Sermon Transcript
Learning about something and being able to talk about it is much easier than actually doing it. Case in point, my 7th grade woodshop class in middle school. Mr. Bradley, 7th grade. I remember all the tools that he showed us. I remember the weeks that he spent talking to us about safety and what to do in case of an injury.
I remember taking tests about these rules and about what the different tools do. And then it came time for us to actually use the tools. Somebody thought it was a good idea to let middle school boys be around power tools without a lot of supervision. That wasn’t too wise.
And thinking about power tools and safety and all of those things and actually being able to talk about woodshop and all of those things is much easier than actually doing woodshop. We came to find out every project that I tried to do ended up looking like a keychain or like an ashtray or something like that. I was horrible no matter what it was. You need to make a car, you need to make a boat. Nope, not me.
I’m going to make a keychain. I’m going to make a, you know, an ashtray. I’m going to make something like that. I was horrible at it. Why?
Because thinking about something and being able to talk about something is a lot easier than actually doing it. Another case in point. In seminary, I remember we took an evangelism class. It was part of my degree plan that I needed to take. And I remember us studying the foundations of evangelism.
I remember us taking a look at what the Bible has to say about evangelism. I remember us dissecting the myths about evangelism.
I remember us thinking theologically about evangelism and talking about practices of evangelism. And guess what? At some point, after all the tests and all the discussion about evangelism, guess what we had to do? We actually had to go out and share our faith, and some in the class were very reluctant to do so, such that they just refused to do so. They were willing to take tests, they were willing to talk about evangelism, but when it actually came to going out into the neighborhoods around the seminary, a number of people said, no thanks.
Why? Because thinking about something and talking about something is much different than actually doing it. You know what else? Is like that? Hospitality.
We’ve been talking about hospitality. We’ve been thinking about it. Some of you have been sharing great stories with me, and I hope that we’re having more eyes to see and hearts that are drawn towards opportunities that are in front of us. But thinking about it and talking about it feels a lot different than actually doing it. And I am charged here in this biblical hospitality series with week 3 actually talking about the practice of it.
So we’re going to be spending quite a bit of time today talking about practicals. And I have a story that I want to share with you from 2 Samuel. It’s one of my favorite stories, 2 Samuel chapter 9. And so if you have your Bibles, you can turn there, 2 Samuel chapter 9. If you’ve missed any of the hospitality series, or if you can’t really remember all the things that we’ve done, I’m going to give you 3 quick summary points.
The first thing is this, is that whenever we’re talking about hospitality, we’re not talking about Martha Stewart living. Okay? Hospitality is not simply that. It’s more than that. Biblical hospitality is the love of what?
It’s the love of strangers. And we’ll define that, and we’ll expand on that a little bit today as we talk about the practice of hospitality. But if you’ve missed any of this, you need to know that we’re talking about the love of strangers. The love of those that we don’t know or don’t know well, and then we can expand on that group. Second point that you need to know, if you’ve missed any of this, is that there are 3 action points along the way that if you’ve been reading in your devotionals in the booklet— if you don’t have a booklet, you can go get one after the service— but we’ve been talking about 3 adjectives: to see, to feel, and then to act.
To see, to care, to actually do something. So Hopefully, through this series, our eyes are being opened to needs that are around us. You have to see a need, and you have to actually care about that need. It’s one thing to see a need and say, well, there’s a person over there with a need, but are you actually— do you actually care about that person? When Jesus saw people with needs, Matthew 9 tells us He was moved towards them with compassion.
Hopefully, you are beginning to feel more of what Jesus felt towards other people as you see needs, You then care and feel something about those needs. But just seeing and feeling something is not the practice of it. You gotta do something with it. And we should not withhold good within— it’s within our power to give and to do and to meet a need. So it should be up to us to figure out how that need can be met and what our part can be in all of that.
So all 3 of those things, if you’ve missed any of this series, you need to know we’re gonna continue to come back to see, care, do. See, care, do. We want you to do that again and again and again. The third thing you need to know, and this is probably the most important point, in addition to the love of strangers and seeing and caring and doing, is that hospitality didn’t originate with us. It didn’t originate with Southern Living magazine, or really anything Southern.
It didn’t originate with sweet tea. Some of you don’t know what sweet tea tastes like. If you go down south, I promise you’ll have some sweet tea. Hospitality didn’t originate with Chick-fil-A. I know it’s hard to believe.
Hospitality didn’t originate with a table. It originated with God. And the reason why we’re to be hospitable to others is because God has been hospitable to us. The reason why we are to welcome strangers is because we were the strangers and God welcomed us.
Everything good originates with God. So if you’ve missed any part of this series, now you’re all caught up. But today I want to talk about the practice, the practice of hospitality. And I’m going to have us spend some time in 2 Samuel 9 looking at an awesome story, and then I want to spend the rest of our time just talking about practical principles that I think we can just all benefit from. And I hope that we’re not— I hope that we’re able to pull these things out of the text.
I don’t want to, I don’t want to take away from God’s Word in any way. But at some point, we can have God’s Word up in our head, we actually have to put it into practice. We do. Amen. We have to do that.
So 2 Samuel chapter 9, verse 1 says this. David— who’s David? Well, David is the 2nd king of Israel, the guy who wrote many of the Psalms, and man after God’s own heart, fought Goliath, and many of those stories that we grew up hearing about. David is the king now, second king of Israel. And David is on the throne.
He’s, uh, most of his enemies have been, uh, put away, and, uh, he has increased Israel’s borders significantly. And David now asks, is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake? Who’s Saul? The first king of Israel, and David was the second. Who’s Jonathan?
Jonathan was Saul’s son and a very close friend of David. You can read all about this in the Old Testament where David and Jonathan were knit together like brothers, and David and Jonathan made covenants together to, to honor each other. And David made covenants and promises to Jonathan to help honor Saul’s family long after Saul would be gone. And Saul wasn’t too pro-David most of the time. Saul was jealous of David.
But now Saul is gone, his son Jonathan is gone, most of Saul’s family is gone, or so David thinks. So David, though, asks the question that a lot of kings ask, is there anyone still left? Because in David’s day, if you were a king, you wanted to know if there’s anybody left so you could wipe out all the heirs of the previous dynasty to remove any possible threats to the throne. And David says, is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness?
To whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake? Verse 2, now there was a servant of Saul’s household— so there’s a servant still around— named Ziba. They summoned him to appear before David, and the king said to him, are you Ziba? At your service, he replied. Verse 3, the king asked— here it is again— is there no one still alive from the house of Saul to whom I can show God’s kindness?
Ziba answered the king, well, there is still a son of Jonathan. I’m sure David perked up at that, Jonathan being his close friend. Still a son of Jonathan. He is lame in both feet. Well, who’s Ziba talking about?
He’s talking about a man that we’re going to meet here in just a moment called Mephibosheth. Nobody’s naming their kids Mephibosheth anymore. I don’t know why not, but it just kind of rolls off the tongue.
If you were to look at my notes for this message, you’d just see the initial M. I got tired of writing Mephibosheth out. Mephibosheth was Jonathan’s son, and when Jonathan, David’s friend, Saul’s son, was killed in battle along with Saul, the nurse that was caring for Mephibosheth when he was 5 years old— you could read about this in 2 Samuel 4— was running to get away from the Philistine army with Mephibosheth as a 5-year-old in her arms, and she dropped him in her haste. And he ended up being badly injured in both of his legs, such that it says that he was lame in both of his legs. I don’t know that we’d use that terminology now, but that’s how the Bible describes it. He was lame in both of his feet.
And so that’s who Ziba is talking about to David. There is still one person here, and David doesn’t know if he’s alive or dead. I don’t even know that he’s even met Mephibosheth. Necessarily, because 20 years would have passed, more or less. He’s a stranger to him.
And the king asked in verse 4, where is he? Ziba answered, he is at the house of Machir son of Ammiel in Lo Debar. So King David had him, Mephibosheth, brought from Lo Debar, from the house of Machir son of Ammiel. When Mephibosheth son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David, Mephibosheth bowed down to pay him honor. Why is he doing that?
Well, he’s probably thinking, he’s going to wipe me out here. I’m part of the previous dynasty. And in fact, if you think about it, 3 of Saul’s 4 sons died on the battlefield. The 4th one, Ishbosheth— here’s another name for you— Ishbosheth, uh, was murdered because he tried to set up a rival kingdom to David. And so he’s long gone.
So really, Mephibosheth actually has a right to the throne from the previous dynasty. So he has a right to be scared. David said, Mephibosheth. He said, at your service, he replied. Verse 7, don’t be afraid, David said to him, for I will surely— here it is— show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan.
I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table. He’s referring to Jonathan here because in 1 Samuel 20, David and Jonathan made a pact. And Jonathan had David swear allegiance to protect and to bless Saul’s family in the future. And so Saul’s going to— or David’s going to show kindness. In verse 8, Mephibosheth is just blown away.
He bows down and says, what is your servant that you should notice a dead dog like me? Unlike today, dogs were not highly regarded in that day. I’ve always contended, if you want to run for public office, Just put the protection and humane treatment of dogs somewhere in your platform, you’re going to get elected. People in our country love dogs, and rightly so. Not so much in Israel.
And something dead was vile and unclean. You didn’t touch it. So Mephibosheth’s referring to himself as something that would be vile and unclean. He’s repulsive garbage. In fact, the, the little suffix there, Boesheth, means shame in his name.
Shame is part of his name. I’m a dead dog, he says. What is your servant that you should notice a dead dog like me and show me kindness? Verse 9, then the king summoned Ziba, Saul’s steward, and said to him, I have given your master’s grandson everything that belonged to Saul and his family. You and your sons and your servants are to farm the land for him and bring in the crops so that your master’s grandson Mephibosheth may be provided for.
And Mephibosheth, grandson of your master, will always eat at my table. A sign of honor and closeness that was startling and surprising. Now Ziba had 15 sons and 20 servants. Verse 11, then Ziba said to the king, your servant will do whatever my lord the king commands a servant to do. So Mephibosheth ate at David’s table like one of the king’s sons.
It mentions it 4 times in this chapter that he eats at David’s table. Verse 12, Mephibosheth had a young son named Micah. And all the members of Ziba’s household were servants of Mephibosheth. And Mephibosheth lived in Jerusalem because he always ate at the king’s table. He was lame in both feet.
I want to pull out 4 quick principles that I think hopefully should be fairly obvious to us as we look at the text, and I want us to look at them through the lens of hospitality. This is not just some nice story, but what can we learn about biblical hospitality from this, in addition to it being the love of strangers and it originating with God, you need to know, first of all, we see it right here in verse 1 and verse 3, that biblical hospitality requires intentionality. Doesn’t it? It requires intentionality. It requires an intentional mindset.
It requires open eyes. And verse 1 and verse 3, David’s asking questions here. He’s seeking someone to whom he can show God’s kindness. He’s not waiting. There were no auditions.
There was no Israel’s Got Talent TV show at the time. There was no Israel Idol back then. There was no reality shows, no applications. There were no— Mephibosheth hadn’t distinguished himself in battle. Who’s, who’s Mephibosheth?
David is looking for someone, actively looking for somebody. And it’s a reminder that for all of us When it comes to hospitality, seeing, as we said, and caring is one thing. You’ve got to actually do something. But even just the seeing requires intentionality, doesn’t it? If our eyes are not open, we’re going to miss opportunities that are all around us.
Jesus seemed to be attuned to these things. The disciples were always trying to divert Jesus from whatever it was that Jesus felt like He needed to do. But Jesus opened up His eyes, and God always presented Him with Opportunity, opportunity, opportunity, opportunity, opportunity, opportunity. And I’m wondering, if we were to simply open up our eyes, what we would see as opportunities for biblical hospitality. Are you even looking?
Am I even looking for anyone to whom we can show God’s kindness? Is that something that you’re mindful of? Hopefully, during this series, at least, you see it’s something that God wants us to be mindful of. Not simply to be nice, but to be intentional. If you’re going to be hospitable, we need to mirror and pattern after David’s, and later Jesus’, intentionality.
Biblical hospitality requires it. A second thing that biblical hospitality does is it meets practical needs. It meets practical needs. Again, it’s not just simply smiling at somebody or waving to somebody or being kind or letting somebody forward in traffic ahead of you. It meets actual practical needs.
What did David do for Mephibosheth? Well, he did 3 things. First of all, he provided him with protection. He provided him with protection. He said, don’t be afraid.
Don’t be afraid. I’m going to show you God’s kindness. There in verse 7, we see it. But then he also provided him with possessions. He said, I’m going to restore to you all your family’s land.
And then he also provided provision. You’re going to eat at my table.
And he got to move from Lo Debar, which we’ll talk about in just a moment. Where the heck is Lo Debar? Significant and important for us to make note of. But you’re now going to live in the palace in Jerusalem.
That’s meeting practical needs. And as I was thinking about this story and the idea of meeting practical needs, well, surely that should be obvious to us. But it’s not so obvious that in the Book of James, chapter 2, it does— you know, that James didn’t feel compelled to actually say, hey, if somebody comes to you and is in need of food or clothes and you say, be warm and well-fed, like, what good is that? If James felt compelled to say that to the church, then it applies to us as well, right? That we can see a need and we can— to me, saying, be warm and well-fed, is the equivalent of whenever somebody says, My thoughts are with you.
Thoughts and prayers for you. We can pray, but God also wants us to do more than pray very often.
Meeting practical needs in a very specific way. Well, what is it that can be done? Well, we’ll give you some ideas here as the service goes along. Hopefully going to give you a lot of different ideas and things for you to think about, but meeting practical needs is David didn’t just say, hey, Mephibosheth, I see you over there. Glad to know that you’re alive.
Best of luck. He met his needs on a very personal level. So, it requires intentionality. Biblical hospitality meets practical needs. So, the third thing that we see here in this story is that biblical hospitality, true biblical hospitality, the way that the Bible describes it, treats strangers like family.
Treat strangers like family. Ours is a culture of isolation, isn’t it? When people are done with work, what do they do? They go home, they close their garage door, not to be seen again until the next day, most likely. Maybe some of us are like that.
It’s easier to spend time with a phone or a TV or in the comfort of our home than actually being around other people. We live in a culture of isolation. I don’t know if you’ve been hearing a phrase that I’ve not heard prior to this coronavirus stuff, but I started hearing it a lot last week: social distancing. Do you hear that? People are like, what the heck is social distancing?
Social distancing is a fancy way of saying keep away from one another. So introverts are probably, besides the whole disease thing, excited about the coronavirus. You mean I don’t have to interact with anybody? Yes! Social distancing.
We do that pretty well. We don’t have to be told to do that. Social distancing helps to eliminate or to reduce, hopefully, the spread of an infectious disease. And I’m kind of joking about that, but it’s true, right? We, we all have social distancing from one another, people that we don’t necessarily interact with.
But people tend to isolate, extroverts and introverts, for a variety of reasons. And Dan talked about that in the first week. If you didn’t see Dan’s sermon, Week 1, go back on the website and take a look at it. But he speaks about this idea of social distancing and isolation and the problem that that is and how biblical hospitality addresses that. Well, in Mephibosheth’s case, he’s living in a place called Lo Debar.
Debar is located— Lo Debar is located quite a ways from Jerusalem, north and on the other side of the tracks, or in this case, the Jordan River. Dibbar means thing in Hebrew, and lo is a little prefix that typically means it’s a negator. So, lo dibbar means no thing. Mephibosheth came from nothing.
If you’ve ever seen the movie Star Wars, think about the planet of Tatooine where Luke Skywalker was and where Anakin Skywalker was. Part of that story, it’s just this kind of remote thing. David’s people didn’t even know if he was alive or dead. He was just sort of holed up somewhere. Total stranger living in isolation.
And David could have sent his best cooks and said, we’re going to provide all these meals for you in Lo Debar, and you just stay there. He could have provided for a very, very good life for Mephibosheth, and yet he said, I want you to come eat at my table. I want you to come be part of my family, turning a stranger into a family. And I think we can learn something from that. It’s the idea of, you’re no longer a stranger, but I’m going to treat you like one of my family.
That’s what God does for us. That’s what biblical hospitality does. And sometimes, that can be rather inconvenient. Was it convenient for David to do what he did? Probably not.
Is it convenient for you and I to see, care, and act in the way that biblical hospitality pushes towards? Sometimes not, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it or make excuses. Come back in week 5, we’ll talk about excuses that we make about biblical hospitality. Shannon and I read a book about 15 years ago called Refrigerator Rights, and the concept— it was written by a therapist named Will Miller. It’s kind of a cute concept.
It’s the idea that most of us don’t have relationships with people anymore outside of family who with people who have refrigerator rights, meaning they could theoretically come into your home and into your living space and feel comfortable enough to be able to go to your refrigerator and pull out a drink or make a sandwich or do something without your permission. You have anybody in your life like that? Most of us go, okay, that’s just weird. That’s just crossing some lines. Shannon and I love the concept personally.
We’ve tried to live our life that way. If you come to our home, and some of you have, You have refrigerator rights. I’ve even told specifically some of you, you have refrigerator rights. You’re like, what does that even mean? I know it’s sort of weird.
That may not be your next step specifically, but even just to be open to the idea of, God, what would it look like if I was to live in that way? For us, it just— it was something that because we read the book, we were inspired by it, and so we’ve tried to move in that direction. And we don’t always have it down, but I think God wants us to live, all of us, in some sort of way to be approachable, to be able to allow people to be able to have access to our lives. Amen. So meeting practical needs is also something that enables strangers to become family, and that’s what biblical hospitality is.
And then the 4th thing we see here, and it may not be as obvious, but I’ll bring it out here for you, is that biblical hospitality is, is an example, or it’s a picture An illustration of what God does for us and through His kindness. It’s a picture of God’s kindness to us. It says here multiple times, 3 times in fact, that, is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness? Kindness is a word that shows up multiple times in this story, and it’s really the key to understanding this story. It’s not just, again, a nice story.
Kindness in Hebrew is using a word in Hebrew that really doesn’t have an exact English equivalent. So it often gets translated as loving kindness or mercy or loyalty or goodness or love, or in this case, kindness. It’s a word called hesed. I’m not going to continue to pronounce it like that. I’m just going to say hesed, but you’re supposed to kind of make that little guttural sound there.
And what it really means— rabbis will tell you it has a much richer and deeper meaning than just simply kindness or love. It means to love as God loves.
Is there anyone to whom I can love as God loves? Is what David is asking. And it’s a picture of what God does for us. Hesed implies loving your neighbor not just with warm emotional feelings, but actually doing something about it, because that’s what God does. And loving as God does entails that.
But it also describes what God does, does it not? Describes the character of God. And you may not realize this, but all throughout the Old Testament we see that word, and it shows up in a variety of ways. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His has said endureth forever.
In Lamentations 3 that Nate just read a little bit ago, the has said of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is Your faithfulness. Psalm 23, Surely goodness and hesed will follow me all the days of my life.
It’s part of God’s character. And the fullness of God’s hesed is seen in the cross, is it not? That Jesus came near to us. We don’t think about it like this, but this is a room full of Mephibosheths. All of us are Mephibosheth.
We are lame, we are broken, we are hurting, in need of God’s mercy, in need of God’s kindness. But God took the initiative and came near to us, and He offered provision so that we could have a relationship with Him. It is God’s has said that paid for our sins. It is God’s has said that makes it possible for a person to follow Him. It is God’s has said that makes it possible for us to become a Christ follower.
If you are a Christ follower, it’s because of God’s kindness, His hesed.
So what do we do with God’s hesed, and what do we do with this God’s kindness towards us? Well, we don’t withhold it from others. We give liberally, and we look for opportunities, and we seek to meet practical needs along the way, and just look for opportunities to show God’s kindness to other people. To not show God has said to other people when you’ve been on the receiving end is to ignore all that God has done for you. It’s to ignore God’s hospitality.
When a need is brought before you, to not respond with some measure of loving as God loves is to ignore what God has done for you. Is that a big ask? Absolutely.
That’s why hospitality is so radical. It’s a picture of God’s extravagant love that He would come after us, that He would love us, that He would leave the 99 and come after the one and give all for our sake. That’s hospitality. The Word being made flesh and living among us and allowing us to behold Him and to become children of God, adopted into His family. We were dead.
He makes us alive. We were in darkness. He brought us into light. We were enemies, we were strangers, we are now family through what Jesus has done.
Biblical hospitality requires all those things. Now, so we’re going to talk about the practice of this. You ready? Let’s talk about the practice of these things and putting them into practice. Now, let’s start with this.
We said at the very, very beginning that hospitality is the love of strangers, right? So let’s start there. The love of strangers. And then who is a stranger? Well, we need to think about that.
It’s people that you don’t know, people that you don’t know well, could be outsiders, foreigners, and we could add to this group the marginalized. Okay? The marginalized. Now, who are the marginalized? Let’s talk about the marginalized.
This is not a comprehensive list, but let me help you out here. Okay? These are the underserved?
These are the harassed? These are the persecuted? These are the disregarded by society?
Those denied or with limited access to certain privileges that the wider society, you and I, get to enjoy? Are they marginalized here in Silicon Valley? Are they marginalized in the Bay Area? Are they marginalized in California? The United States and around the world?
Absolutely. So let’s start naming some of these things. Again, not a comprehensive list. The poor, the unemployed, the homeless, victims of human trafficking, victims of sex trafficking, children, youth, women, girls, people of color, people of a particular ethnicity, people of a particular country of origin, immigrants, Refugees, migrants, people of different sexual orientation, elderly, the homebound, incarcerated people and their families, people of differing religions, people with disabilities like Mephibosheth. That’s a little overwhelming, isn’t it?
Now, which of these groups deserves hospitality?
Take a look up there. Which of these groups deserves hospitality?
Which of these groups is on the receiving end of your hospitality right now? Not just, hey, I value you at a distance, but we’re actually sitting at the table together. We’re actually— I’m moving away from strangers, moving towards family here. That starts to get a little bit more personal. Well, Some people might— some of the groupings that I listed might make some of you uncomfortable, right?
Because for some of us, our politics don’t really allow us to be able to think of these groups in quite the same way. We start to think, well, it kind of depends. Sometimes this group, but not this group usually, because they’re dangerous, or we don’t agree, or we’re not on the same page, or they don’t— honor God with their life. And but honestly, who deserves God’s kindness? None of us.
Who’s on the receiving end of your kindness and of your hospitality? So let’s, let’s just sort of build on that. Okay, here we go. Since Mephibosheth had a disability, let’s talk about that. That’s a, that’s an issue that is near and dear to me.
Let’s talk about those with disabilities. There are 5 different categories typically associated with disability. Okay, you have visual disabilities, you have hearing disabilities, you have those with cognitive or developmental disabilities, you have those with mobility-based or physical disabilities, you have people with speech disabilities, and then there’s now a 6th category that is growing quite, quite significantly, and it’s called sort of a broad category of invisible qualities, meaning they’re not necessarily disabilities that are visible to you and I, but nevertheless, they are physical or mental or neurological conditions under which a person lives, and it affects their movements, it affects their senses, it affects their activities. And these are the kinds of people, those with invisible disabilities, who often get told by people, but you look okay. You look healthy.
Are you sure you’re sick? And we don’t tend to have as much compassion for people like this. Okay, here we go. In the United States, how many people have a disability? 1 in 5 have a disability.
That’s a pretty large group of people to whom we can show hospitality, though a lot of us don’t necessarily think about all the time. It’s a group of marginalized people who are— many of whom are strangers to us. 1 out of every 5 people in the United States. Around the world, more than 1 billion people have a disability. And listen, that’s just thinking of disabilities that have actually been diagnosed.
There’s probably some undiagnosed disabilities that in developing countries or even here in the United States that people might have that is not included in that number. So more than a billion people, making people with disabilities the largest minority group in the world.
That’s significant. The World Health Organization reports that Similar to Mephibosheth, one-quarter of all disabilities are caused not through birth, but through injury or through violence. One out of every 4 disabilities around the world is caused in a Mephibosheth-like situation. And for every child who is killed in warfare as an innocent victim, there are 3 more who are injured and acquire a permanent disability as a result of the warfare happening. This is again a really, really large group, okay, that we’re talking about here.
And we’re talking about again the idea of just opening up our eyes to these needs that are around us. And so let me give you some more stats that ought to hit home more locally for us and here as a church. 60% of people say that a family member’s disability has kept them from being able to come to church. Let me repeat that. 60% of people who have a family member with a disability say that they are unable to come to church because of that person’s disability.
32% of people with a family member who has a disability have had to move their place of worship because they have not been welcomed hospitably by their original place of worship.
Why do, why do we talk about this? Because this is a group that’s right under our nose, is it not? You’re talking about unreached people groups. What about those with disabilities? What about children with disabilities and families with disabilities?
They all need the gospel just like you and I need the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, and yet they don’t have the same access that other people do. Well, what do you mean access? Like Of course they have access to church. Why don’t they just show up? It’s not that simple.
Every disability is different, okay? And it requires churches to actually become more accessible and hospitable. People with disabilities and their family members don’t merely want to be tolerated at a distance. Does anybody— like, does that make you feel welcome if somebody comes in and says, hey, I tolerate you? Nobody wants to be tolerated.
They want to be included. They want to be part of things. They want to be able to be encouraged and also use their spiritual gifts to serve others. They want to be— they want a seat at the table. Okay, so thinking about that particular group of people, I said that we’re going to get even more practical here out of all of this in terms of applying these things.
We could apply any of those things that we just talked about with regards to, you know, Mephibosheth’s story about it requiring, you know, meeting practical needs and about being intentional whenever it comes to serving and showing hospitality to a person with disabilities. Okay, but let’s start with the fact that churches are not always as accessible as they think that they are, and very often it’s because we’re not willing to change our programs. We’re not willing to change our building structure, it costs too much money, or we don’t have the manpower to be able to do that. I can tell you for a fact that we have a disability ministry in our children’s ministry. My wife has the privilege of overseeing that, and we need volunteers desperately because we have families who are sort of waiting right now to have more people who can help their child to be able to be a part of a Sunday school class.
But as it is, they’re able to come for only 1 hour, so they had— so the parents have to pick either worship or a life group. They can’t pick both. We’d love for them to be able to come to both, but we need more volunteers for that. We do. So, yes, I know that that’s a shameless plug.
We will give you training. We need somebody to do this for a couple, couple, couple times a month. We’ll train you. We’ll give you all of that kind of stuff. But if you can sit for somebody, then you can help be a buddy to somebody else.
But let’s take this again even further, the practical needs and all of those things. First of all, here’s what we need to remember is that Language matters. Language matters. The words that we use matter. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, but disability metaphors abound in our culture, and they’re usually used as pejoratives.
The economy was crippled by the debt. That movie was so lame.
What are you, an idiot?
You know, I was paralyzed with fear. And we use these things, and we just, like, we sort of use them in a way that we’re not really critiquing. They seem so natural to us.
And yet, we ought to pause and think about it, because if you want to bash somebody, you usually use a word like, you’re deaf, you’re dumb, you’re crippled, you’re diseased, you’re an idiot.
Our language matters. And on top of that, you have this matter of what’s called people-first language. That may be a new phrase for you. People-first language means referring to the person person first before their disability.
Instead of saying that somebody is disabled, it is somebody with a disability, because you want to bring out their personhood first rather than just sticking a label on them. Not the handicapped— that’s really not a word that we use anymore— but a person with a disability. It’s not somebody who’s autistic, but somebody with autism. You see the difference there in that? Now, there are some people who have a disability who just say, call it what it is.
But there are other people who are more sensitive about that. So we have to know our audience, and we have to, through relationship, actually think hospitably, what— how can I come alongside this person and befriend this person so that we become close enough that this person has refrigerator rights in my life, and I have refrigerator rights in their life, and I’m comfortable enough knowing how to be able to refer to something? Now, not everybody is as open in talking about their disability. I know that. But our language matters.
Now, I’m not the language expert. I’m not talking about being politically correct. What I am saying is this, is that we ought to think through the words that we use because language matters. Maybe not to you, but it matters to somebody else. And that’s what hospitality does, is it considers other people.
So if you want to be hospitable to somebody else, whether with disabilities or any of the marginalized groups, recognize that our language matters. Second thing, don’t make assumptions. Not everybody with a disability has, you know, like you may know 2 people who are somewhere on the autism spectrum, but they’re very different. Or 2 people with cerebral palsy or something, but they’re very different in terms of like what their needs are. Don’t make assumptions about them or about their family members, okay?
Or about, or even about your own capacity for growth in this area. ‘Cause a lot of us are like, yeah, okay, I don’t make assumptions. Sure we do. Somebody walks into the, you know, like to wherever we are, somebody walks by and they have a hood over their head or they’ve got a dirty shirt, or maybe you’re in a movie theater and somebody’s got a crying baby and like, why don’t you just get your child to quit crying? And we just make assumptions, not knowing the person, not knowing the needs, not knowing the background.
And so, not making assumptions means that we’re going to understand that every situation is unique, and we don’t— we’re not in the place of judging. So, if you want to offer hospitality, don’t rush to assumptions. Don’t do that. And also, don’t do it about your own sort of capacity, again, for growth. I’ve had conversations with people about the idea of just ways that, God wants to build diversity in the church.
And whenever that topic of diversity comes up, you know what I typically hear from those of us who are Caucasian? Oh, I have black friends. As if all of a sudden that that’s okay. Well, then this doesn’t apply to you in any way. We all have room to grow.
Don’t make assumptions. Whatever the group is, you’re not the expert. You don’t know until you can come closer and be able to come alongside somebody. That leads to a third practical. We need to advocate for people with disabilities and anybody who’s marginalized.
We need to advocate. You need to speak up for people with disabilities. If you want to show hospitality, speak up for them. Befriend them. Bear burdens with them.
Come alongside them. Be a safe space for them. Learn to look at the world the way that they look at the world. Well, that takes time. It takes intentionality.
It takes meeting practical needs. It takes being vulnerable. It takes being willing to kind of get out of your comfort zone a little bit. But people with disabilities are actually part of an oppressed group because people with disabilities don’t have the same access and the same rights as others in our world.
We think that they do, but in actuality, disability rights is a civil rights issue. People with disabilities are at far greater risk for being assaulted, are at far greater risk for living in poverty, and are at far greater risk for being unemployed.
More specifically, women and children with disabilities— women and girls, even more specifically, with disabilities— are more likely to experience rape and abuse and forced sterilization and sex trafficking. This is a civil rights issue. We need to advocate. We need to let our voice be heard and say that this is not okay. Why?
Because we want to be hospitable. God has been hospitable to us, and we’re going to let our voice be heard. There’s a 4th thing that we need to keep in mind, and that is to love their families and their caregivers.
Love their family members, love their caregivers and those who care for others. They need encouragement, they need the gospel, they need prayer, they need somebody to come alongside them. Don’t forget about them.
Now, why do I bring all this up? Because again, People with disabilities and all these marginalized groups are really right under our nose. This is low-hanging fruit, folks. It really is. People with disabilities don’t want to be treated with pity.
They don’t want to be treated as, you know, somebody who’s sort of special and set apart from, you know, from others. They want friendship. They want inclusion because they’re vital parts, integral parts of the society, I think we would all say, but they’re also integral parts of the body of Christ. 1 Corinthians 12, in describing the whole gamut of spiritual gifts, says, those whose gifts seem— or those who seem weaker are actually indispensable. And those with disabilities, or any of those marginalized groups, actually apply.
How hospitable are you, or how hospitable are you willing to be to come alongside and to be an advocate and to love somebody in that way? That’s really what we’re talking about here. And it’s not just simply tolerating somebody, but loving them, showing God’s kindness. It’s not simply serving them, but letting them serve with you, alongside, and having a seat at the table. I love that idea.
Speaking of, by the way, seat at the table, here’s a practical question we could draw from David and Mephibosheth. Who is sitting around your table?
I don’t mean like at work when you’re kind of forced into a situation, but situations that you would choose. People like you, or is it people who are often unlike you? People with different political affiliations than you, people with different needs than what you have, maybe people who aren’t believers, people of other nations and other races.
Breaking down those barriers and saying God wants us to be hospitable. Who’s sitting around your table? Do they have a seat at your table? Here’s what we should never forget, is that God is the one who invited you and I to be able to sit at the table, right? So why do I bring up all of this stuff, and we focus on disabilities, and we focus on these marginalized groups?
Because if the story of David and Mephibosheth teaches us anything, it’s that hospitality doesn’t have to be extravagant, right? It can be kindness, it can be loyalty, it can be being sensitive and empathetic and coming alongside. But at the same time, hospitality is willing to rearrange the power dynamic to make host and guest equal. Equal places at the table, equally valued.
It’s sometimes when we welcome in somebody but then we don’t include them, that sends across a message of sort of superiority and inferiority. But hospitality, true biblical hospitality, levels the playing field. It’s you and I at the table with strangers and people we don’t know or don’t know well, outsiders, and God right in the center. That’s what God did for us.
It doesn’t have to be extravagant, but it does push us to live out what we say and what we believe with, boy, just great intentionality. Here’s that word again. Who is someone to whom God wants you to show His kindness this week? Who is a stranger? Who is somebody in your world to whom God wants you to show kindness and to provide a seat at the table with you in the hopes of that stranger becoming a member of the family of God?
That would ultimately be the goal, right? Let’s be hospitable and demonstrate God’s kindness to all around us. Now, I’m going to give you a warning. You’re going to leave here today— here’s like a Surgeon General’s warning. This is a Pastor Steve warning.
It’s not the Surgeon General’s warning. It is that you’re going to leave here today and you’re going to go, I can’t do that. I don’t have the time. I don’t have the resources. I don’t have the personality to be able to talk— do some of these things that you’re talking about, forgetting, again, God’s hospitality to us.
Let’s never forget. God’s kindness to us, and that will inspire us to then practice and show God’s kindness to others. Let’s pray. God, I want to thank you for this message. So much that we could talk about here today.
I thank you for the message, not because it’s my message, but it’s because it’s the message that comes from the heart of your word that you want us to be passionate about, truly passionate about people that are often discarded by society.
People with needs that we just don’t even understand until we get a little bit closer. And I pray, God, that we would be open and willing, with open hands, to let You foster those relationships. God, that we would not let this virus that is happening right now in our world— and by the way, Lord, we pray that this virus would come to an end, that it would stop spreading— but, Lord, I also pray that it would not cause us to be so fearful that we stay away from others. That, Lord, we would look for opportunities even in the midst of that to show your kindness to others. Thank you for showing your kindness to us.
Lord, we love you, and we pray all these things in the name of your Son Jesus. Amen.
