Homelessness Sunday

A sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on 30 January 2022 by Revd Sally Hitchiner

Reading for address: Hebrews 13

What do actors Daniel Radcliffe, Sir Ian McEwan, Nicholas Cage and me have in common? We have all been mistaken for people who are homeless. I’ll leave you to look the stories up on line… Nicholas’s story is particularly amusing. Today is homelessness Sunday and I’d like us to look at the heart of homelessness.

In ancient times engaging with those who were homeless was very important. Zeus was the god of hospitality. This was mostly expressed towards those travelling from one place to another. Travelling was just for merchants or businessmen, occasionally fathers on the lookout for a suitable bride for their sons and political envoys. It would almost always have been men – high status people. But because it was so rare there weren’t many places with inns or hotels, people relied on staying in the homes of strangers. To regulate this, there was a commonly understood, strict code of etiquette. It had four parts – invitation, screening, provision and departure.

First you had to wait at outside the city gates a well or some other visible landmark.

Someone would then go out to you and screen you; ask some questions that tried to work out if you were friendly or were likely to wake in the night and stab everyone in their beds. Sometimes people carried letters of recommendation from someone of status or a famous person in their hometown.

Then, if the person was satisfied, he would take you to his home, wash your feet, give you something to eat and somewhere to sleep.

The final stage of the etiquette was that the guest had to leave after three days.

“Ahh” you say “this is why it worked! Anyone can be generous for a time limited period”

However what we see in our readings, is that the expectation of good etiquette was knocked up a rachet for those following God.

Let’s look back to our Old Testament reading.

“He [God] defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.”

The etiquette about relational hospitality now has a wider scope. This isn’t just about interesting and high status male travellers, this is now about the orphan and the widow – people who have lost their supporting relationships and the refugees and economic migrants who live in your area. This, isn’t just for people who can leave after 3 days.

Perhaps more strikingly, it now has a deeper basis. We aren’t expected to do this to get a pat on the head from Zeus. As people who follow the Hebrew God they (and we) are called to remember that WE were refugees from Egypt. Remember you were oppressed and I brought you through the waters of the Red Sea, walked with you when you were weary wonderers and brought you home to the Promised Land.

Now I don’t know about you, but I was born in Liverpool. I’ve never even been to Egypt let alone been a refugee fleeing persecution from it. But we are called not just to have our memories but to have meta memories.

Imagine if you would a group of English business men who arrange a football match with their counterparts in the Berlin Office at a work get together. Just before they go out to play the office manager gives a peptalk and in that talk he mentions one particular date. Every English person in this room knows that date because it is so woven in to our subculture. The 1966 world cup when we beat Germany. Now, when they say “we beet you in 1966”, none of the middle aged business men playing this match actually played in that match. Most of them weren’t even born then. But the cultural memory gives them strength for their little match today.

If you are Jewish or have been baptised into Christianity and added to the family of the Jewish Messiah (as Christians understand it), the memory of the Israelites being saved from political oppression in Egypt, of God walking with them when they were refugees and finally bringing them home, this memory is yours. If your life is cosy it’s a challenge to also remember a time when you were a refugee. If your life is now fleeing persecution, it’s an invitation to remember being saved from this. And this memory will do a lot more to help you than remembering the 1966 world cup.

The New Testament passage continues this radical identification– it calls the free Christians (v3) to pray for those who are in prison as if we ourselves were in prison.

Why is this solidarity so important?

Homelessness isn’t a binary about whether or not you have a roof over your head. Homelessness is a litany of broken relationships and being let down over and over by their society. The seemingly command to keep marriages strong, isn’t primarily about sexual morality, it’s because relationships are the glue that stop people from spiralling. Without the love of others, no one is immune from homelessness.

So we are supposed to identify with people who are homeless because of our spiritual history and because no one has a present that is not vulnerable to it. But what about when homeless people seem VERY other?

What about when the people do strange things because their mental health is all over the place? What about when they have practices that seem strange to us because they’re from other cultures? What about when they’re from other belief systems?

The book of Hebrews invents a word. It’s not really found in other places outside this passage. It’s something we’re supposed to do when we meet people who are without a home and are strange to us. The writer invents a verb.

In Greek it’s “philoxenios”

It’s a compound… taking the word xenia – which means weird or different… where we get our word xenophobia. And the word philio – brotherly love. They (and we) are commanded to take those who are strange and treat them as if they’re siblings. Your siblings can be quite strange to you, I’m sure I’m quite strange to my siblings, but they’re family so you learn about their life. That’s the deal. It may surprise you that Sam is an expert in Strictly Come Dancing. Less surprising when you find out it is because his daughter loves it.

The final way it ratchets up the significance of engaging with people when they are homeless is found in verse 2 of our New Testament passage.

“Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”

I’m sure you know the story of when Abraham finds three weary wonderers, welcomes them in, feeds them, gives them safe lodging and then finds out that this was the Lord and two of his friends. This isn’t saying that all homeless people are Jesus. What this passage tells us is that Jesus hangs out with people who are weary wonderers.

I would go as far as to say, there seems to be a sacramental quality to those moments of reconnecting a community of home.

A sacrament is ordinary things – water, wine, bread. But made extraordinary, given power to transform by the presence of Christ.

I’m sure you’ve had times when you’ve reached out to someone who was at a point in their life when they were disconnecting from their support network. Someone at church who seems to be going through a hard time in their relationship with their spouse, someone who has just lost a job, someone at work or whose mental health seems strained.

You’ve just said “Are you ok?” or “Fancy a coffee?” Perhaps you’ve gone the extra mile as you welcome them to church. Invited someone you know to your home for a meal or if you know them less well invite them to a restaurant and say you’ll pay.

“It was just spaghetti bolognaise” you might say “It was just our local café”, “I just listened to them… it was just a coffee… just a quick pint after work”. You’re not a trained counsellor, you’re not someone who is a professional at this. But years later they remember that coffee with you. They talk about that meal and how feeling like they were part of your family for those few hours gave them something transformative.

You didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, but there was something in that encounter that gave them strength or made them feel human again. Something happened to our ordinary offering that made it life-transforming. It had a sacramental quality.

This doesn’t come cheap. It’ll cost you money but it’ll also cost you time. It’ll cost you time you could be spending with people who are on an upward trajectory rather than spiralling down. It’ll cost you time you could be spending with people you have more in common with.

How do we as Christians live this radical lifestyle of making those who are different into our siblings? One of the greatest concerns of being with people who are suffering is that it may be catching. There are two secret that holds all this together. One from the past and one from the future.

V5 of our NT passage quotes Deuteronomy again:

Never, never will I leave you. Never, never, never will I forsake you. – 5 Nevers!

That doesn’t even make grammatical sense in Hebrew or Greek. In Hebrew you could say something twice instead of using the word very… Jesus says “Truly, truly I say unto you” and once it has three times in Isaiah “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty” and everyone thought… “Goodness! That must be really holy if they say it three times.” But here God says something five times. More times than even it says God is holy… God will never forsake you.

You can live this lifestyle of radical befriending because Jesus will be your faithful friend too.

V11 We read that although the High Priest carried the acceptable bits of the sacrifice into the Holiest of Holies, to the alter. Jesus is with the bits that were thrown over the city wall and burned as waste. Jesus suffered OUTSIDE the city gates. Jesus takes home to you.

Even if you’re in the exact opposite of Ancient Near Eastern hospitality.

On the cross Jesus was with those who weren’t waiting outside the city to be let in but were inside the city and thrown out.

Jesus was with those who were wrongly screened. People whose asylum claims have been processed badly.

Jesus’ feet were pierced not washed, Jesus fed vinegar on a stick not food from hands, Jesus was given three nights in a tomb not a bed.

On the cross Jesus cried out “My God, my God why have you forsaken me” – we hear “never never never never never will I leave you or forsake you” but Jesus is with those who feel forsaken even by God. GOD is with those crying that out… God is even faithful to you when you feel you are cut off from God.

Jesus transforms the place outside the camp to being the centre of encounter with God. The temple now doesn’t own God. Wherever we draw the boundary of God, God chooses to be with those on the edge.

The next power is from the future. We are all homeless – not just because we identify with our ancestors who were homeless. Whatever we have as home now is vulnerable to death. It’s the great leveller. Even the Queen is vulnerable when the people who have made her home die.

We are all waiting for a permanent home to come. And even if you think you’re very lucky in having a great sense of home now, we will all look back and see now as homeless by comparison. We are all homeless but we are all befriended by Jesus in that.

In the words of V13 Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

Let’s reach out to those who are in situations where their relationships aren’t working, those who are refugees, those whose mental health is under strain, those who are different, those who live on the streets.

And maybe, just maybe, we too will find that we are entertaining angels unawares.