Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Redeemer Community Church is located in the historic Avondale neighborhood of Birmingham, AL. Our church family exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
For more information on who we are, what we believe, or how to join us, please visit our website at rccbirmingham.org.
If you have a bible, I invite you to turn to first Peter chapter four. First Peter four. A few weeks ago, my on off switch was broken on this mic, and and they forgot to mute me. And it was just me singing for the overflow rooms and for the livestream. It's literally all all they heard.
Joel Brooks:And and those around me, you know, I I don't hold back, and I also don't hold key. So I I'm a little little always conscious of this now. First Peter chapter four. We've got beginning of verse three is is there. We looked at that last week, so we're gonna pick up in verse seven.
Joel Brooks:The end of all things is at hand. Therefore, be self controlled and sober minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. This is the word of the Lord.
Joel Brooks:You pray with me. Father, thank you for this word, this letter that Peter wrote, and I pray we would receive it. Lord, that you would write these things indeed on our hearts, we would walk out of this place looking more like you, Jesus. Lord, thank you for making us part of your family, for showing hospitality to us when we were strangers and bringing us in. Lord, I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore.
Joel Brooks:Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. Rosaria Butterfield, in her book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, it's a great book. It's an awkward title.
Joel Brooks:But she describes her old life as this. She says she was a radical, lesbian, feminist professor. She was. At the age of 36, she was a professor at Syracuse University, where she taught English and women's studies. She was a leading voice in the lesbian and gay community.
Joel Brooks:She would speak at rallies, leading the advocacy groups for them, and she would openly mock Christians. She thought Christians would be ignorant, to be close minded, not to mention judgmental, often hateful. She said she thought Christians were just bad thinkers, who in her mind, all voted Republican, all homeschooled their children, and refused to inoculate them against diseases, and they made what they what she saw as immoral choices, all the while claiming that God was on their side. In response to this, she actually decided to write a book against the religious right, and it was during her time writing this book and studying this movement that God actually met her and changed her life. She had just written and published in a local news play paper a critique of the promise keepers movement.
Joel Brooks:And, she was receiving all types of of hate mail, and also all types of fan mail. Both were coming in. And so, she actually made two stacks on her desk. She put all the hate mail on one side, she put all of the fan mail on the other side, except for one letter. She didn't know where to put it.
Joel Brooks:And she had received a letter from a pastor, and it wasn't hateful, it wasn't arrogant, yet this pastor was very firm in his convictions and simply asked her some questions about her life and things that she believed. And, that letter just sat in the middle of her desk for a week, driving her crazy. And so, she thought, well, I gotta file this somewhere, so I'm just gonna go ahead and call up the pastor and clear things up. And so she called up pastor Ken. And when she talked with him, he was very respectful and he was very kind and he was quick to just invite her over to come to his house for dinner and explore those questions.
Joel Brooks:And she said, I took him up on those words because I wanted to meet a born again Christian, and I wanted to find out why he believed such silly ideas. And I I rarely do quotes, as you guys know, from the pulpit, let alone long ones, but I I want to read you on her words, her account about this dinner. This is from her book. She says, I remember in great detail that first meeting with Ken and his wife, Floyd. I remember being conscious of my butch haircut and the gay and pro choice bumper stickers on my car.
Joel Brooks:I remember how relieved I was when I learned that Floyd made a vegetarian stir fry for supper. I tried to maintain a vegetarian diet for health as well as moral reasons. I remember awkwardly greeting my host at the door and pulling out my bagged two gifts, a bottle of good wine and a bottle of strong tea. It was a hot July day, and I was glad that they didn't use air conditioning because I was concerned about the environment. I share with you these details because they reflect my thinking at the time.
Joel Brooks:I wanted to get to know these people, but not at the expense of compromising my moral standards. My lesbian identity and culture and its values mattered a whole lot to me. I came to my culture and its values through life experience, but also through much research and deep thinking. I liked Ken and Floyd immediately because they seemed sensitive to that. Even though, obviously, these Christians and I were very different, they seemed to know that I wasn't just a blank slate, that I had values and opinions too, and they talked with me in a way that didn't make me feel erased.
Joel Brooks:The most memorable part of this meal was Ken's prayer before the meal. I had never heard anyone pray to God as if God cared, as if God listened, and as if God answered. It was not a pretentious prayer uttered for the heathen at the table to overhear. I have heard a few of those at gay pride marches or in front of planned parenthood clinics. It was a private and honest utterance, and I felt as though I was treading on something real, something sincere, something important, something transparent but illegible to me.
Joel Brooks:Ken made himself vulnerable to me in his prayer by humbling himself before this God of his, and I took note of that. Our conversation was lively and fun. If Floyd was a, quote, submissive wife, she was also gifted, smart, perceptive, well read, and a great cook. If Ken was quote a bible thumping pastor, he was also a good listener, a balanced interpreter, a lover of good poetry, a reader of culture and politics, and a husband who clearly adored, relied upon, and valued highly his wife's counsel. These people simply didn't fit the stereotype, and I simply didn't know what to do with them.
Joel Brooks:Just like his letter, Ken wouldn't be filed away so easily. And I wanted him to be filed away so I could just move on with my life. Ken and Floyd did something at that meal that has a long standing Christian history, but has been functionally lost in too many Christian homes. Ken and Floyd invited the stranger in, not to scapegoat me, but to listen and to learn and to dialogue. Ken and Floyd have a vulnerable and a transparent faith.
Joel Brooks:We didn't debate worldview. We talked about our personal truth and what made us tick. Ken and Floyd didn't identify with me, but they listened to me and identified with Christ. They were willing to walk the long journey to me in Christian compassion. This went on for two years.
Joel Brooks:After two years of dinners, two years of a growing friendship, Rosaria, she came to know the Lord. It was through the hospitality of Ken and Floyd that she began to not just hear for the first time the gospel, but to experience the gospel. And now, she's even come to write a book on hospitality called Hospitality Comes with a House Key. Now, let me ask you a question. How do you think the church should share the gospel?
Joel Brooks:Let let me let me phrase it this way, actually. In the culture we find ourselves in, a culture where people have a very difficult time connecting with one another, where loneliness is an epidemic, where many people live in the echo chamber of their own news feed, which just reinforces their own beliefs or or fans into flame the fears they already have, where no one can trust anything they read or even see online. In the midst of that climate, how do we as a church share the gospel? Facebook? Anyone?
Joel Brooks:Is that the best way? I mean, remember that as a king, no no kings protest was going on or maybe still going on now that but, as I was going on, you know, I saw a post, somebody was holding the sign and it said, no kings, but Jesus. And, I thought, that'll win them. There's going be a lot of lot of hearts changed on that one. But, what if we did a big tent revival?
Joel Brooks:We set up a huge tent right across the street in the gravel lot and we invited all of Avondale to come. Do you think people would come? I mean, in the past, you would have had thousands. What if, you know, we we decided to do our next sermon series and base it on all the hit summer movies? The gospel according to Toy Story, according to Forky.
Joel Brooks:Or or we do do something, you know, like the gospel according to the real disclosure day. Hint, it's Jesus. Is is that I mean, Christians have tried, we laugh, but Christians try these things. There's one strategy that the church has had for over two thousand years, one that is still effective today, I would argue actually even more effective today than it was two thousand years ago, and that is to share the gospel through hospitality. This is what Peter talks about here in chapter four.
Joel Brooks:And, I hope you sense the urgency in his words because he ties it to how we should be living in the last days here. As the end of all things has come, what should we do? We need to be hospitable, people. Look at verse four or verse seven. The end of all things is at hand.
Joel Brooks:Therefore, be self controlled and sober minded for the sake of your prayers. If I were to go downtown and hold up a sign saying the end is near, everybody would think I'm crazy or I'm drunk. Paul or Peter says, oh, no. No. No.
Joel Brooks:Fully in control, sober minded. When Peter here, he talks about us being in the end times. He's not saying that the that the clouds are about to break open and, you you know, Jesus is just about to ascend. And he has he's talking more about we're living in the last stage, the last age, if you will, or the last act in human history. If if you think of the human drama that's unfolding here, you think of it as a play, I mean, you have act one, you've got creation, act two, you've got the fall, and then you have the the call of Abraham, then you have the giving of the law, then you have the kings, and then you have the prophets, and then finally, you have Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Jesus ushers in the last time. He ushers in the last age. Jesus, He came, He lived, He died, He rose again, He ascended, He is now seated on His throne and He has given us the church His spirit to live out these last days until He finally returns. So what are we supposed to do during this time? I mean, I remember when I was younger, you know, that everybody's saying, well, I mean, if the end is near, you you gotta figure out what's the mark of the You you gotta you gotta work on your timeline for when Jesus is coming.
Joel Brooks:Even gosh, that was such the rage. When I was getting ordained, my ordination exam, one of the questions that they asked me was, in Daniel chapter nine, when Daniel have his has his prophecy about the seventy weeks there, the last week, how does that correlate with how you see the end times playing out in the book of Revelation? And, I just I was like, okay. You know, when I when I have somebody come to my office who's really depressed, maybe it's a it's a girl, she's depressed, she's on a she's eating disorder, she thinks about killing herself. I tell her, if she could just figure out that last week in that book of Daniel chapter nine, everything falls into place.
Joel Brooks:And I just went after them. And and it you know, it's amazing. I am still here, and I'm a pastor. I called up Lauren afterwards, she goes, how did it go? I was like, well, you didn't marry a pastor.
Joel Brooks:I could tell you that. What are we supposed to be spending our time with in these last days? Well, Peter here, he tells us. He says that, you know, well, first, we're to be self controlled, sober minded, prayerful. He said, but above all those things, love one another.
Joel Brooks:Read verse eight with me. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly since love covers over a multitude of sins. Peter says that during these final days, this final act, if there's one thing you could do, one top priority, it's this, love one another and do it earnestly. That word earnestly, it literally means stretched out or to reach out. We are to have a love that stretches us.
Joel Brooks:A love that reaches out to people. Reaches out to people with an encouraging text, reaches out to maybe a new mom or someone who's sick, reaches out to them and brings them a meal, reaches out to the visitor who came here all alone and ask if they want to sit next to you. Reaching out to those who are heartbroken heartbroken and just going and being present with them. It should stretch you. Guys, love is a verb.
Joel Brooks:It doesn't do anyone any good to just love someone up here. You actually have to reach out to them. One of the best people I know at doing this, and I'll just go ahead and embarrass her, but it is my wife who, every morning, Lauren, in her quiet time, she just asks, Lord, who today? Who today should I reach out to? Whether it's reaching out with an encouraging text, whether it's reaching out and asking if they wanna meet for lunch, whether it's reaching out and asking if they wanna go on a walk, but who today should I reach out to?
Joel Brooks:And she does. I, on the other hand, typically pray, Lord, who today can I avoid? We're different people. There's a thousand examples of how we can have a love that stretches us, how we can have a love that reaches out, but Peter just gives one. A love that reaches out is a love that's hospitable.
Joel Brooks:Hospitality is when love in love, we are reaching out to the stranger and we're treating them like family until they become family. Love is when we are reaching out to the stranger, we're pulling them in, we're treating them like family until they become family. Last September, Matt, he preached on a theology of hospitality. I'd encourage you to listen to that. It was an outstanding sermon.
Joel Brooks:I'm not gonna repeat all that. We're not gonna so much talk about the theology of hospitality, but I I do want to remind you that the reason hospitality is a core conviction of our church, the reason it is so important to us, it's so important to Peter, is because it is a tangible expression of the gospel we believe. One can go and hear the gospel in a sermon. They can go and read the gospel in a book, but they will feel the gospel through our hospitality. And, they need to feel it in order to open up their ears, their eyes, their hearts to actually receive the gospel.
Joel Brooks:And so, opens those doors. We reach out to the stranger, we bring them in, and we treat them just like family, just like Jesus did with us. In Ephesians two, we read Paul, he says this, that we once were strangers, but through Jesus, we have been now brought into the household of God. Let's look at verse nine here. He says, show hospitality to one another without grumbling.
Joel Brooks:You gotta you just gotta love those last two words. He gets it. He gets it. I mean, he knows he knows like we we grumble about hospitality all the time. Why are we always the one who invite them over?
Joel Brooks:They never invite us over. How did we Why do we have to make all the food? I mean, Lauren and I, we were home group leaders and we would have potlucks all the time, which just meant we cooked everything and everybody else brought collectively a bag of chips and some sweet tea. Home group leaders, it's like it's like he's reading your mind, he he knows these guys he's saying, guys, I get it. I get it.
Joel Brooks:I know opening up your home week in, week out, it's it's hard. Things get broken. People either show up really early or they stay really, really late. Some people can't pick up on the little social cues. I mean, there's times, Lauren and we would have people over, they're staying so late, we're giving them like everything every social cue you could get, leave.
Joel Brooks:Our children that even came would lie down on the floor in front of them in the kitchen and and say like, Mom, dad, can you just put us to bed? And they're like, Wow. It looks like they just sleep on the floor here. They they can't pick it up, that they should leave. And you want to grumble.
Joel Brooks:Get it. He says, don't. Remember one time, Lauren and I, we had college students over. They spilled a two liter bottle of Coke, and it went all over a rug in our dining room. Lauren and I, we both caught each other's eyes, we looked at it, and then the college student did this.
Joel Brooks:As if as if nobody could see it. We wanted to grumble. We did grumble. If you read through your bible and you look for it, it it might surprise you just how many times hospitality is mentioned. It's not a minor theme in scripture.
Joel Brooks:Romans twelve twelve, I'll give you a couple of examples. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer, contribute to the needs of the saints, and seek to show or reach out to show hospitality. Hebrews 13, do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for therefore some have entertained angels unawares. The guy who spilled coke might have been an angel. Fallen angel, but an angel like he We can see the importance that hospitality played in the early church just in the fact that both Timothy and Titus mentioned that one of the qualifications for being an elder is that person has to prove themselves to be hospitable.
Joel Brooks:But hospitality wasn't just limited to the leadership. Even the most poor and destitute person within the church was expected to be hospitable. Timothy mentions in first Timothy five that even the widows in the church need to have demonstrated their hospitality before they can even receive benevolence from the church. It's astounding. So, this is whether you are a leader in the church, whether you're the most destitute person in the church, hospitality was the expectation for those who are within the church.
Joel Brooks:Because once again, it's a tangible expression of the gospel. It shows you actually get the gospel, that you were a stranger and God brought you in. Now, first, you might actually think that this is a little cruel here that Timothy would go so far as to tell widows, we're not going to help you out until you've proven yourself to be hospitable. But I actually think the best picture we have in scripture of hospitality is from a widow. It's found in first Kings 17.
Joel Brooks:When we read through that chapter, there was a describes there was a severe drought that had descended on the land. It would last for years since it's an agrarian culture. It would have been devastating. In our day, we would say like, it's a great recession. It's a time where where the the, you know, you go into the grocery store, the shelves would have been kind of empty, prices would have been sky high, people would have been burning through their savings or through their store houses, just trying to survive.
Joel Brooks:And it's during this time, God told the prophet Elijah to go to the little town of Zarephath and find a widow there because he has commanded a widow to take care of him during this hard time. A widow during this time. And so Elijah, he goes to Zarephath and sure enough, right outside the city gates, he finds this this widow. She's that they're gathering sticks. And he goes to her and he says, hey, could you bring me some water and a drought?
Joel Brooks:He says this. She says, okay. So she's going to get get him water. And then he says, well, you know, as you're going, when you come back, could you bring me some bread too? Think she wanted to grumble at that moment?
Joel Brooks:Actually, what she said is this. She goes, I honest to God, I promise, I don't have any bread made. As a matter of fact, all I have is a handful of flour and the tiniest bit of oil in the jar. You know the reason I'm gathering sticks? It's so I can have a fire and use those things to make one last meal for my son and I, and we will eat it, and then we will die.
Joel Brooks:I talk about social cues, should pick this up. You would have probably interpreted that. Now, I would have interpreted that. That's a hard no. But, not Elijah.
Joel Brooks:He goes, Okay. Well, go and fix that meal and bring it to me. She probably wanted to grumble then too. Bring that meal to me. And then he says this, For thus says the Lord God, the jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty until the day the Lord sends rain upon the earth.
Joel Brooks:And so, the widow went, and she made that last meal for Elijah. And then, she went back, and sure enough, there was still oil, there was still flour, and she made for herself and her son some bread. And then, she invited Elijah to come and to live with her. And we read from that point on that the jar of flour was not spent, and neither did the jug of oil become empty. I have underlined those words in my bible, showing that God will always provide when we are hospitable.
Joel Brooks:She gives us such an unbelievable picture of hospitality here. I mean, at first it it seemed almost cruel, didn't it? That God would command a widow in a time like this, you couldn't have a more destitute person. She was the one who was supposed to open up her home and her life and her food and resources. Seems kind of cruel.
Joel Brooks:But look what happened to her when she obeyed. When she obeyed and she gave away seemingly all that she had, she found out that the food stretched further than was humanly possible. God provided for her as she gave it away. Now, she didn't have a huge surplus, she didn't have anything like that, but she had enough for every day. Second, she gained family.
Joel Brooks:I mean, it was just her and her son just trying to just trying to get by in life, like just trying to survive, but now she has someone else and she's brought in family because she's become hospitable. Guys, when we open up our homes, when we break bread together, when we welcome the stranger in through these doors and we get to know them, what we're adding is family. And, I want to be clear about this. Like, when people come into our homes or when people come in here, they are not problems. They're not problems.
Joel Brooks:They're future family. They're not just another mouth to feed, they're not just another drain on our resources, they're not another parking spot that's been taken, another seat that's been taken or reserved with the worship God. How annoying is that? No. They're they're people that God has brought to us in order that they might become family, part of his family.
Joel Brooks:All of these things that this widow experienced, we still experience when we open up our lives, we open up this place here, and we become hospitable people. I can't help but think of Frank and Barbara Barker when I think of the story of that widow. For those of you who don't know, Frank, he's the founding pastor of Briarwood Presbyterian Church. He was the founding pastor there. And he and Barbara, they founded that church through hospitality.
Joel Brooks:They opened up their home for people to come in and to eat for over forty years. Mostly, they opened it up to college students every single week, and they fed them. They said I'm talking to Barbara, she's like, we don't know how we would feed them. We don't At one time, she said, was making chili, just more and more college students just started coming, and I was like, we don't have the resources, and she was starting to grumble, and she just started crying, and she said, so tears went in the chili. Gave her an idea, they just started adding water to the chili.
Joel Brooks:And the chili stretched, and God provided. God provided. She got to experience that the jar of flour was not spent, and the jug of oil never ran empty. Even just a few weeks before Frank Barker died, he asked if Lorne and I could come over for dinner, still opening up his home. And in a very sweet moment, because we knew we'd never see him again until the next life, Lauren just said, hey, Frank, or you probably said doctor Barber Barker.
Joel Brooks:He said, would you just do you mind just sharing with me the gospel one more time? And he said, sure, I'd love to. And he actually he got up, which took a lot of effort, he walked into the other room, like, what in the world is going on? And then, he came back with the four spiritual laws track. Very Presbyterian.
Joel Brooks:And and and then he he sits down and he just walks through the gospel with Lauren. I mean, it was a it was a sweet moment. But the truth is, he had already demonstrated it to us. We'd already experienced it when he opened up his home, he opened up his life to us, and he just treated us like family. When Peter commands us to be hospitable, you gotta know what he's commanding.
Joel Brooks:He's not commanding you to be the next Martha Stewart. He's he's not talking about having the perfect home with the perfect meal. You know, that's that's entertaining. I don't know if we still use that word, but like, we would also hey, we're gonna entertain people, we're gonna have them over that way. No.
Joel Brooks:Entertaining is about impressing people. Hospitality isn't trying to impress anyone because it's not seeking to bring honor to the host, hospitality seeks to bring honor to the guest. You're lifting them up, not lifting yourself up. And we honor the guest when we treat them like family. Many of you guys, you've come over to to our house for dinner, maybe for one of our new to Redeemer dinners.
Joel Brooks:There's a good chance if you came to one of those, something went wrong. Because something always goes wrong. You know, maybe maybe we ordered food and it wasn't delivered. That's happened. And so, we've we just would go down into the basement to the deep freeze, and we'd pull out every frozen pizza we have, and and that's what we serve you guys.
Joel Brooks:Or, more likely, because this happens all the time, it just pours down rain, and so we can't meet outside, and so we all have to come inside. We don't have room. We can sit six people in our living room. And so, I'm like, guys, just sit on the floor. And so, many of you all have experienced that.
Joel Brooks:Let me ask you that. When that happened, did you feel unimportant? Is that what you felt in that moment? That we were not honoring you or you felt unimportant? Or did you feel the opposite, that we valued you so much, we wanted to treat you like family?
Joel Brooks:That's that's hospitality. A person is actually honored when you see them as having so much value, so important, you want to get to know them and pull them in so much, you are not willing to wait for the perfect house. You're not willing to wait until you become a better cook. You're gonna do it now. And actually, it's those imperfections, when you have all those and you're just trying to pull them in, that honors them.
Joel Brooks:What I value more than anything else is not making much of me and how I live, it is I want to get to know you and pull you in. I want you to become family. So there's no excuse not to open up whatever you have, whether it's a home or whether it's your your favorite restaurant or pub or whatever it is to to pull in people. Guys, this is true in our homes. This is certainly true here in the church.
Joel Brooks:We don't celebrate this enough here at Redeemer, but I I I wish we'd celebrate it more. Do you do you realize that God is doing here is extraordinary? I mean, the pulling the people in constantly, hundreds and hundreds every year, just just coming to know the Lord and and joining the church and, man, that that should be celebrated. And yet, I so often hear about people being a problem. And, I get it because we're prone to grumble.
Joel Brooks:There is a temptation for us to see people as the problem, To see college students when they come in, they're just the ones who are taking up all the pews, or the ones taking up all the parking. Why did they park so close? And some pregnant mom is having to, you know, having to walk so far away to get in here, and we we see them as they're not they're people. When the strangers come in, they're people that God has brought here in order for us to add a seat at the table and treat them like family? Whether it's actually we have a seat or whether we're sitting on the floor or standing on the walls, but we want to honor them as future family.
Joel Brooks:They're not problems. Is there a cost to hospitality? Absolutely. I mean, why do you think he says, don't grumble? It's a cost.
Joel Brooks:As a church, we find that we will receive far more than we have to give. There was a cost to Jesus when he was hospitable, when he stretched out his arms in love towards us. There was a cost. But he did it all for the joy that was set before him. It was so that we might become sons and daughters of the king.
Joel Brooks:And if we open ourselves up to hospitality, I believe we as a church will always find that the jar of oil shall not be spent and or the jar of flour shall not be spent and the jug of oil shall never run empty. So live out these last days with urgent hospitality. Just as Jesus welcomed you when not only you were a stranger, but you were his enemy, he welcomed you in. Let us welcome those into our homes and into this place. Let's pray.
Joel Brooks:Lord Jesus, I I just in this moment, I want all of us to just collectively thank you for the people that you've put in our lives who have demonstrated your love to us, that have reached out to us in love. And when they reached out to us in love, we got to experience your love. Thank you for all of those people. Thank you that they found a a place for us at their table. And, Lord, I pray we would do so as a church, that we would not just be a people who say the gospel, who read the gospel, but we would be people who live out the gospel so that people can feel it and experience it.
Joel Brooks:I pray you would make us a more hospitable church, all for your glory and for our joy. And, we pray this in the sweet name of Jesus. Amen.