Sermon -Dr. Eleazar Fernandez

Sermon—Opening Doors, Building Peace
Text—Hebrews 13:1-3, Joshua 2: 1-7
Dr. Eleazar Fernandez
March 5 , 2006

Good morning! I am glad that a little more than a year ago I got the courage to drop by your church and introduced myself to Pastor Kathy. Since then, coming here has been, for me, a delight. Your hospitable spirit has made it so.

"Opening Doors, Building Peace" is an apt theme and a creative metaphor for this day when you dedicate your newly renovated building. It grabbed my attention and unleashed my imagination. It sent me to the roots of our Christian faith and gave me wings to imagine new possibilities. There is no doubt in my mind that the message of hospitality and peace is central to the Christian gospel. Yet, like any creative metaphor, it is vulnerable to trivialization. Seeking to grow in membership, many religious bodies are presented to the religious consumers as open and hospitable. However, a careful scrutiny reveals the superficiality of the much advertised openness and hospitality. Instead of authentic hospitality, what is pervasive is the "gospel of niceness," and I am finding this "gospel of niceness" to be "offensively nice."

An average homily for the adults is just as likely as a homily for children to suggest that God's primary attribute is being nice, or such equivalents as easy to get along with and helpful when needed. Imagine the extreme makeover this would give of Isaiah's vision of God: "...I saw the Lord sitting on a lawn chair, close and friendly; and the emblem of his ball cap said [Minnesota Twins]...Seraps ...called to one another and said: "Nice, nice, nice is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his niceness".

I am not suggesting that we should be mean, but the core of the Christian Gospel calls us beyond "cozy niceness" to a kind of hospitality that is radical, demanding, and, even costly. I am grateful for your warm hospitality, but what has given me profound joy in coming here, even if only for a brief moment, is being with kindred spirits who are striving and seeking in your own fragile way to be faithful to Jesus' message of radical hospitality. I admire your wisdom in taking significant events in the life of your congregation, such as today's dedication of the newly renovated building, as occasions for renewing your commitment to opening doors and building peace in a climate of fear, distrust and violence, and when the American Dream has become a nightmare for many.

The overall climate around us makes it difficult to cultivate the virtue of authentic hospitality. Can hospitality find a home in a house where its members live harried lives? Is there any room for genuine hospitality in a life that is loaded and cluttered with material toys? Is there space for hospitality in a life preoccupied with protecting one's possessions and achievements? Is there space for hospitality when one's life has been consumed running the rat race? Brothers and sisters in Christ, I have been running the rat race, and I'm still not in shape. Worse, even if I win the rat race, I would still be a rat.

We cannot be truly hospitable to others if we have not been hospitable to ourselves. If we cannot find a home in our own house, others cannot find a home there either. Finding home is indispensable for true hospitality, which is creating space in our lives so others may not only survive but thrive, and be free to sing their own songs, and dance their own dances, speak their own languages, and follow their own callings.

We must stop running the rat race if we truly care to create a hospitable space. Likewise, we must declutter our lives. When we are cluttered with things and achievements that we hold dear, it is difficult, if not impossible, to be hospitable. Our first instinct is to protect them from any stranger who might steal our treasures. But if our greatest treasure is our hospitality, we are less likely to worry that the stranger might steal our hospitality. After all, if the stranger steals our hospitality it only grows a thousand fold. Why is it hard for us to learn that the greatest treasure that we can really own, says an Arab proverb, is that which "cannot be lost in a shipwreck." Paradoxical, indeed, for it is only when we have nothing to be afraid of losing that we can be more truly hospitable.

The consequences of our failure to live hospitable lives in general and of our rat race to accumulate "clutter" in particular are horrendous. In response to perceive threats to our security, we put up duct tape securities and walls of fear. Our hearts constrict and our horizon narrows. We fail to see that peace that has walls is no peace at all; that only justice can stop the curse of the vicious cycle of violence. Instead of investing our resources in cultivating hospitality and the culture of peace, we invest in armaments of hostilities.

An elderly man saw some six and seven-year-old children at play, and asked, "What are you playing?" "War," responded the kids. "Why don't you play peace instead," said the man. The children stopped, put their heads together, discussed something among themselves, then looked puzzled and finally ran out of words. One of them went to the elderly man and asked, "Grandpa, how do we play peace? We don't know the game."

Sad, our modern society has taught us more about playing war than about playing peace. "How can we be so stupid as to play war when we all know how horrible war is," the elderly man said to himself. This is modern rationality gone mad. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche says it right: "The quest for power makes [one] cunning, the possession of power makes [one] stupid." This is not just true of a once upon story like King Midas, but a present nagging reality.

Even though war games and war stories are pervasive and on the headlines, they are not the only games and stories. We are capable of playing peace, of building bridges of connections, of opening doors, and of enlarging our hearts when our lives have experienced the transforming power of God's generous and costly hospitality.

Perhaps many of you have heard the story of Mazen Julani, a 32-year -old Palestinian pharmacist, a father of three children. He lived in the Arab part of Jerusalem. One day, when he was with his friends, he fell victim to a fatal shot from a Jewish colonist--an expression of revenge by an Israeli for an attack that day by a group of Palestinians. He was immediately taken to an Israeli hospital but did not survive. The Julani clan decided on the spot to donate his organs as transplants to those who need them. In fact, in the breast of Ygal Cohen now beats a Palestinian heart.

Mazen's wife did not know how to explain to her 4-year-old daughter that her father had died. So she told her that her Daddy had gone on a trip and that on his way back, he was going to bring her a beautiful gift. To those around her, she whispered in tears:
"In a little while now my children and I will visit Ygal Cohen in the Israeli section of Jerusalem because there lives the heart of my husband, the father of my children. And we will listen to the palpitations of his heart. And that will be for us a great consolation. "

Mazen's heart in Ygal embodies radical and generous hospitality that our world so desperately needs. It is a testimony of hope, and it calls us to embody radical hospitality in our corner of the world. Our embodiment of this radical hospitality need not be heroic and the circumstances earth-shaking. We can do our small but significant part in the place where we have been planted. Let us remember, we are not called to do everything, but are called to do something, to sew our piece into the larger quilt of God's work of shalom building.

May the God of peace and radical hospitality empower us to carry on our commitment to opening doors and building peace in a climate of distrust, fear, and violence.