Lectionary 108:

Gen 18:1-10a

Ps 15:2-3, 3-4, 5

Col 1:24-28

Luke 10:38-42

Possible preaching themes:

• Gift of hospitality
• Work and self-identity
• Anxiety and stress

Possible scientific resources:

• The gift of hospitality (1^st reading and Gospel)
  • Measuring hospitality across cultures, “Assessing and understanding hospitality: The Brief Hospitality Scale” https://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/index.php/ijow/article/view/839/75
  • Anthropologists examine the colonial and political aspects of hospitality https://journals.openedition.org/lhomme/35525
  • Environmental psychology explain what makes people feel comfortable https://metropolismag.com/projects/environmental-psychology-hospitality/;
  • Scholarly examination of the relationship between hospitality, peace, tourism https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325410288_Politics_of_Hospitality_Peace_and_Tourism_Review_and_Analysis

• Work and self-identity (Gospel)
  • Psychologist Janna Koretz’s brief article “What Happens when your Career becomes your Whole Identity” https://hbr.org/2019/12/what-happens-when-your-career-becomes-your-whole-identity
  • “Why we define ourselves by our jobs” short article on a job centered identity https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210409-why-we-define-ourselves-by-our-jobs
  • “5 Psychological Theories that every Leadership Should know,” https://www.verizon.com/business/small-business-essentials/resources/one-of-the-biggest-things-that-we-try-to-do-at/
  • “12 Psychological concepts for Improving employee Motivation,” http://newmethods.org/archives/psychology-concepts-employee-motivation/

• Anxiety and stress (1^st reading and Gospel)
  • “Anxiety feels terrible, but it has an upside” by psychoanalyst Hilary Jacobs Hendel and psychologist Juli Fraga https://time.com/6111258/good-anxiety-therapists/
  • Neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki’s interview about her book Good Anxiety https://www.npr.org/2021/09/07/1034777586/good-anxiety-benefits-coping-strategies;
    • on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K58vyodt1po
  • “Anxiety Disorders” overview from the National Institute of Mental Health https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/anxiety-disorders
  • “Living with Anxiety” from the British Mental Health Foundation https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/sites/default/files/living-with-anxiety-report.pdf

Homily outline: combining themes of “hospitality” and “anxiety”

• The lived reality of anxiety
  • Anxiety is on the rise
  • Evidence documents how much anxiety levels increased during the COVID pandemic.
  • Although the pandemic is leveling off, anxiety levels are elevated because of multiple factors
    • financial stress
    • jobs
    • personal relationships
    • international instability
    • social unrest and polarization
  • While sources of stress can differ from individual to individual
    • nonetheless stress and anxiety manifest themselves across our population
  • Detrimental physical and psychological effects of stress are well document
    • Robert Sapolsky’s celebrated Why Zebras Don’t get Ulcers – abbreviated as a YouTube lecture – well documents how stress negatively impacts our physical and mental health

• The upside of anxiety
  • Researchers have searched for an “upside” to anxiety, wondering how it can be a positive rather than negative emotion
  • Psychologist Wendy Suzuki believes anxiety can be productive if we get it back to the right levels
  • She argues that anxiety provides information about what we appreciate and what we value; this is where “the good anxiety lives”
  • It can actually be a source of productivity, as it can often be resolved with action: stress gets our muscles active to do something

• What about hospitality?
  • Aren’t the first reading and today’s gospel more about hospitality?
    • Why put the focus on stress or anxiety?
  • Yet those readings show a link between hospitality and stress
    • Notice how Abraham “runs” to greet his guests, “hastens” to Sarah to make bread, runs to the herd to pick out a steer and has a servant “quickly” prepare it?
    • The gospel is more concise but has a resonant scenario with Martha welcoming Jesus and “burdened with much serving”
  • Hosting others can be very stressful particularly because of the level of intimacy it presumes
  • Hospitality is more than generosity
    • Generosity is a relatively liberal attitude toward giving one’s own resources
      • It can include anonymous transactions
      • And has no necessary element of welcome
    • Conversely hospitality is a face-to-face phenomenon that does not allow for anonymity
      • It requires welcoming a guest into the host’s own territory
      • Thus more intimate and riskier

• Hospitality as boundary breaking activity
  • Hosting is both risky and potentially life-giving
    • consider the contemporary challenges of immigration
    • “hosting” the stranger who might take your job or bring economic growth
  • The Genesis story reveals Abraham’s combination of generosity and hospitality
    • He gives freely of his resources, both material and personal
    • His generous hospitality resulted in new life – the gift of a son
  • Martha in the gospel appears to be generous
    • She is responsible for preparing and serving the food (Greek: diakonia) to their guest
    • But Mary is the one who seems hospitable; engaging in intimacy with Jesus
    • hospitality is valued here over generosity
  • We might not imagine Jesus as a host in the gospels
    • But he is often portrayed as such:
      • In the six stories feeding the multitudes
      • across the myriad of dining tales embedded in the gospels
      • with the disciples at the Last Supper and on the shore of the sea of Tiberias (John 21)
    • More metaphorically, he invites “multitudes” into the spiritual home of his life and vision of God’s reign
      • Chosen apostles and Samaritan divorcees (John 4)
      • Pharisees like Nicodemus (John 3), tax collectors like Zacchaeus (Luke 19) and throngs on a Galilean hillside (Matt 5)
    • Rather than hospitality as colonization, Jesus’ generous hospitality is centripetal, boundary breaking and liberating
      • Risking intimacy with the unclean and outcasts
      • Upsetting authorities who sanitize their generosity, devoid of interpersonal encounter
      • Revealing something new about the very hospitality of God
      • In his hospitality, Jesus gives new life and risks death
      • Such hospitality is placed at the very center of Jesus’ vision of ultimate judgment (Matt 25:35)

• Eucharist missions us into the hospitality of God
  • God in Christ through the Spirit sets the table, breaks the Word and the Bread for us each Sunday
  • While it doesn’t raise God’s blood pressure, eucharist is always a divine risk, a holy gamble
    • Inviting sinners into unspeakable intimacy
  • However, the expectations of eucharist might raise our blood pressure
    • its gospel of radical inclusion
    • call to do justice echoing through today’s Psalm
    • mission to move beyond generosity and embrace the hospitality of Jesus
  • This is “good anxiety” because it is for the common good
  • Such “spiritual stress” is resolved with “action,” providing a Gospel “to do list”
  • As today’s Psalm reminds us: “One who does these things shall never be disturbed”