Tea Makes Everything Better

Proper 9C
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
July 6, 2025

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
Church of the Redeemer Episcopal
Morristown, NJ

We are gathered together in what continues to be a time of crisis. Cherished rights are being eroded by fear. The commitments we have made as a people to care for each other and especially for those who are unable to care for themselves are being set aside in favor of policies that embody deliberate cruelty. Impoverished people are impoverished further so that the richest among us may enjoy even more wealth.

We are gathered together in a time of crisis. We’d like to know what our sacred text, traditions, and the practices of our community could offer us to empower us to meet the crises of our day? But what we find in today’s text from Luke, perhaps disappointingly, is a briefing for some temporary missionaries.

If we read the instructions more closely, we’ll encounter oddities like the instructions to travel without a bag of any kind, a change of clothes, or even coverings for their feet. We’ll find instructions for accepting hospitality and a ritual for saying goodbye to any village that hosts them. Quaint, perhaps, but not obviously helpful to us gathered as we are in a time of crisis.

I have been preaching for a long time, sometimes every week, other times a couple of times a year. It has always amazed me when the readings of the lectionary align themselves with the crisis of the day. It’s happened often enough that I have a bit of hope that, as strange as it may seem, this text may be helpful to us, but perhaps not in an obvious way.

So, peering a little closer, we see that Jesus gathered a group of a half-dozen dozen of his followers and paired them up. He saw his situation through the metaphor of growing grain. Something has been growing in their world. We aren’t told precisely what it is, but it’s ripe and the time has come to harvest it. Jesus can’t be everywhere at once and so he chooses seventy-two followers to go where he cannot and gather this harvest.

Jesus gave these designated workers instructions: The world into which I am sending you is a dangerous place. Go by two’s. Go without resources (No walking stick, no knapsack, no sandals, no joining a caravan for the safety of numbers). When you come to a town, bless it with peace. Accept an invitation to stay and accept whatever they give you for as long as it takes to do the work in that village. Heal the sick. Announce the nearness of God’s dream. Leave. If they haven’t listened, shake off the dust from your feet. But don’t go without re-announcing the nearness of God’s dream.

The seventy-two followers did as Jesus told them and came back reporting stunning success. Jesus rejoiced because their work was a cosmic turning point.

Now, the story of the seventy-two stands on its own, I suppose, but I think it’s more than that. Remembering that this writing was intended for the eyes and ears of Luke’s community a generation removed from the original disciples, Luke was writing about Jesus and his immediate followers, but he was inviting his own community some forty years later to eavesdrop for their own instruction.

And that instruction gives us an insight, accidentally perhaps, into how early Christian communities were structured. I say this because there are two groups of people who are at the center of this story. The first group is obvious: the traveling preacher/healers. They go from place to place, announcing God’s dream in words and actions, and they do it depending on hosts whom they meet along the way for their shelter, food, (and perhaps even their clothing).

And that’s the other group of people in the story: the householders who hosted these wandering preacher/healers, providing them food to eat, a place to stay, and (I am guessing) access to their network of relationships to people who might respond favorably to God’s dream.

The New Testament, by the way, was written by and from the perspective of that first group of people–the traveling preacher/healers. They formed the inner circle of Jesus’ followers; they founded communities throughout the eastern Roman Empire; their lifestyle is revered. And there is a sense to this: these people were often displaced peasants who had been dispossessed of their land. They had no power and very little status in Roman Palestine. But in the Christian movement, they were honored as the bearers of Jesus’ message and the continuers of his work. So they get a high status in the New Testament.

But their work would have been impossible without Jesus-following householders who gave material support to the travelers and who sought to live out God’s dream in their own settings. In the New Testament, this group doesn’t get much recognition, but, they are everywhere: Mary, Martha, and Lazarus in John’s gospel; Peter’s mother-in-law; Simon the Tanner of Joppa in Acts; the householders that Paul greets at the end of his letters; and, so forth.

Hospitality was a key part of the life of early Christian communities. Hospitality was important in Jesus’ world in general. Jesus didn’t invent it. In anthropological terms hospitality performs the important function of transforming relations between strangers either of whom after all might be regarding the other as a threat and be prepared to take hostile action at the slightest provocation. Hospitality helps to defuse those tense situations. Hospitality is also a kind of currency in the formation of networks of power. Far from being an occasion for the simple enjoyment of human company, an invitation to dinner brings the parties into an instrumental relationship whereby they can be of use to each other. It establishes or reinforces a relationship of patron or matron and client both of whom come away with real advantages and real obligations. Hospitality in the Greco-Roman world was simply one of a number of strategic tools for amassing power.

Now it was Jesus’ self-declared mission to transform all the social relations of the society he lived in so that they are no longer power-driven or advantage-seeking. He invited himself to dinner. He told his followers not to invite someone to dinner who could afford to invite you in return. He told the seventy-two that when they accepted a householder’s hospitality it was simply a wage for the work they were doing; they owed no debt to their host.

And, to make matters even more mixed up, Jesus told the seventy-two that if they were denied hospitality, they themselves were not being rejected. It was Jesus who had sent them and the One who had sent Jesus who was being rejected.

So tell me, what does it mean when God is being presented to the host in the person of the guest? Who gains power in the hospitality transaction as Jesus understands it? The dinner invitation still stands, but old meanings are subverted and transformed. Even the uninvited guest is Jesus who seeks shelter under our roof and a place at our table as Benedict understood. At the heart of our shared meal God is present in both host and guest. God feeds and God is fed. We serve and we are served. And hospitality as we are called to practice it becomes a lens through which we see ourselves and our neighbors and our world.

The crisis that we face has a long history. It didn’t begin in our lifetimes. And it’s complicated. But I believe that close to the center of the maelstrom is a failure of hospitality.

The regime is rounding up people on the street and shipping them to concentration camps at home and abroad because they had the audacity to imagine that they might find a place at our table. That’s a failure of hospitality. The regime uninvites young people who want to be part of an athletic team because they can’t produce either a blue or pink invitation. That’s a failure of hospitality. To the regime those who live on the streets of our cities can only be a threat to be eliminated and in places it has even criminalized sharing a cup of water or sandwich, the simplest of hospitable acts. That’s a failure of hospitality. Hospitality as Jesus’ understands it, has no place in the regime.

Hospitality is a central value that embodies who we are over against the demands of the regime. The recognition of our mutuality with each other, with our neighbors, with the earth and all that live on it, and even with those who consider themselves our enemies, lies at the heart of who we are in world.

Ideally, of course, that notion not only expresses itself in the Eucharist, but spills over into our lives and the way that they intersect with the lives of others. It can be found in the world even in small gestures.

Some twenty years ago, Carol and I visited Scotland. That was the trip of seven ferry rides as we toured the western islands. It was also the trip of great confusion. It started in Chicago at O´Hare airport. We were to fly Aer Lingus (the Irish airline) into Dublin and then go on to Glasgow, rent a car, and drive north to the fishing village of Ullapool on the northwest coast of the Scottish mainland. We reported to the Aer Lingus gate and handed the agent our printed reservation. The agent looked at it for a bit then turned to us and with an apologetic tone in his voice said, “But this flight left last night.”

You can imagine our reaction. And then, almost immediately, he said, “But there are seats on this evening’s flight and we can get you on it. There is a fee, of course.” So we paid the fee and boarded.

The next day started well. The car reservation was correct and off we drove to Ullapool. We arrived tired, not having slept for well over a day. We found our bed and breakfast and were looking forward to good night’s sleep. But the confusion continued. Our landlady told us, “Your reservation is for the tomorrow night. And I’m full tonight.” Again, you can imagine our reaction. “Not to worry, though. We’ll find you somewhere. Come in and have tea. Tea makes everything better.” Tea came and cookies, of course. She poured, sat for just a bit, and then excused herself to make some phone calls. And we relaxed.

Even a cup of tea does indeed make everything better. Even a cup of tea can embody the hospitality that transforms all of our social relations. Even a cup of tea hastens the downfall of the regime.

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