Minister
“The Table of Hospitality”
Romans 12:9–21; Matthew 16:24–25
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Over these next weeks we will be looking at what it means to accept Jesus’ invitation to the table, not simply as an invitation to share a meal, but as an invitation into a way of living.
Because with Jesus, the table was never just about eating. The table was where people met. It was where relationships were formed. It was where differences became visible. It was where conversations happened, sometimes comfortable and sometimes decidedly less so. And it was where Jesus made room for people who others thought did not belong.
Jesus ate with people who were respectable and people who were not. People who were religious and people who were considered outsiders. People who had lots of social standing and people who had very little. People who agreed with him and people who probably drove him a little crazy.
Because Jesus understood something about tables: Who gets invited tells us a lot about who we think matters.
And so, as we begin this series, our first table is the Table of Hospitality.
Hospitality, in the Christian sense, is about more than being a good host. It is about making room. Making room for people. Making room for difference. Making room for another person’s story. Making room for someone who might not be exactly like us. And sometimes, making room for someone we aren’t entirely sure we want at our table.
Which brings us to Paul. Because the reading from Romans today is almost like Paul has pulled up a chair at the table and started giving us some advice. And it is remarkably practical.
Love one another. Be patient. Share joy with those who are joyful. Weep with those who weep. Don’t think you’re better than anyone else. Make friends with the people nobody else notices.
And then Paul gets to the really difficult part: Bless those who persecute you. Don’t repay evil with evil. Don’t get even. Don’t curse under your breath.
And finally: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” That’s a pretty tall order.
It’s one thing to say, “Everyone is welcome at God’s table.” It’s another thing to discover that God apparently means everyone.
Even the person who annoys you. Even the person who disagrees with you. Even the person who has hurt you. Even the person whose political opinions make you want to leave the table. Even the person who takes the last piece of dessert without asking.
Well… maybe not that person. Actually, Paul says that person too.
Because Paul’s vision of Christian community is not a community where everybody gets along because everybody is the same. It’s a community where people learn how to love one another in the midst of difference. And that’s a much harder thing.
I think Mount Seymour does a pretty good job of welcoming people. We really do try to be a place where people can come as they are, and where there is room for people who don’t necessarily fit the usual mould.
And yet, I think there is always an invitation to keep widening the circle.
Because sometimes hospitality is easiest when the people coming to our table are people we already understand, people we know how to welcome, people whose differences don’t ask too much of us.
Jesus keeps inviting us to notice who else might be at the edge of the table. Not because we’re doing it wrong. But because the table of God is always a little bigger than the table we have imagined.
So perhaps the question isn’t simply, “Is everyone welcome here?” It’s also, “Who might still be wondering whether there is a place for them?”
The Gospel doesn’t say, “Come to the table if you have the right opinions.” It doesn’t say, “Come if you have your life together.” It doesn’t say, “Come if you agree with everybody else.” It doesn’t say, “Come if you have earned your place.”
It says: Come. There is a place for you.
And once we realize that we have been welcomed in that way, something changes. Because if I have received grace I didn’t earn, then perhaps I can offer grace to someone else.
If I have been welcomed when I was uncertain, awkward, grieving, angry, confused or simply not at my best, then perhaps I can make room for someone else who isn’t at their best either.
That’s the movement Paul is asking of us: Receive hospitality. Become hospitable.
Henri Nouwen described hospitality in a way that I think gets right to the heart of this. He wrote that hospitality means “the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy.”
I love that phrase: creating free space.
Because hospitality isn’t simply opening the door and saying, “You’re welcome.” It’s creating enough space that another person doesn’t have to become like us in order to belong. Enough space for their story. Enough space for their questions. Enough space for their differences. Enough space for us to actually encounter one another.
And that brings us to love.
Because Paul’s first instruction is not simply, “Be nice.” He says, “Let love be genuine.” And that matters. Because genuine love is not always warm and fuzzy. Sometimes love looks like celebration.
“Rejoice with those who rejoice.”
Someone is happy? Be happy with them. Someone gets good news? Celebrate. Someone’s child graduates? Celebrate. Someone gets a new job? Celebrate. Someone finally gets the renovation finished? Definitely celebrate.
But then Paul says: “Weep with those who weep.”
And that’s harder.
Because sometimes we don’t know what to say. We want to fix things. We want to make the sadness go away. We want to offer an explanation. Some people maybe even want to say, “Everything happens for a reason.”
But sometimes hospitality simply means sitting beside someone in their grief and saying: “I’m here.” No fixing. No explaining. Just presence. A place at the table.
The writer and activist bell hooks put it very simply: “Love is an act of will, namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.” Love is an intention and an action. That’s what Paul is talking about.
Love isn’t simply something we feel when we’re sitting across the table from people we like. Paul gives us verbs. Rejoice. Weep. Bless. Welcome. Share. Refuse revenge.
Love, in other words, is something we do.
And then we hear Jesus say something that, at first glance, seems like a strange thing to put beside a passage about hospitality. “Take up your cross and follow me.”
That’s not exactly the sort of thing you put on the café chalkboard.
Today’s special: Soup of the day. Fresh bread. Quiche… And one cross.
But Jesus isn’t inviting us into suffering for suffering’s sake. He’s talking about what it means to stop making ourselves the centre of everything.
“Let me lead,” he says. In other words: You’re not always in the driver’s seat.
And that’s difficult for us. We like being in the driver’s seat. We like knowing where we’re going. We like being in control. We like having the map and the plan. We like knowing who’s going to be at the table and what we’re going to talk about and how the evening is going to go.
And then Jesus comes along and says: “Let me lead.” And suddenly hospitality becomes a spiritual practice. Because making room for someone else often means giving up some control.
Think about what happens around an actual dinner table. You can’t completely control the conversation. Someone will bring up something you weren’t expecting. Someone will tell a story you’ve heard fourteen times. Someone will talk about something you don’t understand. Someone will have a different opinion. Someone will arrive late. Someone will bring a guest you didn’t know was coming.
And someone will inevitably say, “I thought you were bringing dessert.”
Hospitality means allowing the table to be something other than exactly what we planned. And perhaps that’s part of what Jesus is asking of us.
Can we make room for what we didn’t plan? Can we make room for the person we didn’t expect? Can we make room for a perspective that challenges us? Can we make room for someone whose life experience is very different from ours?
Because sometimes the person sitting across the table has something to teach us.
Hospitality doesn’t have to be complicated.
One of the people who has understood this remarkably well is Dolly Parton. Dolly grew up in a very large, very poor family in Tennessee. She has talked often about how books were precious in her childhood because her family couldn’t afford many of them.
So when she became successful, she created the Imagination Library, which provides free books to young children in five countries. Any child can be signed up to receive them from birth to age five, for free. It’s a beautiful example of what it means to take something that you have—in her case, resources and influence—and use it to make room for someone else.
But you don’t have to have Dolly Parton’s resources to practise hospitality.
Sometimes it’s a book. Sometimes it’s a meal. Sometimes it’s a cup of coffee. Sometimes it’s an invitation. Sometimes it’s simply noticing someone who is standing on the edge of the room and saying, “Come sit with us.”
Hospitality is often made up of very ordinary things. But ordinary things can become holy when they make room for another person.
And that matters beyond our individual lives. It matters for the church. What does it mean for Mount Seymour United Church to be a table of hospitality?
Well, I think we already have some pretty good examples. We are a congregation that has tried to make room for people in many different circumstances. We have the café. We have the Thrift Shop and the remarkable generosity that comes through it. We have our mental health ministry. We have the Sacred Garden and labyrinth. We gather people for worship, for music, for meditation, for yoga, for crafts, for conversation.
We welcome people who have been part of the church for decades and people who are walking through our doors for the first time.
And yet, hospitality is never something we can check off a list. Because there is always another chair. There is always someone who isn’t here yet. There is always someone wondering whether there is actually a place for them.
And that is the challenge. Who isn’t at our table? Not as a guilt trip. Not as a criticism. But as a question.
Who might be missing? Who might assume that church isn’t for them? Who might be carrying a story that makes them hesitant to walk through the door? Who might be sitting quietly at the edge of the room, wondering whether anyone notices?
Hospitality begins when we notice.
And Paul gives us some remarkably simple instructions for how to do it. “Rejoice with those who rejoice.” “Weep with those who weep.” “Do not be haughty.” “Associate with the lowly.”
Or, as Eugene Peterson puts it in The Message, “Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody.”
I love that. Because Jesus was constantly doing exactly that. He noticed people others didn’t notice. He sat with people others avoided. He listened to people others dismissed. He crossed boundaries that other people thought should remain firmly in place.
And every time Jesus did that, he was showing people something about God.
This is what God’s table looks like. It is bigger than ours. More generous than ours. More surprising than ours. And there is always another chair.
Now, there is an important distinction here. Hospitality does not mean having no boundaries. It doesn’t mean tolerating abuse. It doesn’t mean pretending harmful behaviour is acceptable. It doesn’t mean we have to agree with everyone or become best friends with everyone.
Paul doesn’t say, “Let everyone walk all over you.” He says, “Do not repay evil with evil.” That’s different. We can have boundaries and still have compassion. We can disagree and still listen. We can hold someone accountable and still remember their humanity. We can say “no” and still refuse to dehumanize the person to whom we are saying it.
That’s a very Jesus-shaped kind of hospitality.
And perhaps that’s why the table is such a powerful image for our faith. At a table, we are reminded of something very basic: We all need to be fed. None of us is completely self-sufficient. None of us has earned everything we have. None of us gets through life entirely on our own. We need other people. We need grace. We need forgiveness. We need companionship. We need someone to sit beside us sometimes.
And we need someone to make room for us.
That’s why the Christian table is ultimately not our table.
It’s God’s table. And that’s an important distinction. Because if it’s our table, we get to decide who belongs. But if it’s God’s table, our job is not to guard the guest list. Our job is to make room.
So as we begin this series, perhaps the invitation is simple. Come to the table. Come as you are. Come with your questions, your joys and your griefs. Come with the parts of your life you’re proud of and the parts you’d rather not talk about. Come with your differences. Come with your doubts and your hope. And then, once you have found your place at the table, look around.
Who else needs a place?
Maybe making room means a literal chair at our table. Maybe it means five minutes to listen. Maybe it means choosing curiosity instead of judgement. Maybe it means reaching out to someone who has been quiet. Maybe it means simply noticing the person who is standing alone.
Small things can become holy things when they make room for love.
And perhaps that is what Jesus means when he says, “Follow me.” Not simply, “Believe the right things.” But: Let me show you another way to live.
A way where there is room. A way where grace is wider than our comfort zones. A way where love is stronger than resentment. A way where the table keeps getting bigger.
So come to the table. There is grace here. There is hope here. There is love here.
And by God’s grace, there is always room for one more. Amen.
So – it seems fitting that I would use a Romans passage for my portion of this series on Paul and his letters.
And maybe more than just fitting… maybe it’s a reminder of how these ancient words travel.
From a letter written to a small community in Rome, to a photograph taken in front of the Colosseum, to this moment, here, today.
Because sometimes scripture doesn’t stay “back there.”
Sometimes it finds its way into our lives in very particular moments, sometimes even in the very weeks when we most need it.
There are some weeks when you come to a text like this… and it feels less like something to explain and more like something to hold onto.
This is one of those weeks.
It has been a week marked by grief in our wider community. A week where life feels fragile.
Where loss is not abstract, but close, and real, and heavy.
Earlier this week, I had the privilege of presiding at dear Bonnie Wudrick’s memorial and then the next day for Nancy Farahani’s memorial, a service shaped by deep sorrow and deep love, after the tragic death of a woman at the hands of her own son.
And perhaps not by accident, this was one of the passages that I turned to then as well, that I read during her memorial service.
These words from Romans, words that don’t try to explain tragedy, but dare to speak of a love that refuses to let go even in its midst.
And I suspect that many of us come into this space today carrying things, some visible, some hidden, griefs that are fresh, worries that linger, questions that don’t have easy answers.
And into a week like this, we hear these words from Paul: What can separate us from the love of God?
Now, it helps to remember that Paul is not writing from a place of comfort or distance.
And, just as a small aside, when we say “Paul,” we’re also stepping into a bit of ongoing conversation.
Scholars generally agree that Romans is one of the letters Paul himself almost certainly wrote.
But not all the letters in the New Testament that bear his name are universally agreed upon.
Some were likely written by later followers, carrying forward his theology and voice.
So when we read Paul, we’re not just hearing one person, we’re hearing a tradition, a movement, a community shaped by his witness.
(Which, if you’ve ever tried to write something meaningful and then had someone else try to continue it later… you know that can get interesting.)
But Romans… Romans is widely considered authentically his. And you can feel it. It has a kind of depth, a kind of urgency, a kind of careful thought woven with deep conviction.
When he writes this letter, he is writing to a community he has never met, a small group of Christ-followers living in the heart of the empire, in Rome.
Rome was not just another city. It was the centre of everything – political power, military strength, economic control. It was a place where the emperor was declared “lord,” where loyalty to the empire shaped daily life, where status and hierarchy defined your worth.
And into that world, this small, diverse community of Christians was trying to live out a different story. A story about a crucified and risen Christ. A story about love that does not dominate, but serves. A story about belonging that crosses boundaries of class and culture.
It was not easy.
There were tensions within the community, between Jewish and Gentile believers. There were pressures from the outside, to conform, to fit in, to stay quiet. And while the large-scale persecutions we often imagine came later, there was already a sense of vulnerability. A sense that following Christ could cost you something. And Paul knows something about that.
By the time he writes this letter, his life has already been marked by hardship. He has been arrested. He has faced opposition. He has lived with uncertainty about what comes next.
So when he writes about hardship and distress and danger, he is not speaking theoretically.
He is speaking from lived experience. And that matters. Because Paul does not pretend that faith protects us from the hard parts of life. He doesn’t say: “If you trust God, nothing bad will happen.” He doesn’t say: “If you believe strongly enough, everything will work out.” (And if he did, we might be a little suspicious of him.)
Instead, he names what is real. He names hardship. He names distress. He names grief. He names fear. And that, in itself, is a kind of grace. Because it means we don’t have to pretend either. We don’t have to come into this space with everything held together. We don’t have to hide the parts of our lives that feel uncertain or broken. Faith, at least as Paul understands it, is not about avoiding reality. It is about being honest within it.
So Paul asks this question: What can separate us from the love of Christ? And I think it’s important to hear that question as a real question. Because if we’re honest, we might have our own answers. Grief can feel like separation. Loss can feel like separation. Illness can feel like separation. Regret can feel like separation. Even silence… when prayers seem unanswered… can feel like separation. There are moments in life when it feels like something has been torn.
When connection feels fragile. When presence feels distant. When we wonder quietly, or maybe not so quietly…Where is God in all of this?
And it is into that very human place that Paul speaks. Not with a neat explanation. Not with a tidy answer. But with a conviction. No… in all these things… we are more than conquerors through the one who loved us. Now, that phrase “more than conquerors” can be misleading if we hear it through the lens of power or victory. Because this is not about winning.
It’s not about overcoming grief as if it were an obstacle. It’s not about rising above suffering as if we could simply leave it behind. That’s not how life works. And it’s not what Paul means.
The word Paul uses here is closer to something like: held, sustained, carried through. Not untouched by hardship but not abandoned within it. And then Paul does something almost poetic. He begins to name everything he can think of. Death. Life. Angels. Rulers. Things present. Things to come. Powers. Height. Depth.
It’s as if he is searching the edges of human experience, looking for anything that might break the connection between us and God’s love. He reaches as far as he can, across time, across space, across all the known forces of the world. (You can almost imagine him pausing and thinking, “Have I missed anything?”) And then he says: Nothing. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Not even death.
And we need to be careful here. Because this is not a denial of death’s reality. It is not a way of softening grief or making loss feel smaller. Death is real. Loss is real. Grief is real. We feel it in our bodies. We carry it in our hearts. We live with its absence. Paul is not denying any of that.
What he is saying is something deeper: That even death does not have the final word.
That even death cannot undo the love of God. That even death cannot break the bond that holds us.
In a week like this, that matters. Because we will gather in spaces of grief. We will speak words that feel both necessary and insufficient. We will hold stories; stories of love, of life, of relationship. We will sit in silence that says more than words can. And in those moments, we don’t pretend everything is okay. But we do bear witness to something. We bear witness to love.
To the love that was shared in a life. To the love that continues in memory and connection.
To the love of God that holds what we cannot hold on our own. And maybe this is where the text begins to turn gently toward us. Because if it is true that nothing can separate us from the love of God…then that love is not just something we receive. It is something we are invited to live.
To embody. To practice, especially in messy times. Because we live in a world that knows a lot about separation. We see it everywhere. Division. Isolation. Fear of difference. Quick judgments. Broken relationships.
It doesn’t take much for people to be pushed to the margins.
It doesn’t take much for connection to fray.
And into that kind of world, this text offers a different way.
A way rooted in love that does not let go.
So what might it look like for us to live that kind of love?
It might look like staying when it would be easier to walk away. It might look like listening when we don’t fully understand. It might look like showing up for one another in quiet, ordinary ways. It might look like sitting with someone in their grief, not trying to fix it, not trying to explain it, but simply being present. It might look like patience. Gentleness. Compassion.
Small things, perhaps. But not insignificant. Because these are the ways love takes shape in the world. And maybe this is the invitation this morning. Not to resolve everything. Not to make sense of what cannot yet be understood. But simply to notice: Where do you need to be held right now? Where has this week been heavy? What are you carrying?
And then, gently, to hear this promise again: That there is nothing… nothing in life or in death, nothing in what has been or what is yet to come… that can separate you from the love of God.
Not your grief. Not your questions. Not your fears. Not even death itself. You are held.Held in a love that is deeper than we can fully comprehend. Steadier than the ground beneath our feet.
More enduring than anything that threatens to pull us apart. And that love… is not far away.
It is here. In this moment. In this community. In the quiet spaces where words fall short. Already here. Holding us. Carrying us. And, in time, leading us gently forward. Amen.