody  else  do  that  this  week?  I  did.  And  I  said  some  really  not-­‐‑pulpit-­‐‑appropriate  words  before,  during,  and  after.    

But  you  know  what  else  you  did?  You  got  up  this  morning  and  you  came  to  church.  Because  we  are  God’s  people,  and  our  transformation  starts  HERE.    

Here.  We  start  here.  We  start  in  this  sanctuary,  with  these  people,  with  these  songs  and  these  prayers,  and  we  lean  into  the  promise  that  God  is  with  us  in  lament,  in  heartache,  in  fear.  Our  very  gathering  is  a  proclamation  that  we  refuse  to  give  in  to  despair.    

And  those  of  you  who  brought  children  with  you?  You’ve  just  taught  them  an  invaluable  lesson—that  when  evil  rears  its  ugly  head,  when  death  seems  to  be  winning,  we  come  together  and  we  tell  the  truth.  We  summon  courage.  We  listen  very,  very  carefully  for  the  words  that  will  lead  us  to  life.  We  are  not  helpless.  

And  that’s  where  we  get  to  Jesus.    

Jesus’  words  aren’t  any  easier—he  actually  takes  some  of  Moses’  commandments  and  makes  them  even  harder  to  follow—but  he  gets  to  the  heart  of  the  question.  In  Luke’s  version  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  Jesus  says:  

No  good  tree  bears  bad  fruit,  nor  again  does  a  bad  tree  bear  good  fruit;  for  each  tree  is  known  by  its  own  fruit.  Figs  are  not  gathered  from  thorns,  nor  are  grapes  picked  from  a  bramble  bush.  The  good  person  out  of  the  good  treasure  of  the  heart  produces  good,  and  the  evil  person  out  of  evil  treasure  produces  evil;  for  it  is  out  of  the  abundance  of  the  heart  that  the  mouth  speaks.  (Luke  6:43-­‐‑45)  

And  that’s  why  you  haven’t—and  you  won’t—hear  me  talking  about  healing  or  reconciliation  today.  As  a  nation,  we  have  some  major  surgery  to  get  through  before  we  can  think  about  healing—and  to  rush  towards  that  language  is  to  believe  that  by  getting  over  these  particular  incidents,  we  will  somehow  solve  the  problems  of  systemic  racism,  police  brutality,  gun  violence,  and  poverty.    

And  that’s  the  hard  thing.  Brothers  and  sisters,  we  have  a  long,  long  way  to  go—and  we’re  probably  going  to  feel  a  lot  worse  before  we  feel  better.  We  not  only  have  to  look  at  our  own  hearts,  

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Hospitality of the Heart

but  at  the  systems  and  the  assumptions  that  make  up  the  heart  of  our  nation.  This  last  week,  we  took  time  on  Independence  Day  to  celebrate  the  things  that  are  good,  and  true,  and  beautiful  about  our  lives  in  the  United  States  in  2016.    

But  here’s  the  thing—we  learned  just  a  few  days  later  that  we  can’t  stop  there.  We  have  to  acknowledge  the  fact  that  when  the  Declaration  of  Independence  was  written,  Native  Americans  were  referred  to  as  “merciless  Indian  savages,”  and  we  have  to  acknowledge  the  ways  that  the  hate  ingrained  in  that  phrase  was  the  rule,  not  the  exception.    

We  have  to  acknowledge  that  when  the  Constitution  was  written,  and  the  delegates  were  trying  to  allocate  representatives  for  each  state  in  the  House  of  Representatives—Congress—the  number  of  delegates  was  based  on  the  population  of  each  state,  so  in  order  to  gain  more  delegates  for  states  with  large  populations  of  slaves,  each  of  those  slaves  was  considered  three-­‐‑fifths  of  a  human  being.  That  was  written  into  our  founding  documents  and  codified  in  law,  and  it’s  exactly  the  reason  that  we  need  to  be  reminded  every  day  that  black  lives  matter.    

To  believe  that  those  parts  of  our  history  have  no  effect  on  how  our  laws  work  and  how  our  government  functions  today  is  to  stick  our  heads  in  the  sand  while  a  hurricane  comes  through—it  will  only  destroy  us.    

Maya  Angelou,  the  brilliant  writer,  activist,  and  poet,  wrote:  

History,  despite  its  wrenching  pain,  Cannot  be  unlived,  but  if  faced  With  courage,  need  not  be  lived  again.  

So  over  the  next  months,  years,  and  decades,  we  will  need  to  spend  some  time  weeding—in  our  own  hearts,  and  in  the  structures  and  systems  of  our  city  and  our  nation.  We  can  no  longer  keep  knocking  down  the  fruit  of  hate,  bias,  and  humiliation  and  thinking  we’ve  killed  the  tree.  It’s  time  to  go  at  the  roots  with  everything  we  have,  so  we  can  make  room  to  plant  more  of  the  things  that  grow  joy,  love,  dignity,  and  grace.    

And  that’s,  really,  what  hospitality  of  the  heart  is  all  about—it’s  about  making  room.  Today,  let  us  make  room  for  lament.  Let  us  make  room  in  our  hearts  to  hold  one  another’s  fear.  Let  us  make  room  for  silence  and  mourning.  Let  us  make  room  for  anger,  so  that  it  might  fuel  us  for  a  movement  towards  justice.  Let  us  make  room  for  one  another.    

And  for  the  sake  of  our  lives  and  the  lives  of  our  descendants,  let  us  make  room  for  the  words  of  life.  Let  them  be  written  on  your  heart  and  ready  on  your  lips.  I  don’t  need  to  tell  you  that  it  will  be  hard—but  I  will  remind  you  with  every  breath  that  it  will  be  absolutely  worth  it.    

Beloved  people  of  God,  hear  these  promises  from  chapter  21  of  the  book  of  Revelation:  

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Hospitality of the Heart

See,  the  home  of  God  is  among  mortals.  He  will  dwell  with  them;  they  will  be  his  peoples,  and  God  himself  will  be  with  them;    he  will  wipe  every  tear  from  their  eyes.  Death  will  be  no  more;  mourning  and  crying  and  pain  will  be  no  more,  for  the  first  things  have  passed  away.  

And  the  one  who  was  seated  on  the  throne  said,  “See,  I  am  making  all  things  new.”  Also  he  said,  “Write  this,  for  these  words  are  trustworthy  and  true.”  (verses  3-­‐‑5)  

  Beloved  of  God,  hold  fast  to  the  words  of  life.  Some  of  them,  you  already  know:  

Go  into  the  world  in  peace.  Have  courage.  Hold  on  to  all  that  is  good.  Return  no  one  evil  for  evil.  Strengthen  the  fainthearted,  support  the  weak,  help  the  suffering.  Honor  all  people.  Love  and  serve  the  Lord  rejoicing  in  the  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit.